Something Real

Back when I started this blog, I invited people to read it. My mother read it once or twice, and so did my uncle. When I was visiting my parents, I saw an email from my uncle and opened it to see how he was. He thought I was long-winded. My mother responded that she didn't understand why I had to bring up old boyfriends in a public forum (this was regarding a post where I talked about influences on my taste in music). They both agreed I had always been strange. As far as I can tell, neither of them has looked at it since, yet I don't write many posts now without that feeling that they, or someone of their natures, will chance upon it.

To expand upon the dilemma:

On one hand, why would I talk about things of a personal nature in a forum like this? I have plenty of friends to talk to off line if I must be so self revealing, and the school I attend offers up to ten counseling sessions free of charge. Is it just narcissism that would have me offer myself up here?

On the other hand, E.B. White once wrote that "As a writing man, or secretary, I have always felt charged with the safekeeping of all unexpected items of worldly or unworldly enchantment, as though I might be personally responsible if even a small one were to be lost."

There are a million witnesses to this world, but I am the only witness to my little one, which might in many of it's aspects be similar to others, or might be different. If my small handful of readers who look me up each day or month, or if someone comes upon it--maybe at some point in the future when I'm no longer here--and finds only pictures and packing lists, that person would have very little idea of what was actually important to me at the moment I was posting. I would be an unreliable witness, recounting only the most surface details and leaving those items of importance without witness, to turn to dust of memory and blow away with no record.

Or I might occasionally post something regardless of the fact that I fear it is mundane or cliche or self-indulgently confessional because it is the closest thing to my heart at the moment I write the words, or even a thing that has occupied my thoughts for some time and it seems like the right thing to offer up to the universe.

I don't know. This is a new form, I'm just one of the folks flailing around, trying to figure it all out.

I hear I should use my blog for self-promotion. Okay. I'm in this new issue of Sycamore Review. Paul, for his second year in a row, is a finalist for the Coca Cola Refreshing Filmmaker Award, with his film Can on the Run.

And we have an appointment for marriage counseling on Monday.