Happy 31st!

Upon logging in, I came to the stunning realization that this would be my thirty-first post. Thirty-first. Which, in actuality, is not recognized as any remarkable achievement. Twenty maybe, or fifty. Perhaps at one-hundred I'll even throw a small fiesta. The big three-one, though, usually holds no bearing.

But here I was, recognizing my thirty-first post as something significant. I had sat down thirty-one times to type gibberish which I hoped would relay some sort of meaning to a reader. There were probably times where the reader would sit down and nod in agreement when rifling through this blog, and others where they would choke on their Diet Coke and thoughts like this is madness! would crop up. In either case though, I had succeeded. Mission accomplished?

While the gibberish may have been more or less just that for you as the reader, these blog posts have opened up a little self-exploration on the giving end. Something I had not initially intended, because I was/am no monk set out on a meditative discovery of internal truths. I created this blog as a chance to voice a...well, voice, that may not usually be heard in an audible sense. Or not in the way that I would intend (listen to me *attempt* to talk and you'll get the picture). In my quest to come up with post topics, I've been forced to dive for material and have in-the-process made some exciting *cough* discoveries. And then I've posted them for all the world to, erm...decipher.

So now I sit here and stare at a discovery of discoveries. And occasionally correct spelling errors. And then realize why the thirty-first post is so significant: because it's forced me to see what this blog was, currently is, and will become.

There are few times (HA) when we have the opportunity to visualize all three orientations in time. Reading about an event that has already happened qualifies as visualizing the past; yet said reading imparts the past on us at the present moment...or does it? Making a to-do list creates a possible future, but that future is occurring presently in our minds. Which then brings up an entirely new dilemma: Words will always be the past and future, never the present.

Sure, there are stories written in ways that make it seem as if the plot is unfolding around us as we read, and each verb is carefully chosen in the present tense. But in the time when the light from the page has brought the shape of a word through your eyes and into your brain and your brain has almost instantaneously matched that shape to a meaning, the word has already reached the past. The nature of physics prevents us from ever reading in the present time, because every action requires an amount of time greater than zero.

Historical events may be recorded, to-do lists and plans may be written down, but no literature can exist in the present.

As I wrote that, I heard from all two of you who read this blog the internal scream of rebuttal. You have probably, in the seconds upon reading that last statement, formed some argument against my musings along the lines of "Live for the moment!" or "At the time that you wrote this post it was the present and when I read it it was the present and when I think this idea it is the present and blah blah blah." And such is the nature of the human mind. Just remember, this blog is - until such a moment when I decide the change the direction of my writing - a place for simple musings and unintended self-discoveries.

So, to recap and oversimplify...Happy 31st everyone! And congrats if you made it through this post without throttling the nearest object. God-forbid you actually did throttle something, and that something turned out to be a person. Although that would be slightly amusing.