I must confess I’ve been seduced. When it started it was all very innocent, just a few minutes here and there spent lurking over the details of other people’s lives. Then gradually it became a necessary part of my day; that strangely intimate glimpse into soccer games and office parties, movie reviews and fantastic adventures all masked by pseudonyms and code words lured me. Over time is was inevitable, I suppose, that I’d finally succumb to making my own timid forays into their world, leaving behind a quip or a clue about who I was and what I’m all about like some sort of bizarre striptease in which the bump and grind have been replaced by the keystroke and hard return.
I’ve become a blogger.
I tried to resist. Over and over again I hoped to engage in the old-fashioned art of correspondence, but to no avail. Letters were answered only sporadically or went entirely unanswered—never out of disrespect but rather I suspect because we, all of us, have fallen out of the habit of stationery and postage stamps and into the newer, faster, cheaper thrill of the blog. And I miss you too much to let the silence grow between us.
Plus, I have too many stories to tell. Many of them, I fear, are already forgotten, part of the daily give and take of life wherein the bits that add color and texture slip aside in favor of the vignettes that move the plot along. At some point I’ll tell the story of the The Big Burly Croats, or the one about the Mad Hatter’s Birthday Party. There is a saga to be told about the Changing of the Guard, another involves a beautiful scene of revelation on a crystalline night, and an epic tale exists involving dragons and a trio of maidens trapped in a tower. I’ll get to those stories one day, but probably not soon.
I can’t guarantee I’ll write with the same steady pace I have at other times. Nor will I promise an adventure in every exciting episode, but I will try. What I can offer is the waxed and varnished truth of my life as I see it, complete with a cast of…well, if not thousands then at least many. They are one of the reasons I haven’t written sooner and one of the reasons I’m writing now.
I’ve been feeling the nasty itch to share all this with you from the beginning, but much more intensely over the last couple of weeks; like a rash that has spread across my life it has worked its way into all the nooks and crannies. The only thing keeping me from scratching the itch has been the matter of discretion. When I was writing home from outside the country, the people in my life about whom I was writing were no less real than those currently populating my day-to-day existence. However, the new bunch is far more likely to cross your path than the españoles y otros estudiantes internacionales ever were; someone always knows someone. Plus, my current cohorts have a much stronger command of the English language and I’m debating whether or not to include some of them in this discourse. Do I need them weighing in on the way it really happened? What do I gain? Intimacy, perhaps. What do I lose? Privacy, definitely. Decisions, decisions.
How do I tell you about my joy and laughter without ever touching on their sorrow and pain? Not that one begets the other, but with the full understanding that you don’t get any of them all on your own. It’s all shared; there’s always someone else involved. Can I paint you a portrait of the sassy miss who keeps me laughing all day, who placidly listens to the utter nonsense I spout constantly and never lets on she’s smothering a violently intense desire to punch someone in the nose? Or the tender heart in the adjoining office who manages to magically balance blissful naïveté with tremendous strength and compassion? Or any of the darling men with whom I keep trying to fall in love: the charmer, the rogue, the pretty boy, the wounded pup, the trekkie, the teacher, the storyteller, etc.—all of whom are decidedly out of reach and so much more appealing for the breadth of the safety net? Is it possible to let you into my life without letting you into theirs as well?
I guess it will be a true test of my discretion.
