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A Century Is Nothing A Century Is Nothing
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The Language Company The Language Company
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Subject to Change Subject to Change
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Ice girl in Banlung Ice girl in Banlung
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Finch's Cage Finch's Cage
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Entries in documentary street photography (38)

Friday
Mar162018

Chase Money

There was a man in a poor village.

Everyday he went into the mountains searching for gold.

Everyone said he was crazy.

After forty years he found gold, returned to the village, exchanged the gold for cash, bought a rope, tied the money to one end and the other around his waist.

He ran through the village dragging money behind him.

Everyone said he was crazy.

“What are you doing?” they yelled.

“For forty years I’ve been chasing money and now money is chasing me.”

Subject To Change

North Lao Weaver

Saturday
Mar102018

Street Talk

Captain Tremendous Tremor here again with an update from the dead zone of grieving Chinese parents and crushed kiddies. One reality shows to go ya where Big Brother wraps barbwire around collapsed schools preventing parents from rescuing 10,000 kids. Educational corruption and fear thrives in a Brave New World.

If you want to play you must pay. We know so much and understand so little.

“I don’t understand a thing. Let’s take the day off and be creative,” sang Zeynep, “grab our cameras and tale a walk.”

Lucky and Zeynep passed through ephemeral effervescent worlds healing strangers. Free non-transferable luck was distributed to the needy.

Air simmered grilled meat aromas in a tomato culture as swirling silver musical spoons tickled tea glasses. Seven tonal notes create cosmic spectrums.

Inside Ulus alleys near Ankara laughing blacksmiths with calloused hands burnished musical metallic containers. Friends forged balconies, grates, bars and enclosures on anvils with Thor’s hammer. Gateless gates.

A coal man loaded bags of black on his back. A cornered Russian mistress wearing diamonds on the sole of her shoes waited for rich monkeys. A weaver loomed geometric silk ikat threads. A father taught his son the art of carpet repair. Needle led thread. Dusty stories coagulated and copulated on teakettles rusting atop Roman burial slabs covered in binary codes.

Expanding universal maps and NSA spy satellites collected data.

Total information awareness. TIA.

A peasant woman rolled dough to make ravioli-like manta pasta. A brown snail carrying its spiral galaxy home scaled green and white stones as waving antenna received signals from orbiting space-time Dream Sweepers.

Head scarfed Kurdish women inside stone path shadows near crumbling straw packed homes with broken wooden slat shutters sat in a sacred circle talking and rolling spicy grated seeds into grape leaves. Thick meaty fingers toiled. Heavy 24-caret golden bracelets reflecting scattered light led to undiscovered archaeological sites for sore eyes and a doctoral thesis on amalgamated dust.

“It’s true to report that everyone in Turkey is psychologically well adjusted, employed and content with their free life,” said Zeynep.

“You’re dreaming, delusional or telling real lies,” said Curious.

“Made in the shade, cool baby,” Lucky said. “This is to say with precise specific clarity they have the courage to speak, are never tired or afraid of falling in love and marrying someone outside their rigid social and/or economic class. They take amazing risks and suffer greatly with gratitude.

"Photographing the universe they rent time-share apartments in black holes sucking matter into a void. Some scribble or doodle unintelligible non-linear calligraphic ideograms. The majority disappears into phosphorescent television monitors where they absorb political blather and fake reality shows. Media buys them. They give up their consciousness and miss the show.”

In Bursa a father + two son trash collection team pushed a rolling cart loaded with discarded plastic computers past crumbling Ottoman buildings secured behind barbwire and rusty locks. Faded orange and blue pigments peeled a long lost hollow bell.

One freezing morning a grandmother staring at Ottoman history lifted her child’s child to an iron-grated window. Zeynep, an invisible street photographer present with empathy squeezed a soft shutter release. A whirling dervish painting with light in continuous mode murdered time.

“Freedom is essential in my life. I control the result with spontaneity. I develop real relationships and embrace extreme situations. I’m a photographer who needs to travel. If I stay in one place I go blind.”

“Our images communicate light, story, form, emotion, information and raw aesthetics,” said L.

“Emotional impact. Photography is more art and intuition than process and procedure,” said Z.

In a warm art studio overlooking a fast icy river flowing from Uludag a female flute player fingering emptiness explained melancholic notes. Her chattering laughing friend created marbled flower art using pinpoint dabs of color in a tray filled with hot wax.

A white seagull’s calibrated internal navigation system negotiated air currents with Winter Hawk, Lone Wolf, 101 Screaming Eagles and Labrys of raging violin string theories. Piano melodies and hard bop jazz improvisation reinforced Bamboo resilience.

