Taking up Space

Mountaineering, for example.  Lets say I decide to write a blog on the exciting world of mountaineering, and all that it is to hang on to Nature....... and I get excited and I create and design and there, then, is MountainBlog - and then as my excitement seeps away and reality rushes in to fill the void, I wake up to the nagging thought  that apart from the fact that I know there are mountains and I know, for a second fact, that people climb them, I do, in actual fact, know nothing more.  So the great future that was MountainBlog dies a rather sudden yet quiet, and may I say, somewhat dignified,  death.  But then, once dead, where does it go?  I don't write it, no-one reads it, but it cant just stop and disappear. Does it take up space somewhere?  Is it sitting on a massive computer somewhere (and here I confess that in my mind most of what we call internet is actually a huge clanking mega computer that exists, like a digital warehouse).  Does MountainBlog just float around an ether of deadness, does it lie on some data shelf?  And if many, many people all do the same and abandon blogs, and emails, and websites, where do they go?  Where are they?  I think it comes from me seeing them as concrete things in the first place, webs are items, solid bodies somewhere.  Does this blog, the rainbowblog, does this inhabit the same space as MountainBlog?  Are we neighbours with our deceased data?

And what of people?  I mean, in time, since the first person, be it stone age or whatever age, since the first 'man' there have been lots of people.  And I mean LOTS of people.  And we are told that the massive chalk cliffs are sea animals, and we dig up dinosaurs and we are told that oil came from dinosaurs and ancient life etc., but where are all the people?  Where are the hundreds of thousands of the people who have lived before us?  Why don't we have cliffs made out of people bones?  Where did they go?  How come we aren't tripping over skeletal remains of ancient man wherever we dig?  And that oil, if it was proven to contain ancient man bones too, would we still feel as happy about pumping it out and using it? 

Ah, the wonders of climbing, seeking out each foothold....... testing, no, daring nature with each step, throwing the challenge of survival to fate, reaching ......... oh forget it, I know nothing about mountaineering.  Now, cakes - that I could do.

The language of a hug

It's an odd thing, we sit in our cars and talk at the radio (can one talk to a radio?) and we talk to people on the TV as we iron (we shout out answers they cannot hear, we criticize their singing, we may even warn them against the dubious wisdom of searching the basement for that odd noise using only a mini torch and never, ever turning on a decent light), and yet we hardly ever talk to real people.  So, there we are, with thoughts and feelings and expressions and dreams swelling up in our heads, practically leaking out and we find a place to direct the seepage to.... some Tweet, some fb whilst we others blog.  Blog - what a word, so toiletry in its name, but Blog is as Blog is.

So I have moved from the comfortable settlement of voices in my head, to letting them out, run free little words, run as if your life depends on it. 

And I feel as if I am late.  I feel that I got to the party just as everyone else was singing the final song, just as the last fading balloon began to sink towards the floor.  And yet I am here, so I shall be content with that.

Isn't the word 'cuddle' just the most warm blanket sooth of a word?  It encompasses within it the very warmth of belonging, of love, of making the world OK.  And is a cuddle the same as a hug?  Sometimes yes, often no.  I sat my daughter, and on other times my son, upon my lap, within the embrace of a cuddle. Often I hugged them.  Well done and I love you hugs are a holding of soul to soul, for the briefest of moments.  I lassoo my children to share a hug, to give a cuddle.  It is the all of Love.  And yet.  Last week I stood and held one with a hug to keep out the bad people who would cause hurt and dstress.  Last night I held the other in a hug so tight that I felt the body of the hugged shake with deep and sad emotion.  These hugs say 'if only I could spare you from pain I would'.  At these moments love is not quite enough for it cannot heal.  And yet the hug, the love, is all we have to give and we hope that these, then, are the best of all hugs, the most important ones.