the fringes ~ to be in the fringes ... i've heard the expression enough times. it's usually not a compliment ... not so long ago, i learned it's a place on a golf green ... a rather unfavorable place - bumpier ... a bit more wild and unkempt - a clean shot's gonna be tougher from there - intentionally so. you don't want your ball to land there but the fringes make the game more interesting - and challenging. i don't like the comparison that levels life to a game, so i'm not going very far with this parallel. it's just, i didn't know that - about the term - i didn't make the connection. i'd heard it used in reference to ME; my state of being, on and off, for much of my life. i'm just playing with the term now - to make sense of it, or not.

what else? who comes to mind when we think of the fringes? derelicts, street people ... teen-agers? though with them, i suspect it's intentional and sort of a generational movement. it's important to be seen as sort of fringe-y by adults. the odder the better. so deliberate efforts are made to seem/appear/be so.

i don't, at present anyway, fall into any of these categories ... though i've listed just a couple - what does it mean though? is it just a way of saying someone is 'odd?' fringe is found on table clothes, john travolta (see saturday night fever) and shawls (see circa grandma's hope chest). it's superflous, not necessary and in fact, is wont to snag and catch ... it's often the first part of a garment to show wear.

in my thinking, it buddies up with 'frayed.' the edge where strings are unanchored and loosening; threatening the integrity of the fabric's weave should it begin to unravel and move toward center. but here, in the fringes, is where my center most authentically seems to find itself. i've no interest in threatening the integrity of our social fabric ... or do i?

gotta be careful, though. it occurs to me that ironically, there could even be something sort of elitist about fringe-y sort of people. i'm different. i don't fit in. i don't conform. i'm not a 'sheep.' but does anybody want to be a sheep? or put differently, i suspect most people would prefer not to think of themselves as a conforming well-behaved cog in society's wheel. wouldn't they?

so let's say unique and different isn't really what's being referred to when we talk about the fringes. what then? it's tough to get words around it. but people who know me have regularly referred to me thusly ... and i know what they mean. it feels like an apt reference. and i don't think it's a deliberate action towards a desire to be seen as different. i keep my self too much a secret.

a couple months ago i was talking to a friend about the fringes. it was this conversation which led to ruminating over the term here. i guess i will, after all, return to the golf game metaphor. i was talking to him about my ball. it's definitely in the fringes. more frankly, it's in a sand pit. i have no idea what club to use and i don't even know how much i really care about getting the ball into the hole in the middle of the manicured green. i'm in an undesireable spot to make a winning shot in a game i'm not sure i believe in. that's not it either. i don't believe in the game. i feel my passions and gifts. i feel a deisre to contribute and give but i can't quite get my heart around putting their energies towards ... this.

what he said to me: "you are. you're in the fringes. yes. and thank you, by the way. thank you. cuz i don't have the guts and we need people who do ... have the guts to hold their ground on less favorable grounds ... something to be offered from there. something needed."

the compliment and thanks were misdirected though. it's not to my credit or merit that i find myself "here." it just happens to be who and where i am. moving to a more conventional or perhaps "sane" position would require me to "sell out." to be otherwise, would demand an act of self betrayal. it's not my integrity that keeps me from this so much as that it would require a great deal of effort and psychic renovation ... on a fairly plastic level. i don't think it would penetrate very deeply and it would require a lot of maintenance.

so what am i supposed to do? i asked him this. a frustrated, poor me, hopeless question i didn't really expect him to answer. he answered. "i think you should start a blog."