Dodo Au Go-Go

Lately, I've found myself wanting to retreat from social media. Not that I was ever a huge user, but I did love playing with microfiction and creativity .  Now, more and more, it feels like Twitter has shrunk from a galaxy full of inspirational wildernesses and stars and oceans... to a tired, concrete playground, ravaged by rust, garbage and graffiti, and populated by rival, frothing-at-the-mouth mobs roaming around just to shout insults at each other. Unaware, oblivious or delighting if their venomous words make a mark. And I should add: the issues that get frequently amplified are important. But. But. But there are lots of piles of utter rubbish that get deliberately flapped into ugly fires too. And the ugliness spills and stains and leaches. How do people hang around that energy all the time and not let it soil their souls? How? Can it be done? I really don't know, but right now, I don't think so. I saw this tweet tonight from @SarahBrentyn I wish I had an answer for Sar...

Over on Twitter, I'm playing along to a daily March indie-writer celebration, called #MarchOfTheWriters, initiated by the very awesome JD Estrada . The Day 7 prompt was #HomeIs So. I'm a migrant. I'm a member of a diaspora (probably more than one). If anyone asks, I claim a formal hyphenated identity that includes three places and two hyphens. Roots and routes have been a feature of my life journey, and of the stories I tell about myself. All these things have been part of the reason I wrote a doctoral thesis over an excrutiatingly long period of time (and the doctorate is also the reason I've developed an overly complicated relationship to writing, but that's another post for another time). In short, I've thought about the idea of 'Home' a lot. I was born in Country A. I left there as a toddler and haven't been back, though I still claim citizenship there. It's not home, but it's my father's home, and my parents' stories come t...