Ave Atque Vale, Claire

One of the saddest things that can happen in the world of blogging is when a good blogger goes silent.

It happens for any number of reasons of course.  For some, the desire or need to write simply runs out - like so many things in life, a thing can have a force and meaning which over time disappears and is no longer a force.  For some, just the burden of continuing to come up with something to write on a regular or semi regular basis can be overwhelming - after all, 99.9% of us do this for no other good reason than a love of words and on the whole, love does not pay particularly well.  For the saddest of cases of all, the blogger does not get to make the choice but the choice is made for them (Requiscat In Pace, Ol' Remus of The Woodpile Report).

It was thus with a great deal of sadness this morning that I read that Claire Wolfe has elected  (for all intents and purposes) to discontinue her blog.

I know that she is not everyone's cup of tea (to be fair, at one point in my life I would not have considered her so either), but she is (using the present tense; she is not "expired") someone whose writing I enjoy reading simply for the fact that - agree or disagree - it is well written and made me think, to the point that I actually read books she recommend which in turn modified my thinking.  She became for me like Ol' Remus of the blessed memory above, or a cadre of bloggers that still write and whom I look forward to reading with relish (the list I look forward reading looks a lot like that list over there to the right) whenever I saw they had a new post as I curled up with my cup of coffee in the morning.

Her reasons for leaving are manifold:  partially just that the drive to write of insanity in a world which is every day seemingly trying to outdo itself in said insanity has disappeared, partially because it simply costs money to operate a server in a time of increasing expenses  and she prefers to allocate resources elsewhere, and (the most happiest part for me at least) partially that she has found good things in her life that she would much prefer to spend time on than continuing to dwell on the more disagreeable things of the modern world (which, to be fair, we all would).

Over the years here as I have written, I have found myself transitioning to a different kind of writing which is different in its genesis (for me, I really just do not like unpleasantness and conflict in the comments section) but ultimately the same in outcome:  I have chosen to write about different areas other than current events and the general insanity not so much because it is not there (it is), but that my writings provide very little in the way of actual solutions to such problems - they become more  a simple grousing about the way things are.  That helps no-one ultimately:  not me, not my readers, and not the situation in general.  I would rather write about things that either provoke my thoughts or that I simply enjoy; the potential that they have an impact to fix any current issues is an accidental by-product, not the intent.  And so when someone else makes the realization that the time has come to spend their life on happier things, I can only raise the proverbial glass and shout "Huzzah".

I am selfishly sad of course, the sort of selfishness that comes when a beloved local store or restaurant closes because the owner has decided to retire or simply move on:  glad for them and sad for myself that I will no longer have the experience of shopping or eating there.  At the same time, we are remiss if we do not in our selfish sadness take the opportunity to be grateful to the spot that they filled in our lives during that time.  Our sorrow is most likely not so much from the inconvenience of not having access as it is to the fact that something we enjoyed will no longer be a part of our lives in the same way:  not an active participant, but a happy memory.

I struggled with how to name this post; after all "Goodbye" or "A Requiem for" has the sort of finality that suggests something other than what Claire has decided to do, simply step into another place in life.  As I pondered, the phrase from the Roman Poet Catullus "Ave atque Vale" - "Hail and Farewell" suggested itself.  I post the translation of the poem here for completeness:

Carried through many nations and over many seas,
I arrive, brother, for these wretched funeral rites
so that I might present you with the last tribute of death
and speak in vain to silent ash,
since Fortune has carried you, yourself, away from me.
Alas, poor brother, unfairly taken away from me,
now in the meantime, nevertheless, these things which in the ancient custom of ancestors
are handed over as a sad tribute to the rites,
receive, dripping much with brotherly weeping.
And forever, brother, hail and farewell. (Source)

Ave atque Vale, Claire.