Haiti earthquake

[ haiti. all photos from the Times online Photo Gallery]





[ . Eduardo Munoz Reuters]

Thousands of homeless people sat on the darkened streets of Port-au-Prince in a daze or gathered in public squares, singing hymns.

The headlines did not lie. 12 January 2010 saw tragedy crush an ill-equipped yawing mousetrap of an island.

Comment from a blogger in Haiti:

I didn’t actually fall on the ground, but I stumbled around quite a bit. When the tremors ceased, a large dust cloud was rising from the building a few doors down.

A 3 story school full of teenage girls had collapsed. I stood around looking stupid for longer than I’d like to admit. I looked at the truck from Toyota, tried to call my wife (the service was out) and looked around me at people’s reactions.

Virtually everyone reacted in strange ways. Eventually, I went to the school and started working to pull trapped students from the wreckage.

The work was very hard because I was working by myself. People would come up and shout into the wreckage, “Is so-and-so inside?” at the top of their lungs repeatedly.

... I got one girl out, who was very frantic. I told her to stop shouting and pray for help.

She was about 10 feet deep under the collapsed cement roof of the building. At one point I went and borrowed a hammer from someone to break up the large piece of cement that she was trapped behind. The aftershocks scared the crap out of me, and I really didn’t like being under that cement slab. There was an obviously dead woman under the slab with us.

When the girl was out, I took my hammer and moved over to find the next trapped girl. All I could see was her face and left arm, and she frantically called out to me. I asked her to calm down because it would help me to work and asked her to pray for both of us.

... There was some sort of object behind that rubble and when I went to move it it turned out to be another girl’s bottom. The girl cried out but I could barely hear her – her whole head was underneath rubble.

At this point I began to realize that I was in over my head. All I had was a hammer, and it was quickly becoming pitch dark with twilight fading and no electricity anywhere. I tried to borrow a flashlight, but it was impossible.

I had a moment of feeling intense helplessness. After thinking and praying for a minute, I told Jacqueline that I had to leave her and find more help. I couldn’t do anything without a flashlight, and she needed to keep praying and remember that her parents were coming to look for her.

I walked 4 or 5 miles to a place where I could get a bus, then got on one eventually made it home just after 9pm. On my way home, I resolved to return to Port au Prince the next day with 2 trucks full of tools and workers to do whatever we could.

I met a guy on the bus who was holding a sandwich. He had left his house to go buy a sandwich when the earthquake hit. He returned to his home to find it flattened, then went to the school that he teaches at to find it flattened. With nothing left but a sandwich in his hand, and $7 in his sock, he set out for Cap Haitien to be with the rest of his family.

I slept a little bit last night even though I kept thinking of Jacqueline and her classmate stuck in the rubble, in the dark. This morning all of the workers enthusiastically loaded all the tools we could use into the trucks along with food and water and set off for Port au Prince.

I took them to the school and quickly made my way to the place Jacqueline and the other student were but both of them were dead.

-Chris Rollings

... On the bus he met a man named Amos who had gone out to get a sandwich and minutes later found his house was flattened as was the school where he worked. He took his sandwich and got on a bus headed for Cap Haitien because everything that had made up his life in Port was gone. Amos is sleeping in our dorms and when I took him sheets and towels and asked how he was doing he simply said, with a smile, “M’ pa pi mal, gras a Dieu. ” I’m not bad, by the grace of God.

-from his wife, Leslie Rollings

proof.

that nature inspires art,

is art.


[ . British Wildlife Photographer winner: "Damselfly silhouette" by Ross Hoddinott ]

[ . Urban Wildlife winner: "The ultimate flock" by Lorne Gill]

[ . Animals Portraits winner: "Gannet portrait" by Ben Hall ]
[ . Wildlife Behaviour winner: "Blackbirds Fighting" by David Slater]

from the timesonline photo gallery.

something i felt today.

[? . from whysharksmatter ]

(one of the comments)
Despite all the knowledge and technology we possess we continue to destroy things that we don’t fully understand.

us people always seemed to me more self-conscious than self-aware, more inclined to the strange Other than attuned to mapping our interconnectedness. and i'd always thought the devastation on plants and animals a tragic evidence.

there may be mtv* specials galore courtesy of al gore campaigns and wonderful mega-documentaries [see list of EXCITES to the right] out to showcase the world we could be losing, but so long as we only see in parts and in terms of Other..

sharks have been pretty much elevated and distorted in the consciousness of most singaporeans. they are exoticised sleek machines from waters far and away. they also make for delicious sharks fin soup. they are both mythical and part of tradition; a power combo hard to change.


those are two reasons why i'm anticipating “Why Sharks Matter: Using New Environmentalism to Show The Economic And Ecological Importance of Sharks, The Threats They Face, and How You Can Help", by David Shiffman (scientist guy in above pic). follow his shark-crusades here.


*by the way, mtv videos always hit the 'cool' mark..

MTV Global Warming Campaign from Justin Gedzus on Vimeo.

When dust dance, far.

