World of People

5/29

2011-06-09T21:17:00.000-07:00

Snow Day Revisited

2011-06-05T22:47:00.000-07:00

At the Doggy Park

2011-03-08T20:41:00.001-08:00

Blue in Water

2011-02-27T21:09:00.000-08:00

Quyen & Adam

2011-02-17T18:47:00.001-08:00

Two very dear friends from my high school days got married in Rockport in January. I'm so happy for you QC and Adam!

Jacksonville I

2011-01-10T21:51:00.001-08:00

Rhapsody & Youngblood

2010-12-20T09:05:00.000-08:00

Yukon

2010-12-20T08:38:00.000-08:00

Lisa

2010-12-20T08:24:00.000-08:00

Deedee

2010-12-16T18:53:00.000-08:00

11/13

2010-12-11T20:52:00.000-08:00

Lizzie

2010-12-11T14:19:00.001-08:00

Blue

2010-10-31T18:11:00.000-07:00

Rockaway

2010-10-17T18:19:00.000-07:00

Another Emotion

2010-10-10T19:31:00.000-07:00

N-Y-C ~ Part 1

2010-10-10T18:23:00.000-07:00

Cynthia's Wedding

2010-10-06T15:55:00.000-07:00

Dusk and Green

2010-08-05T15:27:00.000-07:00

2010-07-21T11:19:00.000-07:00

2010-07-04T08:38:00.000-07:00

Calm

2010-07-01T22:19:00.000-07:00

Ishan+Tanya

2010-06-28T22:44:00.000-07:00

2010-06-27T11:06:00.000-07:00

Feet!

2010-06-05T13:14:00.000-07:00

I'll be posting some older photos over the next few days from my time in California.

At the Yogurt Shop

2010-06-02T07:55:00.000-07:00

Rally Against the State Board of Education Textbook Revisions

2010-06-02T07:34:00.001-07:00

2010-06-01T21:22:00.000-07:00

2010-02-19T20:49:00.000-08:00

2010-01-27T14:38:00.000-08:00

2010-01-27T14:35:00.000-08:00

2009-10-20T19:31:00.000-07:00

2009-10-20T18:59:00.000-07:00

2009-08-04T12:53:00.000-07:00

Volcano smoke, Nicaragua

2009-08-04T09:39:00.000-07:00

Nicaragua

2009-04-24T06:10:00.000-07:00

a l a n a

2009-03-17T19:36:00.000-07:00

Dead Sea

2009-03-17T18:56:00.000-07:00

Heart

2009-02-13T22:25:00.000-08:00

2009-02-05T20:28:00.000-08:00

Taxi ride in Nicaragua...

2009-02-05T20:08:00.000-08:00

bailey

2009-02-05T20:04:00.000-08:00

2009-02-05T19:57:00.000-08:00

A day on the river with Dad.

Celebrating Life

2009-02-05T15:40:00.000-08:00

Turquoise Sunset

2009-02-04T23:10:00.000-08:00

2009-02-03T23:37:00.000-08:00

I keep coming back to these photos because they remind me of a vastness...a vastness in the physical world and nature that the soul in turn adopts.

Born Again Lover

2009-01-25T23:51:00.000-08:00

2008-11-23T22:19:00.000-08:00

Palestinian boys in Tuba during a protest against the Israeli occupation and settlements in the West Bank.

2008-11-23T22:14:00.000-08:00

Baby of a bedouin family in Petra, Jordan.

2008-10-13T16:10:00.000-07:00

At a church in Jerusalem.

2008-10-13T16:03:00.000-07:00

Netanya, Israel 2006

2008-10-06T21:18:00.001-07:00

m i k a y l a .

2008-10-06T20:55:00.001-07:00

Unfinished Art.

2008-10-06T20:54:00.001-07:00

Adore.

