I’ve been searching for a web theme that expresses stuff am passionate about. My previous theme: fallen leaves was a very good one because of the various shades and richness the leaves projected, not to say the philosophical underpinnings beneath fallen leaves, the connection to the human condition, our nature as beings who fall and lie low, only to rise in another season. Much as i loved this theme, it was limiting in word display and that was a shortfall I couldn’t ignore overtime. 
I had hieroglyphic texts lining up the margins of my first theme, an Egyptian plover gracing the bio page, celebrating a connection to our rich past, a testament of our ancient, sacred writing before the destruction. It was my way of silencing every argument and pretension that sets itself above to claim that we had no written culture before the western rape. It was a beautiful theme but densely dark. I desired to change it and take the ‘revolution’ elsewhere. My webmaster loved it though, and resisted my want of fallen leaves. I wavered between the two themes. In the end, it was ‘my choice.’
Before the current theme, my webmaster came up with trees covered with snow. I love trees, especially when they are green and bursting with life. Also when they are resilient, fighting to live. I am sad when I see dying trees, dried and burnt in the sun or by man. The snow theme brought out the resilience and enduring spirit of trees, the spirit that is also in people. But I wasn’t satisfied. I didn’t like coming to my website and beholding snow. I wanted a personalised, universal theme that stood the test of time, not a reflection of the changes. A theme that made me feel at home, but also made my visitors at ease so how were we to achieve that?
I was pleasantly surprised and immensely relieved when my webmaster made a theme from places I’ve been, combining images of home, my past and current environments with the things that sustain me: a cup of coffee, an orange, hiking in the mountains, books and colors of orange and green. It was a perfect blend. There is the aesthetic ivy-lined building that is an icon of many things, aspiring against a deep blue. The picture of a bookstore taken on a journey to Ithaca, Ithaca that is both a poem and a place. Then a rustic wondrous coffee house in Mindelo city, in Cape Verde, where I discovered happiness was a cup of cappuccino with an orange and a friend. The last shot is the rocky mountain in Santo Antao, where again was a magical experience in a cloud of mist turned into a blanket that closed out the world for hikers to focus on a new journey, a new place, a new sensation not as the world gives but only the mountains. Every time I come here I am transported home, and also to places that have become home, albeit for a short stay, even as I realise am writing from a current home. It is my kind of theme that I hope to stay with for a long time. As seasons change and trees turn color, my feet will be here revisiting and re-collecting different experiences, sensations and journeys that have become long poems and destinations.
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