The other day (actually I have to admit that it was a couple of months ago now; apathy is, after all, my strong point) Simonitov pointed out to me that I had not written anything here for a while. I had to throw my hands up and admit it, yes, it was true, I hadn’t. I couldn’t deny it – the evidence wasn’t right there before my eyes. I hadn’t written a single word.
“But why not?” came the rousing cry from nowhere.
Which is, to be honest, a fair enough question no matter where it came from
even if it didn’t come from anywhere at all, other than from the convenient
heckler in my head who just happened to be Johnny on the spot at exactly the
right moment.
And the answer (somewhat less rousingly and coming from somewhere, i.e., me, standing next to the heckler in my head) is that, quite obviously, I had nothing to say. This was a conclusion that needed no great thought, no lengthy period of consideration. In fact, such was the rapidity of the stated conclusion, I’ll say it again just in case you missed it the first time: I had said nothing because I had nothing to say. Admittedly, having nothing to say doesn’t always stop me but nevertheless.
Such was the case, here.
And such has been the case for almost seven months. That’s quite a long time,
all things considered.
The first time that Simonitov brought it to my attention it came as a bit of a shock that so much time had passed since the last time I had posted wordage.
So I steeled myself to do something about it. That was two months ago.
Good intentions, etc.
But anyway, here I am now, steeling myself once more and…
…concluding that, actually, I still have nothing to say.
About anything.
To anyone.
Cryptic or otherwise.
It doesn’t happen very often.
But this has obviously been one of those ‘doesn’t happen very often’
moments.
Correction - is one of those moments.
And this particular moment has obviously gone on for quite a bit – and going
on a bit is generally what people accuse me of doing although in this particular
instance I haven’t so you really ought to appreciate the irony. Although, having
said that, it does appear that I am in fact now going on about not going on
which either negates the original irony or doubles it up – I’m not sure which.
Anyway…
In spite of the fact that I still have nothing to say, I feel that I ought to at least make the effort and say something, no matter how banal and tedious. So, that is what I will do; I will make the effort and say something.
And having thought about it for a considerable length of time (i.e., the length of time between the last sentence and this one) because I still have nothing to say, I shall endeavour to say something about not having anything to say. Sounds riveting doesn’t it?
Yes it does, but probably not in a good way.
Those who know me will obviously appreciate that this is quite possibly the
moment where I, to borrow the well-known phrase, go off on one – although in a non-violent manner, naturally. You might want to do the same thing.
But if not: Prepare the tangents.
Here I go.
Gosh.
How exciting.
How tedious.
“Get on with it!” cried the heckler.
Oh.
I’d best get on with it then.
Okay, I will.
Right, here I go. Again.
And so…
(By the way, the possibilities for the following monologue are probably both
endless and interminable, and limited in length only by how bored I get tapping
the keys on this keyboard trying to say whatever it is I may try to say, or by
how infuriating the dodgy power connector on my laptop (which is causing major monitorial fluctuations) becomes before I am forced to concede defeat and do something else. Either way, it would probably be best to get yourself a brew before you read any further– I’m feeling persistent today and this may take some time. And I did say earlier that having nothing to say doesn’t always stop me so it’s not like you haven’t been warned.)
Ready?
Okay, let’s go.
No, really, let’s go.
And so (encore)…
Some thoughts about why I have had nothing to say about anything whatsoever for months and months....
I think perhaps that the best way to start is for me to think about the
reason for why I have had nothing to say – because there has to be a reason for that.
So, to attempt to establish that reason, first off, I’ll ask myself the
opening question pertaining to my absence in these quarters for the past six
months: Why?
Why indeed.
I have already said that I have said nothing because I have had nothing to say, but is this really true? Did it really just come down to the fact that I really had nothing to say and therefore didn’t say it because there was nothing there to be said, or was it more the case that I had nothing to say that I wanted to say here and therefore simply kept it to myself?
Because there are things that are better left unsaid. Anybody who has ever
said something and then wished that they hadn’t knows this to be true – this
covers more or less everyone.
Anyway…
I think a lot.
No, really, I do.
I think a great deal in fact, all the time. Like we all do.
But crucially (and that’s not life or death crucially but crucially in the context of instilling some sort of dramatic purpose and effect into this narrative to make it seem a lot more interesting than it actually is and, truly, it actually isn’t) having thought about it again for the amount of time it takes to get from one sentence to another, I have concluded that not everything that flickers through my tiny mind is suitable for family entertainment on the grounds of dullosity, banality, pointlessness, insensibility and, the most important one of all, which is: Frankly it’s got bugger all to do with anyone else but me. In the case of the latter, it therefore stands to reason that it stays exclusively inside my head.
