the 22nd of all januaries
somewhere there is, perhaps, a woman whose unborn child was aborted on the 22nd of January, who has since awoken in the middle of the night on that day every year hence, stricken with some small sense of horror... equally, there exists, somewhere, a woman for whom the 22nd of January is just another day in the faceless landscape of all her Januaries. no remarkable event has staked that territory for her; no person has planted some special memory into its nameless soil ...
and while in other places and other times, a great scholar was born, an emperor succumbed to illness, and very many men died for no good reason at all, these are not the things that mark my January 22nds. for me:
1) idleThinK was born, five years ago, on this day in 2003. it was a great step: that is to say, it was certainly some sort of inaugural, landmark credit-card purchase.
2) idleThinK nearly died on this day this year. never dreaming that I would still have it five years later, thinking myself ridiculous for buying the domain for five years, I accidentally ... let the name elapse. how curiously central it has become to me. for several harrowing hours I was owned by someone else! or rather, evicted; racked by a truly modern sense of exile. I was lonely, homeless, dissolute, typing slightly tearful messages to a a kind listener -- until, epic tale that it is, my Self was wrested gallantly back from the Clutches of Evil by the Knights of Customer Support, and I am, once again, someplace I call home. what strange modern worries lie coiled within us ...
3) yes, what strange modern forces move us, comprise us. and indeed -- change us, prescribe our futures, anticipate us. on this day in 2007 I received and replied to a Facebook message, of all the wretched modern things, that has nonetheless changed more for me than I can yet understand.