#723

Medusa

"I had to see,"
she said, by way of explanation.
"With my own eyes."
But this explained nothing.

"Sitting in a darkened room
peering through a two-way mirror.
It's not the same."

And I had to agree
but I didn't know why.


6 April 1991
 
 

So what’s going on here? It’s not very clear, is it? A woman is explaining to someone—the poem’s narrator—why she chose to leave the safety of a darkened room to see something or someone with her own eyes. Or maybe not “see” as in look at but “see” as in come to understand first-hand.

 

In Ovid’s reimagining of the story Medusa was a beautiful maiden whom Poseidon raped in Athena's temple. Enraged Athena transformed Medusa’s hair—the victim’s hair—into serpents and made her face so terrible to behold the mere sight of it would turn onlookers to stone. Perseus was only able to slay her whilst looking at the reflection from the mirrored shield he received, unsurprisingly, from Athena herself. So there’s the mirror.

 

Two-way mirrors we generally associate with interrogation rooms.

 

Let’s say it’s Medusa the woman has to see face to face. Why’s she still able to talk? Surely she would’ve been turned to stone. Well, metaphorically, perhaps she has. Learning the truth can have that effect on people. And we know it can. And yet we go out of our way to look it in the eye. Why? I have no idea.

 

Or perhaps the woman is Athena and this is before Medusa’s punishment. Perhaps Athena needed to look her in the eye before she knew for sure. Even if what she thought she saw was completely wrong.

#718

The Voyeur

No, it's not enough to know.
It's never been enough.

It just all depends on your point of view
how much you can see
of Truth as she changes.

And how much that reveals
depends on what you're looking for.


6 April 1991
 

Voyeurism has always fascinated me. I’m not talking here about sexual voyeurism. That’s easy to understand. The two or three times I’ve happened to see a neighbour in a state of undress have stayed with me even though I can’t remember what any of the women looked like; the idea of nakedness is always more appealing than actual nakedness. What they looked like wasn’t important. What mattered was catching a moment of unfettered truth. As soon as we’re aware we’re not alone in a moment our behaviour changes. I’ve always been desperately interested to see what people do when no one’s watching or they think no one’s watching. So I suppose ‘spying’ would be a more appropriate word but even that’s not right because spies usually have malicious intent. I don’t. I’m simply fascinated by other people.

 

It’s like Jen says in Left:

I enjoy eating out. Especially alone. I amuse myself by watching the other customers or, if they’re a dreary lot, by peering out the window at passers-by. People interest me, their doings and their undoings. I don’t get them in the same way I don’t get meerkats but still like following their antics.

Jen’s not like other people. She’s not a poet but she knows she’s different. She notes at one point, “I often feel as if there’s a glass pane between me and everyone else.” Well that’s truer in 2017 than it’s ever been. In January 1997 I go on to write two poems both called ‘Screen’ and in both I refer to glass screens, TV screens, computer screens and how they only seem to let us in; we’re still separate, apart.

#695

Frozen Moment

They crossed in front of me
with their eyes
and that walk
and they know.

It is Autumn
and too late now
for skirts like that
and I'm cold just looking.


29 August 1989
 
 

The last poem was about Ayr. This one I wrote sitting in a car outside a primary school in Larkhall. As I was waiting there two girls who were clearly not from the primary school walked across my line on vision and caught my eye. I'm not sure if they noticed me looking but they were clearly dressed to be looked at. This poem is all that remains of that moment. You can make them thirteen if you like or eighteen. I can't help you out. I'm not even sure why I was there. I imagine it was to see the headmaster of my daughter's school but I'm guessing.

 

I revisited this theme years later in 'Advice to Young Women' (#820). It's a subject that fascinates me. Looking. Writers look. They watch. They observe. No one's safe. There're rules to looking. I can see straight into my neighbour's flat across the road. But one's not supposed to spy. I notice. It's impossible not to notice especially when she's doing her exercises and they're bound to catch the eye but I'm not supposed to watch. And I'm certainly not supposed to record. But what if I wrote a poem about her? A record of the moment. Like the one above. Where's the harm in that?

#626

Naked Truth

Without thinking
I barged into her room
only to find her praying.

She paused
and looked up in silence
like the time she caught me spying
as she undressed.

But then she did not cover herself:
her arms even fell by her sides
so that I could see better.

But all I could see were her eyes.


