One might think: Isn’t it enough that she’s chosen to write a blog in a language that she doesn’t know, all about herself? What the hell is this thing about chapters? But, you see, there is a thought behind that aswell. I rarely do things randomly. In that sense, I guess I’m not a very exciting person. I mostly feel that I have to have a plan. And this I do with the post titles aswell.
First, I want to make it clear that this is a story – if not in the novel kind of sense with a dramaturgical curve, and the probability of no moral in the end is very high, but still it has a beginning, a middle and an end. It is not about the abstract thing that is my life, but the specific occurance that is my journey through western North America. In giving the posts the chapter titles, even the reader that happens upon this blog somewhere between, say, Vancouver and San Francisco, might be inclined to start with the introduction, continue with chapter one and then maybe even read chapter two aswell. I think this might be especially helpful, since I’ve used the same adress for my Swedish blog for two years before changing it into the current Geographies of belonging. With the posts as chapters, it’ll be easy to distinguish between the old blog and the new.
Second, I sometimes see my life as a novel. I know that this is a stupid notion and probably not even that healthy, life does not have a beginning, middle and end, it’s a never ending continuum where death is the ultimate end, but only in a very personal sense. But the thing is, novels are such a big part of my life (I read approximately 70 books a year) and some of the people that I’ve made the strongest connections with in my life have been fictional. There might be a risk that that says more about my social skills than my reading, but my litterary experiences have been incredibly important for me all the same. And I think that that is one reason why I so rigorously write in my diary every day, got a blog when I was 17 and compose short stories and poems closely connected to the things that I experience. I think I imagine that I will be able to read all these texts one day and see through them to the hidden agenda, the meaning behind all this confusion and dead ends that is life. Naïve, I guess, but a girl can always hope.
Anyway, the disposition of this blog, with numbered chapters as titles of all the texts, are both for the benefit of the readers, and to fuel my imagination.
Katja Malmborg 