Balloon and Blog

I watched the translucent white balloon, perhaps escaped from some baby shower or wedding, float against the clear blue sky. If it had been a cloudy day, I might not even have noticed it up there. It was one of those clear Colorado days, with nothing to stop the incessant waves of heat, pouring from the sun. One of those days when it feels so hot that you think your skin might melt (instead of burning crisp and red.) There were no signs of rain or breeze, from horizon to horizon... except that balloon.

If you ask a young child to draw a picture of a balloon, they will draw a circle with a line extending downwards. Is the line straight or wavy? If they think of the balloon tied to their wrist, filled with helium and stretching to the ceiling, they will most certainly draw the line straight. Even if the balloon is floating through the sky, they may draw the string as straight. On a clear day, void of breeze or cloud, one might expect it to be so.

Perhaps this is why the string of the translucent white balloon surprised me. Rather than rising straight into the air, pulling the string taut, it meandered about in nearly rhythmic waves. The waving string reminded me of a dancer's body, gyrating to the rhythm of some tribal tune... or was it disco? The dancer entertains an audience, and so I became the audience of the balloon, dancing its ribbon across the sky.

Of course, the balloon wasn't trying to entertain me, or trying to do anything at all. "Trying" implies some sort of conscious effort, and balloons just aren't conscious (although I wonder if the child drawing the scene would disagree...) Instead, the ribbon was twisting due to small currents of air, pushing it in different directions. Even though no wind was felt that day, the air still continued to move. Why would it stop? We were moving through it, the balloon was moving through it, along with the rest of nature and civilization.

It'd be silly to suggest the balloon had a will to rise into the sky, and was struggling against the forces of the moving particles of air. It might make a decent metaphor for basic aerodynamics, but it is just that, a metaphor. It rises till the helium leaks out. So the balloon doesn't have free will... but we do, supposedly. Why do we assume we are different? More parts, perhaps. Billions of cells can't all just work as one without some sort of direction, right? Except ants in a colony manage to work together without direction, as do hives of bees, flocks of birds and schools of fish. They're all just following simple rules, like, "follow the one next to you." "Go until you find food, then go home." Are we that different?

If we're all in a crowd, navigating our way along a busy city street, we're all following our own simple rules, which are all pretty similar. "Go to work, go home." "Don't bump into the guy in front of you." Sure, any one of us, singled out, would be far more complex, as we each have associations besides that crowd. But in the crowd, we're all driving towards the same purpose, more or less, to move down the block. Why are we all there? Because the stores, homes, or offices are there. The stores, homes and offices are there because there are people there to go inside them. There isn't any real direction, someone shouting, "you go in there, now, and you go next."

Now, back to the individual. We each have all these unique ideas and thoughts, goals, ambitions and fears. All of these thoughts influence our choices, and define the way we move through the crowd, or through life. Does uniqueness equate free will? That seems like a stretch... I would have called that balloon unique. Sure, maybe there were a half dozen more back at the wedding or shower just like it, but those would have had straight ribbons! As unique as it seemed, it was just doing what the tethered balloons were doing, rising as high as possible.

Rise as high as possible. Wait. Isn't that what we are each trying to do, in our own ways? We rarely meet someone who tries not to succeed in life, who tries to poor or miserable. We meet them about as often as we meet someone who suddenly stops in the middle of a busy city street. (Ok, so they might be one and the same.) Even if we aren't trying our best to rise, tethered by obligations or pushed around by the little things, we stay up... at least until we deflate or pop. (Whichever comes first.)

So is this all a grand metaphor for life and death? Maybe. But the title of this wasn't Balloon and the Meaning of Life (see the cover of Seed if you want the latter) it was Balloon and Blog.... And that was the purpose of the metaphor: to describe the meaning of blog. Does the blogosphere follow direction? Does a blogger write with free will?

