Backward, Turn Backward

Blogging is just like real life, I say (in the utmost spirit of speculation), in this respect: you act it out sequentially. It comes out all backwards. Yesterday I talked about different kinds of rosebuds and the day before that I talked about why this should be an issue. Remember? Do I remember? I mean, what is memory but a successively dimming progression of posts? And that’s all in the privacy of one’s own head — where presumably one remembers the details of what went before — or most of it. But what happens when memory goes? Everything becomes stand-alone. What am  I doing in this room? Looking for something? Did somebody call? Why is that book lying in the bathtub?  It’s called a Senior Moment, but that’s just to remind seniors

how vulnerable it is to be senior. Everybody has some version of those questions. Especially: what am I doing here? It’s the pleasure of the mystery novel, which — no matter what some people say about it — is really all and only or almost only about this: the revelation of the thing that went before. I know. It’s supposed to be about righting wrongs and all that. But, really. What fires the engine is that question. It lurks there in

the background. Well, really, in the case of fiction, it’s been planted there in the background. And readers of mysteries are like dogs sniffing out, from the scents in the world, what happened yesterday, who happened yesterday. We are a little more passive than dogs. We don’t then respond to the revelations by adding our own markings. Well, as a reader of mostly public library holdings, i notice that some readers can’t restrain themselves from doing that too. One has to be glad it’s done with pencil or ink. Sometimes catsup too, but i think that might be accidental. Where was I? Oh yes: blogs are backwards. And of course, most people take care of that problem by making each day’s post relevant to its day, not to its past. Amnesiacs all, inviting other amnesiacs to take part in that moment’s activity. This is not a criticism. it’s a good strategy. It might even be in itself a form of gathering rosebuds.