On a Refusal to Blog

                                              

It’s 3 in the afternoon on one of the first really gorgeous spring days in Philadelphia.  I’ve opened my windows for the first time in a few weeks because the tree pollen count is horribly high, there are trees beneath my bedroom window, and I have terrible allergies.  Last week, I had a singing performance to give, and was being extremely careful guarding my voice – so no dairy, no alcohol, no outdoors exposure to pollen, lots of steaming with eucalyptus, drinking throat coat.  This week, with the performance behind me, I have returned to enjoying some dairy.  Okay….a LOT of dairy at first – a cheese board, ice cream, more cheese, more ice cream -- which has since modulated itself.

I’ve determined to enjoy the outdoors, or at the very least, enjoy letting the outdoors in at times when I have work to accomplish at my computer.  So, this morning, I opened my windows wide, after checking the tree pollen count and being informed that it was “very high”.  I really didn’t need to check the weather channel to know that. In a very short time, my sinuses and ears closed up, my breathing became raspy, my sneezing began and escalated.  But I was determined.  I powered through with tissues and saline nose spray and steaming a bit – just so that I could keep those darn windows open.  But, eventually, the allergy attack subsided, my breathing returned to normal, the sneezing stopped.

And then, through the window came the songs of birds in those troublesome trees.  The glory of an oboe, being played and practiced upon by a neighbor across the street.  Then a clarinet.  The man plays several woodwind instruments, I thought....Good for him! And good for the rest of us, who get to listen as he rehearses. The smells of cooking from the many restaurants below (there are four on the block, three more around the corner to the north, another five or six if you continue straight down my street….you get the picture.) A broken-hearted child sobbing to his mother, “But I want my ‘nana!  I want to eat my ‘nana now!  Can I please hold my ‘nana?”  This was followed by neighbors greeting each other, and their dogs staging a bark-off.  Then, the music of young girls’ voices, in unison, singing the famous Whitney Houston song, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody”.   It was a typical beautiful spring day on South Street in Philadelphia.

Life was coming through my window, as I sat working on some research and some writing, planning a day of full “occupation”, determining which physical exercise to do, which projects to work on, which correspondence needed my attention.  Yes, it is Saturday.  Yes, I work every day. But the word “work” is something that deserves exploration (and I’ll explore it on these pages at some point soon.)  When you are occupied in ways that offer satisfaction, provide hope and anticipation, there is little to find unpleasant.

But this morning, I was thinking about something I found unpleasant: “blogging”.

First, I was thinking about how I don’t like the word “blog”, although I have several blogs of my own, covering various topic areas: arts, education, culture and aesthetics.  I’m not sure if this is a form of synesthesia or not, but the word has a sticky, unpleasant tactile feel to it, a creepy feel.  The word itself is unpleasant to my ear, sounding like “blah” with a gag sound afterward:  “blah-guh”, and feels unpleasant in my throat when I say it.  Unpleasant in my head when I think it.

So, the idea of “blogging” summons up this feeling of “gagging up” undigested ideas and thoughts. Not something I find particularly pleasant to think about, and certainly unpleasant to do.

Instead, I enjoy creating writing that is more crafted, more polished, more essay-like.  But therein, of course, is the challenge.  These sites are meant to support regular sharing of ideas and thoughts, not carefully crafted, longer essays, right?  But to me, my preferences are more lofty, more artistic in their inclinations.  So, this morning, I gave myself permission to refuse the “blog” form with all the disgusting implications it brings up for me.  But, then, how to provide more regularly shared thoughts and ideas? How to conceptualize what it is I offer if I provide those shorter forms?  If I write only in long form that takes a good amount of time, my sites sit empty for long stretches of time, feeling like the empty halls of an abandoned home.  What to do? Thinking of other creative short-form models, I thought: there is the lieder rather than the etude, prelude or concerto.  There is the prose poem rather than the epic.  There is flash fiction rather than the short story, novella or novel.  

Those brief offerings bring gifts too – a different kind of presence on the page.  It is a brief flare of light rather than a long, steady glow.  A flash of illumination can suggest a fuller vision, but the vision itself is not revealed for the reader…or for that matter, for the writer.  Instead, that “flash” invites each person to explore what their own experience of illumination might be, to travel their own darkened paths to their own greater experience of light….enlightenment…their own visions.  Think of a mantra, or a koan.  The finger pointing at the moon.  

It occurred to me that each of those experiences I spoke of above – the child’s tearful lament about his banana, the group of singing girls, the neighbor alone in his apartment, standing by the window, practicing his oboe.  Each of these offer glimpses of deep and expansive life, each suggests provocative mysteries and promise powerful truths.  Each is a prompt for a story, an inspiration for a dance, a flash of promise, like a many-colored bird darting deep into the bush.  

So, I think I’ll be exploring such moments here in addition to the longer pieces, because there is a kind of beauty in that darting bird, that brief phrase of music. In fact, there just might be a particular kind of beauty in such things that can be found nowhere else.

I just won't be calling it a blog.  

Artwork:

  Evgeny Chirikov, by Ivan Kulikov, 1904