May 08, 2004

Me, blog

Whenever I tell a friend that I have a blog I get mixed reactions. Usually a blank stare, sometimes a giggle, rarely a mutual understanding. Partly I think it is because most people my age did not grow up with computers (or TV for that matter, or even turning signals on cars. Can you imagine shifting and at the same time putting your arm out the window to signal a left or right turn?) and it seems like an exposure, an invasion, or basically, an absurdity. (Don’t you have your friends to talk to?)

A few of my younger friends have blogs and easily understand and appreciate the need for communication in this fragmented world. I was very excited when Yoko told me she, after reading my blog, has started one of her own. But I cannot read it. It’s in Japanese and although she tried to translate it for me, it is too difficult for her. If you and/or your computer can read Japanese, go see. Do anyway: she has some beautiful photos up. (And I found it exciting to see pages of Japanese script on my screen!)

Yoko tells me that it makes sense to keep an on-line journal. In Japan, when someone retires, the person starts a memoir of his or her life. With a blog or journal, it is an ongoing record of your life as it happens, as it feels, as you react to it. And it is an invitation you send out to an unknown, an invitation to connect to and know a bigger world.

I’ve read a few articles recently on the blog coming of age. How it is maturing into a respectable form of journal-ism, evolving from journals. The last article I read was more about political writing and discussions. The blogs I tend to read expand my view of more personal worlds. Living here somewhere on the edge of nowhere, it is rewarding to peek into the more intimate corners of other people’s lives, people who live in the center of their worlds, what they see and feel as they look out from that spot. Toni’s very thoughtful essay on internet journal writing spoke directly to why I write and read blogs, the ongoing record, a new form of communication, or as she puts it so precisely, a short film, intimate communication on a global scale.

Posted by leya at May 8, 2004 07:47 AM