One year

One night last year (21 January to be exact), I quietly started this little blog, a cyber-scrapbook of literary thoughts and clippings. I've had a lot of fun keeping my brain awake reading other bloggers' intellectually stimulating and just plain hilarious posts, getting to know some brilliant people, and participating in my first group reading blog, 400 Windmills. Litblogs have proven to be quite a lifeline, and I'm grateful to all of you for just doing what you're doing. The opinions and aspirations of lonely readers everywhere are being honed as a result.

As another year begins, I'm reminded of a poem by my favorite Elinor:

Now let no charitable hope
Confuse my mind with images
Of eagle and of antelope:
I am by nature none of these.

I was, being human, born alone;
I am, being woman, hard beset;
I live by squeezing from a stone
What little nourishment I get.

In masks outrageous and austere
The years go by in single file;
But none has merited my fear,
And none has quite escaped my smile.

~ Elinor Wylie