2300

I let this one slip by me somehow. Dawn Reader Post #2300. (Today's is 2302.) Getting more inattentive in my dotage? Makes sense ...

I began Dawn Reader back on January 6, 2012 (seven years ago!), with a title stolen from the first chapter of Dickens' David Copperfield: "I Am Born." So now I'm seven years old. A second grader. (Link to that original post.)

The moment I typed those words, the heavens opened here in Hudson--pouring rain, and I can hear our sump pump heaving a sigh of resignation: Here we go again! (I'm not sure if Mr. Pump is talking about the liquid he must remove from the basement--or about another 100-post entry from me?!!?)

As is my custom, I have not looked at the "numbers" for this blog since #2200. [PAUSE WHILE I TAKE A LOOK.]

501,989--that works out to about 218 hits/post. Not too bad. But the days, of course, vary. Sometimes many fewer, sometimes many more. And--as I've said here before--I'm not really too concerned about it. I write for myself--to try to figure things out, to remember, to reflect, to apologize, to wax silly (occasionally, maybe, wise), to leave a footprint on the sands of time (and that, as some of you surely know, I stole from Longfellow's "A Psalm of Life," a poem I've memorized and mumble to myself (Mon-Tues, Thurs-Fri) in the afternoon as I walk over to coffee shop for Visit #2). (Link to the entire poem.)

Something there is that doesn't love a blog.* It's a self-absorptive (maybe even narcissistic) genre. We bloggers think (consciously? subconsciously?) that our lives are endlessly interesting, amusing, and significant. And we have no problem sitting down at the keyboard and spilling our guts and brains--thinking that the spillage will somehow soak someone else in wisdom.

Hah!

I don't really think any of that. Or feel it. As I said (and have said here before), I write for myself, and if someone else finds it interesting, amusing, informative, provocative, whatever, well, that's good. I love reading the thoughts of other writers: Sometimes, I find myself on a leaf afloat on the current of their thoughts and language, and there are geographical journeys that are far less interesting than that!

I don't post often about politics (as you may have noticed). These days--and maybe this has always been true--our secular churches fill up with congregants who are there for a single reason: to hear confirmation of what they already think. I doubt many (any?) minds are changed by Facebook or blog posts. The word fact has transformed into fake, and political disagreement has become a wall (!) between us. Want to experience the savagery of social wrath? Post something polarizing on social media.

But all of you know all of that. And I prefer to stay in touch with folks with whom I share some emotional history--even if their posts are, to me, sometimes abhorrent.

So ... what are my plans for this site during the coming days, weeks, months? I'm just going to keep on keeping on. Writing about my health now and then (words, to me, are the greatest physic), about books I've read, places I've gone, adventures with Joyce; I'm probably going to be serializing (soon?) the third and final volume of The Papers of Victoria Frankenstein.

And some days I'll have nothing to say ... and that's all right, isn't it?

Often there's a reason for my silence here. Fridays I'm almost always reviewing a book for Kirkus Reviews. Other days we're somewhere else. Some days I don't feel well--or don't feel like writing. (You know: Gloom and Doom.)

But most days I'll be here, braying away like an overwrought donkey. (Not an ass!)

Hee-haw!

*another bit of plagiarism--from Frost's "Mending Wall" (link to poem)