A woman sent a comment to one of my various posts on “adult oppositional defiance disorder” and “grandiose narcissism.” These posts consistently get more hits than any others. Depending on which program I use to “take the pulse” of prairiemary, there might ordinarily be a couple of dozen hits (there are 26 subscriber/followers -- I don’t know what the distinction is), but the two subjects above can hit two hundred or more. According to another program, I get about 400 hits a day and another one yet shows where readers are. Often I think I know who the reader is. For a while I was wondering who I knew in Mountain View, CA, and Friday Harbor, WA, until I realized those are Google hubs. About half the hits come in on Google or other search engines over the years after the post is made. Sometimes a decade after the post.
I’ve resisted using Google Analytics because it is the most specific and market-research oriented algorithm -- all that like/dislike, “favorite,” and hit analysis is meant to guide what your strategy is. But I don’t CARE about who’s reading my blog or why. If I did, I’d go crazy. There are a lot of people out there trying to CONTROL this blog and others by using like/dislike, “favorite,” consumer reviews, five-star ratings, and all that stuff. The content means nothing to them -- only the reactions of those who happen to call up this particular blog using tags and titles scanned by computers.
On the other hand, there are people, mostly regular readers, who assume that I’m preaching to the choir, namely them. Their pattern is that they want someone to “conduct” in a confusing world so as to keep everyone in harmony and on the same page. If I seem to be off the path, they will send correcting comments, though most individuals are wary of letting themselves be identified. It seems to them immodest to sing “solo,” and they feel safe in a selected and even “talented” group that stands together. But they sometimes try to be choir directors themselves which would be fine if they gathered their own choir instead of instructing me.
The truth is that I write these blogs for myself. But some persons don’t understand much more than how to type something into a search strip on Google and can barely figure out how to operate the comment feature, let alone read the column on the right with the directions about how to send me a private email. They are still coming from a place of obedience and dependency where they do not know what the little Blackfeet kids at the local library know: you should click on everything to see what it does. With luck these searchers will stumble onto a support forum for their issue and score a boatload of ideas and advice, not just what one person says.
A few years ago I began to explore some really frightening and disturbing issues about “places” I don’t know. Since I am so solitary, I organized a little group of women I considered stable, compassionate, and well-read so that I could balance the screams of agony I was reading with ordinary household calm. Big mistake. They could hear the echo in me. Some asked to be excused. Others thought I should address their own troubles. Since several had been teachers, they would say, “Keep up the good work,” as though they were qualified to decide what was good work or even had any idea what I was doing. (I told them very little. They don’t even suspect where I go. If I told them that, they would demand to know exactly where that was and feel free to tell me not to do that.)
What I was stupid about was that their own challenges (kids trying to stay employed while managing babies, parents fading into incoherence, disease and disorders stalking the land). Their constant rejection and indignation over politics wore on me. They were not interested in the progressive and brilliant groups who are working for change -- not grimly either, but with good humor and a confident sense of reflection and a willingness to throw ideas at the wall over and over and over. They didn’t want the boat rocked.
On this planet there are a lot of structural changes that need to be addressed: false economies, mass assumptions that are not true, damage that is discounted, old religions based on the first shift from hunter-gatherers to grain-based towns. It’s enough to give anyone vertigo. The humanities are giving way because they are human-based and that’s a limitation. The anthro-god is the least of it. The floor has fallen out from under the chattering classes: no publishing, no newspapers, no privilege for Ph.D’s, no professorships, no support for orchestra, theatre, opera, gallery, no advances for books or scripts -- all dissolved into populism, quality defined by money and votes. (The same thing, really.) Reviews mean nothing. There is no Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, no state regulation, no inspector, and neuronal research cannot find a conscience or a superego -- not even an internalized role model. No course, no book, no guru, no system.
Long ago when I was an AC officer, the radio asked me to go to a house in a bad neighborhood to pick up a batch of unwanted puppies. I was to go up the back stairs to an attic. Inside was a young woman in a butt-length skirt and white patent leather go-go boots. She was very blonde and very bruised. A dark baby was bouncing happily in a crib, chewing on the railing. The only other furniture was a mattress. The ceiling was simply the underside of the roof. The puppies were the usual mix, insecurely contained in a big cardboard box I could barely carry. The whole place stunk.
“Hurry!” begged the girl as I struggled to get the tumbling puppies balanced and keep them in the box. “He’ll be back really soon and this is going to make him really angry.” I wanted to reflect to her what I saw: that she was a prisoner, in danger, and that she should reach out to escape. Her bondage was stigma -- I had no doubt that “he” was a lover/pimp -- and the same romantic conviction that I’m trying to understand by reading de Rougement, a set of assumptions that mixes love with death. I did manage to get the pups down the stairs and into the truck. There would soon be another litter, another abused woman. This is survival of the group at the expense of the individual.
So when I got that blog comment that was really a plea, I took a little canvass among some of my known readers, hoping for new ideas. The men advised looking for help but had no specifics. The women were scornful and advised me to move on, since the woman was obviously stupid. I was surprised. These reactions are not typical of the gender divisions in the larger world as described by the media. Somehow the women in particular thought that diagnosis and labeling would solve the problem. They assumed that it was accurate, developed by people who “knew,” and could not be questioned. They are universally “humanities” people. That’s who reads my blog.
I don’t blog to simply report ideas -- I blog to challenge them. Blogging is skateboarding on ideas. Can you get it?
2 comments:
I dig it. I get it.
It used to amaze me a lot more that people would choose to stay in the hellish prisons that they know rather than try to break out of them. Then I realized that it's fear: fear of the Unknown that is worse than fear of the hell that is known. Lots of people are more afraid of change, even if it could be radically better, than they are of what they already have to endure.
I write for myself. I don't write for other people. So I get that, too. When someone comes back at me about something I wrote, I know that it says a lot more about them than about me, or about what I wrote. A lot. You sometimes hit peoples' triggers without knowing or intending to. But then, some triggers are less predictable than others.
You write about dangerous topics. That's part of it. I write about dangerous topics, too, but I write as a poet and artist more than any other way. I know that my blog(s) has (have) a following, but I also know that it reaches people I never hear from. I'm of the philosophy that when you throw a pebble in the pond, the ripples out of sight. They do impact on the far shore as well as the near shore.
All I'm trying to do is encourage to keep going, and not care what people say about it. We can't control that, anyway, so it's best to just ignore it.
Since much of my writing for a long time was delivered face-to-face as speaking and the reaction was very clear and immediate, I DO care what people think and feel and say about it. The big kick is that now I can't be fired for saying it! And if they get something out of it, so much the better but I have no particular obligation to improve them or be a cheerleader.
To turn this around, there have been blog posts that stirred me deeply. In fact, I care about those persons very much and wish I could see them face-to-face as I read them. Blogging is often seen as trivial or political, but for me it can be heart-to-heart.
Prairie Mary
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