A little over a year ago, I decided to get my own domain name. “Most of the blogs I love and respect have their own domains,” I thought to myself, “and I’m just marking time in boring-layout land here at blogspot. I should spruce things up a bit.”
Of course, along with my own domain name, I had to come up with a new title for a relaunch. After sifting through several promising possibilities, I finally settled on “Accursèd Faustus, Wretch, What Hast Thou Done?”. This is, of course, a quote from the Christopher Marlowe play The Tragedie of Doctor Faustus; our anti-hero asks himself this question after having been told that it’s just too fucking late for him and he’s going to go to hell no matter what. I much preferred this line, from the B text (1616), to the corresponding line from the A text (1604), which is a more self-pitying, less self-excoriating “Accursèd Faustus, where is mercy now?”.
So I had the title, I’d registered the domain name with a host, and I was working on a redesign. I got Movable Type and commissioned a friend of a friend to draw an illustration; with the design help of this man, I eventually had the centerpiece (click on the image for a larger version):
And then I somehow lost steam. I got caught up in other things (like deciding to start speaking to my ex N.T. again, gaining and losing the same five pounds over and over again, trying not to kill myself–you know, the usual) and never got around to setting the damn thing up.
And while I was chatting with him the other day, I realized that “Accursèd Faustus, Wretch, What Hast Thou Done?” no longer accurately describes the endeavor in which I am engaged here. Though the crippling anxiety and implacable self-loathing that have been the mainstays of this blog since its inception are still my constant companions, the combination of a good boyfriend and decent medication has meant that they are joined every once in a while by something approaching, if not happiness, at least glimpses of it.
One could argue, of course, that “The Search for Love in Manhattan” doesn’t accurately describe this blog anymore either, what with the advent of E.S. v. 2.0, but I for one have always thought of the eponymous love as encompassing not just eros but also agape and philia–of which there is little enough in the world to make a search worthwhile.
And so I’m staying put. At least for now.
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