Everyone Has One!

Whether I have joined the ranks of the "with-it" people, or merely succumbed to what is a cheap and ineffective shot at grandstanding, I care not. Thanks to the clever Mr. Google (one wonders how he gets paid for his efforts!), I am now afforded what I consider a rather slick mechanism - a blog - by which to broadcast my humble literary endeavours (though it remains to be seen whether the casting is any broader than my formerly targeted email audience). But that doesn’t matter either, for the interesting shift which this new forum has precipitated is one away from the specific, and more to the general, a progression I view as a type of literary graduation. One might imagine that such generalization would in effect dilute an otherwise interesting account, but I don’t think it is so. Besides, where necessary or desirable, fictional names may be employed. Nonetheless, the deeper sense is a shift not so much from fact to fiction as from personal to universal. What I have hitherto written throughout my entire life is largely journalistic in nature, which everyone knows means the grimey details of one’s uninteresting life. The time has perhaps come to distance myself from the admittedly tedious and repetitious accounts of my recurring personal tragedies, and to engage in a broader and more philosophical view of the human condition. I accept as well that after six decades of climbing up and down the hills of life one is qualified to cast a remote (and dare I say discerning?) eye upon the proceedings.

Arguably it is impossible to separate oneself from the details of life, no matter how epic the goal. It stands to reason that we are pretty much mired in the inscrutable facts of life, whatever they may be. Yet to throw open the deliberations to more abstract commentary does at least admit the possibility of useful theory, enabling one to apply a system of knowledge to a variety of circumstances. Even if one were to be defeated in such an effort, there still remains the prospect of reflecting humourously upon this and that, an object which I suppose has always characterized these pieces in the past.

It staggers the imagination to contemplate the vast quantity of literary rubbish now floating about in cyberspace. Nor am I so convinced of my own propriety to assume that I am not among the trash. Once again, it matters not! I snap my fingers at such suggestion, not because I am deserving of any approbation, but rather because the blog has been added to my arsenal of technical devices which appeal to me. I get as big a bang out of the blog as I do from my evening cocktail, and that is no small compliment!

I am still not clear about how the information is encountered on the internet, unless of course I tell people the web site. As such, I suspect the site becomes little more than a convenient storage place, having all the trappings of electronic configuration which one wishes to impart. While a web site suggests that one is suddenly before the world, I think one’s prominence is largely insignificant, a mere speck in the solar system. From my vantage, having the blog will oblige me to maintain the courtesies of public address, narrowing somewhat my scope, but otherwise enlarging my battery to include more topical items or at least items of more popular interest.