the human mind is as naturally sensitive to questions as the eye is to colors. the eye will not see if it is not kept open, and the mind will not follow a question if it is not awake. how to keep the mind open, how to keep wonder in your life; because wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning (from nature, from books, from etc.)

just finished watching what remains, the sally mann documentary. i've written about it here before, like i said, there are things that you always return to, keep close to you. she has an unbelievable stamina, perseverance, great mind - i have a deep, deep, deep respect for her work and her practice, of both art and life.

such joy this weekend. letting my mind work. tink, tink, and then think. ineffable appreciation for language, for books, for poetry, for thought. they're teachers, dead, but amazing teachers.

my two questions for the rest of 2012:
what are the most basic and indispensable elements for developing your mind?
what are the most basic and indispensable elements for understanding communities?

Related to my previous entry on the time spent on projects and fulbright, I'd like to make note on one of the few photographers I feel an affinity with. It's exciting for me to come across a recent article on Erika Larsen via New York Times that gives important insight on the process of such projects.

5 months is nothing here.

Alejandro Chaskielburg is another great one who still uses film and uses the most of moonlight.

saturday morning reflections

there are just things in the world that you keep returning to. if you feel lost, in the all of the multitude of ways that is possible, there are things that keep you grounded, certain things that you remember or keep close as way to navigate back to yourself. time and time again, this (b)log and what it contains proves to serve that purpose for me. writing in general is a relief, but only because it helps solidify the process of experience - it's so important to know what you are thinking - it can skirt by so easily, for me at least, that writing is an effective way of staying aware. lately, i've been so caught up in the workings of the ngo office that i've forgotten about my personal tenor. it never disappeared, but i forgot to listen.

the service, the role of this ngo is important. i believe in and with what they are doing. however, i often forget that amongst the rest of my coworkers, i am a different breed. i wasn't trained to be a marketer, a scientist, sociologist or forester or a lawyer. the skills that i have developed (among others) is based in visual thinking or visual communication with a particular stress in poetry, by which i mean using language for it's broadest spectrum of meanings. it's a different kind of observation, that presents different kinds of questions and resolves problems that you present from your observations differently. in one sense, working with these other professionals, i am bettering those other skills/habits required to be a scientist, forester, writer, or sociologist (actually, a few of them, like the latter, i am inspired by), but i remain a visual thinker. by no means am i the best, or a very strong visual thinker, but this is what i am passionate about and this is what i have been practicing since the age of 17. "... the artist or craftsman in any field differs thus from those who lack his skill. He has a habit they lack. (Mortimer Adler)" Above everything else, visual thinking is my habit.

there are many different titles and backgrounds at work, and with the lack of synergy at the office, this means that people don't really understand where you come from, actually, where anyone is coming from. i have a similar experience outside of work which is another way of saying that i miss my community of friends who i can share my experiences and interests with. some of my friends here think that my favorite movies are too slow or that the music i like is really vintage. actually, i think their responses are both cute and fair, but it means you can never have a serious conversation or a dissection of that work because they don't share an interest in that same discourse. however, we do share an interest in the discourse of community forestry but we use a different ways of thinking and mine is not necessarily equally valued because it does not address the problem or issues in a way that is effective in their field or even their language. that leaves me sometimes feeling insecure about what i have to offer and i also end up asking myself whether i can make my work more effective in a language that is closer to theirs.

more importantly, rather than adjusting my language to theirs, i am also asking myself, what do i need to do to make this project great? if i want to share the collective knowledge of community forestry expressed by the communities, and if all human knowledge is acquired from experience, how do i create a secondary or third experience for which others can understand the primary experience? the thing is that scientists and foresters are responsible for information, not necessarily responsible for making it accesible or understandable. but as an artist, i feel that my role is to create an interruption for understanding: to provide viewers with an opportunity to leaven their knowledge rather than just adding forgettable information to their lives. i may not be contributing to the expansion of community forestry or increasing a community's livelihoods, but can i help people understand these communities, some of the poorest and most reliant on natural resources, are making an empowering and powerful choice in practicing sustainable natural resource management?



a quick scan of a family taking home a seedling after the eastern provinces of thailand community forestry network fair in the district of bong tong and province of chonburi, *note: in established community forests, one of the biggest challenges these villages face is engaging their younger generations in learning about natural resource management to continue maintaing the community forest.

It's hard to not feel like there's something standing in the way - that maybe you haven't been honest to yourself about what you can do to be better. I think I need to start looking at my work more. Is it too measurable of a task for me to ask myself what this work needs to make it what I want it to be? I started doing that last night. I never liked photographing people before, it seemed extraneous, unnecessary. But in this project, people are necessary and I need to have more courage to photograph them. The project is asking for intimacy and intricacy to complicate this incredibly magnificent cultural history. It's becoming a much more narrative story than what I'm use to, but that is okay because sometimes different is good. This is the first project that I've attempted that comes from an established idea. It's like trying to write a great book- I'm trying to provide proof, or rather a beautiful argument that the world really looks this way or is this way. It does because I believe it to be so, so then the only thing that stands in my way is in my own skill in expressing this. I've barely skimmed the thought, by which I mean I've encountered this question without actually believing or thinking hard about it, but how many more projects, how many more years of my life will it take me to build these skills? This is a really difficult question to face because cowardice always comes out. If you're honest with yourself, the answer could be that you may never possess what it takes, but that is also the kind of answer that projects its own future. If you believe this answer, you will never possess that future, that dream is already an embarrassing memory.