Lately, or at least in the long months since I last placed wordage here, a lot of the ‘stuff’ that has been firing the synapses, in my head at least (which is obviously the only head I am qualified to comment about), is not necessarily
stuff that actually needs to be written down (because who needs to know if I
cleaned my teeth this morning?) or it is stuff that shouldn’t be written down
anywhere at all and absolutely least of all here on the worldwide web where at
least three people, including myself and Simonitov, might read it.
Because, as I said but a paragraph or two ago, for all sorts of reasons there
are some things that are best left unsaid and have nothing to do with anyone
else but me – or from the point of view of you and your shoes, you. Come to
think about it, there are very probably some things that are best left un-thought of as well for that matter – but both, unsaid thoughts and un-thought thoughts are exactly the sort of thoughts that should most definitely not be put down into a legible format for the consumption of the aforementioned three people, even if one of those three are responsible for what is being written in the first place.
I think.
At least I think I think.
I get confused, you know.
Can you tell?
Moving on…
So then, here I am, me and my thoughts…
My thoughts meander a great deal from topic to topic. That is probably not
unique, I suppose most people’s thoughts do, although I cannot be certain about the thinking patterns of others – like I said I’m only qualified to comment
about mine, not that I am entirely confident about what is going on in there at
any given time, only that something is in fact going on.
Anyway… So, yes, those pesky thoughts indiscriminately zip about in a
pin-ball fashion around my neural network, dredging one train of thought from
one shadowy corner into another shadowy corner, colliding it haphazardly and
probably (but not necessarily) randomly into another train of thought,
hopelessly mixing and perhaps tainting one with the other, causing a mix and
match tapestry that would, in all probability, not get it top billing at a
handicraft competition on any WI circuit anywhere in the world. In short then
(ha ha!), a veritable cocktail of a train wreck of thought, the type of which,
on balance, should almost always be best kept to the shadowy corners where they can do no harm and definitely not be posted on the interwebbery to be shared with the masses – yes, all three of them.
“But surely” I hear you question, “there must have been some great wisdom
which you could have shared with us over the past six months?” To which I reply: Nah.
Because… if my head has been full of stuff that I have had no inclination to
write about here, then they have been all-consuming and therefore there has been no space for anything else, nothing to say, nothing to see, nothing of any
consequence. In retrospect I suppose that I could have reported the teeth
cleaning or even bowel movements in a Facebookesque kind of way but… why?
There you go then.
I mean yes, alright, I could report on bowel movements, give an in-depth
description and appraisal of each one, provide diagrams and, of course, refer to the Bristol Stool Guide without which no serious study of bowel movements would be complete or accepted by any serious scientific research team.
But I can’t do it. Others can: I am sure that on some social networking
website any number of people are religiously sharing with the world the news of their latest momentous movement, which in turn is then openly scrutinised and analysed by their online peer group with exacting tediousness, quite possibly becoming, wittingly or unwittingly, the ultimate in interactive toilet gags.
Obviously, this may have an appeal to certain sections of certain
communities; possibly hundreds of thousands of people are tuning in every day to discover what has been hanging on to who – or whom.
But me, I’m not just seeing it.
(And no, please do not suggest using a mirror; I can look in the bowl just like everyone else.)
Maybe it is because of my advancing state of old codgeriness. Maybe. Maybe
not. All I do know is that I feel fairly certain that no bowel movement of mine
shall ever receive worldwide media coverage. Although, having said that, if it
does I shall be the first to hold up my hands and say: “Hey, I was wrong, I was
really wrong to diss the movement. Because you know something? Like, wow, that bowel movement really spoke to me, man.”
And shed a tear.
Cosmic.
Anyway, getting back on to whatever it is I was talking about before the power of the movement, which I believe was the subject of why I haven’t otten anything here for seven months, the reason, pure and simple and already stated about a thousand words ago is because I have really had nothing to write about.
Or at least nothing to write about that I want to write here.
Because there has been plenty of stuff going on in my cluttered mind, but it
is the kind of stuff which has been far too important to be the subject of
anyone’s scrutiny but mine. Because that sort of stuff is a whole different
universe of thought from everything else; it’s a different type of
important.