9 November 1988
  
 

The problem with the truth, the real truth, is that it’s not simple and as such can’t be expressed in simple terms. What’s going on in this poem? Someone, presumably a man, intrudes on a woman while she’s praying and his mind is immediately thrown back to a previous invasion of privacy only that time there was intent: he wanted to see. Seeing is important to men. I’m told it’s not as important to women but I’m a man and I just can see why anyone wouldn’t want to see. Seeing’s great. It’s also disappointing because once you see you’ve seen; the past tense rushes in and ruins everything. Voyeurs want to see more than most, they’ll go out of their way to see things, but the turn on is not being seen seeing. If they know you’re watching then it’s spoiled. They change. They perform or chide you or close the curtains. Or scream, “Muuuuum! He’s doing it again.”

#514

Old Walt

Old Walt used to watch the cleaning woman –

Through the spy hole.

Breasts hung as she scrubbed.

In the monochrome passage.

One day...
             ...and the neighbours
                 talked about it for weeks...


29 May 1979
 
 

This is not a very good poem but it is of some importance. It leaves things up to the reader. Completely. What did Walt do? Kill her? Rape her? Expose himself? Drop dead in front of her? It could be anything. Years later I expressed myself far better in my poem ‘Reader Please Supply Meaning’, the title poem of my latest collection. You can read it in this old post.

We never had a cleaning woman. I don’t think we had one. Or maybe we did. I know in the next flat we lived in the neighbours used to pass a bobbin back and forth. When it dropped though your letterbox you knew it was your turn to clean the stairs, the landing and the bin shed. But I don’t remember doing that in the first flat we were in so maybe we did have someone come in. That was the first place I lived in with a spy hole. Quite taken by it I was. So maybe I did watch a cleaning woman one day. Maybe that’s where the idea came from.

We have a spy hole in this flat and occasionally—as recently as yesterday in fact—I’ll hear some kerfuffle in the hall and go and take a look. Not sure what I expect to see. Not sure what I’d do if I did see anything. But I still go and take a look. Might be an idea for a poem there. You never know.

#520

Walkers

Alone
they walked
and did not speak
they walked
neither did they touch.

His face
creased like unironed shirt
and her tired eyes.

That is all,
so why do I moralise?


23 October 1979
 
 

Fodder. Often cannon fodder. It’s a word, like so many words, I’ve used for years and never really thought much about:

Fodder, noun:

1. Feed for livestock, especially coarsely chopped hay or straw.
2. Raw material, as for artistic creation.
3. A consumable, often inferior item or resource that is in demand and usually abundant supply.

My current novel is about a writer who spends much of the book—decades, in fact—sitting on a park bench watching the world go by. Of the people who wander into his crosshairs he says, “they were fodder, ordinary people going about their ordinary lives, food for thought.” And being a writer?

It’s not being ordinary, not going home having your dinner and sitting through some inane made-for-TV movie with a six pack for company and to anaesthetise reality. If you’re not a writer what are you?

[…]

That was what he wanted to capture, what it’s like being normal, not being him because he never thought of himself as normal. Were he the norm everyone would be a writer. And they weren’t. Nor were they artists of any description. Normal people went to the football or the bingo, they got married, had kids and affairs and they knew about mortgage rates and credit cards. He was surrounded on all sides by a nimiety, a too-muchness, of normalcy; it was depressing.

Not everyone has a novel inside them but everyone has a story. I read a book a while back by Amos Oz in which an author spends a few hours making up stories about the people he encounters in his day to day life. That book made so much sense to me. I’m not as bad as Oz but I do remember quite clearly the very first series of Big Brother before it got silly. I was quite addicted. Ordinary people doing ordinary things. I could watch them for hours.

The need to see

Rachel: And your fly's still open...
[Ross looks down.]
Rachel: Ha, I made you look....
– Friends (The One with All the Poker)

How do you say things? Do you get right to the point or are you a shillyshallier, pussyfooting around the issue? Or is there another way?

I’m thinking here, in broad terms at least, about the difference between prose and poetry. As I said, in broad terms. Prose states things, poetry not so much or when it does it’s usually saying one thing and meaning another. In cinematic terms we’re talking about the difference between Alien and Alien Resurrection. In the original film more is suggested than anything else but in Alien Resurrection metaphorically-speaking (and literally) the lights are all up full. (I’m thinking about the scene in the lab with the three aliens behind glass.) We all know what the monster looks like so let’s get to see him up close and personal. But which is the better film? Okay, Alien, hands down, but if we’d never had the first three films to compare Alien Resurrection to it might have received better reviews than it did.

