I’m in danger of having a long break between posts again! Mostly due to lack of inspiration, and time. I have been busy on a couple of projects, but can’t write about them yet. One I have sent away for (fingers tightly crossed) inclusion in a magazine, although I haven’t heard anything so I’m not over optimistic about that. Two more things I am going to enter in competition, so no details about them either. Hopefully in a few weeks I’ll be able to blog about them, even if there is no success!

I’ve also been devoid of inspiration for next month’s writing group. The topic is about place – more precisely I think the question is ‘can we exist outside of place?’. For a start, I don’t even really know what that means. I tend to take things very literally, so my first instinctive answer is no. By existing, we take up space, so we have to have a place to exist in. I suspect that is not what the question means however.

My second, slightly more thought out reply, is ‘yes, of course’. If you mean, do we continue to exist when moved from the place we are born, then obviously we do. Millions of migrants all over the world are proof of that, myself included. Is this some metaphysical question – if you uproot me from the place of my birth am I the same person? Again, I don’t know. My feeling is that all our experiences combine to make us the person we are (people we are?), and place is just one small part of that.

I’m really not very good at abstract concepts.  This topic was introduced with a reference to the novel ‘Erewhon’ by Samuel Butler, which I had not read. I found it on Project Gutenberg, but I have only read about a third of it so far. It’s interesting, but I’m reading it as an adventure story, wanting to know what happens next, without much thought as to the satirical or philosophical nature of the work. I guess in any case I should hold off thinking too much about the message of the book until I have finished it.

I really didn’t have any idea of where I was going with this post when I started writing. (OK, you can say that I still don’t!) And none of this rambling has brought me any closer to writing anything for the group. I’d really like to challenge myself and write something a bit more imaginative or less factual and down to earth than I usually do, but at this stage the ideas just aren’t there. I have three weeks. And I also have to finish the projects for the competition. Will it help to continue reading Erewhon?