Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Spineless Blogging Or, If You Prefer, Blogging Without Balls

Hmmm.

I just wrote a whole big ol' long entry and then decided not to post it. I've censored myself plenty of times before even typing the first word, but this constitutes the first time in at least a year that I opted not to hit "publish" on a completed post. This makes me think of the charming AD and how he sometimes publishes and then un-publishes a post. And it brings to mind, yet again, the idea of boundaries and what we choose to reveal and not reveal about ourselves here in blogland.

In the post-that-will-never-be, I referred to the recent Helena Maria Viramontes interview in P & W and how I was intrigued by the way she likened the act of writing to the act of prayer. Now, maybe I have heard this analogy before and maybe I haven't. Regardless, this is the first time that it caught my fancy. Like prayer, writing requires stillness, reflection, reverance, and a desire to locate truth in what can be a confusing existence. Like prayer, the act of writing can be communal or personal. So, I like this idea of writing as meditation, writing as prayer.

The rest of my post-that-will-never-be was inspired by the book Parenting Beyond Belief. Well, really, since I don't have the book yet, it was inspired by the website's FAQ, which can be found when you scroll down here, and included complaints about insufferably creepy things like...female servitude, intolerance, absolutism, fear mongering, hypocrisy, and the curbing of inquiry. Regarding the latter: I was once at a service (non-Catholic, by the way) where the priest declared rhetorically and with infuriating pomposity, "I don't care what you think; what do the great thinkers say?" It was all I could do to keep from reaching into my purse and ninja starring him with my trusty Pigma Micron Pen.

And so, anyways, what you just read was my original post minus, um, balls.

3 comments:

A. D. said...

Don't know if I like that a post with this title draws comparison to me. ;-P

ver said...

But I did refer to you as "charming."

You're right, though. Unlike me, you are never guilty of spineless blogging; you are more of a "second-thought blogging" type. To make up for my blunder, I will now, once again, take note of your remarkable and quite pleasant resemblance to Matt Damon.

A. D. said...

Haha, you had me at "charming".

I may be spineless for my lack of intellectual/political ambition on the blog. Too, I've always thought sea cucumbers were cool—did a report on them in the fifth grade.