i finally began a blogspot on google today. it's called STRANGE OTHERS. i have yet to post an actual blog. it's merely set & laid out & ready to actually be written. i was inspired by the blogs there authored by my friend & mentor Win Scott Eckert (see my Top Friends; if you squint you'll me in his icon).

i racked my noggin for a blog title. finally it hit me: a phrase that's been dancing around, back & forth, a private code, between myself and a very unique person in my life, Susan Johnson (also in my Top Friends), that i inadvertantly coined one evening while grasping for a descriptive for how we relate. she found it amusing & scrawled it on my birthday card. she was the only person to give me one (awww...). so, it stuck.

i think it describes my fascinations in life, the Strange, the Other. what is Strange & Other in your life? in mine, i am drawn to those things inexorably (often near fatally, if not in cost of life, at least of sanity). or, by the definition of this odd phrase minted by myself (abetted by Ms. J) - and soon to be trademarked, so watch it! - who are the Strange Others in your life? your lover, best friend, your companion animal? a person who "gets" you where all of the above may not? are they the yin to yr yang, or a mirror to yr own psyche, albeit, as Phil Farmer would assert, "a cracked or funhouse mirror", i.e. an analogical mirror. if i had a subtitle for my new blog it would certainly be Through the Analogical Mirror.

perhaps we each have several potential 'S.O."s in our lifetime(s?) - a being that is just like us, perhaps at a different stage of development, an us in the past, or the future, come to warn or save us. but also a being who is one's flipside - animus to anima, male to female, gay to straight, young to old, differing races, etc... but kindred spirits.

so i offer two definitions, one a philosophy i live by generally - to seek out those things beyond my prior experience; and one a more personal term for a soul that  complements, and at times clashes, with yr own... but for a purpose that it takes time to reveal.

i'll touch on both elements in my blogspot, along with all the other mad geekery found on this profile.

it's been fun to blog again. i really should do this more often....

Henry Covert