Tuesday 5 September 2017

And the point is.


I had one of those conversations today with an old friend, one of the ones which makes everything better. We ranged over every subject under the golden sun and came to no consoling conclusions or dazzling answers but left each other with the best consolation of all, which is that we are not alone.
‘Sometimes,’ said the old friend, ‘you just do wonder what the point of it all is.’
We are not melancholics. We laugh a lot and see the beauty and are wild enthusiasts. We love the things we love with a fierce love. But we are fifty and a bit bashed by life and there are moments when it all feels a bit much. That’s when we wonder what the point of it all is, not so much in a despairing way but in a faintly baffled way.
I have been wondering lately what the point of the blog is. I do a lot of social media, partly because I genuinely enjoy it and partly because I have made my first foray into self-publishing and one has to polish the brand, or whatever it is called. The books are horse books and so the red mare is my brand. She has to trot out into the prairies of the internet more than ever now so that people might be interested and go and read her story.
So as she and I gallop about on the social media, it feels a little de trop to write a blog as well. Sometimes I genuinely don’t have time; sometimes I think the whole thing pointless and self-indulgent.
I realise today that it is self-indulgent, but in a rather lovely way. I was trying to tidy up some of my files and found the collected blogs of 2013. There were all the stories I had completely forgotten – about Stanley the Manly doing something comical and charming, about a racehorse I once adored who is now retired, about, of course, the red mare being magnificent. I thought: I’m so glad I wrote that down. I have a memory like a colander and all these ordinary but touching little tales would have been quite lost to me otherwise. There, suddenly, brought vividly to life, is my mother, who is now dead. I wrote her down, so she is still with me. When I miss her dreadfully, I can go back and read those stories.

I want to remember the telephone conversation I had today. I never take this particular Best Beloved for granted, because she is an extraordinary human being who has been there for me in every single triumph and disaster since we were nineteen. That’s a lot of laughter and a lot of tears. But I almost do take for granted that I can ring her up whenever I want and she will make me feel better about life. She will make me laugh so much that I can’t speak for half a minute. I want to look back and remember that we talked about her grandfather and the state of publishing and the abdication and the nature of prejudice and the complications of family and a hundred antic subjects. I’ll do twenty other things today, but nothing will make me feel as human and loved and real and alive as that conversation. That is, indeed, one of the small things. On paper, it is nothing more than a chat between two middle-aged women. In the heart, it is absolutely everything.
It is written now. It exists. It will be there, for the bad days and the sad days when I want to look back on the dancing, sparkling moments of happiness and feel comforted and reassured. That's the point.  

11 comments:

  1. Please please don't stop! I totally agree it's a strange pastime but has, without, exception, only brought happiness. That can't be a bad thing can it? Lou xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Isiyku Abdulahi
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      Isiyku Abdulahi
      My ex-boyfriend dumped me one week ago after I accused him of seeing someone else and insulting him. I want him back in my life but he refuse to have any contact with me. I was so confuse and don’t know what to do, so I reach to the Internet for help and I saw a testimony of how a spell caster help them to get their ex back so I contact the spell caster and explain my problem to him and he cast a spell for me and assure me of 2 days that my ex will return to me and to my greatest surprise the third day my ex came knocking on my door and beg for forgiveness. I am so happy that my love is back again and not only that, we are about to get married. Once again thank you Dr Believe. You are truly talented and gifted.He is the only answer. He can be of great help and I will not stop talking about him because he is a wonderful man. Contact this great love spell caster for your relationship or marriage problem to be solved today via email: believelovespelltemple@gmail.com or WhatsApp: +19713839183

      Delete
  2. It is only a 'conversation between two middle aged women.' But then that's the miracle isn't it? Conversation? Connection?

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  3. I read a quote about poets once that I can neither fully remember nor find again. All I have is the essence of it, and the essence was this - that poets exist to express what the rest of us see and feel but are unable to speak. Life is somehow incomplete unless it is expressed. Writing, good writing, whether poetry, blogs or novels, articulates and thereby helps us to complete our own experiences. And when writing is not just good, but also exquisitely insightful, it illuminates for us parts of our inner selves that we have longed to know, sometimes without realizing that the longing was there until it is fulfilled in a sentence written by some other sensitive soul. Write on.

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  4. My blog has existed for only a year and a half, yet I have already forgotten some of the things I wrote. When I look back, I am so glad I recorded them so I can re-experience them as I get even further from them in time.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I have yearly agendas...which I also use as a diary of sorts; it's not just dates and times. Even as short as it is (space is pretty limited for a start)I too find "surprises" & really appreciate those rediscoveries.
    If I wasn't so lazy (and becoming even more so), I'd do a "proper" journal, or a blog (I actually reserved a name several years ago now!).
    So I also say, write on, write on!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Lou, Guy, A Reader ....you're perfectly right, I agree, write on Tania xxx

    ReplyDelete
  7. Isiyku Abdulahi
    My ex-boyfriend dumped me one week ago after I accused him of seeing someone else and insulting him. I want him back in my life but he refuse to have any contact with me. I was so confuse and don’t know what to do, so I reach to the Internet for help and I saw a testimony of how a spell caster help them to get their ex back so I contact the spell caster and explain my problem to him and he cast a spell for me and assure me of 2 days that my ex will return to me and to my greatest surprise the third day my ex came knocking on my door and beg for forgiveness. I am so happy that my love is back again and not only that, we are about to get married. Once again thank you Dr Believe. You are truly talented and gifted.He is the only answer. He can be of great help and I will not stop talking about him because he is a wonderful man. Contact this great love spell caster for your relationship or marriage problem to be solved today via email: believelovespelltemple@gmail.com or WhatsApp: +19713839183

    ReplyDelete
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