Avete, amici!

Welcome, dear reader (if, indeed, you exist)!

I’m finally starting this blog on the advice of a friend, who told me that writing things down would enable me to organize and, more importantly, to retain inklings and experiences.  Mark you, I’m under no illusion that I have anything “deep” or “original”, but her suggestion nonetheless seems valid, as the inveterate journal-keepers of the past would likely attest.  Can anyone, for example, imagine Boswell without a diary close to hand (unless, of course, his biography was mostly fiction)?  I am not, alas! a skilled amanuensis, though there are plenty of Johnsons close to hand, but then   

…a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,

Or what’s a heaven for? 

In a word, then, this blog is to be a kind of sounding-board, containing occasional and (I admit, not-too-coherent) opinions and recollections.   If my language seems wordy and stilted, I must apologize in advance, but I truly can’t help my being—as the same friend once observed—quite unaffectedly pompous; and, remember, even Homer nods (doh!).   

God bless you, then, dear reader—and, yes, that would be a good topic: the Five Ways to prove the existence of the Reader:)—and I hope you don’t get too bored. 

Sincerely,

Marcus Apollo