I never intended that the rhinoblog be any kind of journal - I'm far too much of a hoarder of my treasured privacy to allow anyone within a mile of the inner sanctum - and anyway, although I admit I do, myself, enjoy dipping occasionally into the daily trivia of some regular bloggers lives, I can't help wondering at both our motives - theirs and mine - in colluding in such an act of public intimacy.
rather, the rhinoblog was conceived as an extension of the melancholy rhino itself - originally a kind of magical mystery tour kind of a photogallery thingy, which acquired a few additional pages of opinion and comment, and just sort of grewed - into the curiously hybrid kind of creature it now is - a fair - if forever incomplete - reflection of its author's characteristically unfocussed concerns - sometimes domestic, sometimes cultural, sometimes political, sometimes just plain whimsical. a kind of scrapbook, I suppose. yet another pathetic attempt to carve a smidgeon of meaning out of that buzzing chaos of contingency out there (and, incidentally, in here - *points to his head* - not to mention here - *taps his chest*).
so hello, gentle reader, whoever you might be - and welcome. I see, in the last couple of hours, that you've come from Buenos Aires, Portsmouth and Sheffield (just down the road in global terms), Ono in Spain (never heard of that before), Kyoto, Cairo, Seoul, and Katowice in Poland, as well as from several places in the united states.
very strange. very strange indeed.
it's pouring with rain outside, so the blood-red lunar eclipse we were promised for tonight goes unremarked unless by those airline passengers who still, like me, look out of aeroplane windows in a state of consummate awe.