Gobsmacked

I’ve been hanging around on-line journaling for a number of years. I’m a lurker: only in the last few months have I dared to publish to the Internet and even though I recently registered at a forum, I still haven’t had the courage to proffer a post. One of the pleasures of lurking is that from time to time I come across an arresting on-line personality, someone I wished I known earlier. It happened today, but in the saddest of possible ways, as the on-line community mourned the death of Leslie Harpold. Never once in ten or so years had I heard of her and here I was delighting in some of her creations, her magnificent advent calendars. I traced the path of Advent 2005, thinking what fun my grandchildren could have had. Apparently she died with seven days of Advent 2006 completed.

I was following the links at the bottom of this page, astonished at the outpourings of praise, affection and sorrow, not in the least surprised to find she had lived in New York and San Francisco. My eye caught the phrase, “She now lives in Grosse Pointe, MI.”

This wonderful person was living in the Woods. I feel like I felt when I learned that I was living so very close to Sylvia Plath when she committed suicide. I wished I had bumped into her, somewhere, somehow.