a new look for an old blog...

it's been a while since i've done any sort of real writing - writing that's not for a class, for work, or even for preservation of my own thoughts. i used to write a lot. in middle school, i wrote short stories. in high school, i started writing poetry. none of it is probably any good, but as with my other creative outlets, writing became a way for me to find peace and connect with myself.

the summer after my junior year, i took a writing class during a pre-college summer art program where we read the letters of vincent van gogh (who painted the header image, the cafe terrace on the place du forum). it was fascinating. it was only an elective since that summer's focus was on improving my painting skills, but in the end, that writing class helped me become a better painter in more ways than learning better technique could. and then, sometime during the class, the professor said something that i will never, ever forget. he said, sometimes, artists need to write their self-portrait. i love that!

anyway, this is sort of the impetus for the change in this blog. it's first reincarnation (no one is alone) saw me through my years in grad school and really was instrumental in helping me understand that i was not alone was i walked through years of uncertainty and trepidation. i still love into the woods, and still believe so much in the central theme behind the song that was eponym of that previous blog. life is the woods into which we go, over and over again. and indeed, we are not alone when we take the journey. i know that very well now and it seems fitting that as i am growing up, the blog will take new shape with me.

in art, a pentimento is an alteration from an original plan, evidenced by traces from a previous step, as in an underpainting. sometimes these pentimenti are obvious, and sometimes they are only revealed under close examination and x-rays. in any case, they show that the artist has changed his or her mind from the previous plan, that he or she has decided to do something different from what he or she had originally intended to do.

sometimes, i feel like life (more specifically, mine) is a series of pentimenti. i've spent so much time painstakingly planning out what i want to, who i want to be, only to find myself altering those plans, painting over the changes, and creating a new composition that is much better than the original intention.

i've always been intrigued by pentimenti, both as an artist and as an art history major (one of two in college!), because it shows how imperfect we are, as creators, as humans, as beings. pentimenti symbolize one realizing one's mistake or shortcoming, and one's subsequent action to fix it. it's a reminder that we can never make a mistake so big that it ruins the entire picture, a reminder that no matter how much we err, we can still compose a great portrait of our lives, of who we are. this is a truth that is not exclusively relevant to artists, because we are all creators.

and, fittingly enough, the word pentimento is actually derived from the italian word pentirsi, which means "to repent." so even a term that is seemingly isolated to the world of art actually has some spiritual dimensions to it. as i grow up, i've come to realize that at the heart of life is repenting. we are always trying to turn our lives around, trying to adapt to the mistakes that we've make, making tweaks to the original plan so that it comes out better than we set out to do.