This is the this

It is, as some of you know, my birthday today, and I am now 66.  It is important to me not just because I am beginning my 67^th year today, but also because of this.  What this, you might well ask.  Well, this is the this, this page I am just now composing and will some time through the day today post on my blog so that you, whoever you are and wherever you might be, can read it if you choose.

Two years ago today I decide to write and post my first ever blog entry (you can check it out here if you want to).  It was titled “They say it’s your birthday”, and it was built around the fact that Lou Reed (67 today), a boy named Levi (4 today), and I (66 today) share this day, the understanding that Lou was (and likely still is) in a relationship with Laurie Anderson, memories of the albums I had just taken to a used record store, and the connections to a couple of old Beatles songs that were in my head that day (and still are today, though I am no longer 64).

This is Post #130 of that blog, which I called Field Days: A Miscellany.  I have just learned how to pronounce “miscellany” through one of the wonders of the internet where someone at a pronunciation site just said it for me, and miscellaneous really characterizes the contents of Field Days.  It is subtitled “A Day Book of Sorts”, and one of the things I have truly loved is the ability to write here about things that happen in a day (miscellaneous things) and take my attention sufficiently to get me writing or photographing or googling them and posting the results here.

I think that my blog posts are a bit like essays, in the original sense of the word, that is; they are essais, or attempts, to get at something through language.  One of the blessings in this endeavour is the ability to write of these things that have engaged me in the informal voice I am most comfortable with, a kind of conversation with the known or unknown you.  A further blessing of a blog is the ability to broaden the range of what can be written through the use of links, so that my side trips in exploring that thing or things that may end up ranging over the vast number of possible trails through the ether of the net can be shared.  And, finally, because I am such a happily visual being, I have the opportunity to include images, what the roving eye may see and try to hold onto with a small camera.

I know some of the people who read what I write here, either because they post comments in response or because I recognize their IP addresses or locations, but the majority who show up on my sitemeter are unknown to me.  I like that, the fact that my writing voice, my listening ear, and my scanning eye can be read, heard, and seen by others out in our wide networked world whenever they care to explore what is available here, and sometimes wonder why that person in Agawam, Massachusetts or Arlon, Luxembourg, or Broadmeadows, Australia dropped in for a visit and what s/he might have thought or felt.

So the subject of my 130^th post is not so much my birthday today, shared with Lou and Levi and family and friends, but the variousness of the world we live in and the things that take our (or, in this case, my) attention in it sufficiently to note them as they pass.  Composing a post for this blog has always been a great pleasure for me, and I always hope it may bring pleasure to you too. 

Happy (birth) day to you too, hope you have a great one!