HAPPY NINETH BLOGIVERSARY TO ME

HAPPY NINTH BLOGIVERSARY TO ME.

The first entry on this blog was 12/30/2001 03:34:00 AM:

Is this thing on?

Bear with me, please. I will be clumsy and clueless. Knowing I will be is the only way I can march into this new medium and not let myself stop myself.

I march on. Still clumsy, having learned more clues, and infinite more to learn.

I plan to stick around.

And every day is a new one.

The being who is the object of his own reflection, in consequence of that very doubling back upon himself, becomes in a flash able to raise himself into a new sphere. In reality, another world is born. Abstraction, logic, reasoned choice and invention, mathematics, art, calculation of space and time, anxieties and dreams of love -- all these activities of inner life are nothing else than the effervescence of the newly-formed center as it explodes onto itself.

-- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

[...] Your kindness claimed earlier gratitude, but I was ill, and write to-day from my pillow.

Thank you for the surgery; it was not so painful as I supposed. I bring you others, as you ask, though they might not differ. While my thought is undressed, I can make the distinction; but when I put them in the gown, they look alike and numb.

You aksed how old I was? I made no verse, but one or two, until this winter, sir.

I had a terror since September, I could tell to none; and so I sing, as the boy does of the burying ground, because I am afraid.

[...]

You think my gait "spasmodic." I am in danger, sir. You think me "un- controlled." I have no tribunal.

Would you have time to be the "friend" you should think I need? I have a little shape: it would not crowd your desk, nor make much racket as the mouse that dents your galleries. If I might bring you what I do -- not so frequent to trouble you -- and ask you if I told it clear, 't would be control to me. The sailor cannot see the North, but knows the needle can. The "hand you stretch me in the dark" I put mine in, and turn away. I have no Saxon now: --

As if I asked a common alms,
And in my wondering hand
A stranger pressed a kingdom,
And I, bewildered, stand;
As if I asked the Orient
Had it for me a morn,
And it should lift its purple dikes
And shatter me with dawn!

[...]

If you truly consent, I recite now. Will you tell me my fault, frankly as to yourself, for I had rather wince than die. Men do not call the surgeon to commend the bone, but to set it, sir, and fracture within is more critical. And for this, preceptor, I shall bring you obedience, the blossom from my garden, and every gratitude I know.

Perhaps you smile at me. I could not stop for that. My business is circumference. An ignorance, not of customs, but if caught with the dawn, or the sunset see me, myself the only kangaroo among the beauty, sir, if you please, it afflicts me, and I thought that instruction would take it away.

Because you have much business, beside the growth of me, you will appoint, yourself, how often I shall come, without your inconvenience.

And if at any time you regret you received me, or I prove a different fabric to that you supposed, you must banish me.

When I state myself, as the representative of the verse, it does not mean me, but a supposed person.

You are true about the "perfection." To-day makes Yesterday mean.

[...]

THE SAINTS' REST

Of tribulation, these are they,
Denoted by the white;
The spangled gowns, a lesser rank
Of victors designate.

All these did conquer; but the ones
Who overcame most times,
Wear nothing commoner than snow,
No ornaments but palms.

"Surrender" is a sort unknown
On this superior soil;
"Defeat" an outgrown anguish,
Remembered as the mile

Our panting ancle barely passed
When night devoured the road;
But we stood whispering in the house,
And all we said, was "Saved!"

-- Emily Dickinson

We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.

[...]

Courage does not consist in calculation, but in fighting against chances.

[...]

It is almost the definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain.

[...]

Nothing would be done at all if one waited until one could do it so well that no one could find fault with it.

[...]

When men understand what each other mean, they see, for the most part, that controversy is either superfluous or hopeless.

-- John Henry Newman.

Some links: Patterns and Characteristics of Codependence.

Recovery Patterns of Codependence.

Recovery From Codependence: A Brief Introduction.

Your CoDA Literature and Materials Center.

Lessons of a Recovering Perfectionist.

