There’s been some feedback concerning this blog to the effect that this conversation between ak and mmj is private, in-house, out of bounds to the visiting reader.
Initially my reaction is to demand more of the reader: “well, work at it” or “why don’t you just jump in.”
But then as I reflect further, my thoughts lead me to the question of WHAT is the blog BUILT ON? WHAT are the FOUNDATIONS of the conversations? It’s a debate that we entered into nigh on ten years ago, so there’s the question of WHY we’ve worked so hard at it, and WHY has it interested us?
To be sure, there’s a shared interest in writing and we’ve circled around the question of what sort of writing. Or to put it another way: WHAT is it we should be writing? WHERE lies the NECESSITY?
Fiction . . . ? Not quite, but maybe. Non-fiction . . . ? errh yes, but what exactly. Poetry . . . ? errh, perhaps.
You mean you don’t know?
Errh, yes, you could say that.
So yes, this blog began in the spirit of exploration, of having a conversation in public – a sort of, even if we don’t know where we’re going, let’s get on with it anyway. All the postings have been written in this spirit.
But then, during the course of our most recent face-to-face meeting (Monday 4 December, afternoon, upstairs in Boston’s, Exeter), the following little word slipped in:
pilgrimage
. . . a whisper of a word/idea, a sort of “don’t tell anybody” type of word/idea. It had the appearance of a key . . . life as pilgrimage. Which might mean not only specific journeys to Mecca, Santiago, Jerusalem, Benares (Varanasi), Rome, Mount Athos, etc., but the day to day, the mundane, the barbed entanglements of our lives as we stumble on in acts of pilgrimage.