Saturday, March 21, 2009

Canary

The nothing goes on. Not that the nothing isn’t full of something or, indeed, many a thing, but it isn’t particularly anything that is pressing to be set down here in blogworld; and not that I don’t have the impulse to share, at any rate, something in this space which has been an interesting and congenial outhouse where I have spent time for over two years. Nor do I just want to disappear or shut up shop without so much as a by your leave because when that happens it leaves a strange feeling in the ether, as I have experienced. There was a blogger I used to follow who did that – one minute he was there and the next he and all his words had ceased to exist. It was just as if the Ministry of Truth from Orwell’s 1984 had done a wipe-out job. It was of course his right to do as he wished, it being his blog, and I’m not saying it was the wrong thing, but it did leave me with thoughts about how we all touch in on each other in blogworld, not to mention the people who just look in regularly, including those who just look and never comment. Even without those, what about the angels, who are looking over my shoulder as I tap these words and read every single blog post that anyone puts up (there is no need to argue with this, I just know that’s how it is). One has surely, out of courtesy, to consider them. Which leads me to the question of whether a tree actually exists if there is no-one there to see it – no witness? Don’t tell me about cats and dinosaurs. Do our words exist if no-one ever reads them? Bring in the angels and archangels – thank you, Gabriel, Michael, Uriel and Raphael, I hope to be putting up something worthy of your good attentions in the fullness of time.
Meanwhile I should be bashing out other things also. I will be giving a poetry reading in June, I haven’t done that since last year and without a substantial number of new things I tend to feel a bit naked.

I have been a bit bed-bound off and on. But. The good Mr. Signs has acquired for me one of those adjustable lap-table things so that I can carry on entertaining the archangels from bed if necessary. It even has space on the side for a mouse. If I wanted to take up permanent residence in bed I could use it for reading and eating off as well. I don’t, though. I want to be up and out in the world, this will not come as any kind of surprise. NMJ has been keeping us up to date with the depressing outcome of the judicial review of the NICE ME/CFS guidelines. I won’t go into it all here, but for those who are interested do please check out her blog and the links thereon. I say this in a whisper: we are your litmus paper – your singing canaries. Time may be coming when everyone will need to listen out - especially when the singing stops.

11 comments:

trousers said...

You've made me thoughtful again.

Some of this chimes with me blogwise at the moment, since I'm getting very little traffic right now, and that fact alone makes me wonder whether it's indicative of movement elsewhere, movement away.

It also chimes in the sense that it's difficult to write much at the moment: there's plenty I could write about, but I'm not comfortable doing so. So there's an odd stasis, which leaves precisely the kind of space in which thoughts and observations like this can find bloom.

For what it's worth, I do feel that our words exist if no-one reads them. Just saying. By the way, there's a lot of power in those last two sentences you've written.

Reading the Signs said...

dear Trousers, your thoughtfulness always has a quality about it that I appreciate. It's true, it's true - thoughts and even illuminations bloom in the spaces, like weeds or like extraordinary exotic things. Anarchic.

Our words exist if no-one reads them? I believe this, but I know many wouldn't.

Kahless said...

I must say Signs, I am finding it hard to blog myself at the mo. Words just dried up. Yet they could just come back.

But you are right about just disappearing. I hate it when bloggers do just that. I get it, but find it hard.

xx.

Reading the Signs said...

Kahless, I've just taken a quick trot through my sidebar list, and there are quite a few not very active bloggers among them. It just goes like that, I suppose. I liked to think that I was one of those who just plodded on soldier-like. But haven't really felt up to it.

Kahless said...

I hope you dont stop blogging.

I take comfort in knowing that you are around.
xx.

Collin Kelley said...

There are so many mouths to feed on the Internet these days: blog, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, MySpace. It makes my head throb just to think about it.

Sorry to hear you've been bed-bound, but glad to hear of your upcoming poetry gig. I hope to be back in England this fall. By hook or by crook...

trousers said...

I'm with Kahless on this, too - particularly her second comment.

Zhoen said...

I have considered disappearing, many times. But it all seems too harsh on my few readers. And I'm glad, because knowing at least a few people are reading, it's still worth trying to write, even when there doesn't seem to be anything to say. And I've not managed a word of my fiction for months.

Funny, how you say you got nothing, but then you write straight into our hearts.

Montag said...

I am conflicted.
I was going to denounce you to the Ministry of References To Bodily Functions, or Mini-Scat as we call it here, but I find myself in an "outhouse" with the author and 8 other commenters, and I am somehwat abashed.

Your writing about the illness seems to send me to an encapsulated landscape where we readers, intense or diffident, stand on the edge of nowhere - and a foggy nowehere it is...and cool, very cool - and warm ourselves around the campfire of your stories.

...and I think I've just gotten a notion for this week's poem.

Reading the Signs said...

Kahless, well I am touched by this - thank you.

Collin, I am not properly bed-bound, just spending rather more time there than I would wish.

I don't know how I would cope with Facebook, Twitter etc. - too much, too much!

Trousers - Mwah!

Zhoen, well that was rather a lovely thing to say, and heart has taken it in.

Montag, I was just about to say that in House of Signs there are many mansions, but that would be sacrilegious. Well, but I seem to have said it anyway. An outhouse can be as good as any mansion, better even, when one is in the company of friends and angels - true? Of course, true. All power to the poem.

鐵板豆腐Fay said...
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