Hi my friends,
I remember a world with less restrictions, a planet without a pandemic, a state of affairs when most travelled freely, and a time when the world as it is today was inconceivable.
And yet, here we are, at the end of an almost 3 year run at this virus’s stroll around our planet or is that wishful thinking?
Waking up predawn, watching the first light unfold, creating dreams to replace the ones I would have had under my sheets; sunrise photography is becoming a much loved practice.
The luxury of not having to share the landscape, to admire the first light till your eyes are twinkly, to breath in the abundance of air till you are giddy; trumps morning sleep any day.
*How unfortunate that the word ‘trump’ makes me cringe each time I use it.
Ireland is one of those places on earth where time plays by its own rules. It can not be confined to any human rules and it waxes and wanes as it sees fit. As soon as I set foot on this magical emerald Isle, my wonders about time, space, movement and change began brewing. It took me to untapped corners of my mind where life borders on the magical. From that I wondered about photography, the movement we capture, the change we try to portray as artists and the power inside the image when time can be portrayed.
If you have never been to Ireland, I just have one word to say:
Go…
It’s a funny thing, time. I remember as a child not minding time at all; being and living in the moment; existing in a plane where time had no say in my business. Then slowly things begin to change. Time would no longer allow itself to be ignored. It wants to assert its managerial role in the affairs of my human existence. Freedom is replaced by deadlines, strict appointments and duties to be fulfilled on ‘time’. But little does time know that I remember what it was like to be free, and that I can escape to that place where I kept my childhood alive and well. Don’t tell time…
Of the many strange things I have done in my life, one of them was deciding to live in Roosevelt Island. I did that for a year and every morning, the strangeness of that place grew and every evening I wondered why is it that a place can make you feel that way. A small island across the East River on the side of Manhattan, where no cars are allowed and the whole width of the island is 240 meters and length of about 3 km, it is owned by the city of Manhattan but feels like worlds away.
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Boracay is a place you leave and always dream of going back to, to its ocean, to its skies, to its lively skies and mostly to its warm people and the girl with the yellow balloon. This ends this month’s journey into the litte paradise island of the Philippines. On to the next!
When our children are very young we try to shelter them from the world, we introduce them to it gradually and with so many filters to protect them from what we perceive as harmful. We guard their innocence with all our might even down to the language that we allow them to hear. Then comes the time when they need to be faced with the ‘real’ world, the world we are leaving them with. The hardest job becomes trying to prepare them for what we think they might not be able to handle knowing that there will be a time when they will no longer want or need our help. That for me, so far, is the most difficult part of parenting.
Innocence is an essence that always rises in our contemplation of the truth of small children. The word ‘innocence’ is usually defined by and associated with lack of guilt or simplicity due to the absence of worldly knowledge and sophistication. But while looking at a child, is that really what makes them radiate innocence? Or is it perhaps their connection to that which is clean pure and in itself innocent. Could it be that one day as they grow older they are forced to disconnect and replace that innocence with more worldly qualities like trickery and games that can attach themselves to guilt and what is defined as sophistication? And I wonder if it not natural to keep this innocence that makes them closer to what a human is meant to be like…
A very strange phenomenon I have encountered repeatedly is with the fear islanders have of the sea or it might be a great awe of the mysterious waters. I keep finding out that locals that live near the sea or ocean never really go into it with the exception of fishermen and sailors. Even in Lebanon, my grandmother who lived all her life 15 minutes away from the shore of the mediterranean, had never set foot in its waters before she passed away. It is also said that the fishermen of the Isle of Aran near the Irish coast, never learn how to swim as they claim it would be much better to die faster by drowning in case they ever fall from their boats.
photo taken: local fishermen on the shores of Boracay~ Philippines