What I’m saying here that there is nothing more powerful that what we imagine. As soon as we get to see something we can step back from it and go, as in Aliens: “Oh, that’s just a couple of guys in rubber suits.” (I’m thinking this time of the scene where Ripley sees them crawling through the space above the ceiling.) Aliens was clever film though in that it suggested an army of creatures but I don’t think we ever get to see more than two or three onscreen at any given time.

Am I saying that it’s never appropriate to show things in surgical detail? What is this need to see all about? Here’s a photograph from Naked New York by Greg Friedler. The whole book is made up of diptychs like this, one clothed, one unclothed:

The first photo is intriguing. I wonder how many men have seen her floating around the office and thought to themselves, I wonder what she looks like naked. And now we all know. Yay! Next page, please! What more is there to see? Oh, we’ve not seen her bum. Maybe she’s got a cute bum. She looks like she might have a cute bum; pert. But do we really need to see her bum? Haven’t we seen enough? When is enough enough? Would we have been happier if the photo had been in colour? Or bigger? There’s not exactly a lot of detail here, is there? The thing is, one seen we can’t unsee:

DRESSED APOLOGY


I've exposed myself too much
and embarrassed you.
I'm sorry:
I thought we were that close.

Can you pretend
it never happened?

And you only imagined
my weaknesses?


28 August 1989

I picked this photo because of the expression on her face. It’s almost identical in each picture. There are a few more online if you’re curious. Just type ‘greg friedler’ into Google.

Truth is often described as being naked. Personally I’m not a big fan. Of truth. I quite liked nakedness, just not my own especially. What I really don’t like about the truth is the fact that I find nothing is ever true enough for most people:

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SWEET WILLIAM


What do you do when you've seen?

Look again. See more. It pays to be sure.
Of course, third time's the charm,
three points make a straight line
and we all know where they lead.

It's always the same though,
always in familiar places.
always doing the same old things.
There's a certain comfort to be had in that.

It's different though, every single time,
each time, the same but different,
a revelation or a kick in the teeth.
That's what's kept us coming back for more.

Curiosity crippled the cat
and all cats are peeping toms.


25 December 2002

This is the last in the Sweet William sequence and I think after nine years we can call it a day. I’ve said all I can about William but when you read the whole sequence (which I will publish one day – promise) what’s pretty clear is how little I actually say. I leave much to the imagination of the readers.

Here’s an early experiment:

OLD WALT


Old Walt used to watch the cleaning woman –

Through the spy hole.

Breasts hung as she scrubbed.

In the monochrome passage.

One day...
            ...and the neighbours
            talked about it for weeks...


29 May 1979

So what happened? Did he kill her? Rape her? Flash her? Shout obscenities through the letterbox? Propose? I don’t know. I never knew. And even if I did I can’t remember and if I could I wouldn’t say. That’s not what the poem is about. It’s about you. What do you think happened?

There are two styles of writing: explicit vs. implicit:

Implicit	Explicit
Are you busy tonight?	If you’re not busy tonight, would you go out with me?
Is that seat taken?	Can I sit beside you?
I wouldn’t if I were you.	You will die.
Does my bum look big in this?	If you say it is you will suffer.

which means there are two ways of acquiring knowledge:

Implicit (or Tacit) Knowledge	Explicit Knowledge
acquired subconscious, internalised unanalysed intuitive covert spontaneous, automatic typically procedural	learnt conscious analysed metalingual overt controlled (processing) declarative

Of course we use both all the time. In the poem above I implied that something happened, Walt did something and probably to or with the cleaning woman. You may infer that something bad happened based on your knowledge of voyeurs who’ve got tired merely looking and escalate to doing. In my poem ‘The Rapist’ which was written about the same time as ‘Old Walt’ this is all I say about the actual assault:

Then in the wood:
Stains and not simply on clothes.

I suggest what happened, where it happened and how it affected the victim (and possibly the perpetrator) but I really don’t say anything very much. I don’t need to.

I used to want to know everything, every gory detail. Does this ring any bells with any of you?

Where did he touch you and how did it feel
And why did you let it begin?
What did he whisper and when did you cry
And where do you think it will end?
How long did you do it and why did you stop?
Did you get to try anything new?
How good was he honestly and where did you go
And who made the very first move?

