Today I realized how much I miss you all, and how much fun I used to have here, even when I had my ears boxed from time to time.
I did as Dean said and started my own fishtank: www.thetruthbarrier.com.
I neglect it, most of the time, but it has been wonderful to be able to publish whatever I want to, without checking in with the censors, and to reinvent what I think good writing is or isn’t. The sky didn’t fall. My life didn’t change that much. I’m still avoiding writing down what I know, and have seen, or felt. The ultimate censor is within, of course. Blogging isn’t as easy as it looks.
I have strangled myself at my own website due to the format I set up which requires each post to have a title, content, JPG, and raison d’etre, which my friend Greg used to call “raisin debt.”
Often, I write long essays, publish them, then delete them, unsure who I am talking to. I return to the blog in my head where the fish dart in all directions, or stay behind a rock for days. I always tell myself maybe tomorrow I will make them all swim in formation.
In any case, everything is so manifestly surreal at this point in time. The instinct to de-cry or object is all but paralyzed. What can one say about “Climate Gate” for example, except not a word, like at a funeral?
I admire you all so much, for the stamina required to remain sharp, informed, indignant, etc.
I have pretty much given up on the Huge Topics, but there’s freedom in that.
I want to return here as a contributor who writes about very very small things–to provide relief from the eternal wrestle with the giant squid of horror (the illusions created by mass media.)
We are not our positions. As soon as we start to become our positions, we find ourselves entombed and alone. So my answer is to shed all positions and just become a camera. Tell you what I saw or heard.
For example, yesterday I went to IKEA in Redhook and after a while I thought maybe I was in hell. I opened and closed dozens of wardrobes, drawers, examined hooks, swooned over ingenious hidden racks, piled a cart full of delectable candles, clever toilet brushes, red glass glogg cups, etc, then ditched 90% of it at the checkout counter, feeling nauseous.
I wanted people, life, contact, conversation–and I’d fallen for the illusion that a slightly lovelier environment would enhance happiness. It does and it doesn’t.
IKEA, is, in a sense, the diametric opposite of the Soviet experiment, where the industrial design goal was to drive people to despair–to terminate aspiration, to assassinate beauty.
IKEA’s trip is to sell stylish design to the masses and to subvert the class order by enabling the proletariat to buy things that don’t look depressing. Not a bad plot.
Our empty bleak apartment in Sweden in 1977 was eventually furnished by the exact same IKEA stuff they are still selling today, with a slight update.
I remember how happy we were when we brought it home. I think we thought those reassuring angles and surfaces would actually heal our family wound, make us the kind of people that surely convened around such furnishings. This was my belief at age 11: That the perfect equilibrium of the furniture, endorsed by the Welfare State, would cause a corresponding normalization of us, transmit itself to us, sort of reach in and FIX us.
This is not what happened.
My best friend in Sweden is a textile designer, who designs for IKEA. She relayed a hilarious account of submitting a child’s textile design with rabbits playing soccer and wearing eyeglasses. But IKEA called and said the rabbits weren’t “funny” enough. My friend, who is in my estimate a great artist, had a panic attack that lasted several long nights, trying to think up how to make the rabbits funnier. Except they probably were funnier the first time around. The rabbits were supposed to convey something very exact, just as every item in that vast temple of good taste must do.
And as we always asked ourselves, in those late night endless conversations about the Welfare State–what’s wrong with that?
Nothing.
That’s what’s wrong with it.
By the way, I do love my new toilet brush–black, compact, 99 cents. And I will ONLY use IKEA dish-brushes, because the American ones are too bulky and the bristles are all wrong. Also: Candles. Americans don’t know how to make candles. I’ll continue on that subject another time.
I hope you haven’t attracted too many readers because I like to think I am talking to about 7 people, gathered round my flickering candles.
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Hmmm… Seven readers, sounds like my blog http://rockportconservatives.blogspot.com/.