It’s different from the insightful stuff (not that I have ever written anything insightful – I know enough not to get above myself and get any ideas about being insightful because I know I'm not) which is a separate type of important and that type of stuff, the insightful stuff, the clever stuff should be shared. Stuff like: Hey, I have just discovered how to turn lager into water. Or maybe not that. But other stuff perhaps, stuff that will do good, bring about world peace, provide free cheese for the common man (and woman), produce answers to questions that really matter in the big wide world such as: Eastenders – WHY?!
And whereas that is obviously important stuff because it is stuff that reflects on the impersonal big wide world and which can change universes and bring down empires etc., and therefore is obviously made for sharing, the other
important purely-to-me stuff is just not in the same category – it’s much more
important than that.
It’s all about me and the universe is not invited. It’s mine, leave it alone. Bugger off.
We all have that sort of stuff within us; classified information for our eyes only. Revelatory stuff, revelatory about ourselves. Revelatory about our own personal universes – your personal universe, my personal universe – and they are not for mixing.
It’s the sort of stuff that we would never want to let the light of the outside world illuminate, either because it is of no concern to the outside world or because if the outside world saw it they might well indeed be concerned – and be concerned when, actually, there is no real need to be concerned because
sometimes thoughts are just thoughts; no harm done to man nor beast as long as they are kept in the drawer marked ‘Top Secret’. We all have secrets.
And a secret shared with just one person (or in the case of this website,
three persons including me) is no secret at all.
So much better to keep it to ourselves under our own lock and key.
Sometimes, perhaps inevitably, bits leak out. The mind is only so big after
all – stuff it with enough thoughts and some are bound to get squeezed out
through the gaps. A small piece of a puzzle here, an edge, a section of sky, but
nothing that really says anything about anything; just a piece of pointless
trivia that gets lost in the stampede of everything else.
And sometimes we reveal things by the things that we do not say: revelation
by omission.
Me, the stuff I don’t talk about occasionally leaks out in song lyrics – or
pours out on occasion. Fortunately though people are generally too busy reaching for the razor blades to make the pain end, to realise…
But, generally, if we are sensible, everything that we would rather not say
anything about has nothing said about it and that is the way it should be.
And I suppose that’s the reason for me having nothing to say here; I have had
plenty to say in the last seven months but I have only been able to say it to me
because me is what is has all been about – the really important stuff, for my
eyes only. Everything else has just been bowel movements – and you know my
feelings about that.
See you again in seven months.
:-)
Steve B
PS: No absinthe was consumed in the divulgence of this non-divulgence of
secrets. But it probably should have been.
“But why not?” came the rousing cry from nowhere.
Which is, to be honest, a fair enough question no matter where it came from
even if it didn’t come from anywhere at all, other than from the convenient
heckler in my head who just happened to be Johnny on the spot at exactly the
right moment.
And the answer (somewhat less rousingly and coming from somewhere, i.e., me, standing next to the heckler in my head) is that, quite obviously, I had nothing to say. This was a conclusion that needed no great thought, no lengthy period of consideration. In fact, such was the rapidity of the stated conclusion, I’ll say it again just in case you missed it the first time: I had said nothing because I had nothing to say. Admittedly, having nothing to say doesn’t always stop me but nevertheless.
Such was the case, here.
And such has been the case for almost seven months. That’s quite a long time,
all things considered.
The first time that Simonitov brought it to my attention it came as a bit of a shock that so much time had passed since the last time I had posted wordage.
So I steeled myself to do something about it. That was two months ago.
Good intentions, etc.
But anyway, here I am now, steeling myself once more and…
…concluding that, actually, I still have nothing to say.
About anything.
To anyone.
Cryptic or otherwise.
It doesn’t happen very often.
But this has obviously been one of those ‘doesn’t happen very often’
moments.
Correction - is one of those moments.
And this particular moment has obviously gone on for quite a bit – and going
on a bit is generally what people accuse me of doing although in this particular
instance I haven’t so you really ought to appreciate the irony. Although, having
said that, it does appear that I am in fact now going on about not going on
which either negates the original irony or doubles it up – I’m not sure which.
Anyway…
In spite of the fact that I still have nothing to say, I feel that I ought to at least make the effort and say something, no matter how banal and tedious. So, that is what I will do; I will make the effort and say something.
And having thought about it for a considerable length of time (i.e., the length of time between the last sentence and this one) because I still have nothing to say, I shall endeavour to say something about not having anything to say. Sounds riveting doesn’t it?
Yes it does, but probably not in a good way.
Those who know me will obviously appreciate that this is quite possibly the
moment where I, to borrow the well-known phrase, go off on one – although in a non-violent manner, naturally. You might want to do the same thing.
