flora & fauna of the concrete jungle

excerpted from one of the greatest books about the big apple that i know of, colson whitehead's the colossus of new york:

"I'm here because I was born here and thus ruined for anywhere else, but I don't know about you. Maybe you're from here, too, and sooner or later it will come out that we used to live a block away from each other and didn't even know it. Or maybe you moved here a couple years ago for a job. Maybe you came here for school. Maybe you saw the brochure...

No matter how long you have been here, you are a New Yorker the first time you say, That used to be Munsey's, or That used to be the Tic Toc Lounge. That before the internet cafe plugged itself in, you got your shoes resoled in the mom-and-pop operation that used to be there. You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.You start building your private New York the first time you lay eyes on it....

Our streets are calendars containing who we were and who we will be next. We see ourselves in this city every day when we walk down the sidewalk and catch our reflections in store windows, seek ourselves in this city each time we reminisce about what was there fifteen, ten, forty years ago, because all our old places are proof that we were here. One day the city we built will be gone, and when it goes, we go. When the buildings fall, we topple, too.

Maybe we become New Yorkers the day we realize that New York will go on without us. To put off the inevitable, we try to fix the city in place, remember it as it was, doing to the city what we would never allow to be done to ourselves. The kid on the uptown No. 1 train, the new arrival stepping out of Grand Central, the jerk at the intersection who doesn't know east from west: those people don't exist anymore, ceased to be a couple of apartments ago, and we wouldn't have it any other way. New York City does not hold our former selves against us. Perhaps we can extend the same courtesy."

the pictures that follow are pieces of my NY. not to hold it against itself, but to remember what I once knew so well. i've said goodbye for now, the way you tuck a child into bed: rest, close your eyes, but go on breathing, living, even while you sleep be active in your dreams, and tomorrow i will see you, the same two souls in a different moment.

city bird

beauty thrives

chain link

the carpet beneath my feet

by the river's side

fallen leaves

cause to reflect

crystal orbs

walk

fresh

in the shadows of the bright lights

jungle town

  

femme

the red balloons

occupy all streets

man in blue

graff scape

shelter me 

= ?

no time for sleep

straight chillin

river front sun set

halt

shapes

classic

NOLA

in a moment of personal crisis in january of 2010, i did what i do best... i went away... escaped, traveled, journeyed. i went to new orleans, and let my soul feed on that. i ate of its fruits, listened to its music, and regenerated pieces of myself that had been lost over time. some images, one year later:

empty spaces can be heavy with meaning... in physical space and the spaces of our hearts

quality time w the bro-han. being around loved ones heals most everything.

coffee and beignets e'rryday!

this sandwich speaks for itself.  #muffuletta

it's amazing how many years of my life i spent calling it barg's instead of barq's.

#truethat

goodnight moon.

starting anew

i couldn't bear to carry the hurt around anymore. in the glare of the truth, i saw that you had your chest cut open, nothing to protect your heart--intense and beautiful, more so than mine. that i could not match you hurt me most. so for this, i begged forgiveness. not from you, but from the sun, who gives me newness every day. i tried to replace some of our old stories with newer ones, ones that were real and true, unlike the memories we polished to a golden and perfect shine with the time we put between them and us. but when i took them down from the shelves of the past to put new ones in their place, they all begin to tarnish, and the new ones became harder to make amidst the dirt and rust of the old. i still don't know if it is better to see them as they are, or as we like to remember them--flawless and unparalleled? either way, on this day, i sat at brighton beach and laid them all out before us, our shoulders unusually warm in the october sun. with my toes in the sand i eased them all closer to the sea, willing the waves to lap them away. i asked poseidon to bury the marks of our feet and lay empty stretches in our paths.

the sun rises and falls. the tide comes in and out. waves ebb and flow. love comes and goes. travels begin and end. chapters of our lives are written and then stashed away. all the time we are given chances to begin anew. in the new york autumn sun i asked for forgiveness. tomorrow, i offered, i will try to be better. 

