Blog Block or Dyspepsia?
I’ve just been nudged by a friend, asking if I have developed blog block. The question spawned two forms of laughter; the first a joyous chortle because blog block sounds like a particularly perverse form of constipation, and the second was a rueful chuckle because both my need and urge to opine has been recently stifled by a form of asphyxiation due to loud, strident, broken-record voices in a separate forum screaming arrhythmic, emotional and historically questionable pronouncements with the abandon of a skid row drunk vomiting on a sidewalk.
Being one of those terminally optimistic people who believes that when you truly want to do something badly enough, you’ll find a way to do it, I’m forced to admit that I haven’t really wanted to commit thoughts to ‘paper’ during the last two weeks. Somehow, the blog muse has preferred to nestle comfortably alone on a hidden mountain peak and contemplate the lint in her navel as more enlightened that the men currently determined to destroy each other for no more valid reason than that they can.
There is definitely something missing in my own make-up. Over the course of my life, human beings have been a continual disappointment, yet I’ve never learned one simple lesson. I continue to expect people to be better than they are. When they constantly fail, I’m again forced to acknowledge that it is more my failure than theirs. By now, I should have known to expect absolutely nothing so I can be surprised those few times when humans, especially in a formalized mass setting, actually do something wonderful and selfless with no expectation of payment in any form.
Individually, there are random acts of kindness on a minute by minute basis, but each time any group, community, government or nationality forgets that they are first and foremost human beings exactly like every other human being, their awareness and focus becomes nothing more than white noise. Given access to armament, they have no awareness at all, but they do develop a taste for conquest and blood.
The entire scenario is despicable, disgusting, and inexcusable. It even leads normally rational, sensible people like me and others of my ilk to see additional, well targeted violence as the only possible remedy. We tend to think the only way to halt the bigotry and hate is to willingly reach out and figuratively strangle every one of the blind perpetrators. And that is no answer at all. In our hope and better wishes for all mankind, we expect more than the small minded among us can ever deliver, and in turn, grow silent, as though the ink in the pen that we tell ourselves is mightier than the sword has evaporated, the small flecks of detritus remaining clogging the nib and blanking the mind.
Being one of those terminally optimistic people who believes that when you truly want to do something badly enough, you’ll find a way to do it, I’m forced to admit that I haven’t really wanted to commit thoughts to ‘paper’ during the last two weeks. Somehow, the blog muse has preferred to nestle comfortably alone on a hidden mountain peak and contemplate the lint in her navel as more enlightened that the men currently determined to destroy each other for no more valid reason than that they can.
There is definitely something missing in my own make-up. Over the course of my life, human beings have been a continual disappointment, yet I’ve never learned one simple lesson. I continue to expect people to be better than they are. When they constantly fail, I’m again forced to acknowledge that it is more my failure than theirs. By now, I should have known to expect absolutely nothing so I can be surprised those few times when humans, especially in a formalized mass setting, actually do something wonderful and selfless with no expectation of payment in any form.
Individually, there are random acts of kindness on a minute by minute basis, but each time any group, community, government or nationality forgets that they are first and foremost human beings exactly like every other human being, their awareness and focus becomes nothing more than white noise. Given access to armament, they have no awareness at all, but they do develop a taste for conquest and blood.
The entire scenario is despicable, disgusting, and inexcusable. It even leads normally rational, sensible people like me and others of my ilk to see additional, well targeted violence as the only possible remedy. We tend to think the only way to halt the bigotry and hate is to willingly reach out and figuratively strangle every one of the blind perpetrators. And that is no answer at all. In our hope and better wishes for all mankind, we expect more than the small minded among us can ever deliver, and in turn, grow silent, as though the ink in the pen that we tell ourselves is mightier than the sword has evaporated, the small flecks of detritus remaining clogging the nib and blanking the mind.
posted by kaz at 11:05 AM
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