Whispers #1

So I’m writing my first blog on a notebook on a bus on my way to visit friends. I’m doing this because I keep finding myself distracted by the internet when i try to write on my laptop and I’ve been too lazy for words lately when it comes to updating this website.

As I’m writing I’m listening to Nic Cave and the bad seeds singing “There she goes my beautiful world” which is a song about writers block or at least about literary inspiration. I’ve been telling my housemate Gerry for weeks that I’m going to get of my lazy bum and start posting. As various writers and teachers have said to me over the years “if you don’t have anything to write about just start writing and it will come to you”, so this shambles of a blog will have to do

One of the things i want to do with this blog is to present ideas that come to me and hopefully provoke some interesting discussions in the forums. I’ll start with an idea that hit me the other day, I should have written it down when inspiration was still fresh but I hope that i can present it in a way that doesn’t seem too stale.

I was remembering a time when I was a younger man and I was having some problems with a co-worker who seemed to have some sort of rivalry with me and was always trying to put me down. At the time I thought his antagonism was wholly unjustified, as far as i could see I had never intentionally done anything to offend or annoy him and I couldn’t understand why he delighted in attempting to provoke me in the most juvenile ways.

As the years have passed I have learned more about the culture this person grew up in and i can see, with hindsight, that some of my attitudes would have gotten up his nose at times. I cringe to remember telling a joke that would have been really offensive to him, which at the time I thought was hilarious. That was the worst but there were lots of small things as well.

The point of all this nostalgia is this: How can I know what is real?

The me that was in the situation was biased in his assessment of the situation to say the least. Subsequent revelations over the years have made me think that I wasn’t willing to, or indeed capable of, understanding the nuances of the situation at that point in my life. On the other hand memories are often coloured by interpretations and re-telling. Have I exaggerated the ameliorating circumstances because I don’t want to believe in a world where people are just jerks, although I still think that there was a big “jerk” factor involved here either way.

So there is the question: can we ever really know reality? When the younger me was there, on the spot, there were whole worlds of meaning that i was totally oblivious to. On the other hand my memories are fallible and fade with the passing of time. Although they can aid in acquiring new insights and revelations they can’t be relied upon to present the reality of a situation so long in th past.

It would seem that I can’t know the reality of a situation when I’m actually in it, nor can i honestly hope to discern it in retrospect when and if I gain the wisdom to see beyond the limitations my ignorance placed on me at the time when i know that memories can be distorted over time. There is also the chance that a newer more insightful revelation is just around the corner that will throw a totally new light on the whole situation that I am unable to even imagine right now.

Are we as human beings doomed to flail about doing irreparable harm to each other in our ignorance whilst never even comprehending the full implications of even a single moment?

Can we do no more than to attempt to make the most of the trifling amount of information we can carry with us from one moment to the next?

Hi there.

Still getting the page up and running so lease check back here later for updates.