Fingerpainting in the Dark

Decide on a blog name... check.

Make it look kinda pretty... check.

Publish the first post... uh...

How exactly do you start a blog? Should I introduce myself? “Hi, my name is ….” Uh, maybe I should just post a big WELCOME! Graphic... Or, I guess a good place to start would be to explain the name of my blog:

Fingerpainting in the Dark

Fingerpainting is kinda like riding a bike—once you learn how to do it, you never forget. Anyone who's watched freshmen bikers toppling like dominoes in an earthquake during the first week of Fall Quarter knows learning how to do it could be harder than it sounds. I remember having to still using training wheels when all the other kids in my class were riding without holding the handle bars but... thats a whole different story. Thankfully, fingerpainting was slightly easier. You just find some funky smelling paint, dip in your fingers, and start tickling the sheet of paper in front of you. Its that simple.

But even in preschool, you'd start by having some kind of mental image that you wanted to get onto paper. After dipping your fingers into yellow paint, then the green paint, and eventually wondering where the blue paint appeared from, you realize what's on your paper is nothing like what was in your head. You never really succeed. But there's a certain insouciant nature that's critical to finger painting that allows for that. You don't have to get it right. Its okay.

After spending months upon months of preschool and even kindergarten—for the lucky ones atleast—you never really succeed at getting that image to appear on your paper. But that's the beauty of it: you fall short of success, over and over again. And after doing that as a kid, you spend your entire life doing the same thing—trying to impose the concepts of your mind onto reality but never really succeeding. That's just life. Its okay.

And, that is what my blog is all about—the seemingly ineffable concepts of my mind, the bain marie of my existence, trying to find their way into reality. I guess its just me trying fingerpaint on this pallet we call life as I try to shed a little light on the shadows of the past, to take a look around the effervescent darkness of today, and splash a little paint on whatever the future holds.

They'll be posts, pictures, and who knows what else to look forward to.  For now, enjoy the fish!