Blog Description #2

This blog, a host of other blogs, forums and message boards, inter alia, at internet sites where I post and my website that has been on the internet for the last seven years, 2001-2008—are each and all part of a tapestry of poetry and prose that I have created across the internet.

This literary creation by this self-employed individual, this retired teacher and lecturer who is now 64, attempts to endow various themes and a wide range of social science and humanities subjects with many layers of meaning. In these seven years on the internet I have evoked a complex range of responses in readers who come upon my work, responses which range from lavish enthusiasm to utter indifference and quite intense criticism, quite a normal range of responses to most serious writers.

I have tried over the many decades of my life to develop a writing style which, while fusing together material from many academic disciplines, from my own life and my religion, the Baha'i Faith, aims to be both provocative and intellectually stimulating on the one hand and light and entertaining on the other. This is no easy mix to achieve. There are now several hundred thousand readers engaged in reading some part of this tapestry, this literary product, this creation, this immense pile of words that I have created. One result of all this is that I now correspond with hundreds of people on an occasional basis. This correspondence mostly takes place in the form of postings at internet sites but, for many, it now involves personal email correspondence.

This amazing technical facility, the world wide web, has made this literary activity and what for me is clearly a literary success possible. If my writing had been left in the hands of the traditional hard and soft cover publishers, where it had been without success from 1981 to 2001, these results would never have been achieved.

It is my conviction that the Baha'i Faith has a significant role to play in the growing unification of the planet in the years, decades and centuries ahead. I do not engage, though, in any sort of aggressive proselytising at the more than 4000 websites that are part of this personal and industrious exercise. I do possess an obvious enthusiasm for my religion, my values, beliefs and attitudes or I would not have been associated with them for over 50 years; nor would I be promoting them in a multitude of forms, subtle and not-so-subtle, on the internet.

I have been increasingly engaged in this leisure time pursuit since retiring from FT work in 1999, PT and casual work in 2003 and most volunteer work in 2005. It is my hope that what I write as a result of this self-employment, this literary vocation and avocation, this pleasurable occupation of my time, resonates with both the novitiate and the veteran Baha'i on the one hand and the great diversity of people who are on a multitude of paths in their journey through life.