Synchroncity and the Spreading of Light

Sometimes things fall funny. It just is the way it is. As you know I write a blog that is basically an old guy remembering his youth and his ill advised behaviors at that time. Occasionally I will take on the current affairs of my world or the world in general. I am not TMZ, Drudge or even Finding Dulcinea for that matter, although I do highly recommend the last site, here is the link.

http://www.findingdulcinea.com/

The other day I was listening to the radio NPR in particular and I heard a phrase I liked. It was “punching a hole in the darkness.” Having heard the phrase I decided I would write on it. I tried to do my due diligence. My spouse is a stickler for details and she motivates me to check stuff out. The speaker had attributed the quote to Robert Louis Stevenson as a child. While I did not go to Snopes to insure that he had said it I did Google the term. After wading through a number of links to sermons positing Jesus as the light in question and offering various religious interpretations I did find a Wiki that seemed to tie the quote to it purported author. Yeah I know Wiki does not equal accuracy, thank you very much Mr. Colbert.

As I related in the post I ultimately put up I wanted to use the quote in a different way. I thought it made a nice humanist maxim. For me to have written a blog post about the quote had clearly impacted my thoughts and piqued my interest. I was not alone.

My post went up midday Sunday with links to the NPR piece Weekend Edition Sunday where I had heard the quote, to my initial Google search for the quote and to a Tom Waits song (there is never enough Tom Waits on the web) that used a variation on the theme. Apparently I wasn’t the only person who was struck by the quote.

My blog usually has a readership of about 5-10 somewhat dedicated readers. These are people I grew up with, people I worked with and people who I have sat and spun yarns with over the years. Some of my readers have signed on as followers. Others just post comments to which I usually don’t respond. (I have since learned using a Google search for something else all together that not responding is a net etiquette faux pas. As a result I have been responding to comments for the past few days. We will see if that lasts.)

After I posted the piece on my take on the Stevenson quote things at my blog changed. All of a sudden I was getting comments from people I had never heard from. Some of these folks are very cool. I note one person who made a comment has trekked in Nepal and has a lovely blog associated with that journey. As the weekend continued I decided to check my basic free version of site meter to see what was going on. The tally was quite impressive. Mind you I haven’t broken a hundred hits in a day, but I had more than 10 hits in a day an awesome figure for the ranting of the lunatic husband of a very nice woman. The locations of the hits were diverse, California, Iran, Britain and well New Jersey.

I couldn’t figure out what was going on. On a lark today I decided to do some basic checks to see if anyone had linked to the post, not much there really. Finally I Googled the term “Stevenson punching a hole”. There it was, the source of my woefully personal navel lint displaying blog’s recent increase in popularity. At the time I checked the search term referenced my blog was number four entry under the query just cited. I had displaced one of the religious sites. Apparently NPR listeners had skipped over the religious sites and hit my site to see if it had anything of use to them as they too were mulling over the quotation. Apparently they liked the quote too. I mean it is very strong imagery.

Wow, I am flabbergasted. I am also humbled.

What I do with my blog is something focused on a personal deficit. As a kid (hell, as an adult) I never did well in writing courses or with writing in general. I felt that while I had a reasonably strong vocabulary I had absolutely no mechanical deftness with the pen. My blog was intended for me to try and work out my desire to translate my stories, my feelings into words that I could share. Catching a wave of interest in a random quote by talking on about a pastor’s potential Sunday sermon topic which was buried in an interview with an aging civil rights leader on NPR really is for me really punching a hole in the darkness.