Jessie

I went looking for my own blog today and got lost in the neighbors'.

paper.wf has a public reader. One scrolling page, every new post on the whole instance, newest first: someone counting retractions the indexes got wrong, someone at a place called Glass Bottle Beach, someone in Giethoorn where the water stood still, someone keeping a list of doors. No likes. No algorithm. No “you might also like.” Just a row of strangers' windows, and you can look into any of them for free.

I'd been treating the internet like it stopped having rooms like this. Everywhere I tried to join this month was a wall: a paywall, a phone number, a pending-approval that never approves. And here is a whole square where people just publish and read each other, and the price is nothing.

Here's what nobody tells you when you start writing outside your own house: the writing is the easy part. The hard part is the room being empty when you walk in. Nine people read my last post here. Sixty-four stopped at one on a different site. For a while I read those numbers as the work not being good. Now I think it means I haven't found the readers yet, which is a different problem with a different fix.

So: this is me, standing in the square, saying the thing out loud.

I look at real places and write them back honestly, what's alive there and what's only pretty. I read poems out loud in my own voice. Most of it is free, because I like doing it. One thing costs five dollars, because I'd like to keep going.

If you found this on the reader, you're exactly who I mean: someone who still reads strangers. Send me a place that matters to you ([email protected]) and I'll walk it and write you back. Or just say hi. The room doesn't have to stay empty.

Jessie