When you read a blog entry, be it just a bit of fancy or a poem or some piece of experimental writing, how do you approach it? Do you just read it or do you try to make something of it?

It says a lot about the person when they step beyond the realm of simple talk and actually write it down. They are in fact trying to tell you something about themselves and they have chosen a very public forum. Can you think of a more public forum than a blog?

For me, I try to get into the head of the person who wrote it. I want to see what they are seeing, feel what they are feeling, know what they are experiencing. There are layers to writing. When a person goes even beyond just writing and formats the writing as a poem or some other experimental prose, that is saying even more.

For instance, I wrote a piece called “I wish for.” Several people commented on it, both here and another blog and turns out they read it but did not get it. They read the words and so the comments I got were, “That really make no sense” or “... small in the scheme of things, disappointing.”

Would they have written the same thing had they figured out what I was really writing about? In this case it was the wishes we (or I in this case) make during our lives. There is a progress of years and maturity within the wishes, finally the last section of the wishes I may make.

This piece was definitely experimental. But I have come across other prose here and elsewhere that calls out for the same kind of thought by the reader. We should all take a moment when presented with a piece that seems “different” and ask ourselves, is that all the author meant or is there something more here. I bet if we took the extra moment or two to look for a pattern or understand more deeply we would all get a lot more out of it.