Motivated?

Feel like I should post. It's been almost two years. Perhaps I owe something, perhaps a truth or two. Perhaps something of myself in exchange for every blogger whose ever blogged before. You know, like how where Jodie Foster exposes her vulnerabilities - except with hopefully less silenced lambs. Bad joke, rotten metaphor, sorry.

So an answer perhaps. You may or may not recognise the question.

"What's in it for you, emigre, this blog-counting?"

It would be untruthful to say no diarist ever started without an ulterior motive. Oh yes I had them. And how pure those motives seemed, virtuous. What, leave blog-linking to the self proclaimed "war bloggers"? Ga no, thought I. Ga no, why, I shall link in the name of peace and free-speech! Fight I shall! Neutrally! Courageously! Without weapons! With words! Oh cutting blade, how righteous the pen (yes, I still ballpoint stuff at times. Generally on the backs of old receipts and recycled printer paper). What a battle shall be waged! And how fearless shall I be, speaking truths and outing blogs and inspiring and egging on and logging the unloggable and generally you know, being brave from here behind my pseudonym requiping things that other people think up (always acknowledging sources and cleverly collaging quotes). An all inclusive list of blogs! Thought I. Oh how compelling, that there ought be a blog count. A blog count of diversity! The pro-war linked by no-war (and hopefully vice versa). Surely peace cannot help but spring out across the bridges that surely will be engineered!

But now? Well now I have nothing to prove. Peace cannot be proven, just as war cannot. It's blindingly obvious to anyone with an eye on history that no war is ever just, in that no war is exempt from atrocity. Blindingly obvious that dictators and weak leaders prop themselves up with war, having no other means to convince a population. Despots choose rule by fear, there is no secret in that. And it is equally obvious that people find peace at their own pace. Peace cannot be forced, coerced, artificially replicated or converted into poster boys and pin-up girls. Peace is no rivulet wearing away stone, tempting as it is to believe so. Nor is peace chipped off shoulders or even from old blocks. Peace is not an acronym. So many things peace is not! Is peace an absence then? Of troops perhaps? Well maybe, except that even troop withdrawal is a superficial solution and fails to address the creation of armies and the bodies that will remain long after official forces have shipped out.

Oh well. There you have it, a piece of my mind. I guess I will stick about anyway.