From Pallor to Post

I confess: I have been a neglectful blogger. This is not news to anybody who reads my blog regularly. So my apologies to all four of you.

As everyone who knows me is well aware, I am always good for a story if anyone has a minute. Get me started, and I have a mental file of anecdotes hours long. As long as you keep laughing, I’ll keep going. But my preference is oral storytelling: I like to have my victim(s) pinned down where I can see their eyes, the better to gauge whether I am amusing them. With practice I have even become sensitive to that glazed-over look people get when I have gone on too long, or the shifting side-to-side glances of a trapped animal desperate to escape. Moreover, in person I am able to gesture to illustrate points (I have nearly put out an eye or two doing this at the dinner table with a utensil in hand), lower my voice to a whisper as needed by the moment, and then blast unsuspecting listeners with a rise in volume. This is fun.

Writing is fun too, but prose is so much more permanent. Posting on the web is akin to getting a tattoo on the abdomen: It’s going to be there forever. If you chose the subject carefully and it was executed well, it looks pretty and for a while you are proud of the result. But eventually you are going to get tired of the thing, the ink will fade and—oh horrors—you might change sizes and the memory of where you were remains indelibly imprinted across your belly in sagging or stretched ugliness.

And you can’t hide a blog post with a T-shirt.

Which is why I go pale with terror at the idea of how permanently I can wedge my foot in my mouth online. Nevertheless, I fully intend to gird up my loins (has anybody ever done that? Well, now that I have worn renaissance-era kirtles, I have) and commit myself to posterity. I resolve to put something up every Friday, come Hell or high water.

There. Now it’s all over the internet. The four of you can hold me to it.