At least give me credit for resisting the demands of vicarious readers for this long

But I do have a purpose. For me, this is just another tool among many to keep a record of things.

This is a blog that is also for information that I deem pertinent to share in an easily accessible form for friends and family. It is also for chronicling my Rotary ambassadorial scholarship stint in Cape Town, South Africa which begins in 2007. Many people have expressed a preference to read a blog as opposed to other forms of keeping tabs.

As you have read in the blog's description Avera and Palimpsest are defined as follows:

Avera: A name of Castillian origin, towards truth. On a visit to Ellis Island in 2001 I looked up my own surname on a computer and from what I recall what I define above is accurate on that count.


Palimpsest: a manuscript (usually written on papyrus or parchment) on which more than one text has been written with the earlier writing incompletely erased and still visible. This palimpsest defintion is from dictionary.com.

In juxtaposing these two words together to title my blog, I sought to provoke reader's thoughts about the nature of text, writing and truth. While on the constant search for meaning and worthwhile purpose (i.e. truth), when that process is textually recorded there is always something obscured or hidden. Some scholars argue that something called "textual supremacy" exists, a privileging of that which can be verified or communicated by text as opposed to other means of diseminating and understanding information. The existence of textual supremacy often invalidates and lessens the value of that which is communicated by speech, or physical movement. Or if in a given context all that we validate is a textual form, then we often miss or ignore what is not captured in text.

Think of examples as varied as undocumented workers, oral history, the energy of an audience during a musical performance...

So by the very nature of its title I ask readers to think about not just what is possible to be expressed in blogging and writing in general, but also what is hidden beneath the sufrace text, and what parts of truth evade written record. Text can be penumbral just as much as it elucidates.

Since a palimpsest is most often on papyrus or parchment, and usually very antiquated, it is especially fun to invoke it in a new and paperless medium like a blog. And as someone unsavvy with new-fangled technology (at least compared to my peers) to begin with, calling it a palimpsest reflects the tension between the evident benefits of digital documentation and my staunch love of reading and writing things on paper.

Beyond this explanation, I hope that any reader encountering it will draw their own titular interpretation. A palimpsest lends itself to multiple meanings.