2008-10-06T20:32:00.000-07:00

More of Delicious Sky

2008-10-05T22:03:00.000-07:00

"Everything had changed suddenly--the tone, the moral climate; you didn't know what to think, whom to listen to. As if all your life you had been led by the hand like a small child and suddenly you were on your own, you had to learn to walk by yourself. There was no one around, neither family nor people whose judgment you respected. At such a time you felt the need of committing yourself to something absolute--life or truth or beauty--of being ruled by it in place of the man-made rules that had been discarded. You needed to surrender to some such ultimate purpose more fully, more unreservedly than you had ever done in the old familiar, peaceful days, in the old life that was now abolished and gone for good."--Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago (Taken from Into the Wild, a passage highlighted by Chris McCandless)

Beautiful Peru

2008-10-03T23:19:00.000-07:00

On a ten day long hike through the Huayhuash in Peru.

2008-10-01T20:18:00.000-07:00

Catholic church in Salvador, Brazil, 2005.

puddles of light

2008-10-01T20:17:00.000-07:00

`

2008-10-01T20:15:00.000-07:00

Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia 2005

2008-10-01T19:42:00.000-07:00

Brazil, 2005.

Brazil, 2005

2008-10-01T09:02:00.000-07:00

2008-09-30T18:17:00.000-07:00

Distinctly

2008-09-30T16:52:00.000-07:00

2008-09-30T16:51:00.000-07:00

Peace Activist

2008-09-30T16:46:00.000-07:00

California, 2004

Liberation

2008-09-30T15:41:00.001-07:00

Humbling, gorgeous, ominous,
You--
blue. bright. thick. suffocating.
Yet my bones are but breaths in your arms,
that float away to other stars,
or evaporate into the belly of a great bird.
And my Birth and my Death will find You,
and in You beats the greatest Fear and the greatest Hope--
that of letting go.

2008-09-14T22:20:00.000-07:00

Ramallah, 2007.

2008-09-09T06:17:00.000-07:00

A street vendor protests against tightened selling restrictions in the town center.

Bogotá, Colombia 2005.

2008-09-05T23:31:00.000-07:00

Mosque in Ramallah, 2007.

2008-09-05T23:12:00.000-07:00

Caged

2008-09-05T22:48:00.000-07:00

Weaker wings, swelling heart.

A Moment

2008-09-05T22:46:00.000-07:00

From Western Wall to Ronnie Superstar

2008-09-04T22:21:00.000-07:00

Boardwalk in Netanya, Israel 2006.

Kids dance to Ronnie Superstar during Purim celebrations in Netanya, Israel 2006.

Jewish Orthodox women pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, 2006.

Members of the Jewish Orthodox political party, Shas, campaign in the old city of Jaffo before Knesset elections in 2006.

Members of the Israeli conservative party, Herut, campaign in Jaffo, offering Israeli-Palestinians money to leave the state of Israel. Here a city councilman (on the left, an Israeli-Palestinian), argues with a Herut member over the party's ideology towards the Palestinians of Israel. Herut members brought copies of dollar bills as symbols of their proposal.

Las Colonias

2008-09-04T06:22:00.000-07:00

A Colonias neighborhood near San Juan, TX 2008.

Kiddos living near San Juan in a Colonias neighborhood (2008).

Las Colonias (from http://www.grass-roots.org/usa/azteca.shtml) :

"By any standard, the flat, dry land of the Rio Grande valley, with feathery mesquite trees shimmering silver under a huge, blue bowl of sky, houses some of the nation's poorest people. For the 60,000 Hispanic-American farm workers of Mexican descent who live in the region, the typical income is in the range of $5,000 or so a year.

Most of them live in one or another of 366 small settlements called "colonias." Established by primarily Anglo developers, colonias assemble small (50 by 100 foot lots) on open land, criss-crossed by neat streets that almost look suburban. But there the resemblance ends: Most of the colonias have no running water. None boast sewage collection systems. Urban services, from street paving and garbage collection to police protection, are limited at best. A scrub lot, with no services, sells for up to $12,000, leaving most families only enough resources to throw up a plywood or galvanized-iron hovel out of salvaged scraps."

Proyecto Azteca is an organization helping to provide these families with safe and affordable housing. Learn more about them here:

http://www.proyectoazteca.com/

"In 1991, the United Farm Workers of America, Texas Rural Legal Aid, and the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service came together and organized Proyecto Azteca to respond to the housing crisis in South Texas colonias located in Hidalgo County. In the first year, Proyecto Azteca organized construction with just four families. Over the years, Proyecto Azteca has gradually increased its production rate and its present construction rate is 35 to 60 homes per year. Today, Proyecto Azteca is a nationally recognized, community directed, self-help housing organization that has financed and trained more than 600 families in the construction and first time homeownership in over 50 Hidalgo County colonias."

