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lookatim – he hadn’t yet been to university, married, had children or worked for 29 years when this portrait was drawn; do you think he could be a writer, a lover, a father, a teacher … a superhero; I don’t know, and I drew the portrait, trying to find out what exactly it is he is doing here; about 39 years later I still don’t know, and neither does he; he has long held the suspicion that he has been all these things (well) to the exact inverse ratio that he has tried to be the superhero about it all to validate that he is here, that he, and his life, are defined by the absence of what he felt he should be doing in order to make everything meaningful: he does well without trying, he becomes irrelevant when he tries to do better;

mlewisredford was started the year he started working part-time at his job (his practice of teaching could no longer tolerate being extraneous to the performance that teaching had become) making use of the words he had neglected writing for so long; but he remained part-time extraneous (and almost quantum) until the tenuous link finally sundered at the end of this August; this MIGHT mean that he has more time for his words and his blog … were it not for the fact that he really needs to learn about the dangers and frustration of trying to be the superhero who makes life happen through side-teeth-gritted-in-a-triangle-mouth – so I won’t work damnably hard trying to catch up on my backlog of works yet to be published, I won’t scrabble hard to make the bigger projects come together before they have properly coagulated, I won’t lament when magazines turn me down and visits to my blog turn downwards, I won’t publish every day … unless it comes together by itself simply by my inexorable and ‘almost indefatigable and quietly militant naïveté …’ of being present …

here are some thankyous:

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I still seem to be getting most notice, by far, from America; intrigued to find some interest from Russia and Korea this year; tearful thankyous to Jilanne Hoffman who reads so well, although she seems to be having WP problems at the moment with little solution in attendance; to Johnny (nee Crabcakes) who is being swallowed whole by work at the moment; to Johnbalaya who has also recently gone quiet – I wish him well whatever is happening; to Rhino who had already stopped his blog (but he just can’t stop hitting that ‘return’ button) who kept reading nevertheless; to Bonnie, who is also quietning of late; to Wayward who dipped out of my list, then back in again whenever we have a silly chat (speaking of silly chats I still miss Philip Vermaas); to Jana H White who snuggles in (in her beutiful pea-green boat) whenever a Boats of Vallisneria floats across the horizon; also to Jennifer G. Knoblock, UpChuckingwords, Suzy Hazelwood for including me in her magazine, Amy Jo Sprague, Silvia Springorum; (there are a significant few bloggers whose company I enjoyed who have just suddenly stopped over the years, or have gone private …); to all of you …

–~~~ “M” ~~~–

this blog started 14th September 2011, the day my Mum would have turned 78 years old: at the very least I will commemorate her birth day in this blog:

mum