But if not: Prepare the tangents.
Here I go.
Gosh.
How exciting.
How tedious.
“Get on with it!” cried the heckler.
Oh.
I’d best get on with it then.
Okay, I will.
Right, here I go. Again.
And so…
(By the way, the possibilities for the following monologue are probably both
endless and interminable, and limited in length only by how bored I get tapping
the keys on this keyboard trying to say whatever it is I may try to say, or by
how infuriating the dodgy power connector on my laptop (which is causing major monitorial fluctuations) becomes before I am forced to concede defeat and do something else. Either way, it would probably be best to get yourself a brew before you read any further– I’m feeling persistent today and this may take some time. And I did say earlier that having nothing to say doesn’t always stop me so it’s not like you haven’t been warned.)
Ready?
Okay, let’s go.
No, really, let’s go.
And so (encore)…
Some thoughts about why I have had nothing to say about anything whatsoever for months and months....
I think perhaps that the best way to start is for me to think about the
reason for why I have had nothing to say – because there has to be a reason for that.
So, to attempt to establish that reason, first off, I’ll ask myself the
opening question pertaining to my absence in these quarters for the past six
months: Why?
Why indeed.
I have already said that I have said nothing because I have had nothing to say, but is this really true? Did it really just come down to the fact that I really had nothing to say and therefore didn’t say it because there was nothing there to be said, or was it more the case that I had nothing to say that I wanted to say here and therefore simply kept it to myself?
Because there are things that are better left unsaid. Anybody who has ever
said something and then wished that they hadn’t knows this to be true – this
covers more or less everyone.
Anyway…
I think a lot.
No, really, I do.
I think a great deal in fact, all the time. Like we all do.
But crucially (and that’s not life or death crucially but crucially in the context of instilling some sort of dramatic purpose and effect into this narrative to make it seem a lot more interesting than it actually is and, truly, it actually isn’t) having thought about it again for the amount of time it takes to get from one sentence to another, I have concluded that not everything that flickers through my tiny mind is suitable for family entertainment on the grounds of dullosity, banality, pointlessness, insensibility and, the most important one of all, which is: Frankly it’s got bugger all to do with anyone else but me. In the case of the latter, it therefore stands to reason that it stays exclusively inside my head.
Lately, or at least in the long months since I last placed wordage here, a lot of the ‘stuff’ that has been firing the synapses, in my head at least (which is obviously the only head I am qualified to comment about), is not necessarily
stuff that actually needs to be written down (because who needs to know if I
cleaned my teeth this morning?) or it is stuff that shouldn’t be written down
anywhere at all and absolutely least of all here on the worldwide web where at
least three people, including myself and Simonitov, might read it.
Because, as I said but a paragraph or two ago, for all sorts of reasons there
are some things that are best left unsaid and have nothing to do with anyone
else but me – or from the point of view of you and your shoes, you. Come to
think about it, there are very probably some things that are best left un-thought of as well for that matter – but both, unsaid thoughts and un-thought thoughts are exactly the sort of thoughts that should most definitely not be put down into a legible format for the consumption of the aforementioned three people, even if one of those three are responsible for what is being written in the first place.
I think.
At least I think I think.
I get confused, you know.
Can you tell?
Moving on…
So then, here I am, me and my thoughts…
My thoughts meander a great deal from topic to topic. That is probably not
unique, I suppose most people’s thoughts do, although I cannot be certain about the thinking patterns of others – like I said I’m only qualified to comment
about mine, not that I am entirely confident about what is going on in there at
any given time, only that something is in fact going on.
Anyway… So, yes, those pesky thoughts indiscriminately zip about in a
pin-ball fashion around my neural network, dredging one train of thought from
one shadowy corner into another shadowy corner, colliding it haphazardly and
probably (but not necessarily) randomly into another train of thought,
hopelessly mixing and perhaps tainting one with the other, causing a mix and
match tapestry that would, in all probability, not get it top billing at a
handicraft competition on any WI circuit anywhere in the world. In short then
(ha ha!), a veritable cocktail of a train wreck of thought, the type of which,
on balance, should almost always be best kept to the shadowy corners where they can do no harm and definitely not be posted on the interwebbery to be shared with the masses – yes, all three of them.
“But surely” I hear you question, “there must have been some great wisdom
which you could have shared with us over the past six months?” To which I reply: Nah.