a fairytale ending

in the dark ocean of the night, the moon stands, a lone fisherman.
the waters around him thick with their stillness.
his moonlight net cast out to gather the whole night,
to contain it,
but it cannot be done.
the secrets it knows, infinite.
its bounds, shifty.
what lies at the edge of the darkness?
beyond the fisherman's net?
a vastness incomprehensible to even the fisherman himself,
who is blind to all without his net.
but this is the justification for breath,
that we are small.
that the moon's bright and glowing web, too, is small.
and then, just as you begin to feel that you might know the night,
that you watched the fisherman as an apprentice would his master and may be wiser,
the night is stolen by the light.
the fisherman's net comes up empty and you are left with your questions.
the fisherman leaves slowly, betraying nothing, neither regret nor hope.
his departure swollen with some age-old story that only he and the night know.
the sole certain thing is that the two will meet again,
like old friends for whom the joke never gets old and the competition never wears.
and you will chance upon them as they share secrets and stories,
and you will try to understand their youthfulness when every meeting is the same--
the fisherman always drawing in his barren net,
as if the peace he finds is in the act of casting it out instead of in success.
there is comfort in its emptiness,
as if it proves the night's secrets to be true.
and so,
he will always test his friend's honesty--
to keep the balance,
and the bet even,
and all the rest in suspense over the curiosity of the vastness,
and the moments between the fisherman and his sea.

yogya

magnificent yogya. what can be said? just that it is as alive as any city, brimming with personality. i'll let the photos say more than i can...

malang

malang was a pleasantly simple place. alal and i had a splendid room just wider than my wing span. 

we whiled away hours writing in our journals over tea and waffles, in a sweet spot across from our hotel called legipait, a perfect little cafe. 

we browsed the bird and flower markets. 

we rose again in the middle of the night for a more than hilarious attempt to trump rinjani with another volcanic sunrise at mount bromo. we had a first-timer guide who did not know his way and after leading us on a series of right turns remarked, "i think... we are back. yes, we are back" upon discovering we had walked in a giant circle. spoiled by rinjani we balked at the sacrifice of warm, cozy sleep in our beds. the truth is though, that we were spoiled. even bromo was spectacular.

to end our stay, an old and gentle soul biked us to blind massages. tomorrow? we make our way to vibrant yogyakarta...

mount amazing

we've just come back from a 4 day/3 night trek on mount rinjani. words cannot describe the stunning beauty of this volcano. we set out from sembalun, led by tal, a good friend of mine from the CDC and an expert rinjani guide. we trekked for 8 hours the first day to get to the crater rim where we set up camp 1. tal woke us around 2am for a light breakfast just before beginning the strenuous climb to the summit in time for sunrise. most of the way to the top was a narrow and loose path of gravel, on one side of you the active crater, and on the other a steep fall down to the green valley below. we wrestled with rinjani through the night, searching for something stable to grab hold of to help pull ourselves up to the top of the volcano, but there was no solid ground, and the peak proved ever elusive as each time we thought we had gotten close, turning the corner revealed a new leg of the climb. there were countless moments when i thought, "what am i doing? why did i sign up to put myself through this? this is not fun! this does not feel good!" but if i paused to question myself, turning my back on the mountain, i saw that the sky was an endless black, milky with stars. a cavernous and gaping mouth ready to swallow me whole. it was so dramatic, as if all else but us had ceased to exist. stretching behind and above me was a line of ants, our flashlights bobbing in the dark like lightning bugs, all of us making our pilgrimage to rinjani's summit. sweat and tears our sacrifice, silent awe our prayers at the high altar that was this breathing hole in the earth. and so i, we, continued on. slowly one edge of the sky began to melt from black to blue to purple, until it was on fire with the orange glow of the sun rising up. our sacrifices had been accepted, our prayers heard. the sunset was like none we had ever seen before. a 360 degree view of the horizon as the sun brought color back into the world.

the rest of the day was spent making our way down into the crater to the lake's edge to set up camp 2. we rewarded our weary limbs by soaking them in a natural hot spring near camp. we felt tired, but undeniably alive. we applauded our legs for the hard work they had done, getting us to the summit and back. we ate heartily. and then, we slept.

on the third day we trekked up the other side of the crater and over the rim for a different view of rinjani's majesty, stunning as ever, and then down its jungled exterior to make camp 3, laughing the entire way at our tired clumsiness. we stayed up late with tal and our porters, huddled around the campfire and singing along to all the western songs they had downloaded on their cellphones.

by the fourth and final day we were covered in dirt and our muscles were strained, but we were giddy. we had climbed rinjani and been amazed by its splendor. we capped the trek off with a motorbike ride. set and royal drove us and our packs to lombok's capital, mataram. we shared a late lunch all together and then said our goodbyes. parting was sad, but i was filled up with experience. everything i could have asked for from lombok it had relinquished to me.