On Living Photography

“Many of us have photos of long ago birthdays or the predictable poses at graduations and weddings. But isn’t it the moments in between that capture the rawness of how we live?”

Meredith Novario on her children: “I want them to know how they looked to me,” she says. “I don’t want to tell them everything, I just want to show them what I saw. And from there, it can become their own open-ended story.”

From here. (Photograph below is mine) 

Bryant Park Carousel, Christmas 2014

(Click photo to view on black)

Sometimes the Sea

"You know the thing I love best about this city?", someone asked me last night. He was a stranger but for that confession.

"The freedom? The feeling that you could do anything here? The glitz of the UN?", I ventured. We were talking in one of the most iconic of buildings in Midtown Manhattan, after all.

"The fact that you can take a train to the sea."

Well, there's that.

"For someone like me who comes from a landlocked country [Austria], it's amazing to me how I can sit down in the subway and just...emerge at the ocean."

Of all the things he liked about New York, that was one I would perhaps not think of immediately. So much of my life here in the past two months has been about the grangy towering metal and glass and what goes on within. That interspersed with lovely, lazy brunches and walks in bits and corners of the city. Oh, and snow. Endless snow. Easy then to forget that beyond this piece of solid metamorphic rock, we are surrounded by so much more.

But the sea always finds a way to travel with me, somehow. And with all the moving I've done over this year, I might as well be floating on some (cold) current around the world's oceans. Water meets water meets water, right?

Still, blame winter and the clouded over skies, or just plain old inertia, I realised I haven't paid homage to the sea since I got here. So here's a picture from the city I left it in last. It's not the sea, but it's so close, I can almost smell it.

How's that for sea-rious yearning? I'll send you a picture postcard when I make it to the shore.

On Understanding and Finding Your Flow

Happy new year, you! Wherever you are, I hope this year ushers in a host of little lovelies, whether you can see them immediately or not. I also hope you on your part find a way to fill this year with wonder, memorable moments, and love.

Winter flowers on the Highline

I could say lots more, but I'm going to let Ms Popova from Brainpickings help me with that today. In response to (and in support of) Greek philosopher Philo's maxim: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is carrying a great burden", she quotes an extract from surgeon Sherwin Nuland's conversation with radio show host Krista Tippett,

"When you recognize that pain – and response to pain – is a universal thing, it helps explain so many things about others, just as it explains so much about yourself. It teaches you forbearance. It teaches you a moderation in your responses to other people's behavior. It teaches you a sort of understanding. It essentially tells you what everybody needs. You know what everybody needs? You want to put it in a single word?  

Everybody needs to be understood.  

And out of that comes every form of love.  

If someone truly feels that you understand them, an awful lot of neurotic behavior just disappears – disappears on your part, disappears on their part. So if you're talking about what motivates this world to continue existing as a community, you've got to talk about love... And my argument is it comes out of your biology because on some level we understand all of this. We put it into religious forms. It's almost like an excuse to deny our biology. We put it into pithy, sententious aphorisms, but it's really coming out of our deepest physiological nature."

Perhaps this is the greatest message of all. Be kind. Show some understanding. The ocean of life is so expansive; sometimes you're ebbing peacefully into clear skies, sometimes you're being tossed into the eye of a storm. (Though you know what they say about the eye of the storm) You just have to roll with it. Watch the waves go by. And dive into them when the time is right.

In other words, you have to find your flow. Find it, make it, melt into it.

That way, by the time you reach the shore, you are at peace with the wave that brought you there.

Have a good one, everyone! 

In Defense of Magic and the Blog

Christmas in transit - Hong Kong International Airport, ca. 5 am

Merry Christmas to you all! Here's a tiny quote I wanted to share with you when I saw it.

"I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit... What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?"

- Henry David Thoreau, Walking

I hope this season finds you and your family well. I know a lot has happened in recent months, so I am glad if you are getting some downtime to relax, travel, or be with family (or all three!). Wherever you are, I hope that you also get to fully be there in spirit. Bless you.

I don't know if you noticed, but for a brief period a couple months ago, I pulled this blog down. I felt it had had a good run, but it was time to move on. Call it 'executive action' if you want (a joke that seemed adequately current when I first started writing this post).

But the thing is, where would I be without my blog? Without my little corner of the interwebs? Without a small piece of my very own virtual space while I'm still looking for a real-world one. This blog started as a way for me to record the little moments, the grand directions, and the minor revelations... the magic, in other words, that I encountered in my everyday life.

I hope it will continue to do so. Because without a place where I can be thankful and share it with the people I love, I would just be moving through life without really being there in spirit. And that is quite a sad thing. So I'm keeping the blog up.

On that note, here's the tiny Christmas message I'd like to repeat to all of you for these next few days and for the many, many more to come: be where you are when you're there. Be one with what's happening in your life. Share the joy of it all with those around (or those you'd like to surround) you. There's a lot to be said for believing in the magic of the world, so take a moment also to be grateful for all that you have. (In the words of my four-year-old cousin, "get what you get, and don't get upset".)

On my part, I have been through a few highs and lows this year, one of which almost resulted in me pulling this blog down forever. And while I will continue to focus some of my energies on the bigger projects I want to achieve (photo-essays and other published work), I'm keeping the blog right where it is. It's my happy place; a place that reminds me of the magic, the blessings, and all the love in my life. So if it has ever brought even the smallest of smiles to any of you, I feel I have accomplished so much more than I set out to. Cheers to that, and a very happy 2015 to you!

