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Monday, March 8, 2010

The Eager Beaver Archaeology Co.

Hello, nameless friends out there...

I have arrived, once again, to submit my thoughts to the cyber void...may they offer you something of value.

First of all, let me take a moment to wish every last one of my fellow chromosomal XX buddies out there, Happy International Women's Day! Thank you, to all of you women out there, taking care of business, sisters doin' it for themselves!

The next time you use your liquid paper, basic computer programming codes, or flat-bottomed paper bag (to name only a few...), remember that all of these things are made possible, for you, me and man-kind alike by women. So, not only has a woman made it possible for you to exist in the first place, we've also facilitated things that make your existence about a trillion times easier.

Necessity is the Mother of invention, indeed!

Man, I feel like a woman - hear me roar!

That's my little contribution to the Feminist movement for now.

Moving on...

Today is a beautiful, lovely sunny day.

The sun is setting over our living room, and the fragrant aroma of my husband's latest cooking venture wafts forth to me.

It is nearly Rockwellian in its domestic perfection. And yet - what am I doing? Blogging; to no one in particular, because no one really reads these things. Do they?

The excitement of yet another academic quarter looms. And yet - is it really excitement, or am I deceiving myself? You know what they say, "if you can convince yourself, you can convince others". Who are they anyway? And where do they get off saying such prolific things?

Perhaps I will do some poking around to see who they are. If I find out, I will surely post it here.

I wrote last night. As I am sure that you can see. And I got to thinking about the signifigance of the diary. Highly prized within our culture - a person's first hand account of every dirty little secret you can't find out during conversation around the watercooler. But are they really?

Consider 1,000 years from now. Some bright-eyed, Eager Beaver archaeologist digs up the ruins of what used to be your ultra moderne loft/studio/domecile en vogue. And among it, she finds your journal ('diary' just sounds so....childlike, doesn't it?). What would she discover about you? That you secretly (or maybe not so) coveted thy neighbor? Or that quasi-homosexual experience in college?

By the way, whatever it is that you're thinking of with that flushed smile on your face, it probably counts.

And what value would it have for the people that follow us? Would they learn from us - not to do the things that we learned to be so ashamed of that we kept it secret? I doubt it. In reality, there are just some things that are part of human nature, that cannot be unlearned, irrespective of how many times we learn the lesson.

Blogging exists for the same reason that 'social networking' does. We post our woes and wait for people to validate our experience or our thoughts. We wish to be remembered. To have a witness to our lives. We would like someone to say, "your life will not go unoticed because I will notice it. It will not go unwitnessed, because I will witness it."

But, as Ann Beattie said: "The problem with diaries, and the reason that most of them are so boring is that every day we vascillate between examining our hangnails and speculating on cosmic order" (Picturing Will, 1989).

It is my hope that if ever the Eager Beaver archaeologist may stumble upon my oh-so-mature journal and not diary, that I've left something worth reading.

I guess now that I've contemplated the cosmic order of things, I can successfully move on to my next task: a thorough examination of my hangnails. Stay tuned for a thorough report!

Until next time, virtual friends...

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