I think I will go through many more projects. The number doesn't matter. The effort is more profitable than the product. I suppose it also depends on my hunger and my drive to satisfy my curiosity. I think there is probably a way to be strategic about all of this, although maybe we should call it Lyfe Strategy because there is always an unknown, but great algorithm for how life unfolds.

Well, I didn't pass the first selection of Fulbright candidates, which means no Fulbright at all. Goddamn, I put so much work into that application but it basically means that I am so glad I never waited around to hear from them and that it was the right thing to do to move Thailand when I did. Plan B worked.

I've put down i six nonlectures to read Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book. While i'm not looking to be too well read, I would rather have read a few books well. So if given only a few choices, this book would be near the top of my list. It is an essential reference for being a stronger learner and a more receptive and active thinker.

What I've been gleaning is absolutely invaluable such as learning how to understand the difference between increasing your information and increasing your understanding. They are far from the same, although competitively equal in value. For example, while you can gain information through the acquisition of facts, it does not mean that you are understanding more. In fact your understanding remains the same, unleavened, if you do not learn the facts and their significance. Reading, as Adler defines, is "the process whereby a mind, with nothing to operate on but the symbols of the readable matter, and with no help from outside, elevates itself by the power of its own operations. The mind passes from understanding less to understanding more. The operations which cause this to happen are the various acts which constitute the art of reading." So to come to an understanding is an active effort that is in actuality a very powerful and empowering culmination of oneself.

In coining what makes a good book, Ernest Hemingway also touches on the experience of understanding the written word, "All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer."

Basically, I can't put this book down. This experience of understanding is clearly not limited to reading. I feel so lucky to have know the gift of art, to have felt like I was a receiver at a few points in my life.

my house is real, just not measurable

numbers have a place. numbers are important when you have people to report to. also some people see better by numbers. and some people or groups like things they can grab on to and so they know what to do next. it's quite helpful if you're in charge of many people.

when i stand next to this idea, i feel very short or very tall. i don't see eye to eye with her because it is the immeasurable that inspires me. it's not about the number of times --- that happens, it's that it's happening! it's really happening and it's going to be different every time it happens and you just have to be there!

for instance my most recent guest asked me a lot of measurable questions i didn't know and a little later i realized that i have very little interest in this kind of knowledge.

"how many people live in bangkok?"

"i don't know"

it turns out 12 million. i don't think about the bangkok as 12 million people. i think about how it smells like diesel, coffee, and jackfruit on very hot and crowded days. and if you turn on specific corners it also smells like jasmine and deep fried pork. and all of this will change with the fluctuation of people and what they order for lunch. in that case, numbers are have a say in what this city smells like, but is it numbers or something more impalpable that is a source for this decision? for a second though, I wondered if i should could consider knowing more measurable information. surely it wouldn't hurt to know more measurable knowledge, but somehow my memory is not inclined to holding that kind of information.

measuring feels especially horrible in situations where there is no need to measure. for instance, when you stand yourself next to someone else and you make yourself see all the irrelevant contrasts- all the things that make you feel bad, unless you are egotistical and in that case, all the reasons that make you feel good. it still doesn't matter.

my eyes crossed this text many weeks ago. although i have read the first part of the text years and years ago, when i read the latter half i knew i had believed in this my entire life:

…so far as I am concerned, poetry and every other art was and is and forever will be strictly and distinctly a question of individuality…poetry is being, not doing. If you wish to follow, even at a distance, the poet’s calling (and here, as always, I speak from my own totally biased and entirely personal point of view) you’ve got to come out of the measurable doing universe into the immeasurable house of being…Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can you be alive for anybody else. Toms can be Dicks and Dicks can be Harrys, but none of them can ever be you. There’s the artist’s responsibility; and the most awful responsibility on earth. If you can take it, take it–and be. If you can’t, cheer up and go about other people’s business; and do (or undo) till you drop.

i'm crazy about this

toasted coconut flakes
toasted peanuts
dried shrimps
diced ginger
diced lime with peel
shallots
tamarind sweet sauce

in

fresh grape leaves

spirit caves, we made it

a wild half week of serious traveling. just one day of cave hunting but i'll never forget it: crawling/swimming through 2 ft high cave holes with cave water up to your chin to get to a very dark and loud waterfall. and walking through the most beautiful mountain side of agricultural land with a shan man named ong who knows his local flora. tasting along the way, i became translator for the different things we came upon from wild grazing cows making songs with their harmonious bells (or rather cows delegated with bells according to size) to the bright red sweet and sour flowers, medical herbs, and agricultural crops. we were only a few kilometers from the myanmar border.

i also received a very important book recently which is putting me in my place every time i turn a page. in i six non lectures, e.e. cummings paints the integrity of artists in almost its entire complexity in such a way that i no longer feel lost or confused in the midst of pursuing my calling. As he quotes Rilke from Letters To A Young Poet, he sings the song of my loneliness that has been so present in my life despite the dream i am living- then he reminds me why my curiosity is my compass (and great navigator) through the loneliness i chose:

"Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing to be so little reached as with criticism. Only love can grasp and hold and fairly judge them." (Rilke)

In my proud and humble opinion, those two sentences are worth all the soi-disant criticism of the arts which has ever exists or will ever exist. Disagree with them as much as you like, but never forget theme; for if you do, you will have forgotten the mystery which you have been, the mystery which you shall be, and the mystery which you are --