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Greetings comrades, the name is Kevin Roberts, but I go by a few aliases, including Lalilulelo (lah-lee-lu-lay-lo), and KeMiRo. I have my own fledgling blog here, and a dedicated art blog here. But I didn’t just come here to plug my own crap. I’m here to make Saint Superman 25% beefier. Or 25% more pasta, or…whatever.
My main areas of expertise are the visual arts and gaming, and the critical analysis of everything therein, especially themes of the stories told within games, their art, and the industry that creates and distributes them, a love springing from the Metal Gear Solid franchise. I first got my hands on the first MGS game when I was thirteen, a highly impressionable age as you might agree, and I haven’t been the same since. I’ll get into detail with that later.
I’m a good friend of author-of-this-blog Brian Visaggio, and we’re partners in crime on the amazing Sanctuary: Hope is Not Yet Lost, which is a story for another day. Anyway, I have business to attend to, and I just wanted to say Hello, My Name is[ ].
One Love.
KeMiRo out.
I love travel writing, especially when it goes beyond the cliches of awed description and captures more than a place’s physical attributes. There is a religious sensibility to any place that goes further than “I felt so at peace in the woods,” a divine tension between humanity and God and nature that’s worth reflecting upon. That tension is, to me at least, the most interesting thing you can capture in your writing.
That’s why I admire Rachel Barenblat, and that’s why I read her blog, Velveteen Rabbi.
She moved to Israel a bit back, and is absolutely breathless in her excitement about the place. And she’s willing to deal with the thickness of the country’s divine tension, a place claimed by three faiths, and her efforts to grasp what it means to live in such a country.
She writes:
From there, we went up on the roof of a tall building and got some views of the panorama of Hebron. The early-afternoon call to prayer rang out from one minaret, and within moments from another, and another. They overlapped in counterpoint, like ripples of water intersecting as waves move across a pond. My friend Hussein once translated Allah hu akbar as “God is greater” — greater than you, greater than me, greater than anything. That thought comforted me as I listened to the muezzins’ song.
and
We gathered around a long table and ate a delicious lunch of Arabic salads and spiced rice and chicken and pita. And then we clustered into a corner of the room, in a lovely sort of indoor tent space (little booths draped with woven cloth, furnished with wooden benches piled with pillows.) Birdsong came from the space right beside us: the beautiful young man with his talent for birdcalls was now indoors! We swooned appropriately, and when we noticed flyers for Sabreen Hip Hop, we asked him whether he is a part of that group. He answered in the affirmative, and urged us to return in the evening for hip hop and break-dancing. (I’m sorry I couldn’t stick around.)
She is one of the most interesting writers I’ve stumbled across here in the Interblag. A wonderful writer is a rare find, and I’m pleased to say she’s one of them.
