January 25, 2004

Yesterday, Heather and I started talking about my blog as soon as I arrived, 15 minutes late, to take her shopping. I said something stupid on our way downtown, where my visionary Indian friend was waiting for us. “My blog will get pretty intense if I manage to get myself physically assaulted one of these days,” I said. “If it bleeds, it leads.”

“Are you just doing things to have something to write about?” Heather asked disapprovingly. She accused me of shaping my life just to keep the narrative going instead of simply allowing life to happen.

“Am I just a part of the narrative?” she asked.
“Do you want to be?” I retorted insidiously.

Heather is quite observant and our conversation left me doubting my motives. Maybe I am taking this evolving personal narrative a bit too seriously — yearning for physical violence just to have something to write about is not exactly sane.

Fortunately, once we arrived downtown and met my friend I had an excuse not to think about how silly some of my ideas are. The three of us had a blast shopping for election gear, jam, and pretzels. For a couple of hours I forgot about narratives and shaping reality, and all was good.

Until today, when I received a letter from my visionary friend asking if I was mad or something. He was worried because in yesterday’s blog I didn’t mention much of what happened, and my silence seemed suspicious, reasonless. (Actually, I felt tired and I couldn’t be bothered to write more than two paragraphs).

But it’s interesting how my silence serves as an invitation to read or misread my mind. By removing the details, the blog becomes a canvas where people can project their own visions and fears. People are eager to misread nothingness and to come up with their own meaning.

Thus, while my blog distorts my life in a subtle way (as Heather noticed), it seems that unless I provide my readers with my distortions, they will fabricate the distortions themselves. We all hunger for something more than silence, and distortions are so goddamn appetizing.