War

‘They say war is coming, that they want it so it’ll happen . . .  Just like that! It doesn’t matter if you are the son of the mayor or of the dustbin man, it doesn’t matter what you think or what you feel.  As soon as you join up, they’ll ship you out.  Give you a rifle, a round, help you point it and let you start shooting.  It doesn’t matter that you are scared or do not want to kill, it doesn’t matter if you miss the birthdays of your nearest and dearest.  This is war!  War does not stop for the dead, and it doesn’t stop for the living!  It will continue regardless of what you think, so they say.  Join up and get in the fight, prove yourself, prove that you are a man!’

Here, at this junction, he takes a rest and leans against the pillow before starting again.

‘I’ve heard it before and I’ll hear it again.  Our lives are not so short that we won’t live through war, a war, any war.  Just think about it boy, there must be a hundred wars going on right now – all across the globe people are fighting for this or that, spilling blood for the power of belief.  Killing is justified, they say, it is justified because it helps to prove that what you say, what you believe, is right, is the only way.  We must fight to take back our land!  We must fight to stop them!  We must fight to prove ourselves!  We must fight because this fat bastard insulted me!’

Another rest before he carries on more lucidly.

‘Wars are funny things my son, they are odd things . . .  They are both natural and unnatural.  Nature telling us that we are too numerous and too many, that we need to thin the population somewhat, create a bottleneck so we can survive.  Wars are the outcome of the idle rich, of those that seek power and revenge.  War ain’t nothing good, but we’re used to it.  Society accepts the causes and the outcomes, realizes that there is always a price to pay.’

War is war, the living are the living, and the dead are the dead, I wanted to add.

‘There is nothing to see here son but history, the ashes of a thousand dreams . . .’

‘Dad?  Can you hear me dad, I’m right here . . .  Just give me your hand dad, you’ll be okay.  I love you.  I’ll be back soon, okay?’

I shepherd the son out, who is caught briefly off-guard by the single tear running down the older man’s left cheek.

This speech wasn’t anything knew, but I knew that the son had to try and talk to his father, to try and establish reality once more.

A Bite of Blogging

I was nervous at first at daring to enter the world of blogging.  What did I have to contribute?  What could I bring to the table?  Why would people look at anything that I produced?  These were a few of the questions that went around my head as I debated internally whether to start a blog or not.  Even if I did how would I decide to go about it and what would it be about, and why?

Of course the very fact that I knew I wanted to start one was propelled by the fact that I thought I had something to add, something to say, something different to put across.  I looked at a few of my favourite blogs, studied their style and format, and decided on the blogging provider that would give me the most freedom to design and host my own writings.  Of course there were little things that I couldn’t change, parts of the blog design that annoyed me at first but has since become more endearing to me.  So I naively entered the blogging world with a site focused on something close and dear to my heart.  I stuck, largely, to my guns and slowly the style of the blog became my own: I ‘discovered’ my voice in the blogging world by taking an active part in it.

Even as I focused my attention on the small ecological niche of the blogging world that I inhabited I couldn’t help but notice that there was a whole different blogging world out there, one that veered wildly from post to post, site to site.  I was, in a way, captivated by what I read and by what I saw.  I liked the daring-ness of it all, the sheer bloody mindedness of the numerous authors in persevering in engaging the audience and by the continuous posting of their work online, free for all the world to see, engage with and to enjoy.  I’ve been extremely impressed by the creativity of each and every blogger that I have come across, whether they have kept to their own chosen artistic medium or whether they have danced between them, twisting and turning between photography, fictional explorations, nonfiction comment, sculpture, fashion design, painting and all things in-between.  In short it has been inspirational, an educational tour de force into the brief glimpses of lives of people who I’ll never likely meet.

Still we, as the audience, can engage the individuals behind the work.  We can leave a message of thanks, we highlight what in particular grabbed us about this or that blog entry, we can help spread the word of their work, of their art forms that have helped us think anew.  What we can do, as bloggers, as writers, as artists, as the audience, is engage on a meaningful level, to swap ideas and views and to make aware that we both appreciate others and ourselves.

So even as I continued blogging at my specialist site I kept seeing these amazing artistic and informative blogs daily on the WordPress reader.  I was inspired, I wanted to be creative again and I wanted the public to see it, even if I was embarrassed by what I had produced.  Nothing is forever and nothing is really ever finished – everything is up for evaluation and interpretation.  As such I wanted to take part in the great online experiment of emotion that I saw spreading daily across the screen.  I knew that the blog I wrote currently had to be kept separate, as I wanted that site to stand by itself in a field that is fairly academic, serious and worthy of reaching a mass audience.  In short it was not the place to put my own doodlings of poetry, photography, music reviews or fictional writings.  Thus this blog was born as an aside to my original blogging self.  I try to keep it active, indeed it is probably more active than my main site but that is due to the differing nature of them both.  I can write freely here.

Blogging isn’t easy but it doesn’t have to be hard either.  It can be time-consuming.  I personally find that it can take many hours writing an individual blog post (perhaps more so on my academic site than here), and that editing your own writing can be quite difficult as you skip over mistakes again and again.  The joy is in the trying though, in the communication, in the differences and the similarities between your views and others.  Blogging is perhaps the greatest creative output currently on the web, a medium in itself that helps to show the best of humanity’s artistic side.  It can be anything and everything that you want, both as a writer of a blog and as a reader of blogs.

It would be hypocritical of me to conclude this post without at least highlighting some of the posts that have both moved me and influenced me.  So without further ado here are 6 blogs that are simply awesome!

Reveal Illusions: A fantastic site by Elin Borg which focuses on her artistic outputs.  This includes her sublime paintings, photography, illustrations and sculptures amongst other strands of art work.

Electric Puppet: A rather delightful site that largely focuses on archaeology, history and literature.  I love, and look forward to, the reviews of the books that the blogger has recently read and the round-up of recent literature purchases.

Markovich Universe: One of the blogs that I first came across is this delightful photograph and short story site where daily life in Russia is often highlighted by Alex Markovich.  A real nice touch is Alex’s Postcards from Russia project, take a look here.

Benjamin Studebaker:  Studebaker’s site is one that always engrosses me and challenges my own thinking on a number of different topics.  This aspiring political philosophical  offers essays on a range of different international topics and whether you agree or disagree with his views, it will force you to think differently on important challenges in the world today.

Retiree Diary: A lovely little photography blog based in Hong Kong.  I particularly love the fact that the photographer is new to blogging, is highlighting daily life in China, and is engaging with his audience.  It just goes to show that retiring means you can start a whole new chapter of your life.

And This Is Why I Will Die Alone Surrounded By Cats: The artwork on this blog is by Sarah Elizabeth Orchard, who has quite clearly defined her own unique style.  The blog posts are worth reading alone for their hilarity, but the artwork is simply fantastic and I am sure she will go on to be an artist of some renown.

The above are just a few examples of some of the blogs that I love (although there is, of course, a WordPress bias), but I heavily recommend you also search out your because you never know what you may find.  And, if you fancy, why not start your own?