When the universe speaks, listen!

Day one of official job search, and I get this in the mail.

It's a sign! I am meant to be a "unique, mystical underwater creature".

And I have the best lot of friends ever, non?

Control, acceptance and what lies in between

Control.

We seek it in the crevices, we seek it in the clouds. A search for the semblance of order in our lives, an unwitting attempt for the pieces to fall into the places we create for them. Routines of order, routines of disorder. Habits.

But life is not that ordered, and we are not dominos. We will not collapse if things are out of place, or if there is no definite end in sight. And we cannot ceaselessly exert influence over things that are outside us. People, places, events, the weather. They aren't radio stations that can be tuned to perfection. The random static of the universe will always remain in the background. Scientists have been listening to it for years. Things will work out without your meddling. You are powerful and responsible for your own actions.

But you are not God. And you are definitely not the earth's axis. The world won't stop spinning if your mind is at rest.

Maybe that's my learning for this first quarter of my life. Maybe that's my learning for the parent I hope to eventually become. My learning for a worry-free life. Learn to let go, give a little, let things rest and they'll turn out all right.

In other words, learn to have faith.

Where does this come from? I'm writing my thesis, which is code for a nicely-formatted novella that maybe two people will read -- if I'm lucky. I've just flown to the end of the earth on a ticket with no return date. I'm firmly in-between things and have been for a while. And between this month and (hopefully) the next I have to successfully look for, apply for, and get accepted for a job, which means I have to at least attempt to categorise my life into neat little boxes for a disgruntled HR employee somewhere.

So many factors to account for, so many things that are out of my control...the twenties are uncertainty at their best. Something about having too many choices and feeling like you are responsible for owning them all.

But I have to remind myself it's temporary. That things will work out. That the fog will lift. It always lifts.

It's like my supervisor a wise and very kind man told me recently. Looking me in the eye, he said in the voice I would imagine God (or Morgan Freeman with a cold) to have, "You'll do all right. In life, I mean."

And then he smiled that smile that always makes me wonder whether he means it or he's just having a good laugh.

But I'm sure I will be all right eventually. And so will you, all of you. Whatever your present set of worries might be. Have faith.

It's what lies in between (refer title).

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PS: This post initially started off with reference to this set of pictures below, and was intended to be a sort of reminder to all you parents (or parents-to-be) to let your kids run amok a little. They'll figure their way out.

As you can see, what comes from the heart often finds its way sooner into words than you think. But let's pretend for a second that this below is what this post is really about. I'll save you the excess of words for this part, though. Only the excess, though. So, a word about what I think parenting is -- from a non-parent.

Parenting is about...

standing behind your children

maybe even boosting them up,

but mostly just letting them splash around (in spiderman wellies)

letting them weave their paths

and climb

on their own, to the top.

(If you let them, your little chickies will climb out from beneath your shadow and into the sun.
They'll gather their courage, wits and will,

they'll build their wings

for flight.*)

* This holds true for parents from children too! Life lessons from Nanya, for Nanya. Hah.

Emus, Cockatoos, Kangaroos

I'm in a land of weird and wonderful things. There are trees I have never seen before, birds I've never heard before, and turns of phrase I don't think I'll ever quite understand. But I'm home again and at least here, (some) things are just the same.

The landscape is different though. A few miles away from home lies this vast expanse of ocean.

It's winter here, mind you, but as my sister reminds me everyday, "the sun is strong!".

So strong.

It hasn't changed that much over the years...

...and it isn't so far from paradise. Hello, Australia!

On learning to drink coffee and other things

"Allow yourself the uncomfortable luxury of changing your mind", I read this morning here and here.

It makes sense. If change itself is inevitable, then the change within must be as well, if only as a progression or reactionary process. For one, I have recently begun drinking coffee, a drink I have firmly stood against for most of my life (for reasons of unbased loyalty towards a good old cup of Darjeeling tea).

This seems minor to you, but it comes from deep stirrings within a sea of change.

Don't get me wrong, I have always loved the smell of coffee, for obvious reasons. Nothing can be more comforting on a rainy day. But I have never taken to drinking it. Like, actually, really enjoying it. Something about a childhood distaste for milk and a general absence of anything but instant coffee in the environs. But almost as hard as I've tried to keep myself away from what I perceived to be a yuppie obsession with tall, extravagant, caffeinated drinks, I just as easily re-discovered the warm, gentle feeling of satisfaction I got from a good cup of coffee somewhere along the course of this year. Milk steamed just right, espresso poured over, and a single cookie to nibble on while you wait for it to cool. Not difficult at all to grow into this feeling of luxury, one cup at a time. To grow into, in other words, the idea that I do deserve good things. That I do deserve to treat myself. That my world won't implode if I give to myself as much as I sometimes find myself giving to others.

Seems simple, right?

Making the simple things special: an espresso macchiato, for me with love.

A lot has changed for me in the past few months, and I'm sure a lot will change in the coming ones. In as positive ways, hopefully. In ways that will take me closer to that eternal, infernal, unfindable goal of living a self-actualised life. And yet not quite get me there, because where would we be if we stopped searching, changing, moulding ourselves and our preferences?

Not so far from where we started, that's what.