to write

E.M. Forster once said that he didn't know what he was thinking until he wrote. That is probably the best reason for doing a blog or a journal, a thoughtful email or even that ancient format, the letter sent through the mail.

The second reason for writing in formats like this is for the future. Humans need records of what it means to live. Time, or what we can understand of it, is illusive. All our methods of dealing with life tend to negate time. It's so slippery. We want our lives to be stories, with a narrative arc (beginning, middle, end). It's how we process.

But life isn't a story. It's a journey. And we, timid and brave, have an unknown bit of time to live, with ups and downs, hopes and failures. There is a blog I like to read by an Irishman who lives in Munich. At the end of each day's posts, he includes excerpts of an entry from some published diary for that day. I find it affirming and helpful to know that other people in other times wrestled with the day. Pepys diary is now on-line as a daily blog. It is fascinating and I encourage you to visit it. With a little help from the out-of-copyright Victorian edition being used, and the annotation of modern readers, one can easily start smelling the messiness of England in the 17th century.

Discourse is often pronounced dead. Hearing the letters and journals of 19th century Americans during the Civil War, we know that today we never have the time to let words percolate through a morning's respite, the sun coming through the window, or at night, in the silence of the darkness and the flickering of the candle or gas light.

And yet, in our lifetime is this new medium, the internet. And in all our muddles (another favorite Forster term), we can connect with what's around us in ways that are neither excessively sentimental or overtly commercial.

So I start this blog.