Greetings, Citizens!
I trust that this finds you well. Failing which, I hope you get well soon.
I am Matsepe Tsiu. I am proudly South African. I am an energetic young African. And this is my blog.
I intend to reduce some of my thoughts to writing and upload them onto this website for public consumption. I hope that at the absolute least the reading of them will prove worthwhile. This website, essentially, will be a written archive that the curious among you can access and peruse at leisure – a portable miniature library in which one can spend some time absorbing and engaging with the content that I produce, whether it be in terms of opinion pieces, mathematical exercises, samples of literature or some other writing entirely.
As with all good libraries, the flow of information goes both ways, if you so will it. I look forward to your feedback. Especially because I will be kind of exposing myself here. Your response – or lack thereof (this is the real world) – will tell me much about what to consider next and which way to maybe turn with my next projects.
The reason why I named this blog – and indeed this website – The Ink-Stained Hand is because I am quite fond of writing with fountain pens and sometimes my hands get stained when handling them. Not often, thankfully, but sometimes. Sometimes I find my hands (my right hand – my dominant one – especially) stained with smudges of red, blue, orange, black, green or whatever the colour of the day happens to be. In those moments, I just get up, clean off what I can with a tissue, wash my hands and return to my work. The colour makes for a welcome splash of vibrancy against the plain backdrop of everyday life. The shape and the sound of the fountain pen are now familiar to me. Having consistently owned at least one since 2016, I have learned a lot about their care, maintenance and use. I am nowhere near advanced in any of the above topics, of course. But I know enough to use my pen productively and to keep my pen running productively, even as I transition from one colour to another without running the pen through a wash cycle first, theoretically for expediency but practically for the joy of watching the blended colour grace my pages for the briefest of whiles.
I wish you all the best going forward, in every endeavour. I thank you for visiting my website and I look forward to you sharing your impressions of the thoughts that I share.
Go forth and conquer. Live long and prosper. Have a good day, wherever you are.
Yours faithfully
Matsepe Tsiu