It’s from the spoken introduction to Jim Steinman’s song ‘Left in the Dark’ in case you wondered. These are all facts. The two that’re missing are probably: Who was he? and Was he better than me? although I’m sure you could think of lots more. But this is all explicit knowledge – names, dates, places – and it’s ultimately dissatisfying because what he wants to know is how it felt. And not just the physical act, the emotions, before, during the act and after. He wants to know how she felt and how the guy felt.

We want the truth – we say we want the truth – but no matter what we get it’s never true enough:

SIGHT UNSEEN


We start off looking for truths
but end up just looking
not seeing even what we thought
we wanted to

or hoped we might
because, at the end of the day,
nothing could ever come
close to our expectations.

Especially the truth.


21 June 1997

I’ve always acknowledged the role of the reader in a work of fiction and the thing about voyeurism (all writers are voyeurs and, let’s face it, so are all readers) is that no matter how much you concentrate on looking at whatever it is that you’re fixated on at that moment, you cannot not look into yourself and see yourself for who you really are:

MIRROR, MIRROR


Before we start, gentle reader
tell me what you're looking for;
it helps if I know beforehand.

(Because poems are whores;
they become what you want,
but there's always a price).

Or we could just talk if you like.
What do you want to hear?
Surely not the truth?

Oh, I see: you like mirrors.
Well that's quite all right.
I have just the thing here.

All it takes is a little imagination.


19 August 1996

We all know the story about Adam and Eve. Whether you accept it as fact or fiction it doesn’t really matter. It makes its point beautifully:

And the LORD God commanded the man, saying: 'Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.' – Genesis 2:16,17

The key expression here for me is ‘Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat.’ It’s not as if he was depriving them of food or anything so Eve didn’t eat of the fruit because she was ravenous and although the Bible never actually states explicitly what the fruit was (it’s a misnomer to think the first pair ate the first apple) doubtless there were dozens of other trees with the same fruit close by. But Eve’s curiosity got the better of her. Curiosity is not a sin but it led to her sinning.

There are lots of things I’m curious about. Even without acting on that curiosity much is revealed about me but once I’ve acted on it there’s no going back. And if I’m disappointed well I’m always going to be disappointed. I like Christina Ricci. It’s okay, my wife knows. I like lots of other actresses but let’s just stick with her. I think she’s sexy. I don’t quite know when she got sexy. One day she was Wednesday Addams and kissing Casper the Friendly Ghost and the next she’s falling out of her clothes in Buffalo ‘66 and The Opposite of Sex. And I would be lying if I’d never wondered what she looked like without her clothes on. I have. There I’ve said it. And then one day I watched After.Life and well, now I know. If you’re curious just type ‘christina ricci After.Life’ into Google. Try and not. Go on. And even if you don’t I still make you wonder.

I wrote a poem about this once. As you all know I keep my poems in a big red folder. One day, a good few years ago, a friend was over with her daughter and her daughter was flicking though my poems when she came across a poem entitled ‘Do Not Read This Poem’ at which point she said, out loud, “All right,” and turned the page without reading it. Of course every adult who’s ever come across the poem has read it. It’s like anything that says ‘Don’t press this button’ or ‘Don’t eat this’ – we want to. It suddenly becomes desirable. Knowledge is, let’s put no fine point on it, alluring. We want to see Truth naked so badly. We’re scared we might be missing something. I assure you Christina Ricci has exactly the kind of body that you would expect from a slender thirty-year-old. It’s quite like the one of the thirty-one-year-old Friedler photographed in New York – no extra nipples, no appendectomy scar, no blemishes. So, if you’ve seen one naked about-thirty-year-old woman have you seen them all?

There are times when you want to be explicit. Giving evidence in a court of law is a good time. I don’t think writing poetry is one of those places. I don’t honestly think that prose is either but because you can routinely get away with writing 90,000 words in a row about a particular subject it’s tempting to say more than you need to and IMHO most novelists do.

The salient characteristic of the tacit knowledge approach is the basic belief that knowledge is essentially personal in nature and is therefore difficult to extract from the heads of individuals. – Ron Sanchez, “Tacit Knowledge” versus “Explicit Knowledge” – approaches to Knowledge Management Practice, p.3

This is why savvy businesses move people (“knowledge carriers”) around rather than retrain staff because not all knowledge is transferrable. That doesn’t mean that tacit knowledge isn’t transferrable:

The process of transforming tacit knowledge into explicit or specifiable knowledge is known as codification, articulation, or specification. The tacit aspects of knowledge are those that cannot be codified, but can only be transmitted via training or gained through personal experience. – Wikipedia (italics mine)

I repeat: some things have to be experienced, which is why I wrote this last poem:

DO NOTE READ THIS POEM


You mustn't read this.
Turn the page, please.