Hurricane Rita, 2005

2008-09-04T05:43:00.000-07:00

Beaumont, TX

2008-08-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

Nablus, 2007

Teenagers Dancing and With Guns

2008-07-29T21:05:00.000-07:00

2008-07-21T21:52:00.000-07:00

stars gasping into

pink water

huddled together

spinning

in the

bucket of sky.

morning bares

its teeth and

scrapes the

loose skin

off our smiles

Nicole & John's Wedding

2008-07-11T15:08:00.000-07:00

May 2008

2008-07-06T18:58:00.000-07:00

Los Angeles, CA 2004.

2008-07-05T20:35:00.000-07:00

"A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."--Albert Einstein

2008-07-05T20:17:00.000-07:00

"Why couldn't the universe just have always been there?"

And so began my musing.

July 4, 1985

2008-07-04T08:44:00.000-07:00

(Red Sea, Jordan 2007)

Twenty-three years ago I was born in a hospital in Dammam, Saudi Arabia.

I spent many days of my life basking in the glimmer of the Red Sea, examining an octopus shift from red to blue to purple, or floating, mesmerized, listless, feeling the grandest of humility in the vastness of a gorgeous & cruel ocean as manta rays flew by me. I wondered at the women swathed in black and imagined their faces--were they sorry, tired, anxious, happy...smiling? Men touched my white hair for good luck, and in the market a cow head bored into my eyes, accompanied by the thick smell of wet blood. In Jeddah, silver skyscrapers and red lights stained the concrete.

Now, I am not allowed to visit the beautiful yet harsh place of my birth.

But I swing it around in my net of memories and peer at it like a gem held up to the sun.

My dream is to give people hope until this brilliant little earth circles its star without me.

"I owe my life to the people that I love."--Ani DiFranco

2008-07-04T06:57:00.000-07:00

Palestinian boys.

2008-07-03T23:51:00.000-07:00

A sweet family full of adorable girls that possessed almost nothing but gave me more than they could ever know.

Lencois, Brazil 2005.

2008-07-03T23:48:00.000-07:00

Dia de Los Muertos in Austin, Fall of 2006.

2008-07-03T23:46:00.000-07:00

Dia de Los Muertos in Austin, Fall of 2006.

2008-07-03T23:43:00.000-07:00

Ilha Do Mel, Brazil 2005.

2008-07-03T23:36:00.000-07:00

2008-07-03T23:30:00.000-07:00

Palestinian family from Twana.

f r e e d o m

2008-07-03T23:28:00.000-07:00

2008-06-24T18:56:00.000-07:00

Israeli-Palestinian in Akko, Israel 2007.

"When the helicopters disappear the doves fly back
white, very white, marking the cheeks of the horizon
with liberated wings. They revive their radiance and their ownership
of the sky, and of playfulness. Higher and higher they fly,
the doves, very white. ‘O that the sky
was real’ [a man passing between two bombs cried]..."

--From The Siege by Mahmoud Darwish

2008-06-24T18:49:00.000-07:00

2008-06-19T23:14:00.000-07:00

Brazil 2005

2008-06-19T23:12:00.000-07:00

Brazilian Street Kid, 2005.

2008-06-19T23:09:00.000-07:00

Moshe, Colombia 2005

2008-06-19T22:05:00.000-07:00

Waiting

2008-06-16T20:09:00.000-07:00

Waiting in Bethlehem.

December 2007.

Serendipity

2008-06-13T20:42:00.000-07:00

From page 198 of Maiden Voyage by Tania Aebi:

"She has been described as a drop of milk from the breast of India, and Sinbad of old Arabia called her Serendib. From there evolved the word serendipity, the aptitude for making fortunate discoveries accidentally, and Sri Lanka certainly was a desirable sight for my sore eyes burned by the equatorial sun."

Hence, the word serendipity was born of Sri Lanka.

Costa Rica

2008-06-12T21:11:00.000-07:00