Another loop, another detour. And so day by day I get diverted from my search for signs of humanity. Sometimes it's a detour to wrestle with, or clutch to, a liberal argument, but mostly it's the sheer weight of atrocities and dismal news that depresses.
What has made me hit the Create button today is that I've had a couple of really useful prompts/prods/pointers in comments on two posts. As a relatively new blogger, who's not yet ready to share this URL with her friends and colleagues, I am surprised that I get any comments at all. None of my 'frivolous' blogs draws in any comments at all, so I rather imagined this would at first really be just a case of my thinking aloud, communicating with the ether, and maybe using the blog to keep me on track, scanning for sparks of hope.
Of course I want to make ripples, but I thought naively I would have to spread the word about the blog to get any sort of response, and that I imagined would be once I'd written a few posts, gathered some anecdotes and could feel a momentum building.
Yet some posts have raised a comment, and my curiosity about the posters, has taken me to blogs which draw me right in and right away from what should be my spark-seeking priorities. So these detours are a learning experience and that's humbling too.
Also, those comments have been a boost especially as they appear whenever I think this isn't going to work or when I've read something like, yesterday, a review of Left to Tell
I tie myself in niggly knots wondering if this "counts" as a spark of humanity shown towards an enemy. This is how ridiculous my side-tracking is: because the man who sheltered the woman was a Hutu priest, "technically" he was their enemy, but as a priest he had his thoughts focused on an altogether different, "spiritual" tribe - ergo, does it count?How do they find me? Is it a complete chance, i.e. via the random Next Blog button? One early comment was from someone who had apparently read about my site on another website but when I google my own blog, I don't even come across it. So it's puzzling.
I'm starting to think about whether I should try to count "my" hits. Is this natural curiosity? Or just plain vanity?
1 comment:
I was inspired to comment on this entry as further confirmation that while you may indeed be communicating with the ether, which has its value too, you are also communicating with me & others as real readers, who perhaps are looking for that spark of light and humanity amongst an avalanche of sad, negative, despairing stories about Iraq. And we need proof of those sparks.
Your blog is inspired by a work of Vera Brittain's - she also wrote a subscription letter through WW2 "Letters to Peace Lovers" where she tried to maintain contact with others who looked for that spark too (Her letters being the 1940s version of a blog, of course..).
Please don't lose faith with your idea - one place to keep such stories together. It could be a tremendous testament to the fact that humanity doesn't altogether disappear under the avalanche. Ripple away! And I wouldn't worry about whether to include a story if you're not sure about whether it meets an arbitrary rule of true inspired kindness (like "Live to Tell"). If it seems kind, it probably is, and would do well in your encyclopedia, as I hope your blog may become.
Please keep typing and assume that somehow a quality blog will be found, and read, and the blogger thanked, and blessed.
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