meeting someone else.

It was as if the expression was such a powerful force of energy. Her happiness was open on her face, and in her nimble hands; fingers working a soft sheet -now rolled, now thin spindles- of tissue. To look at her was to plug in to a common field of shared joy. I was reeled in. Her face was an even fawn canvas as her lips curved slightly in a happy half-smile. It seemed the spirit of wonder and glee had effused through her very body and flitted away, touching very slightly then escaping the solid boundaries of her mouth, lighting the air around her in a soft electric glow. There was no singular way of observing her countenance; what was animated was gently infused, and held steady in her private reverie. Smooth brows, lifted lids, confident nose, and a mouth made to always smile. There was no pout in her posture. Her tan leather bracelets and sandals claimed freedom more than fashion. Her red bag fit a simple sagged form on her lap which sat ordinarily under a skirt of yellow and orange. An old scab on her left knee, the only punctuation on legs that looked used to activity. A thin band around her elfin hair betrayed hippie inclinations. But therein the word 'betrayal' reveals the wonder: she simply was. And to chance upon her unwritten thoughts was to share in the same rapture.

This is different from the delight a young child might find himself in. She had consciousness, and a tumultous age. She was aware of the world, but stayed instead, with the light within. And yes I did wonder, just once, the reason for her joy. A romantic date? But she sat clean and upright, not slumped in the sensual aftermath of romance. A comic moment? But her expression was placidly bright, not mired in the fast tangles of witticisms. It doesn't matter. She'd sat, and was.

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.

the real green engineering.

[ india, cherrapunji. rootbridges. all other images from theoriens ]

what happens when man can't build a bridge.

why, grow one of course. this northeastern bit of india is one of the wettest places on earth (monsoon winds from the bay of bengal ensure that), streaked by many swift rivers and mountain streams. it is also native to the rubber fig, its use as a bridge better explained by its scientific name ficus elastica.

for generations now, people have been splicing betel nut tree trucks and guiding roots of the rubber fig through them.



the literally named 'double decker root bridge' can hold over fifty people at a time, which already include quite a few tourists.

this just took my breath away. apparently it also takes ten- fifteen years to be fully functional; i'm glad that here at least, human patience (inevitable or not) has allowed such a feat testament to the harmony nature and man can achieve. tolkien would be proud.

the golden spruce.

[ northwest, united states. from STRIKE ]

i got alot more than i'd bargained for when i picked up the golden spruce. tree, land, wind, sea, air and man, -above all, man- i did not realise the combustable combination they were.

take a long look here: imagine how a tree could have grown through centuries to become so; imagine its place and what it fought, what it strove for, its comrades in the pursuit of life. imagine how man first came upon the giant; imagine how man saw how it could be used, and how he thought up clever ways to harvest it all; ruthless being conquering being-
[march 04, 1906, at rock pile creek, sonoma, california]


i'd turned myself towards rows of page-bound greenery. i was looking for an insight into the inanimate mass we both depend on and plunder. oil, water, air, fuel, crops.. then forests: stoic browns and proud plumes, quiet and relentless, all knowing, still, wilderness, i'd thought. how quaint my ideas were. but the story of a man in the middle of it all is indeed all wilderness, all madness.


from chapter 14, after the tree falls,

al wanderer, hadwin's former colleague from lillooeit, could have been speaking for all woodsman through history when he looked back over his own empty corner of british columbia and said, "good god. i didnt think it was possible to log this much."

"man", (George Perkins Marsh) wrote more than 140 years ago, "who even now finds scarce breathing room on this cast globe, cannot retire from the Old World to some yet undiscovered continent, and wait for the slow action of such causes to replace...the Eden he has wasted." That year (1864) saw the creation of california's yoesmite state reserve, which included the continent's first federally protected trees.

by 1919, just as a group of wealthy californians was forming the Save the Redwoods League, the first portable chain and circular saws began appearing on the cover of Scientific American.

einarson picked up his train of thought: "another reason i like falling," he said, "is i like walking around in old-growth forests. it's kind of an oxymoron i guess - to like something and then go out and kill it."

a cap so fine.

