Saluton! Long time no see! Mi esperas ke, vi fartis sane.

Please allow me to introduce myself… Or rather, re-introduce myself. You can call me by my Esperanto nickname, Leks. I used to be the one who posted on Transparent Language’s Esperanto blog back in its earliest days – almost seven years ago, if my memory serves. I had a great time sharing strange and interesting things I found regarding the Esperanto language, and an even better time learning from the comments of experienced Esperantists. But then life intervened – I found I couldn’t balance the demands of my undergraduate program and be a competent blogger at the same time – so I had to “retire” for a little while.

Yet here I am again! I was told that Transparent Language needed a replacement Esperanto blogger, and now that I’m older, wiser, and considerably better at time management, I think I might be well-suited to the task at hand. Chuck is a difficult act to follow, but I will do my best.

I’m on the tail end of a Ph.D. in kompara literaturo [comparative literature], where I have been studying – among other things – film, autobiography, and philosophy. (I have been living in the films of Hollis Frampton, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Mercedes Álvarez for the last year!) All of the books I’ve been reading and films I’ve been watching have given me lots of Esperanto-related blog topics, and I would to share some of them with you over the coming months.

I hope to approach this blog as both a scholar and a hobbyist, investigating our favorite constructed language through the lenses of film and literature – and maybe philosophy, if it won’t incite a mutiny among the readers. Let’s use this platform as an opportunity to show that Esperanto artists really know what they’re doing, and introduce the uninitiated to the world of great works they’ve been missing! (I have a good idea of who and what I’d like to tackle in the next few weeks, but I welcome suggestions for future posts, in case there is a film, novel, poem, or other work you would to see discussed here.)

Until next time! Se vi fartas bone, do mi fartas bone.