What This Is, I Cannot Quite Say

I have been writing this for some time now, and it occurs to me that I do not know what to call it. It sits on the page with the modest confidence of something that expects to be read, yet I hesitate to give it a proper name.

It might be a blog. People use that word freely these days, applying it to nearly anything that appears in orderly lines on a screen. A blog, as I understand it, is meant to be current, to keep pace with the day, to say, “Here I am, thinking this, now.” If that is the case, then perhaps this qualifies, though it feels a little too quiet for such a purpose.

An article, on the other hand, suggests a certain firmness. It implies that the writer has arrived somewhere—that he has a point to make and intends to make it plainly. I am not sure I have arrived anywhere at all. I seem only to have begun, and then continued, which is not quite the same thing.

There is also the possibility that this is a diary. That would be the simplest explanation, though also the most revealing. A diary does not ask much of the reader, because it is not written for one. It is a place where thoughts are set down as they come, without much concern for their usefulness. If this is a diary, then it has wandered rather far from home, finding its way into the hands of others, which is not usually its habit.

It may be that I am asking the wrong question. The piece exists, whether or not I name it, and it has done what it came to do, which was simply to be written. Perhaps that is enough.

I will leave it here, then, without deciding what it is. It seems content enough to remain uncertain, and I find that I am content to leave it so.