i want to blog about everything. things that are still, things that grow, advertising, grocery stores, what the dog did, how to kill time, startling colors and surfaces and breaths of air, pieces of passing conversations, small adventures, thoughts upon waking, what the earth would say, tiny lies, image and city, the myth of aging, the labor of history, acts of compassion, the light the light the light, the shadows, one stranger, two strangers talking, making breakfast, eating bread, relics of memory, love of course, everywhere there is tension, symbolism, noise, collections to have, questions to voyage, what matters or doesn’t, how to understand.
and on.
and then i realize that i would rather simply write about these things.
there must be one thousand ways to express oneself and one million ways to share. what does it mean to choose blogging? if i were to blog about my life, its details and images and prying amusements, it seems i would be equally suited to shout my reflections to a crowd of strangers, pulsing the end of my speeches with “anyone..?”. people would smile, or shrug, and one may rarely raise a hand, shadowing all my intentions. and everyone would soon disperse, having not stayed long at all, and shuffling, and my body would feel so strange from the toil of everything unmet.
displaced.
mis-fit.
blogging blends anonymity with the impression of celebrity, and some parody of dialogue. is it novel? is it triumphant? is it awkward? is it purely flawed? i wonder between the format and the motive:
? if i write to hear myself think, i may try keeping a diary, and
? if i write to share my meanderings with others, i could draft an email, and
? if i write to illicit feedback, i ought to have a conversation into someone else’s eyes.
blogging may work to represent the voice of a cause, to organize efforts, to unite minds across distance. but as a personal, solitary enterprise, there must be some combination of an author who is otherwise unoccupied, self-regarding, timid, or spectacular, and a reader who is suspiciously available, indulging, or exceedingly devoted.
there are other explanations, of course.
but i wouldn’t buy any of them.
i am not a private person. i don’t keep secrets or fear light or hold fragile keepsakes against my chest. but i keep a level voice, and it matters who i speak to. i don’t distribute mass email updates, and i’m not inclined to send along forwards, and i have never mailed out year-end greeting cards with my summarized life across the reverse side of a photo of my dog. i don’t take three-way phone calls. and i don’t accumulate my poetry for open mic night. and i don’t sing in front of crowds.
and i don’t blog.
but i will write, in this electric journal, in this glaring, pixeled light. that is called a blog. i will paint a space and rest here and nurture it. and i suppose it will be good to imagine that others may be listening, sometime, but there are no fanfares.
and i mean that as a relief.
.
