It's A Blog's Life
Why would a person create a website that includes nothing more than their own ramblings and the daily events of their lives? Because they can. For some Harvard students, maintaining weblogs, or blogging, as it is sometimes known, is their way of sharing the gift of themselves with the world.
Weld resident Jamie L. Silver ’06 updates her log daily, including so many tidbits about her personal life that reading the entire collection might just qualify the reader for citizenship in the United States of Jamie. In addition to learning that she is 4’11” (and a half), and a member of the Harvard Juggling Club and Marching Band, we get a glimpse of some more intimate aspects of her days:
4-11-03 “Had nice lunch with blockmates, then Ling section, where my TF was like “Wow, I can’t believe you actually came.” And then after about 10 minutes he decided he wasn’t feeling well and we all went home. That class is a joke.”
4-10-03 “Ruben, my main man, made it through another week of American Idol. He’s the best!!
4-12-03 “Someone was a tad trashed last night. At least I’m not a mean drunk. But I do flirt a bit too much...especially with big guys.”
From these brief excepts it can be gleaned that Jamie, like many others, has learned that linguistics is an area of earnest academic investigation. Also, we can tell that she is into big (read: portly) men such as Ruben Studdard from American Idol. “Part of it is for my friends back in Florida, so they can see what I’m doing up here,” says Silver. “It’s also a good record for me to go back and look at when I’m happy, sad or just curious what the hell I was doing at a certain time.”
Christine M. Liu ’04 displays the same affinity for sharing her thoughts with the world, though she goes beyond a mere mundane description of her daily events. Reading Liu’s weblog, one not only gets a glimpse into her life, but is treated to the stream of universal profundities that gush from her with some regularity.
1-16-03 i’ve just realized we’re all the same. we all make the same mistakes, have the same fears, cause identical pains for others that in turn strike us deeply from another direction. cyclical. memoryless. pull on this string, because you will never be caught with the short end.Says Liu, “I blog knowing there’s an audience, yet at the same time I only am truly compelled to write when I’m emotionally driven, thus drawing from material that’s intensely private. Therein lie the ambiguous poetics of it all.” Indeed, much poetry is found within Liu’s weblog. There’s free verse:
11-14-02 at times, you cannot come up with the reasons. your tongue hesitates and your mind draws a blank. silence... runs... through, not because there aren’t any answers, but because your mind lacks the ability to verbalize unadulterated, unsaid truths. you can only feel, and perhaps show, but cannot tell. silence, filling the space between us, cradling us in its arms. with eyes closed, and minds open, the truths begin to flow...
...and there’s self-referential haiku:
11-11-02
i would like to write
a haiku about haiku
meta-poetry
“Blogging is a strange combination of totally immersing myself into my imagination and artistic state, and yet writing with the full awareness that any pair of eyes could be reading the same thing,” says Liu. “Whenever I want to keep something secret, I just wax incoherent, undecipherable poetic that only I can understand, and that leaves everyone else in the dark, scratching an unlocated itch.” To see what she means, head to www.cmliu.com.
Blogs might be another way for people to stay in touch with their loved ones. Alternatively, they’re a product of “hey, look at me, this is the next best thing to being on The Real World” culture, which assumes interest in the most personal minutiae of strangers. Maybe both.