A 19% waxing crescent moon danced with clouds. Moon remembered moons in Augustine Fujian. Eat moon cakes, said Curious. Feed dead ancestors with filial duty. A cruel heartless forgotten forgiving month heard sky welcome moon. Clouds explored atmospheric conditions.

HELP screamed in a literary agent’s slush pile.

Help was a bulldozer leveling forests to harvest trees outside Phonsavan, Laos.

Vietnam bought them all. One tree = $10,000.

Chopsticks chairs tables toothpicks. Wood you believe it?

Lighter than Winter Hawk’s feathers, HELP made fun of people.

Invisible howling soft wing energy manifested Beauty. Letters. Signs. Symbols. Metaphors. Observations. Unpleasant facts.

Help expressed brevity. How are you? I'm short, said Brevity.

Help played with variable truth-value meaning.

Help, a landmine in Cambodia below the surface of appearances in a luminous landscape reaching infinity weighted for sensation.

 The Language Company

Wednesday
Feb282018

Laughter is beauty

A man pushes an empty wheelchair across airport tarmac.

Boarding pass woman does eyeliner. The 'modern' stainless steel global glass hair port design hasn't reached Vientiane time warp.

Laughter is the Beauty.

Transitions are radiant and clear.

One life, no plan, many adventures.

Intention. Mindfulness. Impermanence.

Ancient stories. Music is the muse in Luang Prabang. Clean air, excellent light, brown Mekong, green elevations, deep valleys and long visions.

Hey Orphan, your Mystery bike is faster now.

Yeah, we visited a shop in LP after seeing the old tire hanging on a nail next to a white shirt drying in the sun. He was a nice guy, filled the tires, blasted Mystery with water, soaped and scrubbed it down, air hosed it dry, oiled the chain, re-calibrated Shimano gears and said, I'm going to Japan next year to see my family.

 

Thursday
Feb222018

Fabulous Fables

The world is a myth. We live in a fable.

I used to be someone else but I traded him in.

Traveling isn't supposed to be fun, said an American father to his whining son sitting on a cafe balcony in Istanbul overlooking the Bosporus, it's an adventure.

I don't find. I discover.

 

Mai's hearing evaluation.

Anthony from NZ came, met, talked, promised, took her out, tried to seduce her, failed, left. Mai is resigned to her former life, massage and laundry scrubbing under the paternal gaze of her older sister who sits in perpetual admiration of her mirrored reflection.

How does her awareness and disappointment register in her POTENTIAL for unrealized dreams?

How does her silent resignation and understanding comprehend lost chance, all the complexity w/o expectations?

In the false dream of star rain they moved a wooden toy pawn,
the salad bar in silence welcomed cool air from a brown river,
children pressed noses to a rolling window, laughing.

An archeologist skips through star puddles into Angkor Wat excavations.

Freedom sings stones,
selling a Blue Pumpkin to a Cambodian land mine amputee w/o a left leg
selling DVDs to fat tourists talking with their mouths full.

An Enfield spinning the Wheel of Time, rejoicing in small miracles rumbles in Pokhara, Nepal.

Sit in meditation.  

We do laundry by machine, said Language Animal.

3.8 billion years ago a black hole captured a star the size of our sun. It sucked the star into its empty mass. The star exploded the black hole. The escaping energy created streams of light we see today.

At that moment 20 raindrops trusted intuition.

To travel is to feel.

Indonesia asked you to return. You said thank you, farewell. Hello Hanoi.

Orchids remember you. The apple tree you planted at Gardenia is growing. Roots buried deep below blossoms lie fragrant with memory.

In and out dialogue.

Discover what speaks to you.

 

Wednesday
Feb142018

Gratitude

In late 2011 in Vientiane, Laos he finished another revision of A Century is Nothing.

He let it rest. He's tired of it. He's been consistent with it every morning and afternoon.

Doing the work. Polishing is the party.

He feels good about the process.

Stories inside stories.

A work of art is never finished. It is abandoned.

The 2nd edition was published December 2012.

After spraying oil on sprocket and chain he rode Mystery the mountain bike.

Slow.

He discovered a woman with her plastic box sitting in the shade doing nails on a quiet side street.

He gestured scraping callused souls. She smiled and finished another woman.

He soaked feet and hands in water. She scrubbed off dead skin.

It reminded him of murdering his manuscript darlings. She trimmed cuticles and skin with a small silver tool. She wrote him into her story and he wrote her into his. They're are mutually inconclusive.

Love is unconditional.

He is open minded, patient, positive, flexible, and friendly.

She is intuitive and creative with empathy, trust, respect and gratitude.

He paid. They smiled.

He rode away protected by a white butterfly ringing a bell.

Present and empty.