Been WAY out of town. You hear me? Checked The Google twice in last week (for very brief periods). Been a good while since I plummeted off The Series of Tubes like that. As a writer, it seemed to open me, my, uh, doors of perception (?), geode cracked. I suppose I mean to say I felt I was absorbing more, of people I met (mostly strangers—always a synapse crackle), the sights/sounds/smells/feels/tastes (NY city, outside NY city, sick gorges, fog, wind, microbrews, jackknifed dreams, etc). I don’t know. Seemed like I was eating new food and meeting new words said in new ways and it seemed, well, different.

Possibly I was cleansed, in the manner of detox beverages or Pringle binges or long, long runs through old forest? Off the Net, on the Net. I am now wondering if I shouldn’t take regular, extended periods away…it seems to have surged me, to have prepped me to write, to have planted the brain’s gray furrows with inlaid jewels ready to pry and bloom and sparkle. Thoughts? Do you make yourself leave the Virtual? Or maybe binge on the Virtual, then write? What are your thoughts and ways?