Saturday commute liii: between cabañas

At the present pace, rmbl will very shortly mark its thousandth posting, as I hadn't noticed until only this week, consulting the records on another matter. I found myself, surprised, if one could prolong this instant of disclosure a little more, to have come so far by going, by my own compass, rather closer to nowhere than I would have expected. The issue of trying to articulate a frame of reference, to one's own satis-faction at least, had taken a much more protracted turn than applying that frame to one's interests. I am compelled to admit that I seem to be attached to this frame of reference as an interest.

Between the imprint of a seeming erogenous aspect of the page, and a flatly sentimental one, I seem to walk a tightrope in almost all of these postings, between two cabañas at the same beach. Their propinquity must have led to a great deal of confusion among readers, whose clarification the blog form resists. Anyone can hop one of these streetcars at any stop, ride to the next, and wave off. Someone may see a service-able deltoid in the portrait above; but it is there, to depict the state of mind observed along-side. Yet, bring me an alternative portrayal of that state of mind, and I must still screen it for energy, delineation, and depth.

The commuter marks, then, an inordinate dilation on frame of reference above other interests, and a deferred scrutiny of any two cabañas. This is not a recipe for another thousand postings, at least under this aegis. This is none of the reader's concern, of course; but a blog may adopt this voice from time to time. This is not a blog of creativity; it is a blog of criticism. I love those goddies, Beth and Valéry, who carry that thing off with a radiant light, and Ivan, who gets away with criticism on top of it. Maybe I could do that but life has lent my nature to something else. It's not very complicated, it's just slow. If you are looking for its bloom here, I am not.

We seem to have lived in the persons of our forefathers; it is the labor and reward of vanity to extend the term of this ideal longevity. Our imagination is always active to enlarge the narrow circle in which nature has confined us. 

I am plainly not looking to live here, for this is not a creative blog; and lives do make themselves. The ideal longevity I am trying to extend is hypothetical and prospective, because I do not live in a world where I wish to die; and I am irreconcilable to sagac-ity, that I should love it more. I love it quite well enough. I blog for a world where my life will not have to be lived. But I happen to be impressed by many things I should be sorry not to find in this prospective world, and I honestly don't mean Billy Baldwin's zebra. I mean, the even smaller things, the little treasures of a text, the panoply of things you remember all at once when you study an eye you love.

I was guiding a classmate down the corridor to my office one day, over-looking Nob Hill and the Golden Gate, when I answered a pleasant question of his, Oh, I don't know if I'm gay, or just neurotic. This brought the guffaw I knew and loved, and grew to expect in zillions of good-night drop-in's during our years at college; so I record it here as illustrative of a life that shouldn't necessarily have to be perpetuated, to satisfy the blogger at this page. There's no doubt, these figures stand in for some continuity of expression here, but I wouldn't go so far as to trouble them for an I.D. They are going to get along just fine without rmbl.

But I was a very young man at the time that I said this, and I wouldn't hold a reader to the assumption that it rep-resents a present view. Whatever may be said for a moyen that is so expe-ditious and efficient, I'm far from being in a position to be one of its seers, and never did propose to be. Still, to be merely neurotic tends to stifle coherency. 

And who can deny, that an obfuscating glare is the most constant complaint of readers? Between naps lately, I've been freshening up on solid citizens of prose, and I can tell you, Mr Gibbon is a real tonic. At the same time, commuting between cabañas, I notice that the page has often employed a kind of shorthand symbolism which is vulnerable to misconstruction. Still, we do think it's possible to show a face without having to beg, Where's the rest of me? I've learned to doubt that readers come here for me, but if I can slip in a kind word for Gibbon's autobiography along the way, I'm likely still to try.


Is there not always a glare, Mr Gibbon, from the enlargement of a narrow circle? Is this an effect of extension's part in our defeat of narrowness?

We are still a riotously young page, in Context. A non-committalism may or may not be becoming, but a premature attachment satisfies no one. If you should chance upon the thousandth posting here, it is very likely to resemble the others; but it will have your eye, and be grateful for it.

Edward Gibbon

The Autobiography

  of Edward Gibbon

op. post.

Dero A. Saunders, editor

Meridian Books, 1961©

xiv  Jeremy Young