life between the pages

“I spent my life folded between the pages of books.
In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.”
Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

Friday, October 28, 2005

about blogs

interesting! the politicos have found out about us:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20051027/ts_csm/ablog_1

it appears that those who make the rules by which society operates have discovered (again) the power of the truthfully-shared word --mountains are climbed, bibles translated, kingdoms will fall --and of course, it follows that they will attempt to assimilate our methods into their whole. well, good luck. i hope it's like trying to pick up spaghetti with their toes. they will be like a pack of penguins, swooping down upon a fish. in trying to suck out all the goodness --read "power" --from this big fish called the internet, a multitude of keening voices, flopping with life and abundance, they will struggle with it and attempt render it down to nothing more than the slimy residue of what it was. and then they will pronounce it "harmless," and move away, back to easier prey, from which they can again suck out goodness and power. the education system in america, for instance. your gas tank. non-corporate agriculture. hopefully that slimy residue will be more indicative of what was left in their pockets after we escaped back into the sea, and they are none the wiser.

a very old and dear friend of mine, whose youthful creativity was long ago assimilated first by the US Marines, and then by Corporate America, upon learning i had a blog, commented as to how he wouldn't attempt it. "too much potential downside from airing my non-work-related opinions!" and i quote. darb, 'twould serve thee right if i aired those lovely poems from 11th grade --paeons to coming of age in the 1970s all, they are the picture of the severe hormonal angst that will be recognized by any 16-year-old --right here for the world to see. i still have them, and did not throw them away as you directed so long ago. the reason, of course, is because i saw that youthful exuberance going away as you grew up; i would no sooner destroy a field of diamonds. one day you will thank me, but probably not before you are very old and very grey.

don't worry. they are safe in my writing chest. i'll give them back to you when i visit you at happy acres rest home for former corporate shmucks. until then, live happy, and do more of that bmw racing stuff --get out & see the world, breathe the fine air in a state south of the mason-dixon line once in awhile. it's good for you. and it will be good for the world, should you decide to share more of that fine, acerbic but perceptive wit with us again in the form of the printed word.

here is why we blog:

http://www.fragmentsfromfloyd.com/archives/004270.html#comments


it's a fine and frightening thing, blogging is. you wear your essence on your sleeve, so to speak, for the entire world to possibly see. thing is, most peeps don't see it. there really aren't that many of us in the scheme of things. plus, you have to read in order to get anything out of a blog. given the state of education today, that could certainly mean that over time, blogs will mean even less. so what? it's a powerful thing, that blank screen of light --much more so, even, than the printed page. i hope we are headed for some sort of shake-up, where we as a world will discover the value in communication, in honesty, in truth, in caring for what we are given. perhaps it is so that as one comment to the blog above-referenced mentions, you have to leave something alone for awhile in order to be able to see what it means to you. i've not blogged in over a month, my friends' erstwhile comment above giving me a bit of pause. is he right, after all? i'm not certain. i know for him it could be quite risky, corporate america being much more comfortable with the mind they give you than the mind you bring in the doors. but he's a smart guy, i think he'll figure it out. after all, it was one of those things he fought for, too: freedom of speech. freedom to share what you're thinking with someone else. ideas are born, they spread, they sometimes take on a life of their own. scary, scary stuff.

maybe we are getting ready to see "a new birth of freedom," again. how exciting! after the dregs of political disaster are dumped out on the ground for all to see, we get up, we move on. i cannot imagine that we could sink much lower than we are right now and still be called a civilized society. maybe that is the point --nature herself is quite uncivilized. the balance of civilization vs. rampant chaos. how can we assimilate all that? we can't, we mustn't. we learn to live, and let live, to learn, to teach, to sow. over and over again. the world is only in balance when there is a liberal amount of chaos interspersed with all attempts to control it. the boat, after all, works as a transportation device because it floats upon the ocean, not because it beats it into submission, or ignores the current.