I wanted to show you this photo which I took on the trip home last Sunday after the last in a long string of this year’s Significant Family Events.
Each of these events has been emininently bloggable in it’s own way. Filled with life and family and the endless layers of being alive that such events encompass.
But none of them have been my story to tell. I have taken my own story to each event of course, and brought my own stories away. But they weren’t about me those days, and it’s one of the things we’re trying to teach my eldest boy, you can still be included and be on the side. They can’t have it without you, but it is theirs.
It’s one of the things about blogging, negotiating what’s yours to include and yours to leave out. So I’ve written about them in my journal. It was boynton, gave the advice that you should still keep a personal (offline) journal (apologies that I have got no idea where to start looking to find that particular entry, boynton), and I would say for me, it was excellent advice.
Which leaves you with only with this photo taken at the end of a most significant day. I made an effort with several other photos, and just snapped this. This is the one that sums things up the best because at the moment, there are two layers of life which can be separated, but can’t.
There is speed, but there is solidity; I am out of focus, but in control. There are sunsets, and sometimes they hold the light. There is Salvation Jane which is beautiful, but makes me sneeze and strangles the countryside. There is a horizon, but it’s skewed.
If you need me, I’m in the corner, wiping up dog wee.
Great photo. Great observation about what is yours to blog and what is not. Perhaps why I’ve been so quiet lately…Carickalinga is a lovely spot, but it’s been a good 6 years since I was there.
beautiful. i’ll remember it as norway and yorkshire rush past my bus and train windows today. i do the offline journal too – silence is important sometimes. ‘out of focus, but in control.’ that’s nice.
In WA Salvation Jane is called Paterson’s Curse. It does make for a beautiful (if ruined) paddock though. 🙂
Beautiful post.
You learn it with other forms of writing, but in blogging it’s writ large (or writ instant,anyway)
I was telling Laura recently,pompously: “My blog has become a place of non-disclosure”. About the only things I confess are canine-related.
There was a time in blogging that I used to post images or links that related to the stuff I couldn’t write. Like writing your diary in code.
Also, a bit like this poem by Ondaatje.
People start reading it and it buggers things up.
I think we call it Paterson’s Curse here too, cellobella, but I forgot!
That’s about the problem, Zoe.
I’ll follow that ondaatje poem up. Though I’ve promised myself to read through a few dozen other books before I add any more to my pile.
Yes, a gorgeous post. (And Boynton is never pompous. The very idea.)