To blog or not to blog

I’m genuinely unsure about blogging. Personal blogging, that is. (I don’t even like the word “blog” – it has to be one of the ugliest.) There are far too many blogs already, so ought I be adding to the mulch? As for the Shanghai “blogosphere” (brrr), it’s already full to brimming with “foodies” (another word I hate) waxing lyrical about their latest “foodgasm” (eugh) or complaining about bad service. Then there are the myriad China blogs, detailing with pungent naïveté all the culture shocks that assail the novice expat.

So what could I blog about? What am I interested in that might interest others? Here are some ideas:

1. Words and phrases I dislike. There are many. It could take a while.

2. Finding mistakes in books and magazines. Partly for my job, partly for (dis)pleasure.

3. Hamsters (of which I have an increasing number)

4. Strong pinko reactions to Daily Mail articles. I only visit the Daily Mail website for that warm-making liberal outrage that forces me to grab Web 2.0 by its horns and berate fellow commenters (and the “journalists”) for their narrow-mindedness. Ever so cathartic.

5. Maps of metro systems. I doubt this would be of much interest to anyone other than transport fans, but it can be fun.

6. Art Deco architecture.

7. Amateur dramatics.

So we’ll see. I have a crippling fear of web exhibitionism, which has led me to hide behind my other blog, Spam Stories, for a couple of years, but maybe it’s time to venture outside of anonymity.

like

Sometimes I like to sift through my folders and remind myself of my more prolific poetic days. I just came across one particular example of adolescent obnoxiousness in the form of ‘Like’. I wrote it as a blithe joke one day at university, but it managed to find its way into a poetry journal where it was met with acclaim, rather ironically. Here it is:

 Like

LEPIDUS: What manner o’ thing is your crocodile?
MARK ANTONY: It is shaped, sir, like itself; and it is as broad as it hath breadth: it is just so high as it is, and moves with its own organs: it lives by that which nourisheth it; and the elements once out of it, it transmigrates.
LEPIDUS: What colour is it of?
MARK ANTONY: Of its own colour too.

(Shakespeare – Antony & Cleopatra, Act II Scene VII)

We sat for a while
and watched the bubbles
rise in his beer like
bubbles rising in beer.
Then he drew a cross
in the ashtray like
someone drawing a crucifix
in ash.

The horses ran
across the plain, like
stallions running across
the plain, like mares.
 The wolves howled like
wolves howling, and the
sound of their cries was like
dogs crying to the moon,
and the stars, shining silver like
the stars.

We walked down the street like
two people walking down
the street; and, like people
saying goodbye, we said
goodbye.

Paquirri

Today I found a poem that I wrote about a year ago when I was doing some research on bullfighting for a play. Paquirri was the father of a dynasty of great Andalusian bullfighters.

Paquirri

From Zahara de los Atunes (Cádiz)
to Pozoblanco
to die
on the road to Córdoba,

Paquirri,

shadowed by his father and his father’s father,
set in his turn to shadow his sons

from Zahara de los Atunes (Cádiz)
to Pozoblanco
to die
on the road to Córdoba.

Gore and the
flash of the traje de luces,
traje de luces and lances and
banderilleros that leapt as they hooked.
The picadors’ flat hats like beekeepers
holding the stings of their bees and pressing
jabbing
pressing
into Avispado.

Avispado.

Big and black as the black on a bee
on the yellow sand and the sun,
bristled with porcupine red banderillas,
thrashing and lowing,
tossing, throwing his head and his horn
to send Paquirri

Paquirri

down through the decades
Zahara de los Atunes (Cádiz)
to Pozoblanco
to die
on the road to Córdoba.