[ uk, cardiff. the senedd]

[ usa, illinois. bahá'í house of worship]

[ turkey. erzurum holy mosque. all photos via thedeputydog]

(sometimes i think) the very act of tilting the head up is reverence of one beyond yourself, is contemplation of a possible other.


[ israel, mount carmel. enchantedceiling]

hands.

[ singapore . restaurant(?)]

looking at the chef engaged in his work, precise metal in motion, and hands, his hands moulding and kneading, one felt it was not a job cut out for many. it reminds me:

laborare est orare

(never complicated responsibilities) the essence of it breathes honesty, (not drudgery) its directive simple. and when else do we feel free and simultaneously vital than when we are engaged in that we love; when else do does one feel in harmony with something beyond his lonesome self. we're physical beings in a physical world. shall we not wrestle this and remember how we feel alive when in motion, in tandem with that we enjoy and express, and with that we believe in?

*

Teach me, my God and my King,
In all things thee to see,
And what I do in any thing,
To do it as for thee:


Not rudely, as a beast,
To runne into an action;
But still to make thee prepossest,
And give it his perfection.


A man that looks on glasse,
On it may stay his eye;
Or if he pleaseth, through it passe,
And then the haev'n espie.


All may of thee partake:
nothing can be so mean,
Which with his tincture (for thy sake)
Will not grow bright and clean.


A servant with this clause
Makes drudgerie divine:
Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,
Makes that and th' action fine.


This is the famous stone
That turneth all to gold:
For that which God doth touch and own
Cannot for lesse be told.

the elixir.
-george herbert

feel better when

[stonehenge. naturewhispers]
'd been looking and looking.
this time, the search was
not for an 'it' factor.
but hunger, to
know, feel, be,
how it must have been like-

and then. as always, others have said it first, and always the same.

i think and think and think,
i've thought myself out of happiness one million times,
but never once into it.
- everything is illuminated. jonathan safran foer.

..and it,
it never is what one thinks it is.


[ .telegraph ]

365,000 people.
4.58am.
the northern solstice is the summer solstice is the winter solstice, depending on.
when the sun directly sits above the constellation cancer ,






- or not.

y.z. kami's portraits.

[ .by y.z. kami. via dailyserving ]


"kami emphasizes the flux between matter and spirit, life and mortality, the outer layer and the inner soul."

this line hit it for me. is the in-between an ever seductive intangible. its a accessible tie to both extremes; it offers definitions for both.

it promises all but reminds of nothingness.

mmmm- maybe that is why we go on to only stare?

manmade muse: brian dettmer/ books/sculpture

[ . by brian dettmer]

amost like an autopsy, he carves into these paper tomes,
revealing and exposing,
but also building into a final cohesive sculpture.


talking about digging into a good book.

[heres a video: the book doesnt really have an obligation or the monopoly that they used to...]

eclipsed.

[philipines. manila bay. from the telegraph ]

a partial solar eclipse gave a setting crescent on 30th january.

that's a red anyone can respect.

fly.

[genting highlands. malaysia]

to the new year,
spinner:
of dreams and renewed energy,
of hope and exuberance.

round and again.

is all belief

[singapore. ]

a girl among christmas decorations set up on a square outside a mall.

now tell me, is all belief make-believe?

santa or god, the love of your life or your coming promotion. tell me, how are they different?






but we must always make-believe, to have in our lives, as our lives, a little more than bricks and mortar, toothbrushes and suits.

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.

soul-searching, not for mine, but yours //or are they same-same, even if different?

[ayuthaya. at a very small wat, no english name posted]
my first pile of bricks i came across. traipsed around the small area, poked my head into one of the few shrines and found an array of shiny statuettes and food offerings. the place seemed well- visited.

later, a pack of wild dogs trundled over. a black one leapt onto the ledge here, and i had to flee.


