millsworks

This is a cool video Cory Doctorow posted over at BoingBoing. It’s just some neat footage of a neutrally bouyant balloon that is placidly hovering in a room.

A pink balloon.

Those of you who have been reading this blog for some time will know where this going.

Last year, over the Christmas holidays, I posted here (and on Twitter) about the plight of a small, homeless pink balloon named – appropriately enough – Pinky. I can’t replay the old blog post here because when I fucked up my blog it disappeared into the ether of the interwebs along with 2 to 3 years worth of mental gems and turds – but if anyone can find it for me I’d appreciate it. Nor can I lay out the original tweets – entitled Teh Saga Of Pinky – which inspired the blog post in the first place because apparently time to Twitter is like the flat Earth or the simulated reality of the button-eyed freaks in Gaiman‘s Coraline. Twitter Time is only visible within a limited distance after which it simply ceases to be and all sense of history drops over the edge into a timeless abyss and is lost forever.

But I digress.

Here’s what I can recount:

We had a small pink balloon show up on our doorstep in the midst of winter. It lingered there but we (myself and my immediate family) being heartless cretins, left it there – just to see what would happen.

It was a loyal balloon that stayed true to its desire to find a home with us until finally I could take it no longer and posted a series of tweets that ended with this picture and asked the question:

“Should we bring Pinky inside & offer protection from the elements – or should we let nature take its course?”

Note: For the record – TwitPic has all my photo posts still archived. Perhaps I should stick pictures with all my tweets from now on.

The response to my Twitter question was an undeniable “Yes! Rescue Pinky!” – and so I did.

In my original post I also tucked in a bit of blather about how human beings like to anthropomorphize things, imbue them with character and feelings, and all too often bestow our care and affection upon objects more than we do on other human beings in our midst. We are all some really fucked up monkeys.

While my original Twitter posts and blog entry have vanished forever I did manage to dig out of my email files this late night drunken missive I wrote to myself on the couch with my iPhone as a nudge to make the blog post the next day about Pinky:

For what is a balloon? Any balloon? It is but a container – a vessel of a moment in time – the encapsulization of the breath of life. And here we have this feeble artifact, this minor player in the grand theatre and parade of life – a lowly, singular, lonesome sagged pink balloon – a vessel of the breath of life constrained, held back, diminished, neglected, buried – and yet persevering against all odds, unrelenting in it’s obdurant determination to not just survive but to also be noticed, to be made note of, to be recognized, named and accepted. Each one of us may only play upon these doorsteps for the most brief of times and yet we are most definitely here and not to be neglected nor discounted nor, worse still, ignored – we are here – as in Horton Hears A Who – we are here, we are here, we are here!

One balloon serves as a rather frail and tepid metaphor for all the many things each of us may ascribe to the story. But it serves well enough -that lone sad semi-deflated rubber sack of air is all of us; it is what we are, how we are perceived and what we yearn to be.

One little balloon – on a doorstep – in a snowstorm.

What a wonderous world this would be when we are finally capable of setting aside the metaphors and allegories and heart warming images to clearly see that all of these stories – that all stories – are about us – about you and me – about us all.

Perhaps one day.

Until then we shall have to be content and find solace for our hearts in the tales of the trials and tribulations of a small pink balloon on a snowy doorstep.

Shortly thereafter my friend Jill Gollick also had an encounter with a pink balloon. She had been away for the holiday season but, via Twitter, got my posts about Teh Saga Of Pinky.

When she got home this was waiting at her doorstep:

I didn’t put it there.

Honest.

While Jill’s tale of Pinky The Second ended in horrible tragedy, our Pinky lived happily ever after.

But this whole errant pink balloon thing is starting to get on my nerves.

First me.

Then Jill.

And now this hovering version of the same.

Where are these balloons coming from? What do they want? Where is all this leading?

Perhaps time will tell.

But not Twitter time, of course – that’s too short.

Should you or anyone you know have any pink balloon stories to share with us please be sure to let me know.

In the meantime, here’s some balloons who don’t need rescuing.

Cheers.