While bumbling about on the Internet, looking for some sorely needed blogging inspiration, I stumbled on a blogging rule -- Don’t write anything that you wouldn’t say out loud.
What a bunch of crapola! I’ve been blogging now since 2003 and 80% of what I’ve told you I would never consider speaking out loud. At least not in a social conversation at my kitchen table or any other oral interactive venue. And the reason I wouldn’t is because so much of what I reflect on and explore is too intimate. Not as in sexually intimate, not as in real life drama intimate, or as in vulgarly intimate. No, none of that.
Intimate in the sense that if what I so often write, were to be openly spoken, in a regular neighbor-to-neighbor conversation, I would be strait-jacketed, locked up, and the key ground into powder. I guess the closest allegory to what I mean that might help the reader to understand is that what I say to you on my blog is too often similar in content to a seriously spoken tale of alien abduction.
That does not mean what I write are bold-faced lies. They are not. The happening is true, and so is my reflective exploration of that happening. But the reflective part is often so far out of left-field that it does sound like someone who not only could tell a tale of abduction but quite possibly might still be in that abductive stage without consciousness of it.
Now that I’ve got you thoroughly confused, this is what I am really trying to say.
Society, in general, now consider themselves so uninhibited, so out there, so with it, so conscious of all things to do with the intimacy of sexual relations, preferences, mind workings, etc. etc. We proudly feel we are modern, fact-based, uninhibited by Victorian rules, or naivety or the once held honour and magnetism of ‘innocence’ in the form of the blushing cheek or quivering lip.
We speak vulgarity without flinching. Movie characters engage in flippant, snippy, and cheeky language with children and peers that for the sake of common civility, I can’t believe could be so casually spoken.
Even commercials. There’s the commercial for a gravy mix where the hostess snips at a guest in the kitchen about when she’s going to bring in the gravy. Meanwhile she is simply taking a wee taste. And the one for a business that is not on line, ends up with some smart ass telling the ‘proprietress’ for a lack of a better term, that if she does not have her business on line, she doesn’t exist. And when she courteously asks, “Are you leaving now?“, his snippy response is “Was I ever here?“
Somebody should slap those kind of unnecessarily brusque individuals.
But, oh yes, we are there. So accomplished in our tolerance, and understanding, and intimacy that discussion of it all, exposure of it all, knows no bounds.
But intimacy has become so intertwined with things of a sexual nature, we have forgotten the real meaning - i.e. personal considerations within a quiet and private atmosphere. It is not, as so many tend to think just about sex, crotch shaving, and arm-pit hair. Somehow the true and real meaning of ‘intimacy’ has fallen by the wayside.
We no longer contemplate or consider the spiritual intimacy we had and shared before God died. And it matters not to me whether he died or not. That point of intimacy still exists but is never discussed at least not at the raw spiritual level. And by that I mean, it is never discussed by laymen, only those trained to think along a specific formula within a specific trench.
I want an intimate exposure of how people feel within themselves when dealing with broken relationships, health issues, old age, and great loss. I don’t want the language of programming. I want the real raw stuff. The casting about in a raw mind for a raw solution, and a raw sense of comfort.
The most and deepest intimacy of their souls. But seems to me we have cremated and discarded it as we tend to do with anything too puzzling, unpleasant, enigmatic, or mystifying for a fact-based scientific mind.
In today’s society, running through the public square buck-naked is easier than having to reflect on the intimacy of the soul, the spirit, and the moral fibre and all these other things we were born with, rather than taught, buried subterranean-deep within all the over-wraps of modern sophistication.
Can you not share with me the deepest intimacy of what you believed before you believed what you believe now?
[Despite the blogging rule of ‘not writing anything you wouldn’t say out loud’, that is a an utter falsehood. Blogs are exactly meant for writing what you cannot speak.]
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7 comments:
An interesting question - can I share what I believed before I believed what I believe now - I can share it but will I? Is it a question of intimacy or a matter of privacy or, in some instances, a decision based on one's comfort level? Blogging is in many ways a public intimacy. And written words, like spoken words, can be mis-taken.
I agree that reflection, especially self reflection, is a scarce commodity. As for revealing what one really thinks, one ought to discover first why one thinks what s/he does. Spouting someone else's truth can be a dangerous thing. Even spouting one's own has to have some benefit to a person. I think why we tell what we tell is more interesting to explore than the actual revelation.
As always, you make me think. Pour a cup of tea and meet me at the table. We'll talk about it!
I'd so love to do that, Pauline. I know we could have a grand discussion that would have us laughing and crying all in the same breath. Oh yes, we would.
An interesting and thought provoking post….
Would I? An almost certainty that I wouldn’t!
Would I like too? An almost certainty that I would!
For conversation’s sake, let’s call it the “secret”. I am certain that I would never share the “secret” within a post on a blog. There are just too many unknowns out there with regard to all the readers and potential responders. And after the “secret” is out there, it is not a matter of then dealing with misunderstanding, judgmental critique or hypocritical criticism that is apt to follow - it’s is the vulnerability, humility and regret for having revealed the “secret” in a public forum, thereby giving the “secret” yet another dimension and hold on one’s soul.
One on one, across a table would be the element most likely to promote the revealing of the “secret” in my case I suppose. And there would certainly have to be an element of trustworthiness in the recipient of the “secret”. Yet we can never really know another person so in the end we have to rely on perception and intuition I think – for better or worse.
Alan, you are probably right. But I guess in pondering things of the soul, I feel there is nothing in my inner stuff that open revelation could harm except others belief in the rationality of my mind. But what you're also right about is, if the 'secret' (as you call it), is spoken, no one could deal with it without 'misunderstanding.'
I think what's kept me going in blogging for so long is just that capacity it has for enabling both intimacy and circumspection. There is time and space within which to select the precise phrasing one needs for communication of the personal and subjective. And one knows that one's utterance will be similarly received and that any response will be similarly considered.
As for what once I believed, it's what I believe now and that, for better or worse, has permeated my blog since 2003!
Dick, you are definitely your own person. That's why your final comment makes me smile and the things you write are such a joy to read.
I think that's what makes blogging so appealing....we can make our own boundaries and choose exactly what we want to say and how far we want to express outselves. I find that I fall very comfortably into a somewhat middle ground. I share a personal side of me and my family without sharing everything and possibly running the risk of anyone feeling uncomfortable, vulnerable or compromised. I'd just never do that.
Have a really wonderful Thanksgiving Roberta... ~Joy xo
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