A weblog or “blog”
I’ve never kept a journal. I think I’ve purchased one or two, but they inevitably remained blank or were converted into hardbound to-do lists. Instead of introspective chronicles, my so-called journals weren’t much more than expressions of my need to buy Aquafresh. A blog is something different, anyway, open to just about anyone in the world except certain raccoon-trapping survivalists. This makes honesty—especially, um, detailed honesty, a bit of a challenge—but let me give it a trial run:
“Everything is super, not just in my sundae bar of a life, but in the world at large, especially Myanmar.”
All right, I’ll work on it.
I had planned to have this up and running a few months in advance of the book as a way of generating, um, buzz. It’s a bit late for that—but now I’m writing for myself, dig? I suspect I’ll eventually resort to paraphrasing from the Declaration of Independence or the diaries of Andy Warhol. You will sense this when I seem abruptly preoccupied in holding truths self-evidently or how much heavier Warren Beatty looked the other night at Regine’s.
I live in Astoria, Queens. I guess I do actually live here now. I’ve been saying I “just” moved here, in part because it was actually true for the first few weeks of August and partly because declaring yourself a newcomer is kind of inoculation against the stigma of joblessness, friendlessness, aimlessness. When does this expire? Three months? Six months? When the town square is named after you?