It's true. It's been said that from the time I was born, I've never done things until I was ready. I remember when people first started talking about blogging around 2002-2003ish. I also remember thinking how incredibly stupid it all was. I had friends who had online "journals" and whatnot, and at the time I thought how pointless it was to have a diary that everyone could read. Who would want to do that?! But, as the world of social networking grew and grew (and grew), and is still growing, that which previously made no sense now makes more sense than ever. Or at least has become a "norm."
I'm not a bandwagon jumper. Or at least, I prefer not to be. I don't do things because everyone else is doing them. I don't watch some show or listen to some band because everyone else is (or, in the hipster crowd, because no one else is). As stated before, I do things when I'm ready, when I want to.
So, the next question is Why? Why, after all this time would I want to start a blog? Is it because I overdosed on a Sex and the City marathon and have dreams of being the next Carrie Bradshaw? Because I want to be discovered for my fantastic natural writing ability and one day be published? Because I've come to realize what a narcissistic society we are, and that it's pointless to resist my own sense of narcissism, and wanting to be noticed for what I think, feel and say? Definitely not, most likely not, and maybe.
Let's face it. In the world of online social networking, online dating, and pretty much online anything, we as a society have recognized the ability for anyone to become noticed. Whether we're noticed in a positive or negative way is really a roll of the dice. It all depends on who is paying attention and what they're looking for. Those of us who have chosen to blog have done so for a variety of reasons, but the one that is at the bottom of it all is that we do want to be noticed. This isn't a bad thing in and of itself. We all deserve to be noticed. What matters is how we choose to meet that desire and need.
So, besides the above mentioned reason, why else have I started this blog? Well, first of all, I haven't written in any chronological journal for some time now. Any time I even think about making a new entry, I realize how much I will have to write in order to "catch up" and I soon abandon the idea. Secondly, while there are other forums to expose my thoughts, feelings and creativity (e.g. Facebook notes, journal entries on Ok Cupid, etc.), with this forum in particular, people actually seek out to read your thoughts, feelings and moments of creativity...if only to seek out what they can criticize and tear down. (Trust me, I've had it happen. It isn't fun. I welcome critique as long as it is thoughtful and conscious, not rude and seeking to make someone else feel bad.)
Lastly, I'd like to explain the origins of the title. There are at least two, with a tribute to Judith Butler somehow woven in. The first is a poem by Margaret Atwood called "You Fit Into Me."
you fit into melike a hook into an eyea fish hookan open eye.
That is the poem in its entirety. The first part, where she describes the person as fitting like "a hook into an eye" refers to a hook from the latch on a door fitting into the eye of the latch...or so the reader would suppose. The second part is just a cruel twist, reflecting the author's rage against the one who broke their heart. The poem itself was not necessarily the inspiration for the title of this blog. It was more of the imagery it produced, which leads to the second origin.
In an essay originally written for Bitch magazine (www.bitchmagazine.com) in 1999, and later published in a collection called Bitchfest, Vanessa Veselka wrote a piece entitled The Collapsible Woman: Cultural Response to Rape and Sexual Abuse. Veselka made the point that every single person, pretty much every single day, is wounded in some way.
Being wounded is not necessarily bad. (Veselka made the point that "With rape, the difference is the nature of the wound.") These wounds, good or bad, they create us. They make us who we are. We integrate these very wounds into our own selves, our own psyches. Through our interactions with the world, whether it is through the actual sense of sight, through the other physical senses, and more significantly through our emotional and spiritual lives, we allow ourselves to be vulnerable to being wounded. So, whether it is our physical sense of sight that is "pierced", or the eye of the mind or the soul, we are wounded and therefore never the same.
To expand on this slightly further, here's where I bring in that infuriating genius, Judith Butler. A post structural philosopher (think Foucault and Derrida and all those other guys), Butler wrote a book called "Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence". It would take too long to describe what the entire book is about, but one of the chapters discusses how and why we as human beings have an effect on each other, and the very "nature" of that effect, which is that we are "unbound" by each other.
In effect, we are wounded by each other through our interactions. Ok, so enough with this esoteric bullshit. What the hell does this have to do with a stupid blog?! Well, it helps to explain the premise of this particular blog. My hope is to present you with entries, be they essay, short stories, or poems, where it is particularly obvious that my own "eye" with which I view the world has been pierced. In short, I will be showing my wounds, my battle scars from this life. Glamorous, isn't it? Narcissistic? Most likely. But I have to wonder why we read blogs (those of us who do) if not to somehow peer into someone else's mind, to vicariously live someone else's experience, or to seek insight from another? Just a thought.
One last bit from Butler before closing out for now. This happens to be my favorite quote of all time, by the way.
And so it is.
If you've been raped or abused, you're scarred for life. You will never be as you were before the experience. This is also true for falling in love, getting your heart broken, going to war, having a child, or reading a great book. Everything that cuts deeply marks us. We're all scarred for life the second that we intimately relate to the outside world.
Being wounded is not necessarily bad. (Veselka made the point that "With rape, the difference is the nature of the wound.") These wounds, good or bad, they create us. They make us who we are. We integrate these very wounds into our own selves, our own psyches. Through our interactions with the world, whether it is through the actual sense of sight, through the other physical senses, and more significantly through our emotional and spiritual lives, we allow ourselves to be vulnerable to being wounded. So, whether it is our physical sense of sight that is "pierced", or the eye of the mind or the soul, we are wounded and therefore never the same.
To expand on this slightly further, here's where I bring in that infuriating genius, Judith Butler. A post structural philosopher (think Foucault and Derrida and all those other guys), Butler wrote a book called "Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence". It would take too long to describe what the entire book is about, but one of the chapters discusses how and why we as human beings have an effect on each other, and the very "nature" of that effect, which is that we are "unbound" by each other.
when we think about who we "are" and seek to represent ourselves, we cannot represent ourselves as merely bounded beings, for the primary others who are past for me not only live on in the fiber of the boundary that contains me (one meaning of "incorporation"), but they also haunt the way I am, as it were, periodically undone and open to becoming unbounded.
In effect, we are wounded by each other through our interactions. Ok, so enough with this esoteric bullshit. What the hell does this have to do with a stupid blog?! Well, it helps to explain the premise of this particular blog. My hope is to present you with entries, be they essay, short stories, or poems, where it is particularly obvious that my own "eye" with which I view the world has been pierced. In short, I will be showing my wounds, my battle scars from this life. Glamorous, isn't it? Narcissistic? Most likely. But I have to wonder why we read blogs (those of us who do) if not to somehow peer into someone else's mind, to vicariously live someone else's experience, or to seek insight from another? Just a thought.
One last bit from Butler before closing out for now. This happens to be my favorite quote of all time, by the way.
For if I am confounded by you, then you are already of me, and I am nowhere without you. I cannot muster the "we" except by finding the way in which I am tied to "you," by trying to translate but finding that my own language must break up and yield if I am to know you. You are what I gain through this disorientation and loss. This is how the human comes into being, again and again, as that which we have yet to know.
And so it is.