[outside wat phra si sanphet. ]
fallen offering on the steps leading up to a statue of a past king


[wat ratburana]
plucking time from the stupas.. cleaners sweeping the grounds, pulling out weeds. i wondered what a place can mean to a person, to a collective people.


[wat ratburana.]
quirky find.


[wat thammikarat.]
they were from the past, but very much rooted in the present consciousness of the people... the heavy concentration of wats everywhere also made me question why i was exerting so much time and energy hunting them down. what was i shooting for? i couldnt get past the what, let alone the why.

it paralleled my church-hopping in germany, but this time it was pure fascination. no loneliness, no sadness. this time i felt certain there is something- but i couldn't find anything (about?). for a while all i got were flat opaque images, insect bites and sunburns many times over. and again and again, at the heart of each wat, the glorious gold would just sit there, making me wonder.


[wat thammikarat.]


... all the good and evil in the world we try to explain, and then cope by externalising them in the physical acts we do, and symbols we cherish. sometimes the two get conflated, or completely divorced.

... find myself continually intrigued by the hidden meanings behind concrete events, and none more mystifying more in the sacred realm of rituals and objects in religion. in ayuthaya, the many (did i mention many? about 400 in a lil town of about 90,000) shrines and statues were magnficient and sagely in their age and otherworldliness. time seemed trivial when you see an eternal belief still strong in offerings dotting the most unexpected places; you cross a road and immediately, the humdrum traffic closes behind you and you're transported 400, sometimes 800 years ago.

i touch the old bricks on the left and look to the stream of cars and people on the right, and wonder, really, what lies beneath all this.

many times ive wrestled with the link between physical reality and the morphous meanings under it all. ayuthaya occupies a another special place in my heart because it was to here i first ran screaming out of bangkok, - here, the quiet began to grow. there were (are) no answers, but to see clearly -again- was a kind of rush.


[ ?.]
across the threshold.



[wat ?thammikarat.]
what overlooks us all?


[wat ratburana. ]


[wat mahathat.]
where the buddha's head is embedded in twisted tree roots.

it was magnificent and quiet, receding into the background. id marched through the rain to snap its supposed otherworldly glow at night (illuminated by lamps), but my thoughts and ambitions got worn down by the traffic, and i let myself be sucked back into present time and bustle.

id found it yet another world i could not quite reach.

i don't mean to offend you personally, but do you not belong to the human race that has killed over 100 million members of their own species in the twentieth century alone?

you mean guilt by association?

it is not a question of guilt. but as long as you are run by the egoic mind, you are part of the collective insanity. perhaps you haven't looked very deeply into the human condition in its state of dominance by the egoic mind. open your eyes and see the fear, the depair, the greed, and the violence that are all-pervasive. see the heinous cruelty and suffering on an unimaginable scale that humans have inflicted and continue to inflict on each other as well as on other life forms on the planet. you dont need to condemn. just observe. that is sin. that is insanity. that is unconsciousness. above all, don't forget to observe your own mind. seek out the root of the insanity there.

:: the power of now. eckhart tolle.

[[ all photos taken at ayuthaya, thailand]]

in the under-waters.

id once posted on ethereal beauty, whether manifested in nature itself or conjured through the imaginations of photographers... heres another stream of simply aesthetically pleasing (in quite an ecstatic manner too) photos from zena holloway:






[all images from zenaholloway.com ]

appearances may be superficial, and hence seem... superficial.
but not all that glints are merely articifial coating, good for applause but not too consequential. sometimes you see a narrative which takes seed inside and grows outwards into tangibility; you get enraptured by a scene which forces you to take pause, and consider.

you get inspired, caught up in sheer delight,
elevated above ordinariness and mundanity.
it infuses you, and sets you on a course (necessarily positive?).
it sits there, but it moves worlds.

that, to me, is most utilitarian. and when aesthetics meet utility, it marries existence and purpose at the highest level.