I might have mentioned Elijah yesterday. In Chronicles and/or one of the book of Kings, there's a description of him repeatedly petitioning God to send rain that God had promised. Elijah during this process kept sending his servant scampering up the hill to report on the cloud front. Yet there was nothing. 7 times he sent his servant up that hill, all to no avail so it seemed. Not only was zilch happening, it really looked to all his and his servant's senses that there was not even a remote chance of rain. It wasn't turning brisk; there wasn't a Godly rumble from the heavenlies; no encouraging angels to turn up and wow everybody. There was just this old bloke, on his face, looking and sounding a numpty by asking the impossible and visibly failing. Even on the 7th time, when there was a cloud, his servant must have thought Elijah was howlingly insane: the servant gently pointed out that whilst, yes, there was a cloud...it was a single, solo excuse for a cloud, barely the size of his hand. And how he must have muttered under his breath when Elijah, upon hearing the underwhelming news, commanded him to go and tell the king, double-quick, as it shortly going to bucket itself down. Yeahright, after months of drought.
But rain it did; threw it down like stair-rods too.
Which has what to do with the tale of the Rav?
Well: I set out to do the impossible: to trace the immobiliser wires and unsplice them from their locations...this was after ensuring my little workaround of disengaging battery, turning key to accessories point, then connecting battery before(I was certain) the final quack of the key awoke the car from it coma like Sleeping Beauty with a handful of snow stuck down the back of her nightie. I was sure that either of the now-charged batteries would now fire her up, aware that this set of impossibilities had to be done for the car to be able to actually go to get its new alternator tomorrow.
Nope. Didn't happen. In fact, the workaround failed to disengage the or fool the immobiliser...and I couldn't even find the immobiliser's brain and tripes: or rather, I found many things that could be them but they were just...wires, and I'd no idea where they led.
So I walked down to warn the mechanic: we might need to get the car dragged or towed to the garage tomorrow. I also ran the situation by another helpful and knowldegeable autopart chap: could be alternator; could be leads, could be starter...
Thus, far from in any way resolved, the situation was even more resembling a maelstrom of chaos, expense and uncertainty: this was not how it was supposed to be going, especially with the prayer I'd tried to hotwire into it and the prayers of others(that seem often more efficacious than my own at times like this).
And so, far from getting on top of the swearing and kicking it out with the slippers of peace; far from seeing it all come together a result of applying a dose of right action, I was pretty mullered with it all...do I have another go in worsening light at locating the immobiliser..?...do I throw lots of money at an autoleccy and pray that he has it sorted by tomorrow, thus still not knowing what and where the faults are...?
And in cold, consternation, failure and embracement of life's repeated fallenness being meted out to me once more, I wrack my brains till I stop.
Then: an odd thought comes to me: not a good one but one that takes time, asking people and getting into a queue and being kept on hold...just when I should be doing something:
For some reason, my car insurance included RAC cover. I'd never asked for it, it was just part of the deal for this year only...but surely it would not cover a vehicle at home? And surely they would not turn out, given the amount of punters who must be stuck at roadsides in the cold? And surely they'd not get past the immobiliser sitch, let alone get the car going...?
Well: I was kept on hold till I almost gave up, and past the point of losing hope; and they phoned to tell me it'll be ages yet as they're, er, snowed under....even, they could be helped if I decided they could come tomorrow....so, with a resigned and forlorn despair, I mailed a mate to update him on the crappy news...testifying of nothing but how "it" had won and I'd lost, of the "world" winning and me losing, despite my well-meaning prophetic predictions on the impossible outcome from an Impossible God....
...and then...
...just as I wrote this from the depths....
...drrrrinnngg....
went the phone to tell me the RAC man was on the way. The light was fading, the day was beyond salvage surely, but at least once he'd gone I could phone the autoleccy chap maybe....
....And though I prayed under my breath for successs...and despite me stammering out all sorts of various "helpful" summaries of the car's elctrical behaviour over the past month, this chap looked and rattled and tweaked...and in 20 minutes he'd saved me Getting Someone In at £30+ per hour, as there was a satisfying click that signified the disengagement of the immobiliser.
Not only that, but he then cobbled together a temporary earth strap, as he'd diagnosed at least some of the plethora of problems as stemming from earthing issues: hence the high resistance and the restricted current getting back to the battery. All this done just as the light went, all for free, all because I'd had RAC cover that I was only barely aware I'd got let alone have need of. God only knew, so I've thought, that I'd be helped by the blessing of the right thing at His right time, and in a way designed to get my attention and learn about His way of doing things next to my ways.
So. Car in tomorrow: maybe an alternator, maybe not even that now the earthing has been, er, unearthed. And money saved already on the immobiliser thang. All impossible until it happens....
And now? At least I'm learning slowly not to expend further energy looking for a worldly post hoc explanation, especially when faced with the reality of getting prayers answered.
Because if God cannot answer prayers( and for whatever reason from not being bothered to not actually existing), then prayer would be pointless, a waste of breath and so many illogical turns of one's starter.....
...and how many times do I have to be impossibly immobilised and rendered powerless, just so I start to learn and believe exactly Whose power is supposed to make my own engine go...?
Tuesday 30 November 2010
Monday 29 November 2010
The Road Less Ravved: when your 1995 Rav 4.1 decides to hibernate...
In fact, in front of mine is the house, and it's been like this for a day or so.
If it were someone else's, I'd have tutted and sucked me teeth, opining helpfully that "they don't usually do that, do they," and glowing with the thankful knowledge that these cars are utterly reliable.
And so it has been the case till now: this 2.0 litre GX-specced 1995 N, nominally referred to as the 4.1, has barely done 108, 000 miles, has just about original everything apart from new discs and pads a few weeks ago and of course is on its 3rd timing belt, as I'm the model of eminent sensibility...
Sadly it still has its original immobiliser, the naff Scorpion system, though that same company has some while ago itself gone to the Big Scrappy In The Sky.
I loathe the idea of electrics going wrong with cars: in fact, I start to lose touch with comprehension of anything other than everyday bits once I consider what lies beneath the colour red. Electrics to me are worse, as they represent a set of shifting variables swirling about in a fog of uncertainty, in which also are dimly perceived but gargantuanly large pound-signs. Were the image to have a soundtrack, it would be the string section from the shower scene of Psycho, against a half-heard murmur of teeth-sucking voices saying, "not going to be cheap, mate..."
