June 26, 2005

A Sunday Post

Every day I toss a sheet of paper into the well of the past. Every day I pour a glass of water into the surf.

It’s good clean water, too, and some of the things scribbled on the paper are worth catching and reading on their way down.

Blogging is the best training in awareness of evanescence. I work on every post with as much sincerity as I would put into the same number of words in a novel. And there it goes.

Of course I’m doing the same thing when I write a novel, but a book is heavier to throw down the well than a single sheet. And I don’t have a new book to throw every day.

I have my archive, though. That’s my last resistance. I rarely enter my archive, but if it were lost I’d be heartbroken.

My hope is that one of my biological descendants will discover it and be inspired. It will help him or her do something really good, something that will really last. This great–grandchild will look back and send me a message of thanks.

Or there will be scholars who study the blogging phenomenon of the early twenty–first century. They may not even be human -- they may be artificial intelligences. Somehow they will hit upon my archive and include it among their sources, helping them learn what life here was like. So while I will never be widely known, I will always be known to about six readers.

This is my hope of resurrection.