Today is the 21st anniversary of starting this blog, and it's also the spring equinox...seeing the snow that fell overnight, I'm tempted to contemplate spring rather than the reasons why I continue to keep this space. However, looking up at these objects on my desktop, all of which represent parts of my writing journey, a few words come to mind.
With all the changes that have happened during the last two decades, both in my personal life and in our world, The Cassandra Pages has always felt like home. My home, as a space for working out my own thoughts, but also a place of hospitality where I could open the doors and welcome you, my readers and friends. In that respect, it's very much like an extension of the home that we all carry inside ourselves throughout life. That indestructible home continues in spite of physical displacement, changes in our life situation and in our bodies, the loss of people dear to us, pain and suffering as well as joy, changes in society and the world. And it provides a ground and a center for that private awareness of ourselves moving inexorably through time: shedding, learning, pondering, understanding, letting go. I'm not who I was 21 years ago, and I'm also the same person. It's a mystery, and also utterly natural, even if it's difficult to understand or put into words.
Writing this blog has helped me follow myself and the world more consciously and more intentionally, and, unlike a journal, it's been a way to do that in company. The rewards have been friendship, and also the sense that I've sometimes been able to give something meaningful or helpful. The longer and more reflective blog form has always felt more suitable for me than social media, and now, with more than a decade of the latter having altered society and our own lives in innumerable ways, I feel this even more strongly. I've become weary of superficiality, speed, insincerity, egotism and hypocrisy. We need to create and gravitate toward spaces that are supportive of not only who we are, but who we most want to be.
So, I'm still here. Thank you for being with me.
Thank you for continuing to write. Profound, beautiful thoughts on any subject you choose to address. And I’m glad you brought your blog to Substack as well. Happy belated anniversary. And Happy Easter to you and my other long-distance friends in Montréal.
Beth, I've enjoyed your blog's hospitality for most of the last 20 of its 21 years. To me, Cassandra Pages is the quintessential blog, home to writing (and in Cassandra Pages's case, art and music) that somehow makes me feel at home. May it go on and on!