Where's My Spoon?

A fellow blogger named Peter Haslam who authors the wonderful blog Necessary Skills left a comment for me this morning about a post I wrote last year entitled Sophisticated Lizards.

I'm so glad he did. It led me to this which led me to this article which led me to this post. Seeing my older posts in a new blog format was startling. So I got more coffee and re-visited a few stories I'd forgotten about.

I told Peter, "Reading this made me tear up. I started blogging almost a year ago. How far, how far, how far Mimi Writes has come....I am so grateful for this "accident" that became my blog. How it changed me."

And it did.

So what about that spoon?

October 12, 2006. I'd splattered my pencil passion all over the blog screen that day - one of those days as a writer that you know that you know that you know you'd better write it (you have to write it) and threw out a challenge - to people I didn't know and would probably never meet. Where that story took me, continues to amaze the heck out of my pencil skirt. In response to Dona Nobis Pacem in the blogosphere, a fellow blogger left a different kind of comment.

He said, "Yo Mims. This is a bit like digging a tunnel to China armed with a plastic spoon. So much like the life and problems of Prometheus. Ergo, he signs up. "

To which I eventually replied, "Prometheus, about that tunnel to China. ......look at the responses. Scour the blogosphere today. Mims just got a bigger spoon."

A rumbling started.
Peace Globes began to spin.

This blogger from India, who mysteriously flies in and out of Blogland and raises a most prominent writing appendage to all that ruffles his feathers, wrote what I still consider to be the quintessential essay on World Peace to appear on November 7, 2006. Something about the timing of his words and the angst in which he wrote them captured our attention and sealed my fate as a lifelong peace promoter. After kidding me that my idea was audacious, to say the least, he had no idea that challenges only bring out the stubborn me.

Thanks, Prometheus. Wherever you are.

His blog tends to freeze up at times so I'll quote a bit of it here for you. I dare you to read it without feeling that stirring that propelled this woman to continue. I've reprinted only part of his beautiful narrative below. Please visit his site and read the rest. It is one of the most moving pleas for world peace and the desire for inner peace I've ever read.



"Prometheus did tell Mimi that this Peace Globe thing was ‘like digging a tunnel to China armed with a plastic spoon’. But Prometheus did participate in the Peace Globe venture. Why? There is a proverb in Hindi that means ‘even a twig is assistance to a drowning man’.
When the sun is blotted out, even a firefly seems dear. For Prometheus, the Peace Globe was not just a symbol of his derision for war of the military kind. It also symbolized his prayer for a world where we treat each other with respect, with equality, with justice. A world where we have rid ourselves of hidden agenda, of malice, of superiority over another race or religion, of our selfish traits and of our parasitic tendencies. His dream of a clean human race, one that achieves so much more by harnessing the time formerly spent watching our backs. Like the Elf kind of Tolkien. Wise and serene. Drowning in an endless ocean of stupidity, selfishness and hate; the Peace Globe was Prometheus’ proverbial twig."


And so, prompted by my friend Peter this morning, I reached back into my satchel of Mimi Writes and found that what I consider to be my best writing always flew in on wings of the unknown and came with an emotional revelation. Sometimes it was pretty. Most often it was not. What I learned was that real weaves its way into the minds and hearts of all of us. I gravitate to those blogs -those writers - who lay it bare. Of myself I wrote...

On vulnerability: "My fear is not of uncovering pain or looking at regret and being hurt by it. My fear is that I won't. Because deep down I know that that is the only place in me that is truly universal.....What I discover every time I run screaming from anything - is that my self-proclaimed I-am-woman-strength never holds a candle to the fear that nips at the heels of real. What I have discovered through the unassuming greatness of unmet artists across the globe and far-flung friends and passersby is simply this: I am nothing without my willowness.
My work is not a damn thing without it."

Thanks, Peter, for reminded me that bloggers are sophisticated lizards,
vulnerable to change and evolutionary growth, a species of human chameleons with the ability to change our skins. We are - apparently - the very essence of slithering anonymity. Some silently scream, others inundate with bells and whistles, most just want to have their say.......I'm beginning to appreciate the more beautiful aspects of my fellow bloggers. The world - according to Mimi - is becoming a much smaller place. At the click of my mouse I may find any sort of neighbor a half a world away or inconspicuously hiding (like our lizard friend) just around the corner, down the street, in my house, in my head. I have come to appreciate the complex world of blogging as a good thing, freedom of expression as a sacred journey, voyeurism at its best. Strip down the commercial mongers and we might just have something quite amazing.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go shopping.

For spinning spoons. (click for an amazing sight)



Storm cloud photograph above by Annelisa, Words That Flow, East Sussex, United Kingdom