blog-plaint

As you know, I've been participating in the Blog Exchange. However, I don't know if I'm going to continue. The basic point is that you sign up, are assigned a random partner, and write a blog on a given topic. You then email your blog to your partner (and vice versa) and on the 1st of the month, you post your partner's blog on your own page. There are set rules for this sort of thing, but I've noticed that a lot of people don't bother following them.

1. You are supposed to email your partner well in advance and post by 10am EST. Some people don't do this - they post after 6pm EST claiming internet problems. This is also why they didn't email you back when you contacted them initially. That's funny because their own blog had been updated multiple times. That's fine. You didn't even know you were participating until the last minute, and then your blog isn't even posted until the end of the day, so nobody read it anyway.

2. You are supposed to post your partner's blog unaltered. This means, don't fix their grammar, don't add in material (even if it's a plug for your own blog, which the readers don't need because they are already there), don't do anything! You can ask them to fix links that didn't transfer from Word to Blogger, but don't take the initiative yourself. Don't add irrelevant material on to the end.

3. The 1st of the month is set aside for the exchange. This means, take a break and don't post anything beside your partner's for the rest of the day. This includes your own blog exchange post - it is up at your partner's blog. (Thats the whole point of a blog exchange.) If you want to repost it yourself, wait til the next day. If you are the compulsive type that posts multiple times a day (and I am one) simply save the post for later publication. Even if you wait til midnight - just don't post until the Blog Exchangers have made their ways through.

Those are the big ones I can think of right now. If you have more, please contribute. Like I said, I don't know if I'll continue to participate. Sure, I get a few more hits that day, but they very rarely stick around as regular readers. Conversely, I will generally read the other entries but rarely find someone I become attached to (with a few exceptions of course, Gunfighter!). Yesterday because I had a migraine, I read only my friends' posts, and those of their partners. And even on those few I noticed the problems listed above. So I'm not sure if it's worth the trouble.

**UPDATE:
According to the list, My post and 2 of my friends' posts were voted "best."
So all my complaining paid off, I guess.


And for those of you that are interested, here is my own post from yesterday (as I originally wrote it).
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Tears in Heaven

What would you do if your small child plummeted out of a window to his death? If you are Eric Clapton, you write a song about it and share your grief with the world.

Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven?
Would it be the same
If I saw you in heaven?
I must be strong
And carry on,
'Cause I know I don't belong
Here in heaven.
Would you hold my hand
If I saw you in heaven?
Would you help me stand
If I saw you in heaven?
I'll find my way
Through night and day,
'Cause I know I just can't stay
Here in heaven.
Time can bring you down,
Time can bend your knees.
Time can break your heart,
Have you begging please, begging please.
Beyond the door,
There's peace I'm sure,
And I know there'll be no more
Tears in heaven.
Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven?
Would it be the same
If I saw you in heaven?
I must be strong
And carry on,
'Cause I know I don't belong
Here in heaven.

*Lyrics from Eric Clapton’s Lyric Archive.

This song is extremely moving to me. Not only because it is about the death of a child (which is one of my greatest fears even though I don’t have any children) but because it raises some interesting issues.

This is heaven in a non-religious sense. This heaven assumes that you are more than just a corpse rotting in the ground when you die; there is some other time or place that you will go and meet up with your loved ones. But will your loved ones recognize you? Will you recognize them?

Many people just assume that when you go to heaven, you remain exactly as you were when you die. In Eric’s case, his son would remain 4 years old for all of eternity. And Eric, when he finally meets him in heaven would have aged significantly. Would they recognize each other. No doubt Eric would remember his son at 4, but would the boy know his father so many years later? Many 4 year olds don’t remember their extended family unless they see them often.

This view is a bit pessimistic (I know, it’s a depressing topic, so of course it seems negative.) But there are other views. For example, Mark Twain’s short story “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven” reveals that once someone gets to heaven, they can be any age they choose. Most people eventually choose an older age, because youth is too immature and naive. Would this happen to Eric’s son?

Another view is presented in "Wristcutters: A Love Story" in which there is a special place set aside for suicides. It’s not exactly heaven, but it is an afterlife of sorts. There, you remain exactly as you were when you took your own life, including any resulting scars or disfigurements. There is a character that flung herself off a building, and thus walks with a limp and cane in the afterlife. Eric’s son was not a suicide, but if he had been he would presumably also walk a little funny. (Nobody has a 53-story fall without a few broken bones.) But maybe the continued disfigurement is a form of punishment. If heaven is really Heaven in the traditional sense, there would be no reminder of how one died. If you get to choose your own age, why would you not also get to choose your own physical state? And who would choose a state of anything less than peak?

“Life” in heaven is a topic that is discussed frequently, but unfortunately can only remain as speculation. There is also the possibility that heaven will meet whatever standards you set for it, be they angels with wings and harps, or continuing to “live” the way you are accustomed to. It may also be that Eric will see his son as the 4 year old he lost, while the boy has become a middle aged man. It is all about perception and expectation. I hope that for Eric’s sake, he is able to reunite with his son in heaven, knowing each others’ names and faces, and that all of us may have the same reunion with our own loved ones.


des usually is not this serious or forlorn. You can check out her regular self at the wonderful world of des, and a big thanks to Vicky for letting me depress you all just a little bit, and to the blog exchange for making it all happen.

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