"Hope" is the thing with feathers —
That perches in the soul —
And sings the tune without the words —
And never stops — at all —
And sweetest — in the Gale — is heard —
And sore must be the storm —
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm —

-- Emily Dickinson, Poem 254 in The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1960)

Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life. When we look in fiction for what is missing in life, we are saying, with no need to say it or even to know it, that life as it is does not satisfy our thirst for the absolute – the foundation of the human condition – and should be better. We invent fictions in order to live somehow the many lives we would like to lead when we barely have one at our disposal.

-- Mario Vargas Llosa

For every thing you have missed, you have gained something else; and for every thing you gain, you lose something.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.

-- attributed to Havelock Ellis

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

-- attributed to Anton Chekhov

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

I have a simple philosophy: Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches.

-- Alice Roosevelt Longworth

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.

-- Robert Lee Frost

Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we have been, but what we yearn to be.

-- attriubted to Jose Ortega y Gasset

Look, I don't want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you're alive you've got to flap your arms and legs, you've got to jump around a lot, for life is the very opposite of death, and therefore you must at very least think noisy and colorfully, or you're not alive.

-- Mel Brooks

Happy 2011, and welcome to Gary Farber's tenth year of blogging. Be here now.

Go to previous post.

ADDENDUM, 12/31/10, 8:42 a.m.: Thanks, James Joyner and Outside The Beltway!

I'm amused this post is now #3 on TopicFire's "real time ranked news." I gather it's a slow news day. :-)

ADDENDUM, 12.31.10, 10:55 a.m.: I now weigh 199.5 lbs.

ADDENDUM, 12.31.10, 11:25 a.m.: I've just discovered that my gmail account has NOT been forwarding all the email sent to that address to the email address I actually use, which is gary underscore farber at yahoo dot com.

I'm really sorry about this. But: everyone who has sent me email at my gmail address since November 3rd, 2009: I'm just seeing your mail. I've deleted 145 as obsolete, and there are 34 left to read. Some, apparently, from people attempting to reach me multiple times. I can't apologize more fervently.

I'll fix this ASAP.

(For reasons unknown to me, much of the mail seems to have been forwarded, but those 179 weren't; but I'm really not sure wtf has happened. I'll look into it, but my next few days are quite planned, though I'll do this as soon as I possibly can; again, huge apologies.)

ADDENDUM, 12.31.10. 1:47 p.m.: Thanks muchly, PZ Meyers! Your success is an inspiration.

I hope you'll forgive if I hope you'll never catch up to me. :-)

But you have me beat by quality and consistency of posts by at least an order of magnitude, so you'll have to be content with that.

ADDENDUM, 12.31.10, 11:53 p.m.: Thanks, Digby! Most kind.

Happy new year to everyone. My New Year's Eve/day has turned out to have completely and thoroughly sucked, so I surely hope you all had a thousand times better than mine.

ADDENDUM, 1.01.01, 11:44 p.m.: My New Year's Day turned out to be deeply wonderful. I am very happy.

Some of you were the cause. Thank you.

Coming attractions in posts: How Gary Did Not Get Arrested For Violating California Anti-terrrorism Law on December 30th.

Because he knows the law, and when a threat is bullshit.

Relevant pictures will accompany this.

But it's always nice to be wanted.

In retropect, being arrested would have made for a much better post. Drat.

But it may still amuse and inform you. We'll see.

Go to Next Post here. Please take the time to read, not about me, but MAJ Andrew Olmsted. Thank you.

ADDENDUM, 1.2.11, 7:30 a.m.: Never linked to this Obsidian Wings post: Don't Listen To The Douchebags.

ADDENDUM, 1.2.11, 10:31 a.m.: Congrats also to old pal Charles Kuffner, who started blogging one day after I did!

Us OGs have to stick together. Right, Jim Henley? Thomas Nephew? Virginia Postrel? Justin Slotman :-)

And even newbies like John Cole, who started a month after me. :-)

But the true OGs are Ev and Meg, Dave Winer, Brad Fitzpatrick, Nick Denton, Glenn Reynolds, and the many other truly early bloggers.

All of us who started after September 11th, 2001, were newbies.

And every year since is another blogging world.