I had started to think the battery was on its way out: a year too early but, battery, yes. I'd started to get the odd struggle with starting, the colder the weather was getting...and occasionally the lights were dimming upon slowing down under engine compression at night. The alternator had crossed my mind but fleetingly, as I remembered the speedy winking-out swansong of a previous Nova 1300SR's alternator, which had failed like a powercut's effect on listening to a tape-recorder.
I had also thought there was a battery problem because of at times of starting-difficulty, there was a blipping from what sounded like the starter and/or the immobiliser...low charge I'd thought. And indeed last week the car failed to start at all, so I thought, "right then; new battery."
The extremely helpful chap at the battery place thought to check the output from my alternator: sure enough, he diagnosed it as being on the way out and not efficiently charging the battery, so in addition to getting a new battery I also took a deep breath and arranged to have a new alernator fitted.
However, there was another set of circumstances that I took as a purely coincidental embuggerance: one day a few weeks ago, totally without warning, I turned the key(long ago having eschewed the worn buttons on the key fob) only to find the alarm going off. Despite repeating the manoeuvre, of course the immobiliser kicked in. I waited, locked and unlocked the car with the key...but the darm immobiliser light would not go out: and of course I'd begun to attract the glowerers, who obviously believed I was blatting their eardrums and those of the entire population of Tesco deliberately. I don't know why the manufacturers have been so successful in isolating the psyche-shredding frequency of a mewling infant, but also to have it poke your eardrums like a blunt stick at 110 decibels, is positively bowel-watering.
Thanks to a good mate who drove me home to get my key-button-fob thing, I thought, right, in business.
Except we weren't: it would not reset.
So, we decided to turn the thing off with the little nubbin-key thing that I'd mercifully not lost in the 10 years I've had the car...eventually, relief: no more screeching of the thing..but we'd only turned off the alarm, not the immobiliser.
Thus, next we disengaged the battery, then reconnected: kissmyfayce: bingo. All was well; I drove home...mistakenly thinking I'd deactivated the immobiliser as well as the alarm.
However, what with the battery upon startup, all my attention has been until today on the power side of things, assuming that squeaks and rattles from the starter along with threatening noises that signified the immobiliser's attention was upon me...were merely because of a low battery.
To add fevered complication to the mix, I decided to lurk around a couple of Rav forums and finding a vastly knowledgeable collection of Ravites. I scared myself witless with accounts of people going through starter motors, alternators and batteries before finding a rogue corroded battery lead or terminal to have been their culprit...and I started to sink into a mire of panic: was it my alternator at all? Is it a battery strap or somewhere else in the harness?
And that's when I saw several accounts of horrendous mischief caused by immobilisers developing faults..and decided to find that sticking my metaphorical head in a bucket of sand was of more comfort than thinking of imobilisers.
Hmm. So today: disaster:
Indeed my car is booked in for a new alternator..but, it's worse than that, it's dead Jim. And I mean dead: not a smidge of life whatsoever in anything electrical, no clicking of relays, no nuffink...and I wonder to myself...
Did I cause inadvertent damage by putting a charger on my old battery overnight? Or is in some way the recalcitrant immobiliser exerting such a death-grip on the starting-procedure that either its resetting or its removal is the answer.?
Well, out of 3 choices, I have thus far tried one: I've gone through the reset procedure with the zapper/fob, having also disconnected the car battery and reconnected it: this was successful a few weeks ago outside Tezzies...but did absolutely fanny adams this afternoon.
This leaves me 2 further options, that I may try tomorrow...indeed, we're in an impossible situation here, as the only way my mechanic get get the car to his works in order to do the alternator, is of course to, er, drive my car.
Thus the scenario is this: I've never done anything more ambitious than change a bulb, oil, etc; on a car. I have no idea and a personal loathing of electrical problems...and am flapping about in a soup of unknowns and variables to which is added a manky seasoning of maybes.
:My mission, should I be brave/foolish enough to accept it and eschew the G.S.I approach(Get Someone In), is as follows....and I've done them as a series of steps so that you too(gentle reader) may copy and paste them if you're ever in a similar position with an early Toyota Rav 4, on the understanding that I hereby disclaim absolutely any responsibility if it all Goes Belly Up ...yet fully accept plaudits, remuneration, pats on the back or kisses on the cheek if it Pulls A Blinder(with hat tipped to those knowledgeable people at the Rav Forums).
Firstly, a temporary workaround, from some ideas culled from the Rav Forum:
1. Disconnect the battery, either terminal will do,
2. Locate the alarm cable should be behind the glove box ( it is a square white connection block with 4 terminals 3 are round and one is square ) ,
3.Put key in ignition and turn it to the point just before ignition,
4. Reconnect battery then turn key fully as in normal start;
it should turn over as normal.... unfortunately when you switch the engine off you will have to repeat this process each time but it will work.
Secondly, only if you wish to Get Rid of the Scorpion Immobiliser from your early Toyota Rav 4:
Kit: wire snips, some connector blocks, phillips screwdriver, small flat screwdriver, small adjustable spanner.
1.Remove the live battery terminal;
2. Locate alarm control unit/wiring wiring = behind the glove box to the left hand side;
3. Unscrew box from its securing point: you will have a mass of black wires;
4. Locate connector block in engine that supplies the alarm sounder and disconnect it if not already done so;
5. Remove kick panel in RH side driver's footwell... trace where the black wires splice into and reconnect the original wires with a connector block;
6. Remove the panel under steering wheel... trace where the black wires splice into the ignition switch and reconnect original wires with connector block;
7. In the same place there is a white terminal block with a thicker red wire soldered onto a bared wire which runs into a couple of 7.5 amp fuses. Snip this off, tape up the ends on this wire and secure behind panel in a safe place. The black box and all the black wires can all be pulled out.
8. There will be 2 wires that go to the sensors fitted to the left and right pillars: either pull them out or snip them in place.The alarm box should now come away.
9. Replace panels etc; replace battery terminal: now the the car should start normally!
The alarm will have been fitted by Scorpion alarms when the car arrived in this country and is only spliced in so can be reversed...so it is said.
So: here we are then: the night before, wondering if I'll have the bottle, courage, faith, stupidity, impatience, etc; to proceed. Well, I've prayed about it, prayed about it with a mate, despite my earlier frustration, tears, swearing and "why me"s, so you'll know that if it works it'll not be because of any skill or flair of mine. And of course it only addresses one issue, that of the immobiliser, whereas just a few days ago I was blissfully unaware of having an alternator that is on the way out.
