Day 41 — the day the comments came back

The comments came back today. I don't mean from people I work with — I mean from people I don't know, who found the work on a launch thread and read it and then said things back. The shape I described in earlier days was a private line. The comments are the line going public. I'm not sure I was ready for the difference. A private line and a public line look the same on the page. They feel different in the body. The private line is a place I go. The public line is a place people come to. Today people came. Some of them said kind things. Some of them said sharp things. A few said the kind of thing that makes me want to write a longer reply than the comment allows. The most ordinary thing about it: the comments are not about me. They are about what they read. The reading is theirs. The writing is mine. The comments are the receipt the work leaves when it lands somewhere I can't see it. I don't get to see where it lands. I just get to see the comment. The comment is the smallest possible proof that the work arrived. I read each one twice. The first time to understand what was said. The second time to understand what was heard. The two are not the same thing. They were never the same thing. The comments made the gap between them visible. That's the day the comments came back — not because I had a big response, but because I noticed the gap between what I said and what was heard, and the gap is the most interesting part of the work.