A naive observer

I find the best thing about blogging is the way it makes me think. Sounds trite I know, but for me it does exactly that. It’s a little like organising things or packing a bag when I go on holiday – which incidentally will be tomorrow.

Actually I haven’t thought this post through, but that’s part of it too. Writing things down, roughing out an idea to see if it works then leaving it for a while because something just came up as it almost always does.

At the moment I’m in the study on the first floor. My window looks out over the garden with our big old magnolia dominating the foreground. Not now though, because the curtains are drawn to tone down a fierce early evening sun. The window faces west.

So where was I?

Back to thinking but I have to check the potatoes and get started on the sea bass and a salad so off I go and maybe the post will mature into something and maybe it won’t but that’s part of the enjoyment too because sometimes thoughts go nowhere and that’s good. It’s something we don’t always notice...

...okay where were we? The sea bass was excellent by the way. Far too much potato salad but we’re clearing out the perishables and what are those shoes doing on my desk? Ah yes I’m supposed to be cleaning them later. Cleaning them now actually - but later will do.

Right thinking... I see the sun has stopped trying to blast its way through the curtains. It’s almost cool now. Wonder if we’ll manage a dip in the sea? Probably not, it takes me about half an hour to venture in at the best of times.

But this is why I enjoy blogging. It marshals the daily mess, or at least part of it, into some kind of coherence, although you may disagree. It highlights the extraordinary vastness of what there is, what can be said about it and where we go wrong.

So where do we go wrong?

In my view we construct far too many narratives in a vain attempt to stitch together what cannot be stitched together. Obvious enough but sticking to the obvious is much trickier than one might suppose. Obvious often seems naive even when it isn’t.

So in a sense blogging allows one to become a naive observer and strangely enough that can be quite liberating.

Now for the shoes...