As the door closes shut on one year and opens to a brand new one, we get the urge to make changes, to have a clean slate and to resolve ourselves to a set of higher standards. It is as though every time, a new permission is issued to become a better human and to raise ourselves to a finer level of human development. Like the rings inside a tree trunk, every time we make a full cycle around the sun, we get this sense of renewal.
What are your resolutions for 2016? Are they real or forced? Conventional or brand new?
As harsh and as raw as Yunnan was to travel through, I am counting the days till I am able to go back there and be charmed again by its wild intensity. I have been told that the way I processed the photos of this past month has been too contrasty, too sharp, too extreme, and this is true. Yunnan for me was exactly that, rough, sharp, wild, and its lifestyle contrasting greatly with what I and most of us are used to. I feel that knowing different cultures thoroughly can only increase and deepen our humanity. So with that, I say farewell to the Honghe region of Yunnan and its colorful people and I will meet you again tomorrow with the start of a new month of images, somewhere entirely different…
Thank you for your comments, encouragement, advice and views along the way.
We run breathless towards adulthood only to find out that we would give anything to go back through the very same gate and reclaim the shadows of our childhood…
There is a magical thing about children, which is the ability to use anything around them for creating a unique playground. I remember playing near our house in a Lebanese village jumping down a terraced field from one level to another hoping that no bones were broken, and making glue from tree sap and flower milk, and creating a small world from moss, stones and twigs. It is no different in Cambodia. I saw children creating games that fit their environment and adapting to make the most of what is available to them. The children I saw in the floating village had not heard of ipads or nintendo yet, and their fun appears to be just as great if not greater than our children’s in the west.
photo taken: boy running back on forth between the stilt raised structures in the Tonle Sap floating village
I like to think that there are special angels assigned for each child that is born to this planet, to guide them, watch over them and shower them with buckets full of joy when life get rough…
Glowing smiles, shiny eyes, boundless energy, these things are not what I expected to see in the children of a war ravaged country like Congo. But children are just incredible, aren’t they? They seem to be plugged into an entirely different power source to to the one we are connected to as adults. They never seem to tire, they can run for hours, the can laugh madly about the silliest things, they can jump, sing and react with no inhibition in a safe circumstance and yes, they are like that even in Congo.
You know how when you are a child in school, only very few things resonate and remain with you despite all the efforts from your teachers to fill your head with information? For me, it was a chemistry teacher that I really loved because he demonstrated all his theories in a practical manner, a math teacher who was clearly in love with math, so he was able to infect me with that love, and then there was the magic of history. Not all of history, some of it was dead boring, but some stories just lived in me. One of these stories was the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. It was all just too fantastic and too heroic and too hauntingly transporting to another place and another time. But can you imagine that the place spoken of was just an hour’s drive away from my school? The incredible Epic of Gilgamesh takes place partly in the cedar forest of Lebanon, the same forest that was mentioned 75 times in the bible, the very same forest whose tree resin was used for the mummification of Ancient Egypt, whose wood was used for the temples of the pharaohs and their tombs, the very same trees used to construct the palaces of kings David and Salomon, as well as the famous temple of Salomon, and the list goes on…
And in this ancient forest now called ‘the cedars of god’, my daughter runs today bathing in the vibrations of ancient history…
With 2 days left in my 365 project, I realize how incredibly fast this year has gone by. It always amazes me how elastic time is and how differently it can be perceived. Having a holiday can go by so fast while waiting for a holiday to come can last forever. Watching children grow is another fast train. With the coming of the year of the dragon, I realize that 6 years have passed since our move to China and how Lea moves so fast into her future in front of my unbelieving eyes.
The life that runs free, the journey that seeks the unknown, the lightness that is bound by no gravity, the dreams that shape themselves from the threads of the future, the spirit that flies on the wings of her mind, her spirit life…