[australia, sydney. 1-3. from Brendon Thorne/Getty Images]
[ 4. from Shisberg]

Sydney Morning Herald:

... And everywhere there was dust. It coated footpaths, shop floors, train stations and any other surface the wind could penetrate.

Cityrail trains carried it through tunnels and into underground stations.

"When I got on the train at Cronulla all our seats were covered in this red dust," Robyn Jaques said.

... Up to 75,000 tonnes of dust per hour was blown into the waters off the coast and particle pollution was the highest on record - over 15,000 micrograms per cubic metre at times, when a normal day would see less than 20 micrograms.

The choking dust was far thicker than bushfire smoke, which commonly contains about 500 micrograms per cubic metre.

... Loose red dirt from the arid outback was blown east by strong winds, in what was described by The Sydney Morning Herald as "the day the country blew into town".

... Strong winds following the hottest August on record sucked up dust from a decade-long drought in what experts said was the biggest such incident to hit Sydney since 1942.

when cows walk on man's land; when children grow under man's grand plans.

[senegal, yoff, dakar. all pictures via the deputy dog ]



[india, dharavi, mumbai. ]


[indonesia, citarum river, west java.]



[italy, naples]

winter escape.

[. from landscape ]

thats a suitably bleak picture. and many will find it romantic and lush, full of insinuated meanings and vague, blurry, triple-layered nuances.

sometimes you wake up feeling like that picture; a sharp, uncoloured awareness of yourself, and all around you. and of course, itll never feel abundant or happy or gay. you'll realise you are you, and there wasn't much to you. and that it was your own unintended fault.

or you'll feel coldly alone. except, as those who've lived homeless for long become 'used to', you'll see again the bonds that tie us all. there's the obligations and the indebtedness; the love and familiar.

there's those you held above change, above time, above physical movements and friction. those are the ones you start to wonder about in the wintry time of your soul. you muse if you let open your hand just a little, will it lift and be away, gone, to its own cadence and purpose, and/or lured away by the persistant sweets of other trains.

another feature of this wintry awakening is the incredible distance. things once held near seem far, or missing. or maybe, for the sake of longterm sanity, discovered unreal or misconceived. all directions from you, you see the lapses.

in judgement and in perception, you realise perhaps you have not failed, but oh what a distance to make up for.

of course. the landscape around you is not empty. it shouldn't be, for you are never alone in your context, but inevitably tangled in engagements, in relationships - all markers of your position in time and space. ...to see not even the physical blots is a whiteout of the soul. you're blind and dead for a time, a worse kind of winter, for you lose even perspective of your perspective.

these winter times are when the winds around me howl the greatest, and my senses demanded to be painfully acute.

[baquba, diyala province. baghdad]
under a US soldier's hat and rifles


[kamenica. bosnia]
along with at least 100 full body remains and over 1,000 partial remains of bosnian muslims killed by the bosnian serb army in 1995.


[kibati. congo]
in an improvised refugee camp, away from fighting between rebels and the congolese army.


[philadelphia. usa]
before presidency.


[400 million light years away. cetus]
with another galaxy, and named arp 147

lace of leaves.

[singapore. chinese gardens]

every once in a while comes the thought, we tend to forget- to look up, as do we neglect to shift, even if just for a breath of fresh air, the perspectives we hold, which form entrenched sediments over a lifetime.

almost by chance i turned upwards.

and then tried to frame off the rest of the mundane earthly world, to peel former associations and understandings, to take away taken-for-grantedness. leaves of a tree obscuring sky became dark patterns across a blue-white patch. and it seems i could appreciate them anew.


... and by the way, for skies further than current latitudes and longitudes,


[ . from http://cloudappreciationsociety.org/ ]

october's cloud is the contrail. man-made, but still a cloud.

before this was the no-idea-how-or-why-it-is-formed clouds,
...............the mamma;

the ultimate sandman.

[ nevada. all images from. getwonder.com ]

one man.
one dry lake bed.
8 days of walking,
100miles.

no measuring aids.

....the world's largest freehand drawing.

[ nevada. all images from. getwonder.com ]

130,000 ft above, the last photo in july 2008 shows the artist, jim denevan, as a mere speck. circumvented by his own work, lost in the expanse of nature.

so.. if the introduction sounds a lil epic, that's because this really is!

and the question is, why.

The drawing was transient, as all of Jim's work is: "It was completely erased in a rainstorm the next week... It felt strange to work so hard and not see tide come in. But rains did come which is sort of the same thing."

... in transforming all around him, in his labours and toils, and exertions upon the internal, man only transforms himself. all is washed away by the tide, and all remains is within himself.

world.

[from alicia bock's bloom, grow, love]

from the solid comfort of earth,
fragrant brown strands,
then lured into the static of the living,
of us and you and them,
and they, and me,
but then back out again,
into the roaring infinite,
of blue, and blue.

...interesting how, if we can look away from the world of people, we see nature (we see the world).

how different. ?.

its space knows no boundaries
and imposes none on you.
there in it:
i may regain my own breath, allow
my self again.

an x-ray photo, so to speak.