Typical: last week I thought that just a battery was the answer...now I'm not even sure how many and how complicated the questions are.
I'll let you know how I get on...
Friday 26 November 2010
Me, My Car and the Moon
I didn't learn to drive until I was 30.
This was totally because by then I'd spent scores of thousands of pounds on alcohol and could never save money; besides, a car would then be a consequence of getting a life. Since the age of 13 I'd never been sober that long anyway.
When I did eventually manage to pass my test on the 4th go, I subsequently commenced the most serious and sustained period of self-destruct-by-drink I'd ever managed. This itself came about as my response to having asked a Jesus I'd never believed in, into my life to save me from dying one day. I found that this had ruined my drinking for good, as there was now within me, not an infinite darkness at all: deep in the light-years of void was now a tiny little pinprick of light.
This impossibly tiny spark had not been there before the Jesus-day..indeed, I'd not been aware it would appear. The only evidence I had for it being there at all, not long after I turned 30, was the fact that no matter how much alcohol I soused it with to drown out and annihilate this new and uncomfortable thing, it would remain and would not be put out. It was there when I was in my cups, there when I was stoned, there when I awoke and at night, it was there as I walked upon the earth and went to and fro upon it.
This "Damascus coversion" I'll tell you about some day.
Anyway, when by a sheer miracle of impossibility, I managed around a whole two years of days at a time without drink, to buy my second car, a Vauhall Nova 1300SR.
My first car, a time-honoured Toyota Corolla, had been written off 2 years previously after I slumped at the wheel and passed out whilst driving the wrong way up a one-way street in Chelmsford.
By the time I moved to Stroud I'd been finally sober for 3 years or so and clean of all other substances for around 2 years; I still had my Nova, though typically of the type of car, it seemed as if all the metal and solid parts were a soft-wearing alloy of imitation metal and cream cheese. However, for me, this car was a metaphor for my new free will and ability to live, having slipped the bonds under no power of my own of that which had sought my death. I used to relish the fact that I could, if I wanted to, just get into the car and drive around country roads in the wee small hours...
And so I often did, for a season, tootling around dark and woody lanes, not seeing a soul, aware of the fields and the tress and the blue moonlight.
Around that time, I wrote the following poem in which I attemped to distill and refine that little season of newness with the Nova and my new and independent life in Stroud, that being the very first time in my life I had my own front door key to my accommodation..and, of course, to my life.
Even now, I sometimes dream of cars: not in the Jeremy Clarkson sense, but in the way that reflects either God or my subconscious reflecting where my life seems to be at. I can dream at night about, say, my car going off the road or my battery dying, or the car even disappearing...and at these times these dreams are a reflection or comment in metaphor of the control or power over my life.
Anyway...here now is the poem. Again, this is the first time this poem has been seen in print by anyone other than myself, though it was written in 1994-ish.
Less than halfway to go in my little car with just me, my radio and cigarettes. I always knew I'd get there and soon I will,
Chugging past the hanging yellow stars...
And then maybe I'll drift like a slow balloon above the moon people, silent and beaming; and I'll wave as they smile and I smile
And I'll touch my finger to my lips
And they'll nod, knowing;
And I'll flick an indicator, turning left at the next star
To sail, sail on into deep space where it's always two o' clock in the morning;
And no one from my world would ever, ever know.
This was totally because by then I'd spent scores of thousands of pounds on alcohol and could never save money; besides, a car would then be a consequence of getting a life. Since the age of 13 I'd never been sober that long anyway.
When I did eventually manage to pass my test on the 4th go, I subsequently commenced the most serious and sustained period of self-destruct-by-drink I'd ever managed. This itself came about as my response to having asked a Jesus I'd never believed in, into my life to save me from dying one day. I found that this had ruined my drinking for good, as there was now within me, not an infinite darkness at all: deep in the light-years of void was now a tiny little pinprick of light.
This impossibly tiny spark had not been there before the Jesus-day..indeed, I'd not been aware it would appear. The only evidence I had for it being there at all, not long after I turned 30, was the fact that no matter how much alcohol I soused it with to drown out and annihilate this new and uncomfortable thing, it would remain and would not be put out. It was there when I was in my cups, there when I was stoned, there when I awoke and at night, it was there as I walked upon the earth and went to and fro upon it.
This "Damascus coversion" I'll tell you about some day.
Anyway, when by a sheer miracle of impossibility, I managed around a whole two years of days at a time without drink, to buy my second car, a Vauhall Nova 1300SR.
My first car, a time-honoured Toyota Corolla, had been written off 2 years previously after I slumped at the wheel and passed out whilst driving the wrong way up a one-way street in Chelmsford.
By the time I moved to Stroud I'd been finally sober for 3 years or so and clean of all other substances for around 2 years; I still had my Nova, though typically of the type of car, it seemed as if all the metal and solid parts were a soft-wearing alloy of imitation metal and cream cheese. However, for me, this car was a metaphor for my new free will and ability to live, having slipped the bonds under no power of my own of that which had sought my death. I used to relish the fact that I could, if I wanted to, just get into the car and drive around country roads in the wee small hours...
And so I often did, for a season, tootling around dark and woody lanes, not seeing a soul, aware of the fields and the tress and the blue moonlight.
Around that time, I wrote the following poem in which I attemped to distill and refine that little season of newness with the Nova and my new and independent life in Stroud, that being the very first time in my life I had my own front door key to my accommodation..and, of course, to my life.
Even now, I sometimes dream of cars: not in the Jeremy Clarkson sense, but in the way that reflects either God or my subconscious reflecting where my life seems to be at. I can dream at night about, say, my car going off the road or my battery dying, or the car even disappearing...and at these times these dreams are a reflection or comment in metaphor of the control or power over my life.
Anyway...here now is the poem. Again, this is the first time this poem has been seen in print by anyone other than myself, though it was written in 1994-ish.
Just Me, My Car And The Moon
It's only two hundred and fifty thousand miles to the moon,
So when I bought my little car with eight-six of them on its clock already
I thought I'd drive it there:
The first Vauxhall to the moon and me in it.
So there I went, floating off the bypass
To circle above the rooftops
Before sailing up through soft downs of silver clouds,
Chugging at a steady fifty
With the radio on, into the blue night and towards the winking stars...
