Connecting the Dots

When I was younger we would get both the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Manila Bulletin every day. I loved the Sunday issues of Bulletin better because there'd be a full page of comics and games for children: hidden word games, spot-the-differences-between-two-pictures games, crossword puzzles, mazes, and yes, connect the dots---which were no-brainers, because it was too easy to guess from the outline what the image would turn out to be. Besides, the dots were precisely numbered to make sure anyone would get the real image at the end: a sketchy cartoony figure all edges and angles, with no contours, no depth, no mystery.

Now if there were no numbers, no one plotted image, just a smattering of dots like random stars on the night sky's page, as if a child had taken a toothbrush and flicked the toothpaste-dipped bristles across black paper, then that would be more interesting. If we are free to make our own images and patterns from what we're given, as I believe we are, the danger is that we'd end up with formless mishmashes worse than some abstract art or kindergarten kids' finger paintings. Or we'd see clever little constellations and ignore the extraneous dots surrounding them, deluding our myopic selves into thinking those forms were predetermined.

(Insert appropriate transitional statement here. Hmm. Hmm. A transitional grunt or sigh will do.)

So I am beginning another blog now, triggered by the observation that there is nothing neat about my life, but that there are (for lack of a better encapsulating term) dots I need to connect, or reconnect, as the case may be, in order to make things whole. If wholeness is indeed my goal.

If the above explanation sounds forced or trite, then maybe it is. I wanted a new blogskin; I found one I liked; I wanted to explain why I like it. But then any small thing can be fodder for self-examination, as some of the better narcissists (i.e. bloggers) know.

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This poem, Strand's most popular and anthologized, seems timely. I have Cos to thank for showing me this last 2001.

Keeping Things Whole
Mark Strand

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

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