Shallow Puddles

“In a conversation there is always more than one voice, and one of the voices must be our own or it is no conversation at all.”

– David Whyte, Crossing the Unknkwn Sea

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“The Wart did not know what Merlyn was talking about, but he liked him to talk. He did not like the grown-ups who talked down to him like a baby, but the ones who just went on talking in their usual way, leaving him to leap along in their wake, jumping at meanings, guessing, clutching at known words, and chuckling at complicated jokes as they suddenly dawned. He had the glee of the porpoise then, pouring and leaping through strange seas.”

– T. H. White, The Sword in the Stone

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My blog posts are light splashes in shallow puddles.

Do they amount to any depth when put all together?

Do they drain into a body of water?

How large?

How deep?

I know that they are mostly the words of others, but nonetheless I’ve curated them.

I am part of the conversation.

I barged my way in, I’ve sidled up to the two writers talking and have weighed in with my opinion, even though both could justifiably say, ‘who the fuck are you?!’

Does my view matter?

It does to me.

I’ve introduced two writers who I knew would get along.

I’m a literary matchmaker.

This is a reflection of how I choose to spend my free time and my limited budget: on books, to continue these conversations.

And there is no end to them.

No Limit.

Literally an infinite number of conversations, quotes of others that I can match up.

Now let’s say I have 40 years left to live. That’s 365 posts a year, times 40.

14,600 blog posts. That’s how many days I have left to live, if I’m lucky.

Well, that doesn’t seem many.

But it does give me plenty of time to do the work. Or rather, time to play.