I Flew Too Close to the Sun and Burnt My Wings

So I have been looking at some other blogs recently. I checked out the one that won the blog award thing. The thing that really strikes me about blogging is that people write a whole lot of messy, weird, often cryptic stuff about themselves and their own lives. As text (god, starting to sound very wanky now) it isn't especially accessible. It seems to me like the author reclaiming ground and making up for lost time. I enjoy the process and the catharsis obviously, but because I am not creating coherent narrative, or even providing points of access necessarily, it is a piece of stuff that is powerfully and necessarily me. So what would Barthes and Foucault have to say about this new style of authorship? The non censorious nature of the blog is interesting too. This kind of writing really allows you to run at the mouth and become very self absorbed. I don't think of it as publishing, I suppose it seems to me like emails to myself, and a forum for my friends to criticise me anonymously. Not really. But I do love the fact that it provides parallel conversations and allows us to explore each other differently. I sometimes feel embarrassed by the fact that I am doing this, in a kind of 'who do I think I am' way. But then, I know that in Australia we generate a 'who are we' kind of culture. It is an amorphous and often awkward identity, and we are sometimes an incoherent disparate group of people who aren't really allowed to feel anything too grand about ourselves. And so at times I feel like I am creating a false self here, but in fact it is a twinned identity, as it is more me than I am in person, yet heavily censored and awkward.

I think I am proud of my blog, because it is the first time I have presented myself to anyone in this way, and felt legitimate doing it. KF has been a huge influence on me with her fantastically powerful sense of 'me-ness' that comes across in (seemingly) everything she does. She has made me feel as if expressing myself in the ways I find meaningful is an acceptable thing to do. I know that sometimes I am terribly rigid and that I find it difficult to change the things that have been long felt. Also, I suffer terribly from embarrassment. I read my book of lists recently, and found a list of things I find embarrassing, one of which was the sound of water being poured from a kettle to a cup. I decided that if I found that book of lists (if I was not me), I would think the person who wrote them was rather weird. But that's ok as AM would say. Anyway, excuse me, I digress....KF has been fantastic for me because of her vitality, openness, strength and intelligence. Often I forget that there are in fact other people out there in the world beyond the ones I know and love. I think this is kind of boring so I'll stop now.

Another thing: it makes me sad that I have written so fucking much on here, and perhaps no one will ever read it all. Perhaps I need to go back to being a ridiculously secretive compulsive diarist? I don't think I have thought enough about purpose.

And I have some more questions for you, crazy little community:

• do you think that you have any kind of purpose in your life?
• what boundaries would you never transgress?
• how often do you feel proud of yourself but aren't able to express it?
• do you ever feel spiritual?
• how do you balance modesty and self esteem?
• what are your biggest sources of pleasure?
• what associations do you make between different things/conditions that are meaningful? For example an association between love and home (KF, you'll know what I mean here)