An Anniversary

[poliphilo]

Happy birthday to me....

Well, not exactly to me, but to Poliphilo- who's been in existence now for a year.

When I started this LJ on the 7th of March, 2004 I didn't know quite what I wanted to do with it. At first I thought it would be fun to try out a range of different voices- a different voice for every post. No-one was reading me, so it hardly mattered.

Here as an anniversary treat (?) is a reprint of Poliphilo's very first post

IN THE ALPS

Today I wore white.

The professor collected me in his Daimler and we drove deep into the Bernese Oberland. It was a valley he knew. The long grass was full of little flowers, white and red and blue. The professor is very spry for his age. I tell him he looks like Teddy Roosevelt.

We met a girl who was driving cows down from the high pastures. She was a fine specimen of the race, with white hair in braids and bright blue eyes. "I would like to stretch her on the rack," said the professor, "and pull out all those perfect little teeth with pliers."

Something black flew down the length of the valley, very high up. I think it was a zeppelin. The professor lifted my hand and sniffed at my wrist. "You smell of rust," he said.

Yeah, well.....

But that sort of thing palled after a very short time. I began to see what a wonderful medium this is. How anything is possible. The blog is like no form ever invented before. It can be a diary, a column, a notice board, a one-person literary magazine, a one-person newspaper, a picture gallery, a practical joke. And, whatever it is, it has the potential to reach a large, international audience instantly.

Amazing!

And even more amazing- the audience talks back. It's an interactive medium. It creates communities.

Over at  jackiejj 's, naamaire speaks of what we bloggers are doing as "folk-art". I like that. But with the rider that this is folk art at the cutting edge. We are doing something that has never been done before. We are pioneers.

I began playfully. Now, a year down the line, writing this LJ is terribly important to me. 

Bloggo, ergo sum.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

I've forgotten how we first met. Did I friend you or did you friend me? Was it this poem that did it?

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I friended you, because of that poem.

And then I went back and read more, so I caught up right away.

I read your poem out loud to my daughter, and she said: "Gosh! I love that! Where did it come from?"

(I joined LJ November of 2003, but didn't begin to write in it seriously until January of 2004, when I retired. What a rush...)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

And then we had a conversation about model villages..... ah, yes.