You don't want to see
            the home truth here.

Because when you peer
            in this darkness

            you'll discover a
            side to yourself

            you didn't want to.
Just like right now.

I do hope you think
            it was worth it.


13 July 1997

This is my version of Genesis 2:16,17. I think we as writers should be more aware of the limitations of our craft. We encode and readers decode but this isn’t maths and there’s always something lost in the translation. We may get to see the words naked on the page but we never get to see them with anyone’s eyes other than our own. I cannot put into words how I feel about Christina Ricci. I think I know how I feel but I’ve never tried to articulate it. Why would I want to? They’re my feelings. When I say, “I think Christina Ricci,” is sexy I am sure there will be people out there nodding and thinking, I know exactly what he means (there will be others going, Eh?), but how do they know what I mean by ‘sexy’? That knowledge will go to the grave with me. Unless my wife gets it out of me first.

Is the purpose of writing to pass on knowledge? It can be a purpose. Maths textbooks pass on knowledge. Atlases pass on knowledge. And telephone directories. But the remit of fictional writing (both poetry and prose) should be to make people think and feel not to teach; education is a by-product. Someone told me that 2+2=4 (most likely Miss Kettle) and someone probably told that someone but once upon a time someone worked out that all for themselves and in theory all of us are capable of working out that 2+2=4 on our own. Would I care more about knowing that 2+2=4 if I’d worked it out for myself without any assistance? Yes, probably. Just as I feel a certain possessiveness towards poems that I’ve read in the past that I’ve made my own.

Good teachers don’t just tell. They will explain what numbers are, what the concept of addition is and then they will allow you to (literally and metaphorically) add two and two together for yourself. And sometimes their pupils will get five. And that’s not as wrong as it seems.

Reading through the keyhole

It's always nice to see one of your poems in print, even if it takes twenty years to make it that far. My poem Naked Truth will be appearing in Issue 21 of Aesthetica Magazine. The issue is due for release today. Aesthetica is now available from Borders and WH Smith Bookshops UK, as well as ICA, BALTIC and other national galleries. And a PDF of the magazine can be downloaded, for a price, here.

          NAKED TRUTH

          Without thinking
          I barged into her room
          only to find her praying.

          She paused
          and looked up in silence
          like the time she caught me spying
          as she undressed.

          But then she did not cover herself:
          her arms even fell by her sides
          so that I could see better.

          But all I could see were her eyes.


          9 November 1988

What can I tell you about this poem? For starters I know I worked on it for a very long time. This is one of those poems where, when people ask me what it means, I can only really answer with, if I could have said it any better then I would have. It is an experiential piece, by placing yourself in the position of the narrator, hopefully you will make the right connections.

The poem is about intrusion and how it's impossible to take what's already been given. Voyeurism has appeared quite a few times in my poetry over the years. I think all writers have a propensity towards nosiness and eavesdropping; full blown voyeurism is not that much of a stretch. Of course there is opportunistic voyeurism, being in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time and then there is putting yourself in a position where you increase the odds of seeing that certain something. I'm not talking about skulking around under cover of darkness peeking in people's windows but quite often in a restaurant or café I'll take the seat with the best view and see what wanders into my line of vision.

What am I looking for? In a word, truth, something I've written about more than any other topic. I can watch movies or documentaries dealing with what interests me but the action always feels staged; even in documentaries mostly the people there are aware of the fact they're being filmed and play, albeit subconsciously, to the camera. But, as you're sitting on the top of a bus and you look into someone's flat for a few seconds you catch a glimmer of truth. Mostly these truths aren't very interesting but every now and then you get that Rear Window situation and that's what you're waiting for. But if you're not prepared you can miss it. Writers don't carry cameras, they have imaginations.

The voyeur in the poem isn't interested in waiting. He has, in the past, gone out of his way to spy on the girl. The girl, once she's realised has done the last thing he would have expected. She's deliberately dropped her guard and let him look. The thing is, in that moment he's been confronted with a truth he didn’t expect or want to see, a truth about himself. What the poem is saying is that real truth only comes through participation not mere observation. Later, who knows how much later, the spying incident has been forgiven, or at least gotten over, and life has gone back to normal when, this time with no ulterior motive, the guy barges into her room only the situation has changed and the girl is praying, exposing a different side to her. Her reaction is identical though and this time she does exactly the same thing, she reveals herself – only this time it's her inner self – to him. A better title might have been 'Revelations' with its triple connotation of revealing flesh, truth and as a nod to the book of the bible.

