March 21st, 2012 
“Mary Belle and the Mermaid”, Leo & Diane Dillon, 1995
As I create my first post in efforts to solidify BlankBareClean as an irrevocable force of nature, I must first honor the very elements that brought it into conception- far before its quaint beginning in March 2009 and its hiatus since August 2010.
It started as an imaginary world- much like the Leo & Diane Dillon illustrations in my favorite childhood books. An imaginary world in the mind of a young, black girl who was reprimanded daily for excessive daydreaming as elementary school student. Something about my reality just wasn’t intriguing enough to keep such a whimsical spirit stationary- atleast not in a traditional school setting. -Blame it on the coupling of her Cancerian Sun and Piscean Moon…perhaps.
Then, it became a conscious intention as a high school student who felt like a unicorn amongst water buffalo. A time when surfing the internet wasn’t necessarily a cool thing unless of course you were clamoring to a coveted chat room to “cyber lounge” with friends & such. But there I was daily, nightly, however, whenever- researching art, music, philosophy, religion, and cute shoes. Trying to keep myself inspired. On the surface, an all too common blade of grass wedged behind a concrete wall and a cement slab. – An afterthought of nature that most would consider just a weed or a piece of foliage not even clever enough to be a flower… but, it inhabited an exasperated desire to simply lean toward the sunlight. Some saw a gnarly weed but, the seed sown new far more than a dubious passerby.
