folio

I imagine that my blog is hardly read — and certainly not by anyone I know. So you can probably imagine my bewilderment when I post an ode to a gentleman I once knew, and hours later one of his children comments on it. I wrote that piece the other morning, waking with thoughts of him injected into my frontal lobe. I never envisaged anyone who knew him or me happening upon it, let alone the very same day.

But here I guess I must acknowledge my complete ignorance. Certainly, I have had a very strange year, as the long-absent suddenly appeared, moments after their names fluttered into my mind. This could be one of those, I suppose. Equally, it could just be that my writing is not as well hidden as I had imagined it to be, and that amongst my anonymous audience not all are strangers. I’m not quite sure how I feel about that: I have found the freedom to truly express myself, thinking myself to be writing before the unkown.

The thought that I have been writing in front of people who know me — or with whom paths once crossed — is rather alarming. I find it a bit embarrassing that I would bare my soul before people who know me. How much happier I was, thinking I was just scattering words into the wind, blown hither and thither, to be digested by random passers-by alone.

I am, I suppose, quite naïve, like all those years ago when I was struggling with my new faith, and particularly with the place of women in the tradition. I remember back then expressing my amazement that a sister had contacted me “out of the blue” at the height of those doubts to set my mind at ease. Of course, it eventually occurred to me that her input probably wasn’t out of the blue at all: I imagine that my friends had asked her to make contact with me at that very moment, to help me cross that hurdle.

So who knows what’s going on behind the scenes, and what conversations are being had with whom. It’s all unknown to me. I suppose it always will be. Certainly, my imagination has a tendency to run away with me. All that I imagined to be the case, I guess, is probably not the case at all. In truth, I have no idea what’s going on. Daily, with ever more force, it occurs to be that I know absolutely nothing at all. Is any of this even real, or is it all a mirage? Is it all just a dream, from which I will shortly be woken? Or am I simply going stir crazy?