I’m about to head to the airport for a flight to Haneda. I’ll spend the next 5 days in Tokyo with no other objective than to enjoy myself. Back burnering work, massive business travel plans and relocation will feel great and provide me the space to catch my breath. It’s a minimal approach I’m taking and probably the first trip I’ve taken in years where I don’t need to worry about batteries for a camera. My only image maker on this trip will my by 35mm Lomo LC-A+ and my eyes.
Forgetting about instant gratification, do-overs and the immediacy of digital media, I am going analog. Japanalog, actually. It’s something of a metaphor and also a reminder. Composition, available light, open eyes and the patience to see how things develop. With everything moving so fast around me right now this is my tiny revolution and I’m excited to revolt.
So I’m off now and will leave you with a pretty song from a band that I can’t stop listening to…
“The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.”
That smarty pants was old Abe Lincoln and, on the cusp of what is sure to be an intense and exciting 2011, I am taking this to heart and going to try my best to just take things as they come. This is probably good advice for all of us, actually. All the resolutions and promises and hopes and projects can, if we’re not careful, stifle our abilities to experience the present and leave us dissatisfied or somehow longing for what could’a, should’a or would’a been. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…presence is the best present so, for this new year in this new decade, I resolve to try and stay present and do the best with each day I’m given – whatever that might be. That’s the kind of New Year’s resolution I can get behind…tangible enough to have some viable metrics but intangible enough that I have elbow room.
Sooooooooooooo 2010. . . . what were you all about? And how am I better off because of you?
Probably at the top of the list (by a lot) would be mobility. I was all about travel and all those destinations and quiet hours on trains and planes in between brought me the gift of perspective, some introspection and awe. The past year saw my carbon footprint increase by leaps and bounds (a whopping 20,646 kg CO2 according to Dopplrs account of my recorded trips) as I traversed the planet for work and love and friends and family. Japan, Bangkok (3x), Paris (2x), Vermont (2x), New Jersey (2x), Austria (2x), Macau (2x), New York City (3x), San Francisco, Los Angeles, Reno, Seattle, Santa Barbara, Rhode Island (2x), Boracay, Barcelona, Siem Reap, Phnom Penh, Phuket, Hanoi and – naturally, China (5x). Wow. The list is amazing, in and of itself, but what’s actually amazing is the breadth and depth of the stories that wove their way into my life on all those journeys. Seeing myself cast against all these different places, Hong Kong included, whittled down my shell a little and helped reveal more of myself. I’m utterly grateful for the ride, for the joyful erosion, the evolution and the frequent flier miles. In case you missed any of the pix from these adventures (or would like to revisit them) here’s an easy link.
Next up after mobility, if I’m being honest, would have to be work. I’d be a big fat liar if I pretended like I wasn’t a fierce workaholic this entire year. Propelled by the uncertainty of my future and a vision and belief in what I was doing, I gave up a lot of opportunities for personal development in lieu of professional development. I lost balance, stifled some of my more artistic aspirations and turned laser beam in a lot of ways. Measuring ‘lost potential’ is an exercise for Paul Krugman and not something I want to dabble in but, what I can say is that regardless of what I gave up, I have no regrets. I attribute my triumphant return to greatest city on Earth to the work I did this year – all the late night con-calls and power point tweaks and lobbying and jockeying and politics seem worth it to me, though I do plan to try and restore balance again once I’m landed.
Hummm, now that I think about it, work and travel consumed the vast majority of my year. In addition, I was lucky that music found it’s way into my life more regularly than is normally possible for a resident of Hong Kong. MD just posed the question, ‘ how many peoples lives were saved by rock and roll?’ and I’m pretty positive that I was and am all the time. I caught the Secret Machines, the Bobby McGees, Snowblind, Album Leaf, WEEN!!!!, Attack Release, The Futureheads, The National, Prins Nitram, Slash and the Punch Brothers in addition to the live, streaming Phish show that’s playing right now and all the songs and performances I’m forgetting. Oh! Like that Filipino duo in Qing Dao that knew every Lady Gaga song with dance moves to match :) Flying into WEEN from Hong Kong was a highlight, for sure…as was shooting The National at Radio City and getting some shots of Album Leaf published in Time Out Hong Kong. If you want to journey back to the dark corners and sweaty photo pits of my 2010, here’s a nice link.
The kiddos did some growing up, some new ones arrived (Happy 1st New Year, sweet Amelia!), the grow’d up kiddos did some growing older and everybody else moved and turned and bloomed and molted and learned and left and tried and did what they did. With that in mind, life carried on and for that reason alone it was a banner year and I am grateful for all 365 days of it.
