 This page is an archive from the previous version of The Row Boat, which is why it doesn't look and work the same as the current version. However, these archives are fully functional and integrated with the new system.
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The Row Boat"Had we but world enough, and time..." *
A New Archive9/09/2006 19:37:53I have just made some modifications to the weblog program that runs this site so that the archives appear in an easier-to-browse, simpler form. The program, LittleLogger, is a pretty messy pile of perl code and I tremble any time there is need to delve in and adjust it. Amazingly it works for our purposes well enough. The care and worry I direct toward my own little archive here gives an opportunity to think about archives in a broader sense, particularly in religion: why we guard them so jealously, why they represent a sense of the sacred unattainable without them, why things preserved from the past serve as a divine revelation, sometimes simply by virtue of being exactly that. I drove down to Virginia from New York today and was listening to the book on tape of Bart Ehrman's book about The DaVinci Code. Among other things, he noted that in the ancient Mediterranean world, Judaism was unique in using scripture (texts from deep time) as a focal point. (By this time presumably Hindus were more or less doing so as well independently.) When Christianity arose, it followed the Jewish model. And the other day my old teacher noted that at the same periods when Europe was obsessively building monuments to last forever, (North) American Indians apparently had a far more "leave-no-trace" attitude. It may be that attention to things like archives is not a universal among societies and peoples but a decision, or an inheritance. For me it comes in the form of an anxiety. Without a careful archive I can almost feel my sense of self slipping away! Saving particular things is a devotion, a practice, and a necessity for the preservation of the universe (like the monks from far away who are said to keep the wheel spinning or the prayer chanting that sustains creation). I counter it by a ritual cleansing of other things, i.e., what I give to Goodwill. There is a theological decision being enacted in doing so, I suppose. So we should keep careful attention to what is ritually kept and ritually put away. I keep weblog postings. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
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