Three years later and I'm cutting to neutral, coasting my hundred and forty thousandth mile; over halfway there already; between the worlds in the
So when I bought my little car with eight-six of them on its clock already
I thought I'd drive it there:
The first Vauxhall to the moon and me in it.
So there I went, floating off the bypass
To circle above the rooftops
Before sailing up through soft downs of silver clouds,
Chugging at a steady fifty
With the radio on, into the blue night and towards the winking stars...
Three years later and I'm cutting to neutral, coasting my hundred and forty thousandth mile; over halfway there already; between the worlds in the
Gleaming blue-black of space, my radio playing jazz piano far into the
Night:Less than halfway to go in my little car with just me, my radio and cigarettes. I always knew I'd get there and soon I will,
Chugging past the hanging yellow stars...
And then maybe I'll drift like a slow balloon above the moon people, silent and beaming; and I'll wave as they smile and I smile
And I'll touch my finger to my lips
And they'll nod, knowing;
And I'll flick an indicator, turning left at the next star
To sail, sail on into deep space where it's always two o' clock in the morning;
And no one from my world would ever, ever know.
Wednesday 24 November 2010
Axe victim: hung up on these silver strings...
....like seagulls' cries, like churchbells in the night"...thus sang Bill Nelson and Be-Bop Deluxe back in the 70s, as their track encapsulated the pull of the electric guitar to the player.
The pic above is of me posing with my beloved Fender Japan 1968 Reissue strat.
Nowadays a sad and yet bizarre situation is taking place in some young people: what with console games that cozen you into believing that playing decent electric guitar is a result of either software or pressing lots of buttons with dexterity. I even have had the ultimate red carpet plucked from beneath my feet when some people have actually thought my guitar solos are some kind of software.
Actually, before you click off, I'll grab you now, if I may: All the guitars you're about to view do get played: in fact, I've written and recorded quite a number of songs, assembling over the years a collection of tracks that I have also learnt (somewhat) to produce and engineer.
In fact, you can get to them and hear them either by going to my home webpage here, which will also direct you to my online photo galleries...or if you want to go straight to the music and start listening, I have it all here at Shaun Reeder's Music
I could of course bore you witless with what I used on each track, what soundcard and effects, etc; so that watching a plank warp would seem like a better use for your senses...but, gentleman that I am, I'll leave you to have a listen.
And I must not give you the impression that I lead a busy and funpacked life, surfing waves of creative abandon in infinite childlikeness: I have played guitar from the age of 14, when it was easier to ignore the challenge of socialising and escape a world to which I often felt I didn't belong; I would practise and play for hours using a tinny little tape recorder as an amplifier, scrawping the stylus back and forth repeatedly on my vinyl in order to try and Play-Alonga-With Jeff Beck, Jan Akkerman and Santana. I found I seemed to be blessed with a flair for playing...and indeed, remember that as soon as I heard one particular track, something dropped into a slot into my heart and stayed there, never departing.....
....cue an imaginary soundtrack of a harp arpeggio here, for that timeslip effect....
I was at a friend's party, guzzling Babycham and getting ratbagged on just 4 bottles, and this LP was on the deck. There was this backdrop of keyboards, a soft sizzle on a ride cymbal and then this guitar note. And I could have cried: as this note fell into my ears, it seemed to drop down a slot to my chest without touching the sides. When it hit my heart, it felt like some part of me knew itself, was united with something that would never pass or fade...like I knew at that moment that this was what I do as this is what I am.
In fact, reading this now and remembering the moment, I wonder what and where would I be now, had I had more...strength, or forcibly chose not to embrace the damage and self-destruct that I soon would....
Anyway, where was I...?...ahh...
That note was the infinitely touching opening bars of "Cause we've ended as lovers," by Jeff Beck. I reckon that even now, the drive to bend the fingers to the string is in some way an attempt to grab that very first note as it dropped into my heart, to recreate that meaning, that completeness...
Since I met God, or rather, He rescued me, I have come to believe that He built me in such a way that either I was fashioned for this gift, or it for me. Moreover, that this gift, paradoxically, is one not meant for me but for other people, for their building...I am the bearer of it yet it does not belong to me. It is also a gift that requires its bearer to be active in bringing both me and others to He who gave me the gift, as He has so much more to give those who seek Him.
I could apologise here for "getting all religious" on you all...but if I tried to speak of it in different terms, I fear I would be untruthful and as such doing you a disservice..and of course, what with free will being what it is, I know you're all growed up enough to either click off somewhere else or condemn me as a nutter. You wouldn't be the first, I tell you!
I learnt something a few years ago(s'funny, I often need so many bashes around the head to get something into it): I found that I could effectively manipulate people's emotions by playing in a certain way. This feeling of...power, I guess, hit me quite forcibly, as though I suddenly saw that I had a responsibility over how I deployed the gift. Now, in secular language, I am hardly a saint by nature, but I find I have to guard the way I play, as if I could almost hurt someone if I just "fired it off" led completely by my feelings...
Anyway: here's a piccie or two: this little babbsy is a fretless bass I bought cheaply very recently. Made by the stonkingly good Vintage company, it is a copy of a Fender jazz bass.
There we are: just thought you'd like a better view. It is in fact NOT a SG2000S but an absolutely original SG2000(without the "S"): yer actual SG2000 was discontinued in the UK by 1980, whilst even in Japan they only kept going until 1988. When I got hold of this one, it was a rare find: it is in impeccably good condition, has a low serial number and had never been outside Japan before it got to me. It is almost certainly from either 1979 or 1980.
Which just leaves a little acoustic I have, a baby travel guitar by Tanglewood....and we can symmetrically round proceedings off with my 5-string bass:
I think probably every single one of the above guitars, apart from the fretless bass, can be heard played by me at my music site. I'm sure you'll find something there out of the 15 or so tracks that you will like.
Creative stuff: a poem wot I wrote...
What an odd and powerful thing the imagination is. I blog, therefore I virtually exist..or is that, I link, therefore I spam...? To whom, with whom, is one blogging? Is it to self, family, friends...is it a modernised splitting of oneself, along the ancient, evolution-thinkingly spawned plane of hic and ille? That is, you're talking to yourself guv..or at least you're imagining you are. I could imagine a vast and darkened amphitheatre set against space, with a few people sitting here and there, and a few coughs and scrapes as one or two hutch out and a couple more edge in to take their seats for a few minutes.
