Robert Frost

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Frost unceremoniously fled from Dartmouth. “I wasn’t suited for the place,” he later said. He was by nature an autodidact, which meant he intensely disliked being told what to read and when to read it. He preferred to go his own way, despite what his family or friends might think or say. “We go to college,” he said, “to be given one more chance to learn to read in case we haven’t learned in High School. Once we have learned to read, the rest can be trusted to add itself unto us.”

-- Jay Parini, “Robert Frost: A Life”

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Quote of the Day

"All sizzle, no steak."

-- Amazon reviewer

No doubt that is an old, classic snipe, but I cannot recall hearing it before, and I do not want to lose it. The novel "Wittgenstein Jr" by Lars Iyers is the book being reviewed. Although I like the snipe, I am not dissuaded by it. The novel is on my wish list at least.

LiveJournal Life

We were in the middle of December before I realized that I had forgotten about my Christmas icon. I had adopted it back in the golden age of my blogging life in 2004, 2005. Although Christmas had long lost its charm on me before I got out of puberty, I liked to put on a little festive face on my blog and mark the winter months and holiday season with my Santa and his swim-suited girl. However, with my LJ life being what it is these days, with only a few old men on my Friends Page, it really does feel like false cheer.

I am going to delete the icon and refresh my LJ life with something new. I have been thinking about switching out a number of icons, and choosing some more meaningful images. My personality is such a blank, though, that I do not have any firm ideas in mind for replacements, something that would portray some meaningful aspect of my soul, anything but a picture of my face. Maybe I can use some pictures of famous people who mean something to me. Maybe an Orwell picture? Marilyn Monroe? I once had a great Einstein icon. Or do I dare try something more personal? Has it been long enough that I can get away with using Gabe's old Puppet Master icon?, which would be a nice memento of what was my last and best chance for a little boy-girl romance, the last hurrah of my youth.

I feel a little prompted by LJ's own attempt to jolt itself back to Internet significance, most recently with it's reboot of its "Writer's Block" feature, giving the whole LJ community an opportunity to share in one discussion thread. So far, it is only a sad reminder of how things used to be. Even in the slow, dimming years of 2010 and 2011, you could still see a thousand people commenting; today, 60 comments is the ceiling. We really are small now and largely an aged crowd it seems, and I do not suppose that LJ has any more of a chance to become a player again in the social media world than I have of being thirty again, or of my seeing another hottie posting her naked boobies on my journal just to make sure she gets and keeps my attention. Well, as Voltaire said, "The flowers of the spring are not made for the winter."

The Natural World

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