Mr. Spencer's Neighborhood

Here I am again, on my Easter Egg blog, expressing ideas unsafe to express to anyone in my actual life. This is the blog where I talk to myself, safe in the knowledge that no one is interested in what I have to say.

In tonight's post, I will talk about communication.

Communication has been my motive force lo these many years.

Ooh, dramatic one-sentence paragraphs.

There's the effing critic stomping on my expression again. Well, fie on him. No one is reading this anyway.

Anyway, my upbringing was like a good thrashing in a riptide, leaving me far from shore, trying to find my way back home after ripping my glasses off me and leaving me blind. I am trying not to whine; I am trying rather to describe where I was post-puberty. 16 years old.

At Sweet 16, I had spent the past four years in an Osterizer of having everything I had been brought up to believe having been pureed and frapped. Accent grave on the appropriate E's.

Stubbornly enough, I continued to stick to everything I had been brought up to believe, because I had thought that all through, and nothing had popped up to compel me to diverge from it.

Here's the thing. I was surrounded by those who felt compelled to explain everything, and I was unwilling to explain what I could not explain logically. What I could not explain logically, I had to take on faith.

When I made that decision not to "outdrive my lights," I suddenly found myself on a pretty lonely path.

And pretty lonely I have been since. At times I have found those who seem to admire me for my choice of path, and one who even loves me for it.

And yet, I have never found anyone else following me on that path. But I have been advised that I may not remark upon that fact, or I will be labeled a martyr.

And THAT is the problem in talking about oneself, and that is why I don't like to do it to others. If I should happen miraculously to strike a vein of truth that serves to justify my choice of path, it will invariably be labeled as self-serving.

Yeah, OK, that is pretty much the definition of a martyr. So maybe the label fits.

So maybe my contribution is no greater than my existence.

So never mind my initial point.