Blogging has become one of my greatest loves. It has also become one of my greatest things to stress about. The original purpose of my blog was to share ideas. After entering a few carnivals, I gained a few regular readers, and earned a few worthy links. All of a sudden, blogging wasn't so much about ideas, as it was about page views and referrals. My ideas, kept to myself--sealed in a rubber balloon, so to speak--kept me floating, making me feel as if I had a purpose in life, a reason to rise. When I released them into the blogosphere, however, they were subject to turbulence. I've been at it for well over a year now, and I still haven't gotten used to it.

I see other blogs, posting multiple times each day, or digging into scandals, and then raking in the page views. I see that, and think maybe I should try to post more, or dig into scandals. (Even though, that isn't what I do.) Fueled by assumptions, I've put quite a bit of pressure on myself to blog. Imagine if that balloon had some way to decide it should be rising higher, and tried to take on more air. (This is a hypothetical example, you can have invisible flying tanks of helium in the sky in a hypothetical example, right?) The balloon is already filled to capacity, giving it that gorgeous translucent sheen. Add more pressure, and surely it will pop.

I've seen 'em pop, too, like top 40 one-hit-wonders. New blogs pop up out of nowhere, send off a little bang and flash, and then they're gone. It isn't always the newbs feeling the pressure, either. The turbulence of the blogosphere may come as a shock, but we're all subject to turbulence from everyday life, from storms to those invisible breezes on a clear day, before we even start to blog.

So, occasionally, I must remind myself, that I shouldn't worry about rising up to touch the sun. I blog because I love it, because I can bring together visual ideas with scientific ones, or play in the flowers and watch the lady beetles, learning as I go. I can dive into history or imagination, whatever I choose. That's the beauty of the blog... it's my balloon.

Still, I keep finding myself feeling guilty about little breezes. I wasn't thrilled about postponing several blog posts last week, especially the Friday fractal. The heat wave in Colorado, which is finally starting to pass (we hope) made my office unbearable, both for me and my laptop. It was beyond my control, those inevitable waves... and there I was, trying to battle, trying to rise up to the challenge and catch up. Silly, really... all I ended up doing was nearly popping.

That was when I saw the balloon.  That flowing, gyrating ribbon was the reminder I needed. Don't battle, try to touch the sun, and pop... instead, ride those waves.

So I say ride the waves... does that hold true to disturbances in the blogosphere, like content reproduced without permission? I firmly believe that there is no conscious design behind the blogosphere. There is no king, no set rules or codes beyond the html-type. We barely follow simple rules, learning from our neighbor, adapting as necessary, just like the hives and anthills. Now, don't forget about the leeches... that lack of rules applies to them, as well. That's why I decided to turn down Jonathan Bailey, who offered to help shut down New York Articles, a leechsite reproducing ScienceBlog content without permission. (Thank you, anyways, Jonathan!) I don't think they were breaking any rules... this is too new a frontier for that... but I do think they were rather worthless, and wouldn't stay afloat for long anyways. (Since we brought it to light, Technorati has stopped listing them.)

As for my own content, I'm happy to keep producing it, regardless of how many people see it, or who copies it. I'll keep writing, even if I can't match other's posting rates, or miss whatever the current buzz happens to be. I would like to put a little less pressure on myself, too. I thought adding a few extra weekly features might help me keep up, but it didn't. That's all right, I still enjoy the ideas.... I just won't continue them as weekly features. Instead, they'll become categories I may use frequently or rarely... whatever the weather calls for. I'll keep the Friday Fractal on Fridays, at least, skipping a week as necessary. The rest of the time, I hope to use my blog as originally intended... for the love of writing, and science, and nature, and history, and games, and food, and.... Well, you catch my drift.

All art on this page was done by my son, Roland, age six. In the last picture, Roland explains that he is crying over his lost balloon. This was followed by actual sorrow, because he did not have a balloon to lose. You know those angst-filled artists, always contemplating some existential crisis.