Anyway, here's a poem. Though I wrote it some years ago, I've only a vague idea of what it's "about". Mind you, I'm convinced a poem does not need to be about anything: "rhythmic grumbling" was what that Eliot chap said, and fittingly enough the only fact I remember about him with any glee is that his name is an anagram of "toilets."
It works best when read aloud, as most(if not all) poetry should.
Poetry, eh? Who on earth decided that poems have to be read with that remote, lofty, whiningly depressive cadence as in one's imaginings of what going to church is about? Heck, people read poems as if anticipating a reverb unit set on "Cavern" mode. Either that, or we have the modern "3 Ps" disease of simplistic and dumbed-down couplets: Pisspoor Performance Poetry, that is prophetic only inasmuch as when it spwaned itself a few years ago, it pre-empted the "Your Crap Talentlessness Is The Equal Of, Someone Who Is On Telly Getting Paid For Their Mediocrity"(...er..."ness") by several years.
And speaking of simplistic couplets, here it is...actually for the first time in front of a virtual audience...and how's that for oxymoronic...!
So...ahem...laydeez and gentlemen pleeze-ah:
Icarus Millenium
It's after hours. The player hangs out on nickel strings;
It makes him feel like flying, as if on steady wings
That draw him up and out along the sliding motorway
In a zooming metal guitar-machine that slices up the day
In shiny metal strands that slip in glistening wires
Past thoughts of fallen birdmen, bright streets and screaming spires.
Like Icarus ascending, he rises with a note
That slides like razor wire past an upturned throat;
Fingers cut him as he pulls eight-thousandth gauge delights
From the singing strings snaking out between stars' madding heights
And flashing trails of speeding cars that stab into the dark.
And he thinks the glinting from the frets is really from the spark
That lit him into madness' flash when he fell from Grace
And howling at the warm void was flung out into space.
Far from earth he arches, stretched on silver strings,
Forced out into glaring worlds where nightmarish things
Leap from doorways and the alleys that snake out from the stage
Where he cuts and frets away his life in whammy-barring rage
At the love he stole and burnt those twenty years ago
But whose effigy he carries in a raw hole just below
The broken strings and trailing leads that spill out from his heart:
The image of a woman he'd fashioned from the start
From mud and tears and blood all spilt from past creations
Of screwing towards chastity and mad infatuations;
An idol, a dream of family and a happy, shining girl,
A lover, mother, whore and daughter for whom he'd buy the world
With the silver-mercury tears of the one important gig
That would pay for all(if he played to all, suspended from a rig
Of nickel strings and fretwire strung out above the stage)...
So all would know and love him, and he would never age
But scream and cry and bend those strings: and never would he cease
To rip raw song and laughter but never find the peace
That whispered from the stage in half-heard curtain calls
To sink exhausted, sobbing, in played-out empty halls.
And Icarus is falling, sparking down to earth
Like a gnat caught in a campfire from which the merry mirth
Has long crawled into darkness. He looks with hate above
At his father's wings spread out wide in an attitude of love,
Along searing razor strings pulled taut along their length,
And is lacerated by the wire as he gives up his strength.
Feathers, wire and brightness falling from the air...
He plunges like a meteor, until engendered there
Is a freeze-frame, glaring still projected on the night
Of screaming, snapped and twisting strings on the pavement in full sight
And lurching, tortured spires against the orange glare
Of neon afterburn; and a scorched feather in despair
Drifts down past the doorway to the steps of the poisoned church:
The Castle Perilous and its denizens who lurch
Through dead cans, sherry bottles and forgotten Chinese food.
Here's our fallen birdman: draped by a cloak of rude,
Thin umbrella cloth that can't keep out the rain;
Sad and broken wingskin ripped from a tarnished frame...
His last and maiden flight had almost grabbed the sun
To forge his soul and sear the pain,to be the only one
Who flew at the face of Hyperion, then to play the strains
That frenzy the horses of the sun; and to take the reins
Himself(and die laughing at Prometheus' attempt),
To grasp control and fly the day, not heeding the descent
Of he who takes on the Man with overbearing pride
In trying to harness what's not his own, nor paying for the ride...
Now all that's left is the wreckage of a man across a kerb,
Feathers, blood and twisted wire, of he who would disturb
Whole stars, worlds and lifetimes strung out through the night
On those silver strings that ever sing across their madding heights.
Anyway, here's a poem. Though I wrote it some years ago, I've only a vague idea of what it's "about". Mind you, I'm convinced a poem does not need to be about anything: "rhythmic grumbling" was what that Eliot chap said, and fittingly enough the only fact I remember about him with any glee is that his name is an anagram of "toilets."
It works best when read aloud, as most(if not all) poetry should.
Poetry, eh? Who on earth decided that poems have to be read with that remote, lofty, whiningly depressive cadence as in one's imaginings of what going to church is about? Heck, people read poems as if anticipating a reverb unit set on "Cavern" mode. Either that, or we have the modern "3 Ps" disease of simplistic and dumbed-down couplets: Pisspoor Performance Poetry, that is prophetic only inasmuch as when it spwaned itself a few years ago, it pre-empted the "Your Crap Talentlessness Is The Equal Of, Someone Who Is On Telly Getting Paid For Their Mediocrity"(...er..."ness") by several years.
And speaking of simplistic couplets, here it is...actually for the first time in front of a virtual audience...and how's that for oxymoronic...!
So...ahem...laydeez and gentlemen pleeze-ah:
Icarus Millenium
It's after hours. The player hangs out on nickel strings;
It makes him feel like flying, as if on steady wings
That draw him up and out along the sliding motorway
In a zooming metal guitar-machine that slices up the day
In shiny metal strands that slip in glistening wires
Past thoughts of fallen birdmen, bright streets and screaming spires.
Like Icarus ascending, he rises with a note
That slides like razor wire past an upturned throat;
Fingers cut him as he pulls eight-thousandth gauge delights
From the singing strings snaking out between stars' madding heights
And flashing trails of speeding cars that stab into the dark.
And he thinks the glinting from the frets is really from the spark
That lit him into madness' flash when he fell from Grace
And howling at the warm void was flung out into space.
