Reckless Convention. A white page with a two column layout greets me. The purple and red color scheme on the right hand bar doesn’t do too much for me, but to each his or her own. The text is clear, although I am beginning to wonder why the print is so small on so many weblogs. A larger font would make for much more comfortable reading. Bloggers take note!
I launched into the sidebar where promises of “About Me” and Photos and other information resided. But don’t get too excited. In order to access this information, you have to sign up on Journalspace. I did not feel like doing this at all. Of course, this is not the fault of the diarist. It’s the way the site is designed. I don’t care for it.
It took me a while to figure out that our author is female. Even though there is a photo of a girl on the right column, I could not be sure until I read enough entries. I read some of the latest entries and began to struggle to get the gist of what she was saying. I found myself re-reading paragraphs because I had lost the flow of what she was talking about. But in the entry about sharks I found a few eloquent phrases like this one:
“See, there are these caves in the ocean, kind of bubbles, where the water is oxygen-rich. Highly oxygenated water affects a shark, and as a species, they know it. Sharks swarm to these aquatic opium dens and swim round and round, slower and slower, in their hundreds, lost in dreams of death and perfection.”
Very nice.
But as I read on, I was more and more perplexed. The writing was often more rant-like and disjointed than I can deal with in large doses. But then, here and there, would pop up a brilliant turn of phrase. So I kept reading. But in the end I came away with more than a mild case of annoyance. While I don’t doubt the intelligence of the author, I became weary while trying to connect with her convoluted writing style.
But I would be remiss if I did not mention that she has no small number of readers who comment. This means that there are those out there who DO connect. So my advice is to check out this blog and see what you think.