This new year promises some very big change for me…a return and also a new beginning. I hope that the circle that follows me back around the planet is more like a spiral – elevating me a little while still placing me exactly in the same place where I began this epic journey almost 4 years ago. For those of you with me now, I wish you upward spirals, patience, surprises, clarity and good parking karma for 2011. Even when things get dicey this year – which they will – remember there’s nothing you can’t do…
Since I’m laid up at home for the third day in a row under a blanket of germs and icky vibes, I might as well curl up with the MacBook and spin you a tale, the last of the big journeys of 2010 – Hanoi. It’s good to wrap this up so I can CLEAN SLATE myself for 2011 and shake out the short, or maybe long, list that I love so well.
Anyway, a friend had some friends in Hanoi and I found a flight for under $500 and that’s how the story begins. 36 hours, a will to live, a couple cameras and a vague outline of the possibilities are all that powered me across the Gulf of Tonkin. And a Dragon Air flight, but I have to assume you didn’t think I flew there on a broom. With all the zoomin’ around I do, it’s one of the most joyful experiences to travel with only a backpack. I’d like to try it more often.
We stayed in a sardine can (with a balcony) off a little alley in the Old Quarter and grazed our way around Hoan Kiem Lake, Nha Tho, the French Quarter and Hai Ba Trung district for the first night and day. The food, as you can imagine, is off the hook and I have a very strong pull to street carts anyway, so the urge to try everything was not one that I fought. I should probably start a food blog that chronicles my epicuriousity with the street carts of the world but I think Mr. Bourdain has that covered. Here’s a quick peek at some of the deliciousness I partook…
Raging Awesome Bahn Mi
Minty, spicy, peanutty, brothy beef noodles
Serious Delish
Spicy Bitter Melon (meh)
Bun Cha (doesn't suck)
Taking photos of the food was about half as satisfying as actually trying everything so, you can imagine, I was not an unhappy woman.
As for the non-food related aspect, well, Hanoi is something. A buzzing hive of scooters and horns and carts and people. I used to joke about Amsterdam streets requiring focus and agility to cross, but Hanoi is about 15 levels above that. Advanced Frogger. It would be *very* easy to get hit by any number of moving vehicles there and, after 5-6 hours of taking your life in your hands to see the city, it’s good to sit somewhere and thank god (or whoever) that you are still alive. I know I sound dramatic, but its true.
{ this is the spot where I planned to upload the little short I made that set some nutty Hanoi traffic up along with Traffic’s wonderful tune Utterly Simple. My tired lungs and foggy brain have hindered my video editing abilities, however, and left you only with this lousy blog post }
Doesn't even remotely capture the noise and/or danger
So….as for the rest about Hanoi…we covered a lot of ground, imbibed of Bai Hoi, window shopped, saw water puppets, avoided shoe-glue guys, played ‘lock down’ in the Hanoi Hilton, ate, breathed and were generally merry. Saturday night, however, proved to cast all the other awesomeness into a shadow due to its raging bigness, total unexpectedness and sheer drunkenness so it seems like the right story to tell.
Some Vinegar Hillbillies were also rocking Hanoi and we connected with them late at some little spot where the whiskey and rice wine were free and flowing. The whose-who of Hanoi were clearly present and I felt a little under dressed for the occasion…though the 3-4 Tiger’s I drank prior kept me unaware of this realization until now. A pianist whose name I should remember was playing a small concert that was very, very big in reality. Here’s a little (low res) clip I shot of one of her less John Cage-y numbers and more classic…at only 3:36, it’s worth your time to listen to.
Tiana Alexandra was the host of this soiree (perhaps you know her better from her workout video’s?) and, once the music stopped, we all grabbed bottles of this and/or that and headed to another cool spot whose name I also don’t remember. This is where the night went from fuzzy to blurry to fun fun fun eventually taking me to some epic seafood and Ruou and finally back to the sardine can to hunker down with my hangover. As for the party people, well, this was a primo lot.
Cheers
Cheers
this ain't no Bear Paw wine
Tiana
I could post a ton more drunky pants snap shots of this awesome night but, instead, you can go see them if you want to here. Suffice to say, it was extraordinary and really fun!
So as not to depart in a wake of rice wine and bird ruou, I’ll share with a few more of my favorite images from my weekend. Fingers crossed that I get myself on a boat in Halong Bay before I leave Asia to finish what I started…
Yesterday I decided to head across the harbor and ‘step into my view’ to sneak a closer peek at the container port that I see from my apartment every day. According to the all knowing Wikipedia, this port was the worlds largest back in 2004 but, since then, Singapore and Shanghai have stepped up and taken that ‘honor.’ We all love the effect of progress and industry (she typed on her new iPad) probably because most of us can ignore the ‘man behind the curtain’ and stay clear of what ‘that man’ sounds and smells like.
