A Blogger’s Generosity

Blogs come and go, and as they fall from favor, or of necessity to the wayside on an author’s frenzied life’s journey, they have collected together in a kind of webby graveyard. It always saddens me to chance upon a blog which has ceased to be, sometimes without any explanation at all. I’m sad because I know firsthand of the vulnerability which had to go into the very public writing of those posts when first penned in someone’s desire either to be heard, or to come to clarity in their own mind.

I usually chance upon these blogs thanks to the miracle of search, and today, while searching for a specific writing by the author Anne Lamott, I found Japhyjunket, a post 9/11 chronicle which was written by Japhy Grant, who now lives in Hollywood and blogs at The Modern Romantic.

The specific search didn’t work for me, but when it took me to Japhyjunket, I felt like I’d found something much better. On the homepage, you first see,

“6.28.2006

BEFORE YOU READ ANY FURTHER

Read this brief preface by the Author

From 2002-2004, Japhyjunket was my blog. For a number of reasons, I closed up shop and after a nine month hiatus, started a new blog: The Modern Romantic. It’s probably where you want to go.

This site isn’t entirely uninteresting, however.

It began in January of 2002, three months after 9/11 and my very personal responses to that event make up the majority of this blog. The period of time it covers has been defining for me and for many. It chronicles the "new normal", the threat of war and finally, war itself. For me, this is the period of time starts just before my ex and I broke-up and ends just after I moved to Los Angeles. I suppose this is my portrait of the artist as a young and terrified man. A lot of who I am today can be read into these sometimes panicked jabs at understanding what was happening to my world and to myself- and truth be told, a lot of it was wonderful, too.

If this sounds like something you’d like to waste a few moments on, you can scroll down (all the posts are on this page) or browse through the archive, but to help you out, here are some of the posts which most interest me in retrospect.”

Grant then offers an index of “A Selected List of Posts Worth Reading.”

I clicked in to his new blog, and found he explains there;

“”realizing that I needed to link to my old blog, I looked at if for the first time in about a year.

It was like coming onto an old cabin in the woods, slowly sinking back into the ground. With pop up windows and password abounding, I went into the template code and cleaned it up a bit. My blog basically chronicled all my reactions to 9/11 and as such is often very maudlin and cynical. A large portion of it was written while drunk. I killed it off and started this site to get away from the state of post traumatic malaise that it chronicled. Reading it afresh, I also realize that same impulse is a large part of why I moved from New York to L.A.

I felt bad leaving it in ruins. Reinvention’s important, but shunning the scared and spastic kid who wrote this earlier stuff is stupid. I really love my life now and I’m very lucky to be surrounded by such talented, motivated and inspiring people, but that kid is the one who got me here. So, today’s blog is his.”

I sure wish more ex-bloggers would do this, instead of discarding old blogs like litter carelessly thrown out of a car window.

With more than two years behind me here at Talking Story, I know how much work this was for Japhy Grant to do, especially since I’m pretty unimpressed with the Blogger platform via my posting on blog Synergy. Japhy didn’t have to; he could’ve just cleaned up whatever post he wanted to link to. Instead, he chose to be lokomaika‘i, generous.

Japhy, mahalo for what you did for all of us who do click in when we chance upon Japhyjunket, whatever your own reasons may have been. I’m also very glad to know your new life is one you love; Aloha.

—–By the way, I just noticed that Jay and Nigel may be back!