Imagine a story that grows as you read it:

ItĂ­s an awful idea. Imagine reading a story that may be a thousand words or a thousand pages long, you have no way of knowing which. It would be maddening. And yet thatĂ­s what a relationship is: a story of unknown duration. I suppose the difference is that a relationship, as lived, is unwritten, with no ending to peak at.

Weblogs are such stories too, of course. Your favourite weblog might end tomorrow. It might be deleted from the server. All the comments you’d carefully crafted would be as though never written, the links that tied your work to it would be broken, bleeding, gasping with surprise. It’s not a matter of books without end, it’s not knowing when the end will come.

Luckily we’re all polygamous when it comes to weblogs.

3 thoughts on “how long

  1. Florine

    Polyblogous (?) as I am, I hope this isn’t a break-up note. 🙂

    (Though you might find it interesting to see how people react when a blog closes for some time, and they don’t know how long it’ll take.)

  2. nickm

    Blog-based polygamy? But what about those of us who don’t allow comments? Does that constitute online onanism?

  3. Jill

    Not a breakup message, good heavens no. Online onanism? No, surely that would be if you wrote and wrote but never read?

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