Tag: experience

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contemplations inspiration Malaysia morning coffee talk Photography street photography

Morning Coffee Talk~ 9/365

Casting the net~ Malaysia

Good morning,

Some days like today, when the mind feels very busy like it is working overtime, thoughts flying here and there without any apparent rhyme or reason, I stop.

Stopping is not as simple as it sounds. I remember as a 21 year old, taking a trip alone to India with a the sole purpose of finding focus. Once there, I decided to take up a vow of silence for one month. I did that in the confines of an ashram in South India, and during that time, I discovered among so many things how busy the mind and the brain can be in a single moment. They are so much more complex than I ever imagined… So many lines of thought can act themselves out at the same moment and on so many levels of perception, some emotionally connected, some random, some related to past events, some future projecting, and others to do with immediate needs of the moment…

I learned to quiet my thoughts down to try and focus on one or two threads at a time. And that experience was a pivotal moment in my life that I can link back to when needed as life gets hectic and chaotic.

So today felt like that and I needed to cast my net on one single thought, and that was ‘thought’ itself.

Thankful for having the gift of choice to be able to focus on one line of thought… how amazing is that? Feeling grateful for being human today.

Wishing you all a peaceful and inspired rest of the week.

Categories
CHINA inspiration Photography street street photography Uncategorized

Wanderlust~

yanghsuo portrait 2.jpg
an image of me meeting a local woman and child,  taken by a good friend on an adventure in Yangshuo, China, a few years back.

How gratifying it is to explore the spinning sphere we call home. Each time I plan a new trip, I feel a bubbling of excitement at the unknown that would undoubtedly meet, the amazing people who cross my path and the images my camera would capture. It is as soul nourishing journey when I am far from my routine, away from the usual comforts of home and when I get the chance to push the limits of what I know. It makes me think of how knowledge was collected prior to the industrial revolution and the schooling systems that created machines for the industry; before that time knowledge was sought through experience, apprenticeship and exploration. What an incredibly esoteric experience.

Where is your next journey taking you?

Categories
lebanon life Photography story street

Day 28~ February 28th~ Lebanon

when time carves its lines

When I started this project I wrongly assumed that a story such as mine with my Lebanon could be told with 29 photographs and 29 small writings. With every passing day I could see that life does not work like that. The stories that came to my mind and married with my photographs each day barely scratched the surface of the immensity that life in Lebanon was to me. Life engraves lines in us, each experience life changing, each event leaving its unique signature on our aging skin. No aging face is designed like any other, in the same way that no life is like another and no fingerprint is the same.

I met this lady in the street while in Beirut, her name is Aida, she could not tell me for sure how old she was and she sold cigarettes for a living. Her lines are evidence to a life that would take ages to tell. Nothing is more humbling than looking at a face like Aida’s.

 

 

Categories
lebanon life Photography

Day 13~ February 13th~ Lebanon

imprinted within

I have been writing in this series about the wonderful history, the enchanting memories, the great mysteries that live in my home country, but it would be an incomplete story if I were to skip the part of history that has printed itself on my soul the most, the life changing part.

I will start the story at the end of it. I remember moving to New York after I finished my university studies and after arriving in the buzzing metropolis that I was unable to sleep, not because it was too noisy, but because it was too quiet. The last years I spent in my beautiful Lebanon were filled with noises of war, with the shrill cries of bullets, of bombs, and with the ugly smell of death. Experiences like these print deep in you, they do not just fade away, the are always there under the surface threatening to haunt you. My reaction to those memories and experiences is the same as all Lebanese people, you run away from it if you can (which I did), and you love life even more. I do love life more after living the long years of war, I value it so much more and every morning is a new burst of inspiration and a phoenix of a new and fresh start.

The Lebanese recent war started in 1975 and only ended in 1991.