Remember the fable about the blind men trying to describe an elephant? The first touches the animal's leg and proclaims an elephant is like a tree. The second handles the trunk and proclaims a rope. The third, the tail/brush. The fourth, the side/wall.
That's what blogging seems to be, if we read what others say it is. There seem to be as many definitions as there are bloggers. But whatever it is, it's still something that is available today that has added an important dimension to my daily awareness and enjoyment, not possible until very recent times. I haven't figured it out yet and don't claim to understand it in depth, and I'm curious why that is. If I'm not blogging on any number of trial host sites (I try to stay with the free trials as much as I can), I'm probably thinking about it. It is fascinating. I think about it constantly. It's unlike any other forum for expression I've encountered before.
There's something organic about blogging, I think. What I'm writing now isn't anything like what I started out to write last June, when I thought of blogging as simply an alternative journal to my longhand one of thirty-plus years. Initially I thought it would be a place to discuss writing, my first love, with other shy journalers. As it has turned out, though, it has become more of a place to test whatever ideas and interests cross my mind, whatever their topic. And it surprises me what I find to say, and what others say who read it, most of whom write their own that I read also. I don't have the sense that we're a community of writers, and we're certainly not shy. I have the sense, however, that we do share something. Maybe its our common fascination with the medium itself, the wonder at its potential and ease, its instant communication worldwide, and its total, marvelous freedom not even to be found in print publication.
Blogging takes on a life of its own, and a shape of its own, partly because the writer knows it is read by others--and sometimes commented on by others. It's not the same as an ongoing chat or message board, exactly; but it does, due to its self-monitoring and its own directories and engines, have an interactivity that channels and invites its posts, tempts the inclusion of keywords, and prods postings at regular times so that it doesn't languish. It seems to need to breathe to thrive, and each post gives it a new breath.
Each site and each host has its own adherents and members who develop a unique identity, and each blog has its own focus and character. I'm amazed how much individual creativity I've found even in the few hundred I've visited, and there are legions of others. It seems unbounded, limitless.
I like to understand things and to categorize things; and to do that, I seek clear definitions. But with so much variety and imagination out there--most of it engaging and valid-- what, exactly, is a blog? I wonder. Perhaps it is very like a rope, tree, brush, house....
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A blog is a journal. A blog is a pulpit. A blog is a letter home. A blog is a public announcement space. A blog is a family or school reunion. A blog is a political rally. A blog is a neighborhood pub. A blog is a survival guide. A blog is a comedy club. A blog is a mental ward. A blog is ... well ... way more things than an elephant can be.
I first encountered blogging when I had a student who had a blog focusing on Wiccan issues, but I didn't really pay much attention to the phenomenon until a couple of years later, when the older of my two younger brothers started a blog so his friends and family could keep track of his wanderings. Ironically, he became easier to be in touch with after voluntarily becoming homeless than before -- he had never been all that reliable about phoning, writing, or even emailing, but the blog provided a sure way of knowing what he was doing.
On his blog, a poster arrived whose own blog was like a political rally, and through that blog, I found a link to one that was like a comedy club.
Meanwhile, my other brother started up a blog that, um, defies description -- but then, so does my brother. And then our cousin started up a blog in which to chronicle the restoration of our grandfather's pickup truck. Finally, I gave in to the urge and started my own blog, and shortly thereafter, my husband started two -- one for himself, and one for one of the sailing clubs we belong to. (Ah, so a blog is also a yacht club!)
And then, because blogs connect to other blogs, which connect to still other blogs, a blog is a nerve cell in a vast network of ganglia.
(Oh, yes, in the original East Indian fable, there were six blind men; the one who felt the tusk thought the elephant was like a spear, and the one who felt the ear thought the elephant was like a curtain.)
Interesting! The family that blogs together....
Well, we haven't gotten the parental units into the blogging thing yet, but since they've retired, they've done some fantastic traveling, including to some pretty darn off-the-beaten-path places (my dad's an amateur astronomer, and he goes where eclipses go), and I think those chronicles would attract quite a following. They've been publishing articles in their local small-town newspaper, and those articles have been a huge success.
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