In the midst of a city being demolished, life refuses to stop and be arrested. Kashgar is rich with craftsmen of all kinds and to survive they must continue crafting and go on selling.
In the streets of the old city, this old metal craftsman was selling his creations while hammering away at a piece of metal that will become another household tool when he is done.
We are always moving, from place to place, from moment to moment, forever on a journey to somewhere. Some move fast, others slow and some believe that they are not moving at all, but they are. All things move. Even what we see as still, stationary, dead, that is also moving. Yes, even my cup of coffee near my mac is whizzing at 107,000 km/h around the sun as I type this. Motion, another mystery to dive into…
“Home”, where is it? What is it? “H” “O” “ME”? A planetary place of personal space for a human? A place of safety, of containment, a place to recharge and of being oneself? So much nostalgia is involved with a home, the place where memory webs are spun, where the forming years of who we became are designed and written. What if we live a nomadic life with ever changing homes? What then becomes of that place of safety?
Today as I drove threw villages in the Lebanese mountains, I was haunted by the sense of light emptiness that comes from the search for the meaning of life…
Don’t you love moments in life when you look at someone, a total stranger and without exchanging any words, a pure sense of joy is exchanged between you and them? It is almost a secret celebration of the fact of being human together. It really lifts me up when it happens, it brightens the heart and causes a lightness of being. These two workers were in the middle of their difficult task on top of a large construction site, they spotted me taking photos and they just burst with smiles and a contagious sense of joy, with their giggles echoing down the alley. They made my day 🙂
It has been said that the truth of something, anything lies in its essence.
Often this fragile truth is hidden by layers and layers of personality and until those are stripped away, the inner finer core cannot be seen and experienced.
It is the same with everything isn’t it?
The fine being protected by layers of coarse, the soft covered with a layer of hard…
And anything worthwhile must be struggled for.