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From Cartagena to Infinity

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From Cartagena to Infinity

Three years ago, Cartagena found me. Much to my surprise, it  was not the Cartagena of my childhood and “Romancing the Stone” frame of reference. I expected to find the same car-chases and hand-biting crocodiles that Jack Colton and Joan Wilder encountered when I arrived late one humid night in November, but all that met me was drizzling rain and potholes large enough to swallow one of those crocodiles as the taxi cab careened down the blackened highway.

When I awoke the following morning to explore, those preconceptions faded as the imposing fortresses that guarded the pastel-colored haciendas and hushed plazas appeared. It was the stuff of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s dreams, and mine since reading his books a lifetime before in my small-town land-locked days of adolescence. Cartagena could not be real, I told myself as I climbed the crumbling stones of its fortress.

At first I thought he was a statue, standing on top the rock wall, keeping guard like a 16th century centurion watching for pirates. But as I got closer, the young man pulled out a handkerchief, blowing his nose before sitting down on the wall’s ledge. He stopped me in my tracks and I stood motionless, inexplicably overly cautious and concerned I would disturb him if I took another step. An eternity passed as I leaned against the cool stone, watching him as he watched the blues and greens of the Caribbean Sea. I wish I knew what he was thinking. Was he solving a personal problem in his head? Was he meditating, comforted by the distant crash of the waves that would have carried us to Africa if we had let it? Or was he, like I, so transfixed with the sea’s infinity that nothing else mattered? I will never know what the silent young man was thinking.

There is a perfect sentence from Marquez’s story “Love in the Time of Cholera” that says “It was a lone voice in the middle of the ocean, but it was heard at great depth and great distance.” Perhaps the young man could hear it as he contemplated that sea’s infinity. Maybe next time I will hear it, too.

 

Market Dreaming

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Market Dreaming

It was mid-morning as I made my way through Hue’s market. Its interior is usually packed with vendors and shoppers and hawkers and children darting under tables and around legs like some half-crazed squirrels. But it was too early for that and the only sound was the ceiling fans struggling to circulate.

She wasn’t the only meat vendor fast asleep. Several stretched out on the cool cement floors and if you didn’t watch look where you were going, you would have accidentally tripped and woken the women from their slumber. They were all women, and I wondered how late they must have worked the night before or earlier that morning to slice, chop, or, most of the time, hack the animal parts.

I stepped away from her, turned off the automatic flash, and held my breath, hoping the “click” of the camera would not wake her, or any of them. Nobody stirred as I turned to tip-toe out of the building.

Cristo Noir

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Cristo Noir

The unrelenting drizzle and piercing gusts of wind are amplified once I reached the top of Corcovado, soaring above Rio. After shimmying through the lines with my expert guide Neyla, crowding into the sky tram that climbs through the lush hills, separated merely by a glass window but still a world away from the curious stray dogs and child squatters still asleep on their dirty mattresses that hug the tram tracks, Christ the Redeemer greeted me.

I was raised Catholic but left it when I was 20. Today, I weave around atheism, agnosticism, and a subdued sense of spirituality, so I found it difficult to appreciate the emanating emotionality coming from fellow visitors on that early morning as they looked upon the the statue, tears in their eyes.

But regardless of one’s beliefs, it seems impossible that Christ the Redeemer would not affect you somehow. It stands before you, grand and welcoming, but you can’t help but look beyond the grandiose and examine its cracks and and stains. When looking back on why I took the photo, the imperfections are what pulled me in. I try to avoid filters and fancy effects with my pictures, so minus some auto-corrections, what you see here is what I saw, or at least, what I remember: the grays and blacks and pales, trying desperately to find hued blue contrasts but failing on that cloudy, frigid, windy morning.

Traveling and recording our experiences, desperately seeking to capture our memories of how we feel and what we think for that ephemeral moment, has a way of consistently surprising us, doesn’t it?

Temple Time Snack Time

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Temple Time Snack Time

The afternoon heat beats down mercilessly in the afternoons of Cambodia’s jungles, where the angkors (temples), attract visitors–some better suited than others to withstand the heat. As I feebly sought shelter in one of the limestone corners, I remember thinking that despite my floppy hat and exponential SPF sunscreen and gallons of consumed Gatorade, I was just too weak–too ill-equipped to continue the afternoon exploring.

That was, until from the corner of my eye I saw these two visitors–the little boy was a trooper, refusing water from his mom, who, I am assuming, was insisting that he hydrate. He eventually acquiesced, took a few sips, and was rewarded with a snack. In a matter of seconds they ventured onwards. I don’t think they saw me languishing in the corner. Their pragmatism erased my sense of self-defeat, and I too continued on. These temples can’t explore themselves, you know.

Imperial Pit Stops

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Imperial Pit Stops

It was gray and cold when the train pulled into the Novosibirsk train station on the way from Beijing to Moscow in May 2012. The beautiful pastel-colored building was a welcome respite as I inched close to window pane to capture the shot. Taking pictures from a dining booth in a cramped cabin is tricky. I wanted so much to hop off the train and spend hours there, absorbing the architecture’s aching beauty, visual salve to my eyes tired of the stark tundra and birch forests to which I had become accustomed the few past days. But Moscow, still 48 hours away, awaited. And 10-minute pit stops on a six-day journey waited for no one.

I sat there shooting until the train pulled away.

Child’s Play

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In April 2012, I was finishing roughly hour 13 of the 15 hour exhausting journey from Ho Chi Minh City to Da Nang, when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw this little boy slide open the berth door to take a closer look at me. His playfulness was infectious. For the remainder of the journey he and I played peek-a-boo, hide-and-seek, and flew paper airplanes down the narrow cabin before I sent him back to his mother with coconut candy in hand.

I promise to write more, soon, about both Vietnam as well as that train journey.

A Place to Rest

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A Place to Rest

The bus from Tbilisi to Yerevan stopped at Haghpat Monastery in northern Armenia that day in May 2012. When the rain finally let up, I was able to snap this picture. While the others traipsed around the monastery’s grounds, I decided to rest in this quiet corner…that is, until the rain picked up again. It’s no wonder those rolling hills are perpetually emerald.