Far from earth he arches, stretched on silver strings,
Forced out into glaring worlds where nightmarish things
Leap from doorways and the alleys that snake out from the stage
Where he cuts and frets away his life in whammy-barring rage
At the love he stole and burnt those twenty years ago
But whose effigy he carries in a raw hole just below
The broken strings and trailing leads that spill out from his heart:
The image of a woman he'd fashioned from the start
From mud and tears and blood all spilt from past creations
Of screwing towards chastity and mad infatuations;
An idol, a dream of family and a happy, shining girl,
A lover, mother, whore and daughter for whom he'd buy the world
With the silver-mercury tears of the one important gig
That would pay for all(if he played to all, suspended from a rig
Of nickel strings and fretwire strung out above the stage)...
So all would know and love him, and he would never age
But scream and cry and bend those strings: and never would he cease
To rip raw song and laughter but never find the peace
That whispered from the stage in half-heard curtain calls
To sink exhausted, sobbing, in played-out empty halls.
And Icarus is falling, sparking down to earth
Like a gnat caught in a campfire from which the merry mirth
Has long crawled into darkness. He looks with hate above
At his father's wings spread out wide in an attitude of love,
Along searing razor strings pulled taut along their length,
And is lacerated by the wire as he gives up his strength.
Feathers, wire and brightness falling from the air...
He plunges like a meteor, until engendered there
Is a freeze-frame, glaring still projected on the night
Of screaming, snapped and twisting strings on the pavement in full sight
And lurching, tortured spires against the orange glare
Of neon afterburn; and a scorched feather in despair
Drifts down past the doorway to the steps of the poisoned church:
The Castle Perilous and its denizens who lurch
Through dead cans, sherry bottles and forgotten Chinese food.
Here's our fallen birdman: draped by a cloak of rude,
Thin umbrella cloth that can't keep out the rain;
Sad and broken wingskin ripped from a tarnished frame...
His last and maiden flight had almost grabbed the sun
To forge his soul and sear the pain,to be the only one
Who flew at the face of Hyperion, then to play the strains
That frenzy the horses of the sun; and to take the reins
Himself(and die laughing at Prometheus' attempt),
To grasp control and fly the day, not heeding the descent
Of he who takes on the Man with overbearing pride
In trying to harness what's not his own, nor paying for the ride...
Now all that's left is the wreckage of a man across a kerb,
Feathers, blood and twisted wire, of he who would disturb
Whole stars, worlds and lifetimes strung out through the night
On those silver strings that ever sing across their madding heights.
Inexhaustible well well well...
This morning, when it would have served me better to read a bit of the Bible out loud, so as to bring His Kingdom Come on earth rather than the daily lordship of misrule that seems to be mine, I happened to catch a bit of "The Saint" on a telly that shouldn't have been on.
A re-run of something that I might have originally seen when I was 6 or so, perched and pushing the boundaries in front of the coal fire, hating the dark and cold before the fateful ascent of the wooden hills to Bedfordshire.. And there they were, the eyebrows of Simon Templar the good knight, upstaging the man himself as they darted about the screen with a lofty yet personalised dramatic irony. And now an outside scene in Trafalgar Square, with no traffic apart from collectable classics; red boxes and ello-policemen and Carnaby Street, The Beatles and my aunty and uncle wowed and laughing as they told us about films I couldn't see like Casino Royale.
I remember real dustbinmen with leather tabards, loading real metal bins into sideloading bin-lorries; I remember coalmen, bent like dwarves and as black as soot with eyes that blinked like lights: supermen from beyond the horizon where the coal-trains came past, always 31..or was it 32 that time..?...and then the thunder-rumble as it went into the bunker next to the house, so that in summer when it did thunder I wondered, was that what coalmen did when they rested from delivering coal in the summer...?
And I remember, down our street, bullies and brothers and swearing, and me not having a brother; and falling forever in love with Carol from up the street who was six and playing kiss-cats at blackberry-time. Little families who were English, but not the ones from Newcastle, Poland, Germany or Italy who had large families and were all from Somewhere Else, so I stared for ages before I said anything.
There was Mr Morris from our end and Dan and Maud from the top end. They were old, as old as their gardens or older. Their gardens were overgrown and had caves of laurel or rhododendrons, and they had black doors in their houses that never opened. They wore overcoats in the summer and moved along slowly as if in a film from the 19th century. When grownups spoke to them, they would take their hats off and say "good morning" and the rest of the grownups put on shop-voices and laughed shrilly like ponies. I thought he was God, Mr Morris, at one time: slow and far-off, able to see things that you didn't want to be seen; sitting somewhere indoors in front of a mantelpiece with clock, in his coat, smiling slow with his hat on. His pockets were infinite, and there lived the mint humbugs, which were a gift from Before Time when there were carriages. These old people shone, though you were not supposed to see it, as though they had overcoats to cover a light, as the moved along slowly as if their life was a replay, a film from somewhere better played so often it had begun to wear out.
And when they died, it was with no fuss and no one cried; they just were there one moment and faded away the next, and their gardens stayed overgrown and their doors stayed dark...so you thought that the film of them was still playing in front of the mantelpiece, until it went out like a fire dying down.
Mrs Parker was one of these too, loved and visited by by mum, and we saw her every Thursday when we went to see Uncle Harry who made newspapers and could read upside down and back-to-front. Again, why was it that grown-ups went all nervous when they wanted to give us things, as though it were wrong and shameful to get what you wanted, as though parents were there to stop you? I had started to replace being seen and not heard with responding to being liked, when she died or wasn't there one Thursday. But her daughter was, who was still old; and I thought how odd it was to be a daughter and be grown up, as daughters were supposed to play in the street and laugh. And she was crying, which I could not understand, as mum told me Mrs Parker had gone to heaven: if heaven was nice, then why was her daughter crying?
And I wanted to say it'll be all right, as she's in heaven...but being little, curiosity got there first:
"Did you see her go to heaven?" I asked, as when I thought of Mrs Parker dying, it was seeing her sitting in her armchair and being lifted up, borne up so she was light as Peter Pan, and was not heavy and slow any more but happy to be in the air, and she was smiling as she left the room through the roof and passed away upwards, all light and full of the air...
And there was me, expecting totally for it to be as I'd been told it was. But seeing the panic, the shock, the apology, the shame on their faces, I knew what it was like to be both wrong and lied to. And at that moment, it seemed, I learnt 2 things: that heaven was false and I should keep my mouth shut around grownups.
Isn't there a bit from The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles that refers to life seeming like "an inexhaustible well" when young?
"Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."
