Monday, December 1, 2008

On being a keeper


Transmission resumes.

After a lengthy (and I will say it, enjoyable) hiatus, my daily blogging addiction discipline kicks back in.

Today was my first day back at work. The out-of-office autoreply came off the email, and my voicemail no longer lists seventy-five survival options that allows clients to cope with life in my absence.

If any doubt remained, I guess this blog entry tells the world that my parousia is no longer imminent but realised.

Re-entry.

I was half-tempted, I admit, to allow my blog to lapse.

Two weeks in obscurity turns into two months and into two years before anyone even bats an eyelid. Finally, at your fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration, a concerned friend asks, "Have you been posting any blog entries lately?" Life is like this.

After a dramatic evening of screaming children and a bolognaise explosion in the kitchen (which successfully splattered the kitchen and dining room floors, the dining chairs, the fridge, almost every cupboard and drawer in the kitchen, the rubbish bin, the spud bin and even the ceiling), blogging was about the last thing I felt like doing.

Yet the fingers itch and pull of the little plastic keys is irresistable. This is because I do more than blog at convenience or when something interesting turns up (though there's not a thing wrong with either of these modes of blogging); I am the keeper of a blog.

I like to tend, poke, prod, agitate, stir, feed, play with, lounge with - even sup with - my blog.

George the horse - or as I ought to call him (and I know it's a 'him' because Caelan pointed that out for all of us) 'George, watchman / watch-horse and keeper of the home paddock, Stanley' - reminds me of this home truth. Every time we go to Stanley, he is there, watching.

I have a little field to guard, a turnip-patch to keep and to till. Celebrating Design tugs at me to exercise an instinct that sits deep inside the heart of humans great and small: that urge to shepherd, to renovate, to cultivate. To camp on something and build there a mansion (or at least a measly, cobbled-together cairn).

Tonight, I dawdle up the stairs of my own private lighthouse, flickering flame on lighted wick, and once again place the fire to the lamp. The art of 'keeping' begins again.

2 comments:

T.M. Curzon-Manners said...

You're back! Love the bit about the spag' bog' ha ha, can see it now in my minds eye.

Looking forward to hearing more snippets from down under.

Adriaan said...

Hey, thanks again for dropping by. It's good to be back in blogsville.

When you lose a container of hot spag bog on the floor, it's hard for it not to be anything other than a very visually entrancing disaster.

Appreciate your recent comments - will need to make some time very soon to check out your blog a little more thoroughly - looks like a creative mind there!