since S Compton and J Kimball popped comments on my recent little rumination on blogs, which (really) makes it seem like this blog is a definable space and not just my romantic thrill of thinking myself, I shall ruminate further... pass me the cud, podner... in the previous, I thought of the word anthology as applying to the blogosphere. I think my articulation did gang a-gley a bit then so I want to embolden the idea more clearly. a blog is not bookish, in the sense of being a detached module of literature. instead, a blog situates with other blogs, in a way that books and mags do not. many blogs are obviously conversations, but even those that aren't involve themselves in a wider conception. so I think that considerations such as Jack is given to do, critiques of the blog machine, are not just useful as critical activity but as reminders of the greater theme. it is not a matter of rules but an embrace of the procedure. content is almost not the point, tho that's too pointedly post-modern for my shoes. I would prefer a tensile construct to the pix of babies and dogs, and the Youtube excavations as well, if we're talking content. but I could write of the Christmas tree coming down today. Erin was off at a Magic card tournament whilst Beth and I removed ornaments from the tree. then mid afternoon it was the Patriots vs the Chargers, and once more the Pats pulled away in the 2nd half. about 3 years ago my father went hospital for the final act. it seems so yesterday. last sunday, Beth and I visited a couple who we lost track of the past year or so. they now live in a rehab center, tho nursing home might draw a better picture. sadly, because of differing condition, they live in separate wings. we found one, the less restricted one, at a concert in the facility's auditorium. a small band earnestly played show tunes and standards. it took a while to find our friend, who we finally located up front, and longer to work our way to her. many sunday afternoon visitations were in progress, and the concert itself was apparently part of an extra effort to get patients involved with the outside world. brownies and punch were being served, either staff or volunteers were making stark effort to look like fun (dancing theatrically and such), and kids were overloading on sugar and creep out. before we made contact with our friend, we waited in the hallway outside the auditorium. several children were playing violently, a kind of desperate articulation of youth. a woman was wheeled from the festivities and immediately began scolding the children. I'm sure she scolded everything in her purview. our friend was pretty lucid tho with serious memory issues, which she was aware of. she was pretty calm about the memory loss, at least at the time. I remember my father's distress at times, a boat slipping from shore. she was always intellectually involved, still retained interest but her memory was an issue. we had a nice visit with her then brought her, she was comfortably peripatetic, to her room. she had an expectation that her husband would be along soon, and was fuzzy why he wasn't. she said she needed time alone to put things together in her head. we went to the other wing to visit her husband. that wing was closed off because the flu was present. they let us in with a caution. his condition was more tenuous. he made an effort to stay present and lucid. people there would be surprised to know that he was a dynamic, very accomplished person with a type A+ personality. and yet. I didn't mean to speak of specifics but it was all so sad. we are, culturally, I guess, so stupid concerning children and elders. our schools are full of adult concepts of situated success rather than progressive sense of learning procedure. our elders are captivated in the dullest gloom. my mild anointing of blogs (including my own) only remarks on the connected position of our assertions. I say that hopefully. I assert that Tributary is a Poetry blog tho you can weigh the actual references to the P-word and its productions as being mightily partial, all in all. but poetry is language with an asserted necessity. just speaking for myself, the shopping tours and what not, the contexts of this blog radiate from how language moves around a subject. the subject is not the point, the language is. returning to the beginning, the pets, the Youtube, if this is just filler or markers, it shows. when the connection to the underlying process asserts its present drive, then it lives, not just as content but as process. so I am ok with whatever, so long as something happens...