Blogger is a Wonderful Thing

I have been absent for too long, I think. Too far from my blurbing and blathering and blubbering and blogging. It is healthy, I think, to continue the exercise, however anonymously, of placing thoughts down on phosphorescent screens with highly intelligent and beautifully trained ones and zeros. This doesn't exist. Not really. What I am writing, what you are reading, it isn't real. Not anymore than color is real. You are not seeing color, you are being tricked by absorption and reflection and the quanta of photons that reach your eye tell it a story, and your eye tells that story to your brain and your brain makes impossibly difficult analysis of the story and tells is to your mind, and your mind smiles, ensures that white is white, and black is black, and everything else falls into place and that is what you ultimately think is color.

But I digress. (The MFA has started, after all, there is fresh knowledge swimming about my brain pool.)

Blogger is no different than color. It is a misrepresentation of the truth that has lead me to think that my thoughts and dreams and exaltations are permanently embedded in the fabric of history. Perhaps they are, even in an unreal sense.

Here is how I know this.

One year ago I was finishing my second class at Brooks with my still-to-this-date favorite instructor at this institution. I was revelling in my accomplishment and the creation of five "Big and Beautiful" images for my final project (one of which now hangs in a prominent location in my sister's home, two more in those of my Mother and Father.) I was also exploring local Santa Barbara culture with a tiny golden salamander that I found under my desk.

Two years ago I had just arrived in China and was still tired, sweaty, and somewhat nervous about my accommodations which were in a less than savory part of Shen Zhen. I could write and publish blogs to my heart's content, but I could not read them. It was the beginning of one of my greater adventures.

Three years ago I had been married for one month and was realizing that I loved to blog. I blogged several times a day back then. I was prolific with my espousing of daily activities, knowledge, moments of truth, triumph, defeat, and sheer ridiculousness.

I know all of this because blogger tells me it is true. I feel a little nervous, as if Orwell's Big Brother is telling me stories about my life and I am pretty sure they are true, but not positive. But I think I remember the salamander. No. I definitely remember the salamander. I am sure there is photographic proof. I am a photographer, I am sure that the truth of my life, the truth of the little ones and zeros, can be verified and explained, realized and profoundly demonstrated.

But then I'd have to take the time to scan the image.

Sigh.

At any rate, blogger is a pretty amazing thing, whether it is full of lies and deceit that make pretty colors or not.