My wickedness, as I am in myself, has long appeared to me perfectly ineffable, and swallowing up all thought and imagination; like an infinite deluge, or mountain over my head. I know not how to express better what my sins appear to me to be, than by heaping infinite upon infinite, and multiplying infinite by infinite. Very often, for these many years, these expressions are in my mind, and in my mouth, "Infinite upon infinite ... Infinite upon infinite!" When I look into my heart, and take a view of my wickedness, it looks like an abyss infinitely deeper than hell. And it appears to me, that were it not for free grace, exalted and raised up to the infinite height of all the fulness and glory of the great Jehovah, and the arm of his power and grace stretched forth in all the majesty of his power, and in all the glory of his sovereignty, I should appear sunk down in my sins below hell itself; far beyond the sight of every thing, but the eye of sovereign grace, that can pierce even down to such a depth. And yet it seems to me, that my conviction of sin is exceeding small, and faint; it is enough to amaze me, that I have no more sense of my sin. I know certainly, that I have very lime sense of my sinfulness. When I have had turns of weeping and crying for my sins I thought I knew at the time, that my repentance was nothing to my sin. (Jonathan Edwards' "Personal Narrative"—emphasis my own)

I’m branching out in the world as a fishtree, which, when all the dust is settled, brings us no closer to an understanding of why that particular combination of letters jumped in my head. Actually, if we are to be exact, it wasn’t that precise combination of letters, but rather the following combination of letters that sprang to mind: treefish. But treefish was already taken so fishtree it was to be. By now, perhaps you are thoroughly confused. Let me lay your troubled mind to rest: it seems that a particular friend of mind, a subscriber of this very newsletter no less, has a blog on Xanga where he shares with the world those things that pass through his mind. He is known there as “the_sentry,” and I decided to drop in and pay him a visit. I even tried to sign his guestbook, but to no avail, for one must be a Xangan to participate. No bother: I dropped him an e-mail instead. A week later, a second friend, also on this mailing list and also a Xangan, tempted me from my homework with his blog jellonailer. Forgetting all I had learned from my experience with the_sentry, I tried signing his guestbook. My reply was hardly the stuff of dreams, much less golden ones, but I had signed his book and I was going to see it through to completion if it was the last thing I did on earth, so I created an account.

When I created an account I suddenly realized “I have a blog!” But, failing to be bowled over by this revelation, I thought to myself: “Well, I’ll at least create a single blog entry, a shameless plug to promote my site.” Five entries later, fishtree had officially taken the bait and I now see it as a wonderful place to post just such lighthearted banter as the words you are currently feasting your astonished eyes upon. (Which raises the deep philosophical question: is it your eyes that are astonished or merely you?) So, why don’t you go over and check out what fishtree has to say—if you read his posts from bottom to top, you’ll see how the man of many names gradually began to see an opportunity to dodge his homework and park the prattle he wouldn’t dare let tarnish his own prim and proper site. Oh, and just so you’ll have a mnemonic and don’t confuse me with treefish who stole my first inclination (never mind the fact that he came first), recall that in the English alphabet, the letter f comes before the letter t, thus I am a fishtree, apparently more wooden than wet.