I knew he would.
Shaky's already started complaining. "What is it with you and heavy books? You promised after 'Rising 44' that you'd keep them small, short! But then you said the same thing after 'Le ton beau de Marot', as well, didn't you? And you didn't, did you? If you think I'm standing here for a couple of hours a day with 'Moby Dick' on my back, then think again, sunbeam! Poetry's one thing but a bloody great big whale I don't need!"
Don't worry, he'll come round.........I hope. I would hate to falter, baulk, shy at the first hurdle for want of a penguin's back!
Windows, I've been thinking about windows recently. Not Bill's misconceived abomination. Not double glazed sashes. Metaphorical windows, portals into other places, other lives. What makes you open the curtains for the whole world to see what a mess your living room is in? What makes you roll up the blinds when you know that the one person you want to peer in and then gently tap on the door and offer to do the hoovering is never going to? Not in a million years! Why should the misplaced scatter cushions on the floor around your sofa be of any interest to anybody? And do you really want them tidied up? Even by them?
It's strange sometimes writing this blog. Fifty years ago, I would have had a pen, a little book. The book would be kept under the mattress and would see daylight only in quiet times, times of solitude. Times when gently remonstrating with yourself seemed productive. When rolling your life around the inside of your head seemed to make a kind of sense, in a nonsensical way. When sharing your thoughts, hopes, desires with no-one suited better than sharing with someone.
And yet now, what would once have been so personal, private, secret is now so public. Why? Arrogance? I hope not. A need to tell? Perhaps. But the whole world? I doubt it. A belief you have something of value to say? Scarcely and who'd listen, or want to listen, to a penguin anyway?
They say that every person on the planet is only seven or eight people removed from every other person on the planet. You never notice because you can never join up the dots seven or eight times on the trot, in the right sequence, to make the connection; but blogs sidestep all that don't they? They don't need the intervening steps. They allow you to pass the exam without showing all your 'working out'.
And what if the Elfin Queen should stop by? Curious that, perhaps of all the penguins on google, she might have known this one? In another life? Would she recognise herself? Would you want her to? And worse, what if someone merely thought that it was their face that was being reflected in the mirror, but it was only illusion?
Of course, statistically speaking, the dots still, in truth, have to be joined up; only now they must be joined by chance, happenstance, happy monsters.
But then chance created life and of all the improbabilities in the universe, that must surely be the most improbable of them all.
Of late my dear penguin, I fear you have ruminated too long on what was, what might have been, what can never be, what must never be. Fish, snow, ice, sea, orca, seal, penguins, these are life. The only life. Enjoy!
Whoops! That was just a bit too serious! Sorry!
There was an Irishman, an Englishman and a Frenchman in a bar..............
Penguin, you just like writing :)
ReplyDeletePoint Taken.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I'm slightly infuriated, though it makes no sense at all, since there is nothing "real" between two people writing from across the ocean, but I have to say, one thing I learned from the past blogging experience is that 99% of what people want is attention. That's it.
ReplyDeleteWe take it and twist it and sometimes bend the truth to ourselves. We romanticize it, and fantasize it, but the reality is, blogging is a way to get "safe" attention without having to risk the possibility of a real
relationship.
I started doing it again because I still think it has potential when it comes to writing and being edited...we write what we are;sometimes what we wish to be. Editing gives us direction and clarification: sometimes helpful, sometimes not.
And when I think of the Apostle Paul writing from far away to the different people he wrote to, and I think of the thousands (Millions?) of journals that have been found over the centuries, and I have always felt that they were the most worthy pieces of insight we have into what really went on. In a person's journal, we are free from political suspicion. We are free from agendas. We are seeing the world as they see it. We don't have to agree. We may not like what we see, but we can always close it.
Walk away. Leave it.
When I read something that bothers me it is almost always because it struck a nerve somehow. But then, I'm not a single person without a life. I have a lot to think about and I don't have much time to think about it, so I'm trying to figure out where the wrong way is before I take it, take my family down a trail that leads to nowhere.
I understand what you are saying, but I think that it is the way you feel. Not necessarily the way other people think. You don't ever have to read my blog. I don't care. I read yours because I'm curious about what type of person is an atheist. I'm curious about what type of person loves poetry and literature and can turn around and discuss Quantum Mechanics with effortless grace, and make it interesting.
