Love and Poison

POISON

This month in Japan, the court sentenced the girl who poisoned her mother and blogged about it on her weblog. The report in the US-Japan news site CrissCross can be seen at http://www.crisscross.com/jp/news/371451.

The police have taken down her blog from the web but back when she was first arrested in 2005, The Times, London managed to get hold of some extracts. They make creepy reading - see - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1854972,00.html

The girl was apparently inspired by the diaries of Anthony Holden, a British serial killer dubbed the Teacup Poisoner.

DIARIES

Writing a diary is a curious semi-private, semi-public act. A diary is often confessional, as if written to an intimate friend of the heart, and a record of the facts of one’s life. We might write things in our diaries we would never tell anyone. And at the same time, a diary threatens to expose us for the very fact that it is an object that may be discovered by others at any time.

I used to write intermittently in a diary. It was usually when I was down or depressed or lonely - as if in those times, no-one would understand me but the implacable empty page. It helped me churn through the angst. But at the same time, those rows of journals make me cringe with embarrassment, shame and humiliation when I think what fragility and sadness might be discovered in those pages.

When things are fine and I am engaged in the living of my life, I don’t have the time or the desire to coop myself up using up precious time in the recording of my life - so there are huge gaps and reams of blank pages. Any biographer sifting through my scrawl would only see the blue me and not the me that is chirpy and getting on with my life.

Other people write diaries for posterity and with the intention that they should be read by others some day.

Whether you write a diary for private use, like me, or for wider purposes, the eyes of others always hover in the background.

WEBLOGS

Weblogs (or blogs) started out as online journals. But the difference is that anyone can read them more or less in real time. There are many millions of blogs online at any given time now. Some people use them still as private diares. Others as diaries shared among a small group of friends. And others, like me, use it as an open letter to a large group of like-minded people.

The girl in Japan was found to have psychological problems. I wonder if her blog was a solace, a place where she could find comfort and understanding in a life that no-one else understood. Online, even as you sit in your private space, you bear your soul to millions of others who may happen upon your thoughts at any moment. Perhaps in the heart of loneliness, that can be a deep comfort: that she might be known and understand somewhere by someone, even if it is a stranger she will never meet or know.

What is love after all but to be truly, deeply known by another? And our need for love drives many of our actions.

LOVE

It’s interesting that the comments and debate on the forums arising from this case have focused on the inability in Japanese culture for people to say "I love you" to each other - see http://www.crisscross.com/jp/news/371238.

At an instinctive level, we all know that this - the need to be loved and also, to show our own love - lies at the heart of everything, in any culture and in any place in the world - and yet, why does it always seem so hard to remember just at the point that we need to make that connection?

So, it will not surprise me if we find more and more of such disconcerting confessionals or records on the web. In this digital age, the web is the place that many people already turn to first for many things - whether it’s finding a restaurant or someone to love. Its peculiar characteristic is to be both a public meeting place and a private inner space. And while there are troubled hearts in the real world, here on the web is where we will also find them.