Categories
india inspiration Photography street photography

Morning Coffee Talk~15/365

A woman in Varanasi, India with handprints around the door frame of her home.

Good Morning,

As part of my daily morning process, I have always started with observing the root number of the day. You arrive at this number by adding all the numbers of the day, month and year till you arrive at a single number between 1 and 9. Today is 15+12+2021=5.

5 days have to do with, yes, you guessed it, the nature of 5. If you start to observe the nature of days between 1 and 9, you gradually see a pattern. The best way to start this investigation is by researching the number itself, where have you seen in in nature, religion, culture, mathematical anomalies…etc.

5 is a prime number, we see it in many flower petals, in the number of fingers and toes, in our extremities (we look like stars), in starfish, the 5th Fibonacci number, 5 senses, the five elements in hinduism: earth, air, water, fire and space or ether, the 5 faces of Shiva, the 5 pillars of Islam, the 5 woundings of Christ, the 5 books of Judaism… and the list goes on.

The reason why my mind went more into 5 and numerology today is because of the image above. You see handprints in the world since the beginning of time, from cave paintings till today’s modern art. There is a huge discussion about these ancient hand prints to determine if they are art or not, as if that matters. But what is the real significance of creating a handprint? Where have we seen it before? I just love finding clues in history about things like this.

And what would the nature of a 5 day like today be? Balance comes to mind… What else? What is the root number of your birth date? What does it suggest? Mine is 5.

Categories
art inspiration lockdown Photography

Let’s Photograph ‘Time’~

Thanks again to all who participated in this ongoing lockdown project!

Categories
architecture Egypt history life Photography

Day 26~ March 26th~ Egypt

inside the shaft of the great pyramid

The Pyramid of Khufu in Giza, the greatest and largest pyramid known to us, I had the chance to walk inside it in 1996. If you find the pyramids mysterious and impressive on the outside which everyone I know does, then the inside will leave you mystified! The pyramid of Khufu is constructed with shafts like this one in the photo above that are perfectly straight and on a large scale connecting in a strange maze that no one seemed to have figured out the purpose of despite many various efforts.

The wooden steps you see in the very old photo I took back then were added to allow tourists to walk up the shaft that leads to the king’s chamber.

It was a very strange feeling being in a such a wonder of the ancient past and thinking only how futuristic it felt.

(writing this post and the next few while away in NYC, so I will have very little  to reply to comments, but hopefully will catch up soon :))

Categories
architecture Egypt history Photography street

Day 18~ March 18th~ Egypt

avenue of the sphinxes~ Luxor

The most baffling thing about ancient history is the search for the real reasons as to why the ancients did what they did…

After being amazed, impressed and dazzled by a 7km avenue in Luxor lined perfectly with sphinxes, I had to ask myself the question: “why would they do that?” It seems far too precise to be a whim of an architect, or the egoistic wish of a king, too well planned to not have a greater purpose. I had a similar feeling walking in between the avenues of megalithic rocks in Carnac, France, where huge megalithic rocks were transported from far away places and placed in rows, tens of kilometers long at equal distances to form avenues across fields and valleys.

I am not really looking for answers as much as I am enjoying the search for them. The process of asking with all the awe and wonderment is what makes history so attractive, to mystery dream, to be lost in the search for truth…