I need the limitless in my life with even more insistence than I did then. And why would we see with such yearning as children, the pull of that without limit as being so vital?
I remember copying what I saw and heard, then becoming the same, then believing it as true, then using this as a template for what I should become...and surely upon surely, I have ended up seemingly a different person than the one I could have become. I get older, and the boat leaves so fewer times I fear that one day it will not leave at all and I will be stuck, drawing from the well of memory, but of memories that might only be treatments of reality and not real at all.
Time blows on, remorseless and scouring, and like the sisters in the Sahara, the cups fill with sand.
Ho hum, here's a picture that I'm not including to underscore anything I've written:
A re-run of something that I might have originally seen when I was 6 or so, perched and pushing the boundaries in front of the coal fire, hating the dark and cold before the fateful ascent of the wooden hills to Bedfordshire.. And there they were, the eyebrows of Simon Templar the good knight, upstaging the man himself as they darted about the screen with a lofty yet personalised dramatic irony. And now an outside scene in Trafalgar Square, with no traffic apart from collectable classics; red boxes and ello-policemen and Carnaby Street, The Beatles and my aunty and uncle wowed and laughing as they told us about films I couldn't see like Casino Royale.
I remember real dustbinmen with leather tabards, loading real metal bins into sideloading bin-lorries; I remember coalmen, bent like dwarves and as black as soot with eyes that blinked like lights: supermen from beyond the horizon where the coal-trains came past, always 31..or was it 32 that time..?...and then the thunder-rumble as it went into the bunker next to the house, so that in summer when it did thunder I wondered, was that what coalmen did when they rested from delivering coal in the summer...?
And I remember, down our street, bullies and brothers and swearing, and me not having a brother; and falling forever in love with Carol from up the street who was six and playing kiss-cats at blackberry-time. Little families who were English, but not the ones from Newcastle, Poland, Germany or Italy who had large families and were all from Somewhere Else, so I stared for ages before I said anything.
There was Mr Morris from our end and Dan and Maud from the top end. They were old, as old as their gardens or older. Their gardens were overgrown and had caves of laurel or rhododendrons, and they had black doors in their houses that never opened. They wore overcoats in the summer and moved along slowly as if in a film from the 19th century. When grownups spoke to them, they would take their hats off and say "good morning" and the rest of the grownups put on shop-voices and laughed shrilly like ponies. I thought he was God, Mr Morris, at one time: slow and far-off, able to see things that you didn't want to be seen; sitting somewhere indoors in front of a mantelpiece with clock, in his coat, smiling slow with his hat on. His pockets were infinite, and there lived the mint humbugs, which were a gift from Before Time when there were carriages. These old people shone, though you were not supposed to see it, as though they had overcoats to cover a light, as the moved along slowly as if their life was a replay, a film from somewhere better played so often it had begun to wear out.
And when they died, it was with no fuss and no one cried; they just were there one moment and faded away the next, and their gardens stayed overgrown and their doors stayed dark...so you thought that the film of them was still playing in front of the mantelpiece, until it went out like a fire dying down.
Mrs Parker was one of these too, loved and visited by by mum, and we saw her every Thursday when we went to see Uncle Harry who made newspapers and could read upside down and back-to-front. Again, why was it that grown-ups went all nervous when they wanted to give us things, as though it were wrong and shameful to get what you wanted, as though parents were there to stop you? I had started to replace being seen and not heard with responding to being liked, when she died or wasn't there one Thursday. But her daughter was, who was still old; and I thought how odd it was to be a daughter and be grown up, as daughters were supposed to play in the street and laugh. And she was crying, which I could not understand, as mum told me Mrs Parker had gone to heaven: if heaven was nice, then why was her daughter crying?
And I wanted to say it'll be all right, as she's in heaven...but being little, curiosity got there first:
"Did you see her go to heaven?" I asked, as when I thought of Mrs Parker dying, it was seeing her sitting in her armchair and being lifted up, borne up so she was light as Peter Pan, and was not heavy and slow any more but happy to be in the air, and she was smiling as she left the room through the roof and passed away upwards, all light and full of the air...
And there was me, expecting totally for it to be as I'd been told it was. But seeing the panic, the shock, the apology, the shame on their faces, I knew what it was like to be both wrong and lied to. And at that moment, it seemed, I learnt 2 things: that heaven was false and I should keep my mouth shut around grownups.
Isn't there a bit from The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles that refers to life seeming like "an inexhaustible well" when young?
"Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."
I need the limitless in my life with even more insistence than I did then. And why would we see with such yearning as children, the pull of that without limit as being so vital?
I remember copying what I saw and heard, then becoming the same, then believing it as true, then using this as a template for what I should become...and surely upon surely, I have ended up seemingly a different person than the one I could have become. I get older, and the boat leaves so fewer times I fear that one day it will not leave at all and I will be stuck, drawing from the well of memory, but of memories that might only be treatments of reality and not real at all.
Time blows on, remorseless and scouring, and like the sisters in the Sahara, the cups fill with sand.
Ho hum, here's a picture that I'm not including to underscore anything I've written:
Saturday 20 November 2010
Italy(1): A Brief Flypast...
Beauty real, faded or imagined. Illusion, symbol, mystery, prophetic.Yes, I've been a tourist, a stranger in a strange land...but what a land. A place of awesome majesty, riches, poverty and desolation; flights of soaring hymnals in vision, dreaming spires, screaming tyres; the rise and Promethean audacity of Man creating both magnifence and monstrosity. The overarching might and colossal impact of Imperial Rome, the vast power of medieval and Renaissance men and cities and republics, Babel-like towers rising and toppling....
I find it extremely hard to convey Italy. Partly because of its immensity, beauty and excellence...but particularly for me because there are the groanings accompanying the signs of the End of the Age. I'm in danger of being in a unique position here if I'm not careful: that of alienating any readership before a blog has even got off the ground. Yet I would be lying if I said that I just had a nice time taking lots of piccies. each time I've visited Italy, I've felt that God wanted to show me so much about the real nature of Him and His creation, about the position of man in the world and about our relationship(or otherwise) with Him. The thing is, the reality of this seems so vast, and my powers of understanding so limited, that I could only "treat" this sense through a panoply of symbols and images.
Before I go on any further, I'll probably bring about a sigh of relief from some of you by assuring you the following: I will not be posting every Italy image and gving an artistic exposition here! I'd think that 1400+ images would leave you either catatonic or with a Mekon-style brain extrusion.