Wandering deep into Kowloon and skirting the edge of the container ports, I thought about how, in New York City, I would have had multiple cops tell me I couldn’t take pictures. Here in HK, at least in Port 4 anyway, I walked right in. And then out again…those machines are huge and terrifying and I decided that, though I love to follow my camera where ever it takes me, I also want to live. I’m sure that Edward Burtynsky gets a backstage pass or something when he works in places like that. Anyway, I walked for about 4 hours from Ting Li all the way back to Kowloon in awe of what the global economy actually looks like in action.
Here are a few of my favorites from yesterday, shot both with a small Canon DSLR as well as my Lomo Seagull TLR Medium Format. If you want to see the whole set, click here.
The Sound of Industry - Hong Kong Container Port
Container Port Road South - Kowloon, Hong Kong
Little Boxes on the Hillside
...
Hissing hydraulics, clanging metal, rattling chains, swinging cables…I thought back to when I was at an old quarry in Ferropolis, Germany how those machines must have been loud enough to stir everything to the core. Impressive and terribly ominous were the parallel trains of thought. I still smell like industry and my ears are still ringing from the noise.
Last week I wrote a little bit on my train to China and thought I’d share that now:
Wednesday, November 10th – 18:35 Through Train to Guangzhou
I’m breathing through my nose sitting in Coach 3, Seat 45 on a direct train from Kowloon to Guangzhou. A pile of dead, wet dogs must have been the last passengers in this car and the A/C must have been kaput while the train slowly crawled across somewhere hot and vast. That was the scenic route to the moral: this train smells like ass. Living in the bustling heart of ‘dried seafood’ street, my nose is less delicate than most and it takes something particularly pungent to get my attention. The talkative Chinese family sitting in front of me just opened an army of rustling plastic bags and what was bad just got worse. Add the smell of ‘tangy’ and some loud chewing and you can bet this ride is gonna be a long one.
The 16th Annual Asia Games 2010 are all the rage in Guangzhou now and I have mild fear that navigating from train station to hotel could prove more trafficky (emphasis on icky) or chaosy than usual. It could be my hectic work schedule or perhaps the thick and sticky pollution that rests itself on the tips of GZ’s skyline like a sagging big top, but after many visits, I can’t say that I really know the place. Station to office to hotel to office to station leaves a lot to be desired for the adventurer in me but, I can already tell, this trip will be no different. Unbelievably, I didn’t even bring a camera with me. Not even a point and shoot!
The train is moving now and I’m in one of those seats pointing in the wrong direction. Pointing forwards, moving backwards or vice versa. I can’t help but think that a lot of people travel through their whole lives like this. The hostesses are kicking into high gear and the cart of totally new smelling smells is getting ready to roll through and party and mingle with every other olfactory assault…I’m saturated now so I don’t think it can get any worse. My earl grey latte from Starbucks and cola flavored Pucho should hold me over until I find what exotic fare waits for me at the Guangzhou Westin so im waving her past. Before she goes though, she recites in Cantonese all the things I’m missing. How nice.
An announcement just explained that, because the toilets empty directly onto the tracks, they are closed for the moment we are near the station. As she explained the potential fines and imprisonment associated with misuse of the lavatory, I couldn’t help but imagine hundreds of plastic wrapped iPhones being deposited in a neat line near the China border. Import of goods to China is serious business and I have to imagine that this stinky-yet-direct channel probably has a whole cottage industry built around it. Like my nose being sensitized, so is my awe of what is possible in China. The mere fact that thoughts like the one I just had popped to mind must mean that I am beginning to understand that I will probably never really understand how this place works. Thats progress.
Progress is relative I suppose. China’s growth has a lot to do with American consumption so when taking all of this in, I can’t help but hope that we can take things down a notch and need less.
I’m not sure where all my words have gone. Unlike matter, it would seem that words can be both created and destroyed. Ideas can be born into action as easily as they can dissipate into the ether. Perhaps my narrative has been slipping out my pores, lost in sweat and endorphins, burned away slowly along with the insulation wrapped around my midsection. Or maybe each passing foot step presses the words deeper into me, fusing them with my marrow, too far from the surface and deep to find their way. I don’t know what is happening,exactly, but a quest for balance has seemed to bring as much as it is taking away.
