Getting Started

Well, it seems that everyone’s doing it, and so on this New Years Day, 2008, I am thinking it is as good a time as any for me to start doing it, too. Blogging, that is. I have several friends with interesting blogs and one of them told me how to get started, so, here goes.

I discovered that the first step to starting a blog is to name it. And that, for me, can be a tricky, almost stifling, task. It would be easier, I suspect, if there was some purpose or theme to this anticipated endeavor, but, alas, there is not. So, what to call it?

In giving this some serious thought, I turned first to the world of literature. I mean, literature is something that I know a little about and furthermore, I know that allusion can be a very powerful tool. A skillful use of allusion is an efficient way to say in a few words white might otherwise require a thousand words. So, what to use?

It seems that opening lines get most of the attention in literature. Every High School student knows, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Most will recognize “You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter.” J. D Salinger borrows loosely from Twain with “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.” Whew, that’s a mouthful. Herman Melville was more efficient: “Call me Ishmael.”

But, immediately two problems arise. First, I do not see any appropriate allusions in lines like these and, perhaps more importantly, I have always been a closing line kind of guy. If a story has a great closing line, I can frequently ignore any shortcomings that may have lead up to it. So, I flipped quickly through my mental index box looking for great closing lines.

The first that came to mind was one of my all-time favorites from Dostoyevsky’s classic story, “White Nights.” It helped that my brother was reading this story just a week or so ago. I love the ending: “My God, a moment of bliss. Why, isn’t that enough for a whole lifetime?” So, I thought I would call this blog “Moments of Bliss.” That way, I would make it a kind of upbeat thing. But, truth be known, that just isn’t me. So, the search continues.

Next, I turned to one of my favorite writers. F. Scott Fitzgerald. One of the things I love about Fitzgerald is the way he ends his stories. He has GREAT closing lines. To this day – I mean literally to THIS day – I cannot read the last three paragraphs of “Winter Dreams” without choking up just a little. Or how about “The Sensible Thing”: “There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice.” Then there is the last line of “Absolution”, which was actually a preamble to “The Great Gatsby” and eventually discarded in the final edit: “It would be night in three hours, and all along the land there would be these blonde Northern girls and the tall young men from the farms lying out beside the wheat under the moon.” “Under the Moon.” Now that’s not bad. I have always liked the moon and its various phases and it may take somewhat of a lunatic to write this anyway. But, no, I decided against that as well.

While still on the subject of Fitzgerald, his best known novel, “The Great Gatsby,” ends on what well may be the best-known closing line in all of American literature: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Now, that almost made it – “Boats Against the Current.” In fact, that is probably tied for the runner up in this one-man naming contest.

Tied? Tied with what? For that I turn to my favorite contemporary author, David Payne. His second novel, “Early From the Dance,” ends with Melvillian simplicity – “and that was the end of it, and the start of something else.” So, I almost called this blog “The Start of Something Else.” But, obviously, I did not.

If Fitzgerald has the most famous closing line in American Literature, then yours truly probably has the least famous line. But still, I liked it, and it would certainly fit this blog well. In the early 90s I wrote a long short story – maybe not quite a novella – called “A Love Once New” (a title which is itself an allusion that you should know). The last line in the story – “I dunno.”

So, where did I finally find the title for this blog? Actually, it was not from literature at all. And, I am not even sure that this is the correct source. But once again, back in the early 90s, a friend of mine -- Therese -- had a screen saver on her computer that always impressed me: “In a hundred years, it won’t matter at all. It barely matters now.” Wow!! What could be a more apt description of this blog – “It Barely Matters.”

This name has several advantages. First, I have no idea how this blog will evolve. Unlike some of my friends, such as Michelle, who have truly meaningful things happening on their sites, this site really doesn’t matter. Secondly, by my estimate, 49% of the things I could write about are way too personal to publish and another 49% are things nobody will care about. So, maybe, at best, 2% of this site may be interesting to someone. And finally, with a title like “Barely Matters” maybe someone surfing the net for porn will stumble upon this site by accident, thereby increasing my number of hits.

So, and this does matter – Happy New Year.