I find this an uncomfortable poem to read. It doesn't matter that it's fiction – and it is – I still cast myself as the weaker male character.

I've always found the subtle differences between "look", "see" and "watch" interesting; they're not interchangeable synonyms, not by a long chalk. The male in the poem doesn't look; the female looks, the male spies at first but later on his sees and finally sees within.

The poem works on another level. Readers are all voyeurs, voyeurs by proxy but voyeurs nevertheless. You can't really call them spectators because they're not open about it. They read in private, in secret.

In her introduction to The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes Janet Malcolm describes biography as "tiptoeing down the corridor together to stand in front of the bedroom door and try to peep through the keyhole." While the scholarly apparatus of footnotes and references may legitimise this voyeurism and take it out of the realm of the tawdry, at its core biography remains tawdry. It's easier to tar a writer with the peeping-Tom brush where their subject was or is still alive but I think readers of fiction, myself included, still pick up novels and short story collections for that selfsame reason. The thing about biography is that a biographer is faced with the moral dilemma of what to and not to include; a fiction writer doesn’t have real people to worry about offending or being sued by. The voyeuristic novel reader is at the mercy of an exhibitionistic novel writer. Maybe that's a match made in heaven or maybe that's the real truth that's being revealed here. I don't know.

I'm not the only writer to have realised how voyeuristic writers are. Matthew Porubsky, Topeka poet and railroad conductor (is there any better a job for an inveterate voyeur to have?) released a poetry collection called Voyeur Poems that won the 2006 Kansas Authors Club Nelson Poetry Book Award. Porubsky developed his voyeuristic tendencies at an early age, working at his family’s diner which is also in Topeka and is famous for its hot pickles. He loved watching self-proclaimed tough guys take brave bites of the scorching pickles and then crumble.

Ordinary moments captured his eye as well.

Like watching my grandpa, having him teach me how to cut up chicken and cut up pork chops. I remember the workers would come in and eat sandwiches, and their hands would be dirty and they would leave thumbprints on the bread and they would still eat it.

That's the very thing that would catch my eye. It doesn’t even have to be something happening. I wrote a short story once inspired by a pair of red-headed twin girls not talking in an Edinburgh café just across the road from the Scottish Poetry Library as a matter of fact. They were absolutely captivating and obviously in a mood with each other and I was transfixed by them.

Porubsky continues:

I don't pussyfoot around about something I want to talk about. If I'm writing about something, I'm not going to hint about it as much as I'm going to put you there. I can't remember who said it -- I think it was Keats -- that poetry should be felt on the pulse. You get that when you're reading, but when you HEAR someone reading, that's when you really feel it.

There are truths implicit in many of my poems but they're not presented in an explicit way. I think what I'm talking about is the difference between being naked and nude. On one level there's absolutely no difference, on another there's every difference in the world.

Let me leave you for once with a non-poetry site but one that encapsulates the kind of poetry that is in all of us. I don't believe there is anyone out there who doesn't have poetry within him or her. You could call it visual poetry (or even a kind of modern haiga) but I think labelling it takes away from what it is. The site is PostSecret. Like so many great sites it's been on the go for years and it rests on a simple premise: Think of something you hold close to you, a secret you'd never imagine sharing with anyone. Now think of what your secret would look like if you printed it on a postcard, mailed it to a perfect stranger and got it published on the Web for the world to see. That's it.

The site is run by a fellow called Frank Warren and it's been on the go since 2004. When reading these anonymous postcards, everyone suddenly becomes equal. No one's feelings are right or wrong, they just are. Someone from New Zealand anonymously wrote to Frank saying, "The things that make us feel so abnormal are actually the things that make us all the same." PostSecret couldn't make this sentiment any clearer, and it echoes those great words uttered by C S Lewis, "We read to know we are not alone." Not alone being lonely, not alone being depressed or unhappy or fed up to the back teeth with the kids demanding attention, not alone knowing we've done bad things, seen bad things or dreamt about doing bad things, not alone wanting, or feeling things, not alone in needing to know we are not alone in needing to know we are not alone.