I’m happy to let go of the old routine. It wasn’t particularly healthy or awesome so it probably won’t be missed. But ushering in a new approach to Hong Kong will see me work harder than expected to preserve the bits worth keeping – like this blog, for instance. It seems like I have to wring myself around like a wet t-shirt to extract what’s happening in my head. Twist this way and that until there is a drip or stream of thought.
Less than 2 weeks from now I’m heading to the USA for the meetings that will reveal my future to me like a crystal ball. Bits and pieces are already flickering and I know that my days as an exPat are numbered and expect to be back in the good old USA early next year. That said, I have this immense wave rushing up inside me like some epic hunger. I feel like I want to drink in as much as I can before I go…see as much as I can before the wind blows me West and the proximity factor is no longer working in my favor. At the same time, I also feel this calm awareness that there is no hurry and, most likely, no matter where I plant myself, the wind will keep blowing me around this amazing planet. The push has equalized the pull and I feel totally at ease and, oddly, patient.
Going up? Or was it over?
I guess the waiting and the seeing and the learning and the changing are all part of the process….
Sometimes, when I recount my introduction to the world, I reference Humpty Dumpty. I say that my diligent and beautiful sister carefully glued the broken shell back together and hatched a happy family while I, well . . . I did the backstroke in the yolk. I’m not sure that this metaphor works but I’ve used it enough times that I have convinced myself of its meaning. Bad things happen to all of us. It’s a fact. How we cope with those things, well, that’s life. My backstroke has taken me all the way around the world by now and connected me to people and places that have served to multiply my experience and wonder and longing. Is it true that the getting more means needing more? On the cusp of another significant life change, I can’t help but think about that.
A few weeks ago I flew to Barcelona to see my Step Mom and the city before a week of work in Paris. What brought us together was not joyful but we found fun and meaning in the creation of new traditions and tapas. I had one day to wander the city before she arrived and we painted the town. I don’t think that there’s anything else I can say about Barcelona besides what a perfect place it is. With a bullet, it shot to the top of my list of favorite cities in Europe and, I’m for real now, the whole world (a rung below New York City,of course, the king of all cities). Yup. It’s that good. Architecture, color, sea, grafitti, Rioja, culture, you name it. Maybe one day I’ll sit on a balcony overlooking Barcelona and write a book of poems about how colors there are more vivid and the light makes everybody look soft and beautiful. Maybe I won’t but I’m just saying that I probably could.
It was hard to edit my photos since I took so many…so, rather than wear you out with 300 images, I’ll pick a few of my favorites to share. If you’d like, you can check out the city photos right here and a special album of (the beautiful) Barcelona street art right here.
Remember me, Barcelona
A castle to call our very own
Silent Market
Barcelona Bathing Beauties
Feast Your Eyes
Patch it back together
Alone with my thoughts
Even just picking those images out to share and passing over the rest took some effort…something about these images recalls the sweet, warm wind and taste of olive oil on my lips.
dont fence me in
Paris was a tad anti-climactic after the color and flavor in Spain. Probably more because I was working than due to any flaw with the City of Light. A trip to Versailles and up the Eiffel Tower served to reveal more of the city to me than I had previously known and it was wonderful. I have saturated this blog with pictures of pretty Paris, but bear with me while I share a few more
what goes up, goes up
Hey Look! There's Paris!
Versailles
You can see the obligatory Eiffel Tower shots, the pyramid at the Louvre and some other photos right here. Paris never ceases to stir the romantic up in me, the chairs so close together, pointing out onto the street in the cafes…
I experienced some of the strongest jet lag I have known returning from that trip and was out of commission for a full 3 days trying to figure out what time it was and how to file all the thoughts and work and empathy that were stirred up during my travels. I emerged on the 4th day with the work aspect sorted and will likely have to backstroke through the rest the same as always…in stride.
This song doesn’t have too much to do with anything I just wrote but it always makes me feel like I’m in a snowglobe, safe but still surrounded, the world outside bending to meet me in the round glass…
A few hours polishing some power point, packing power cords and wrapping things up and then I’m off…A quick flight to Paris, a few hours to kill at CDG and then off to Barcelona. This city has been on my list for a long time and I’m really excited for my first trip to Spain!! Here’s a little mood music…
Every now and again I get the chance to be in 2 places at once. Tonight I am at home in Hong Kong while simultaneously gracing the street posts and dirty night club walls of Berlin. Namosh radio’d in for an image I shot of him back at p.m.k. Rock.
Namosh - Live in Berlin
Here’s one of my favorite shots from that show and, if inclined, you can see the rest right here…
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