[ -taken from BBC News]

this is neither a picture nor a photo, but a visual and clear enough representation of our consuming the earth- our ecological footprints.

the cost of our rate and scale of living, to animals:

marine species ... saw their numbers plummet by 28% in just 10 years, between 1995 and 2005.

Populations of ocean birds have fallen by 30% since the mid 1990s, while land-based populations have dropped by 25%.
(quotes from) bbc news

and for a quick sound bite on how it is rebounding back unto us:

"Reduced biodiversity means millions of people face a future where food supplies are more vulnerable to pests and disease and where water is in irregular or short supply.

"No-one can escape the impact of biodiversity loss because reduced global diversity translates quite clearly into fewer new medicines, greater vulnerability to natural disasters and greater effects from global warming."

James Leape, director general of the WWF

...every mainstream finds its radical alternatives, and No Impact Man is interesting to follow in his attempts to live outside how we have been comfortably taught to live, and are pressured to live. his is an example in not simply leaving as friendly and small an ecological footprint as possible, but one that works with the ways of nature- quippily speaking, it doesnt trample, it treads alongside.

by uncanny coincidence, tis Endangered Species Day today in the U.S., where bush&co have listed the polar bear as endangered.

see breeze.

[california, pacifica beach. -from kukyideas]

- the swathes of gray,
insistent thin spills;
you see the architecture of nature
coming together
to create a very pleasing juxtaposition
of harsh and soft,
wet and acrid.
damp salt through your body -
(men only dot the landscape)
-as you turn
letting your vision skim, sail
wide across low, virile waters.
and you hear,
voices, above and around, intermingling
and smell, the sweat
and fervour of pure energy in motion.

(looks like my kind of beach. reminded me of:)


[malaysia. beach at eastern coast of desaru]

right now i'm on the other side of the pane, looking in with awe... that just mere surrender (does not equate) being wholly with Truth, with Freedom, which in it's dangerous moments leads to feeling (seeking) the waves of the ocean closing in around me- no human flesh can resist its insistent pure waves, even if the unfortunate effect is Death. -dec2006

back into the green womb.

[north carolina, usa. along the haw river. -via lj.landscape]

take leave,
not only of yourself, but the masses around you.
replace human noise and excess
with natural calm and utility.

why do we not know you enough.

from norway.

[by Sølve Sundsbø. via Sophie Richardoz's blog ]

once in a rare while, someone bleeds creativity, painting a world mind- blowing enough that it doesn't look like anything before it, and takes us through a leap into what seems like another dimension.

this world is by norwegian photographer Sølve Sundsbø, in the current issue of French Numéro.

if movement represents invigoration, growth, energy, then this picture is an art of dynamicism in itself...
........ swathes of freed imaginings
obscuring hard form and figure,
erasing fantasy from fact,
and dissolving all boundaries.

yup. it inspires poetry like that.


[northern norway. taken by Thomas Laupstad ]

north of the arctic circle, the sunsets (at midnight!) also seem out of this world. i suppose right in nature itself is where lessons in fantasy can be gleaned.

water-ings.

turn away from the obvious, the glaring.
start instead,
with a study of Reflection:

[all photos taken at tasek bera, pahang, malaysia]
they reflect, but not necessarily mirror. they show the same, but even more; they claim to obscure but in fact reveal the underlying.

how so?
taking our attention off the surface and superficial, their shifting surfaces deceptively confront with the whole, the entire, your overall shape. its as a conjurer occupies your eye with busy details that you forget the true magic of the mechanisms at work.

in the reflection you now see your true form.

your wrinkles are smoothed over, but the dark bitterness within now overwhelms; you see not the accolades hung over your neck and placed upon your crown but the young dream you once had; you are no longer a single independent entity but one amongst the fellow living creatures of your time.

seeing the self vulnerably reflected/ refracted, along with the rest of the vast nature-
your existence lies there in the serene impersonal waters. there ceases to be any 'you', any 'they', any separate 'other', when all are but a part of a single whole.

the water seduces you to be a part of it drown in me but one need only look up to feel reassured of a larger whole.


shaking out the silken tapestry of earth's beauty.
the lines dissolve, colours harmonise and its very reality quakes... a reflection entices with 'what is' and 'what could be'. look up and be told,

but look down into the reflection,
and imagine.



the dividing land, a boundary between objective reality and subjective representations?
which do you dwell in and which manifests a truer vision?

one mind, the type of all, the moveless wave
whose calm reflects all moving things that are,
necessity, and love, and life, the grave,
and sympathy, fountains of hope and fear;
justice and truth and time, and the world's natural sphere.

- p.b. shelley

(when murky depths dont offer much,
look up, go for air. )

often we dont look up enough, past the overgrowth of life swarming, bustling around us, be they concrete buildings or abundant green, external events or the unquiet mind.

look up,
water light as air turned white in the heavens, surveying our sisyphean tendencies.

look up upon its white calm and eternal blue,

recall the constant principles with which you carry out your earthbound life.

the day sets.
the reflection darkens, and our time for plumping any eternal truth is up.

and what were thou, and earth and stars and sea,
if to the human mind's imaginings
silence and solitude were vacancy?
- p.b. shelley