I only intended it for locals mainly and I get maybe 25-50 hits a day, it varies. But my daughter, my son, a sister and her daughter, and very occasionally my husband and I actually write something instead of just linking. So I guess it is our around the dinner table discussion on politics except that we are widely separated in space, one in another Texas city, one in Louisiana. So hang in there and post here occasionally, its a good thing.
I enjoy your stuff, Celia, and hope you’ll post more frequently.
I think probably people with a lot of experience in traditional writing find blogging more difficult, because they try to polish each piece to a lapidiary perfection and fit it into an elegant framework with their other writings.
I used to dread IKEA, but with three bedrooms, a living room and an office full of the stuff, I’ve grown to enjoy putting their stuff together. It’s usually very straight forward. That said, I really dislike the layout of the stores. I’m aware of the shortcuts through the store, but they still lead you through a maze before you get to the business you came for – very inefficient. It’s ironic that their stuff goes together so easily.
I enjoyed the post, Celia. It’s good to see you again. Oh, and sorry to disappoint, but I’m sure Dean can tell you there’s a few more than seven.
Hmmm. Since I got the keys to the front page here, I’ve only “published” maybe half the posts I’ve actually written.
I’m glad to hear I’m not alone in that.
But I’m still trying to figure out if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, and what, if anything, it means.
It doesn’t mean much. It might mean you’re insecure. Or it might mean that, like a lot of people, you start writing something and then you realize somewhere along the way that you’re not entirely sure where you’re going with it, or whether you’re really saying what you want to say, or whether you really should say it. That’s, um, normal. You just want to make sure that normal urge doesn’t paralyze you from ever saying anything, second-guessing yourself into oblivion.
I hope the universe did not “hear” me when I said I hope DW has seven readers. I meant 7 times 10,000.
I think we should write as if we are speaking to 7 people is all I meant, because using this mental trick, we can trick ourselves into writing more openly and letting people in on our actual thoughts. This continues to be my goal, as a kind of answer to the traumas of 2o plus years in “media.”
Media is poker, posture, abuse, repressed violence. Getting the other guy and perpetuating shame.
I have been dismayed to see so many blogs become spores of the same tradition.
So nice to be in contact with you all again.
Yeah, now that I’ve thought about it a bit, this is not much different than I am in the “real” world.
I’ve never been much of a talker, and when I do say something, I work hard to make sure I’m getting my thoughts out correctly.
In fact, I’m still amazed at how many people just seem to yap at each other.
Celia: Don’t be so defensive, love. ;-)
DEAN,
WHERE ON EARTH WAS I BEING DEFENSIVE?
This is so frustrating Dean. I can’t imagine where you detected it this time.
Did you think that when I wrote: “It’s so nice being in touch with you people again…” that I was being sarcastic?
I meant it, straight up.
If you thought I was being sarcastic, WHY did you think that?
I very very very rarely descend to using saracsm.
I really want to clear this up Dean. Please tell me exactly where and when I was being “defensive” on your blog, about your blog, in exchange with your readers.
I’ve got posting privileges here now, thanks!
So, even though this is quite belated now, here’s what I wanted to post:
The first thing that came to mind when I read this post is that the reason you were hungry for real people, life and contact is that these are the things we’re wired for, though they are, in our wired world, sometimes the hardest things to find. I too buy candles hoping it will take the edge off my isolation and muzzling, as have we all for as long as we’ve celebrated the winter solstice.
The second thing was that though we know we are in fact much more than our positions on any given thing, others insist we have become our positions with so much energy and persistence that we begin to believe we are. And then we do become entombed, though not by our choice.
Third, you may try to shed all positions, but we can’t, not without becoming the bland game that is the major media, so it’s probably not worth trying to do so. You have always been the camera you say you now want to be. You have always, from what I can tell, told others what you saw or heard. I hope you keep doing it, and that you abandon the plan of having no position at all. Having a position just means telling it from where we sit; it doesn’t mean we’re not open to adjusting our views as new information comes to light.
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