Don't ever feel that you have to read someone's boring trivia. Read what you want. (You already do.) Just realize that the blogosphere is a million voices crying in the wilderness to be heard, to be validated.
I decided that if I ever kept another blog, it would be for me, and me alone. The only, only, only reason I've made it public is for a few friends who were angry with me for deleting it...so I brought it back.
It wasn't for you, if my lady friends don't like what they read, they don't have to read it. I know they don't have time to leave comments. That's okay, too. I'm doing it for me.
FOr some reason showing up every day to writing is easier when I think that someone might read it. I don't know if they will, but they might. It's just enough pressure to work.
Okay, enough said.
No point meant. Except to me :)
ReplyDeleteI'm going to be totally and 100% unashamedly American here, and say,
ReplyDelete"Whatever."
And if you don't know what that means, you are welcome to look it up in a cultural dictionary.
Look, let me say it this way:
ReplyDeleteIf you are truly being honest here, and you are discussing this "windows" idea with yourself, aloud, allow me to make an observation.
First, by your own outlook, it doesn't really matter who is watching. There is no shame, no nakedness, because from an evolutionary standpoint, it's all biology, all part of your evolution to a higher being...
It isn't morally correct, or incorrect. It just is. It's not even noteworthy.
I get into trouble sometimes with my own value system which is one of censhorship. By my own values, I should not discuss some of the things I discuss openly because it goes against my religion. I'm in a paradox: Do I betray my religion or do I betray me?
Much of my writing is an attempt to work those two things out to some form of an agreement.
But if you are little more than a highly evolved microorganism in an ever-evolving cosmos, what does it matter who you let in? Why should you be afraid to open the curtains and let in sunshine? Why should you be afraid to let someone like you?
Is it because it might demand (by your conscience, which does exist) that you do the same in return? Is it because that investment is one you are not willing to make?
Like you said, we don't love because...anything. We love because we love.
So, if someone reads what you write and they don't care for it, you are released from the burden of investing in that human being. If they stop for a minute to pay attention to you, and you have no intention of ever returning the favor, take it as a Faerie Queen Kiss, unexpected, unrequited, just a gift.
You can delete this blog. Maybe no one in the universe will care. You'll have more time to spend with dead people who render endless opinions on the meaning of life. It's an easier existence.
But it sure as hell is a lonlier one.
I could reply to all merely by cutting and pasting most of your comments about why you do it and putting my name to them. Most of them would express my views fairly well about why I myself do this.
ReplyDeleteMy question was not whether it matters whether anyone looks in, but why I MIGHT care if they do? Because in some cases, "Hoess and boss' arse covering" and "Eyeless in Gaza" for instance, I do, very much.
Anyways, as you say, whatever. I'll still post the Levi poem when I find it though. Check back in a week or 10 days. It'll probably be under a title like 'Primo Levi poem, snowballs and why is slush always grey?' :) You can cut and paste it out of the blog and save it locally. Breach of copyright, I know, tho' I doubt Primo will mind, he always struck me as a forgiving soul.
No, I doubt anyone would care overmuch if this blog ceased to exist, 'tis but whimsy most-times, as this post says, just about the middle, "who'd listen, or want to listen, to a penguin anyway?"
But the penguin is pleased nonetheless that sometimes they do.
Oh my God. I've never wanted to hit a penguin. I think they're adorable, but now I do.
ReplyDeleteStop it.
If you need to cover your tail, do it. If you need to vent, do it. If you need to delete a post, do it. But for "God's the universe's satan's your own" sake, take a compliment when you get one.
What do you know about Asimov?
Compliment? I think I must have missed that along the way of the previous three comments. :)
ReplyDeleteNow I have a problem! You see I now have two blogs for tomorrow. One is the one written immediately after today's and follows on from it and attempts a resolution to my question and the other is the 'covering my arse, please can I just explain' one written immediately after your second vent of spleen:) Perhaps I'll flip a coin.
Asimov? Read the 'Foundation' trilogy (and the fourth book) plus some of the short stories in the 'I Robot' collection a long time ago but in some ways I moved on from his style of science fiction when I discovered Philip K Dick. So yes, it's worth reading as sci fi, 'Foundation etc' is one of the classics, tho' nothing has lasted in my brain that makes me think that I thought it was particularly 'deep' at the time. To be honest I cannot even remember the plot now!