Because… if my head has been full of stuff that I have had no inclination to
write about here, then they have been all-consuming and therefore there has been no space for anything else, nothing to say, nothing to see, nothing of any
consequence. In retrospect I suppose that I could have reported the teeth
cleaning or even bowel movements in a Facebookesque kind of way but… why?
There you go then.
I mean yes, alright, I could report on bowel movements, give an in-depth
description and appraisal of each one, provide diagrams and, of course, refer to the Bristol Stool Guide without which no serious study of bowel movements would be complete or accepted by any serious scientific research team.
But I can’t do it. Others can: I am sure that on some social networking
website any number of people are religiously sharing with the world the news of their latest momentous movement, which in turn is then openly scrutinised and analysed by their online peer group with exacting tediousness, quite possibly becoming, wittingly or unwittingly, the ultimate in interactive toilet gags.
Obviously, this may have an appeal to certain sections of certain
communities; possibly hundreds of thousands of people are tuning in every day to discover what has been hanging on to who – or whom.
But me, I’m not just seeing it.
(And no, please do not suggest using a mirror; I can look in the bowl just like everyone else.)
Maybe it is because of my advancing state of old codgeriness. Maybe. Maybe
not. All I do know is that I feel fairly certain that no bowel movement of mine
shall ever receive worldwide media coverage. Although, having said that, if it
does I shall be the first to hold up my hands and say: “Hey, I was wrong, I was
really wrong to diss the movement. Because you know something? Like, wow, that bowel movement really spoke to me, man.”
And shed a tear.
Cosmic.
Anyway, getting back on to whatever it is I was talking about before the power of the movement, which I believe was the subject of why I haven’t otten anything here for seven months, the reason, pure and simple and already stated about a thousand words ago is because I have really had nothing to write about.
Or at least nothing to write about that I want to write here.
Because there has been plenty of stuff going on in my cluttered mind, but it
is the kind of stuff which has been far too important to be the subject of
anyone’s scrutiny but mine. Because that sort of stuff is a whole different
universe of thought from everything else; it’s a different type of
important.
It’s different from the insightful stuff (not that I have ever written anything insightful – I know enough not to get above myself and get any ideas about being insightful because I know I'm not) which is a separate type of important and that type of stuff, the insightful stuff, the clever stuff should be shared. Stuff like: Hey, I have just discovered how to turn lager into water. Or maybe not that. But other stuff perhaps, stuff that will do good, bring about world peace, provide free cheese for the common man (and woman), produce answers to questions that really matter in the big wide world such as: Eastenders – WHY?!
And whereas that is obviously important stuff because it is stuff that reflects on the impersonal big wide world and which can change universes and bring down empires etc., and therefore is obviously made for sharing, the other
important purely-to-me stuff is just not in the same category – it’s much more
important than that.
It’s all about me and the universe is not invited. It’s mine, leave it alone. Bugger off.
We all have that sort of stuff within us; classified information for our eyes only. Revelatory stuff, revelatory about ourselves. Revelatory about our own personal universes – your personal universe, my personal universe – and they are not for mixing.
It’s the sort of stuff that we would never want to let the light of the outside world illuminate, either because it is of no concern to the outside world or because if the outside world saw it they might well indeed be concerned – and be concerned when, actually, there is no real need to be concerned because
sometimes thoughts are just thoughts; no harm done to man nor beast as long as they are kept in the drawer marked ‘Top Secret’. We all have secrets.
And a secret shared with just one person (or in the case of this website,
three persons including me) is no secret at all.
So much better to keep it to ourselves under our own lock and key.
Sometimes, perhaps inevitably, bits leak out. The mind is only so big after
all – stuff it with enough thoughts and some are bound to get squeezed out
through the gaps. A small piece of a puzzle here, an edge, a section of sky, but
nothing that really says anything about anything; just a piece of pointless
trivia that gets lost in the stampede of everything else.
And sometimes we reveal things by the things that we do not say: revelation
by omission.
Me, the stuff I don’t talk about occasionally leaks out in song lyrics – or
pours out on occasion. Fortunately though people are generally too busy reaching for the razor blades to make the pain end, to realise…
But, generally, if we are sensible, everything that we would rather not say
anything about has nothing said about it and that is the way it should be.
And I suppose that’s the reason for me having nothing to say here; I have had
plenty to say in the last seven months but I have only been able to say it to me
because me is what is has all been about – the really important stuff, for my
eyes only. Everything else has just been bowel movements – and you know my
feelings about that.
See you again in seven months.
:-)
Steve B
PS: No absinthe was consumed in the divulgence of this non-divulgence of
secrets. But it probably should have been.