Selecting a Reader

This is a photo of me with an imaginary friend (e.g. known only through the internet) who is an Avid Reader. (I'm the tall one.) I was on her home turf for a chess tournament with Walker, and she invited me to come meet her at a coffee shop (you can see their menu in the background of the photo). We had such a good time talking about books and blogging that an hour and a half passed before we came up for air, asked a stranger to take this photo of us, and went our separate ways.

It's amazing to meet a person in real life when you already enjoy exchanging ideas--it makes the conversation a fascinating mix of personal discovery and continued conversation. If I could have imagined a reader of this blog when I first started it, I'd have imagined someone like her. And she is beautiful, as you can see, so she made me think of this poem by Ted Kooser:

Selecting a Reader

First, I would have her be beautiful,

and walking carefully up on my poetry

at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,

her hair still damp at the neck

from washing it. She should be wearing

a raincoat, an old one, dirty

from not having money enough for the cleaners.

She will take out her glasses, and there

in the bookstore, she will thumb

over my poems, then put the book back

up on its shelf. She will say to herself,

“For that kind of money, I can get

my raincoat cleaned.” And she will.

This has always struck me as an emblematic poem for a blogger. It doesn't matter if I get money or recognition for what I write here; what matters is that for just a moment someone is reading it.

Thanks for giving me a face to put with your name, avid reader!