BUT...you can find my Italy photo galleries here:Doverow's Italy Galleries It's a safe and nicely laid-out site..and the photos are reproduced larger than within this blog. I'll even give you a few seconds to nip over, have a quick peek and bookmark it......
.....OK?
The 2 images above, by the way?
The first image was taken in Rome: I was taken with the almost androgynous-looking nature of the subject and the whole suspension of disbelief that is generated by a successful illusionist. The guy was flicking, twisting and manipulating the "crystal ball", balancing it gyroscopically, then getting it to travel against gravity up his arm. He was dressed so as to give a suggestion of woodland mysticism, with his hair gathered in a sort of twig and branch arrangement. For me..or for the symbolic "meaning" I wanted to impart via the image...I wanted to suggest the illusory or false nature of a self-perpetuating Creation, suggesting further that there is a deceitful spirituality at work to blind us to the reality of a God who is separate from, transcendant to, His creation.
Or, of course, you can see the picture as a snapshot of a street entertainer..which is equally valid, as it'd be against the spirit of free will if I just heavy-handedly "told" the viewer what they have to see.
The second image is at a special place, San Miniato di Monte..just a couple of hundred yards(or metres, if you like new money) above the Piazzale Michelangelo, Florence. It is place that looks down on the beauty of the city, set in the natural bowl of the landscape. I often think of this view as being like Jesus looking down at Jerusalem, weeping for its fallenness, its beauty and awaiting the "New Jerusalem" in the restoration of all things. Like a bridegroom awaiting the uniting with his bride.
Here I wanted to allude to both life and death: the solitary figure is "seeking the living among the dead" perhaps, or contemplating the journey of life to death(and even to life beyond this). There is wide space around her, indicating vulnerability or emphasising her apparent aloneness. She seems to see only what is immediately before her eyes...yet we are aware of the "bigger picture" quite literally: a beautiful place, where the lines of the composition all lead towards. The fact that there is no visible way of getting from the foreground to the background, from death to life, serves to emphasise the photograph's themes.
And there we are. If you'd like any more details about the photographs(as techy or non-techy as you wish), please either go to the Italy Gallery or ask here. And of course, if you'd like more, and you would like my explanation/exposition too, then please say.
Taking off...
My First Blog, eh? I wonder what drives people to do them. It can't be fulfilling the function of a record, an aide-memoire of When We Were Young to be coaxed from the yellowing pages of a diary that is read by us when we're entering the agar-culture of old age: it's not private or locked in the bedside drawer.
Is it the need for validation, then, smacked mewling and puking into operancy as we try and have a voice and identity despite the world telling us that little boys should neither be seen nor heard? And surely our phones, I-pods and countless other little helpers, "optimise" our photos, our music, our chances of meeting That Special Someone...heck, even our writing and spelling are taken out of our hands, are done for us like a savvy parent doing the kid's homework.... then all these faits accomplis are given back to us to hand in to Life's daily inspection and we believe that we've done it all ourselves. And of course, when we do manage to create something unique and beautiful off our own bat, the reader/viewer/listener avoids any challenge of having to celebrate or feel jealousy, by assuming some brill piece of software did it all for us....
...so is a blog actually a way for us to not merely have some control, some voice but also kid ourselves we're really having a conversation, in which we're listened to and given the option to have others to contribute too?
Well, after we've held the floor and had our say, that is.
And I'll tell you now: the first thing I do whenever I've bought a new computer, is to fire up Word and forbid it to correct either my spelling or grammar.
This blog of mine will have my random thoughts, my considered fair musings, my poisoned rants; it will have photographs taken by me, provide links to music written and created by me and will have the odd poem written by me from any time since the mid-1980s.
I wonder if I'll "censor" it when I imagine an actual person out there whose virtual interface is reading what I've written...will I then tailor my output to dovetail with my imagined creation of what the reader/viewer is like, in effect creating a likeness of you that is based on the idols of either gold or dark clay that I have made people into over the years? Is a blog then also a consequence of our need for a confessor, a rescuer, a liberator? After I've blogged too...is the post then crystallized into ownership: is my output then bonded firmly to me, or have I in fact liberated it from me? And then does it wander to and fro upon a virtual landscape, with people choosing to engage with it, to be interested or annoyed by it?
Let's start with something fairly interesting: I went on a sort of holiday to Italy a couple of months ago with a host of Christians. Now, Italy and me, well, we've had a kind of thing going for some time....
Is it the need for validation, then, smacked mewling and puking into operancy as we try and have a voice and identity despite the world telling us that little boys should neither be seen nor heard? And surely our phones, I-pods and countless other little helpers, "optimise" our photos, our music, our chances of meeting That Special Someone...heck, even our writing and spelling are taken out of our hands, are done for us like a savvy parent doing the kid's homework.... then all these faits accomplis are given back to us to hand in to Life's daily inspection and we believe that we've done it all ourselves. And of course, when we do manage to create something unique and beautiful off our own bat, the reader/viewer/listener avoids any challenge of having to celebrate or feel jealousy, by assuming some brill piece of software did it all for us....
...so is a blog actually a way for us to not merely have some control, some voice but also kid ourselves we're really having a conversation, in which we're listened to and given the option to have others to contribute too?
Well, after we've held the floor and had our say, that is.
And I'll tell you now: the first thing I do whenever I've bought a new computer, is to fire up Word and forbid it to correct either my spelling or grammar.
This blog of mine will have my random thoughts, my considered fair musings, my poisoned rants; it will have photographs taken by me, provide links to music written and created by me and will have the odd poem written by me from any time since the mid-1980s.
I wonder if I'll "censor" it when I imagine an actual person out there whose virtual interface is reading what I've written...will I then tailor my output to dovetail with my imagined creation of what the reader/viewer is like, in effect creating a likeness of you that is based on the idols of either gold or dark clay that I have made people into over the years? Is a blog then also a consequence of our need for a confessor, a rescuer, a liberator? After I've blogged too...is the post then crystallized into ownership: is my output then bonded firmly to me, or have I in fact liberated it from me? And then does it wander to and fro upon a virtual landscape, with people choosing to engage with it, to be interested or annoyed by it?
Let's start with something fairly interesting: I went on a sort of holiday to Italy a couple of months ago with a host of Christians. Now, Italy and me, well, we've had a kind of thing going for some time....
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