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Slices
I have been thinking about what a strange thing blogging is -- both writing and reading blogs. You are giving out or receiving such a thin slice of a random sample of someone's life and that someone could be a total stranger on the other side of the world or the person beside you on the train. I read my sister's journal and wonder if would know it was her's if I just stumbled apon it by accident or if I would dismiss it as just another harry potter fangirl site with animated icons and quickly surf away.
I guess you only ever get to see that thin slice of anyone's life, whether they are family and you only get to see their family persona (and they are an innocent child, not a 17-year-old, bucket-bong smoking, porridge gun shooting, dope peddling freak) or their work persona or their pissed-at-the-pub persona. Or you are walking along the street passed a house with a gap in the curtains and you see a family eating dinner and Dad passing the tomato sauce. And maybe, for a minute, they look happy or sad or bored or stupid but that is only how they look for a brief moment.
I choose the slice I want you to see. I can pick from the 58 different thoughts and stories swimming through the lap lanes of my mind -- the determined freestyles, the lazy backstrokers, the tentative strugglers with their kickboards and floaties or the one hiding away in the newly-warm spot in the corner with the sheepishly sly grin.
I could talk being 10 years old in the car on the way home from the Drive-In, curled up, cheek against the cold glass, singing country songs with my mum and sister - freedoms just another word for nothing left to lose and neverr wanting to get home... wanting to drive forever in the dark. I could talk about being 17 years old and sitting on a front porch, smoking joints and listening to Neil Young, looking out over tea trees and Bass Strait on a rare summer's day in Tasmania and how the porch belonged to a guy that everyone considered 'a bit simple' and how, if I wanted to be literary and ironic, I could say he was the smartest man I knew, but he wasn't. He was just simple but, you know, sometimes that's enough. And he's dead now anyway.
I could talk about the time when I lived in Hobart and our Weatbix disappeared -- mysteriously vanished leaving only the box and the liner bag inside the box and a few crumbs. And it was a brand new box, unopened, the night before and every "but maybe?" you can think of has a logic explanation.
I could bitch about my job or my house or my life or my finanical situation. I could link to something on Quizilla that tells you which member of the Olsen twins I most resemble. I could rant about shoes or war or lack of decent men.
But in the end it is just Dad passing the bottle of Big Red across the dinner table. Nothing more.
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