To Render an Account

Time to come home. I leave Thailand with the same words that brought me here.

'We wander in our thousands over the face of the earth, the illustrious and the obscure, yearning beyond the seas of our fame, our money, or only a crust of bread; but it seems to me that for each of us going home must be like going to render an account. We return to face our superiors, our kindred, our friends - those whom we obey, and those whom we love, but even they who have neither, the most free, lonely, irresponsible and bereft of ties, - even those for whom home holds no dear face, no familiar voice, - even they have to meet the spirit that dwells within the land, under its sky, in its air, in its valleys, and on its rises, in its fields, in its waters and its trees - a mute friend, judge and inspirer. Say what you like, to get its joy, to breathe its peace, to face its truth, one must return with a clear consciousness.'

***

'I think it is the lonely, without a fireside or an affection they may call their own, those who return not to a dwelling but to the land itself, to meet its disembodied, eternal, and unchanging spirit - it is those who understand best its severity, its saving power, the grace of its secular right to our fidelity, to our obedience. Yes! few of us understand, but we all feel it though, and I say allwithout exception, because those who do not feel do not count. Each blade of grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together with his life.'

Lord Jim

Joseph Conrad

I will return with a clear consciousness and an account to render.
See you on the other side compadre.

The world!

The Uttermost Edge of the World

'The judge smiled. Whether in my book or not, every man is tabernacled in every other and he in exchange and so on in an endless complexity of being and witness to the uttermost edge of the world.'

Blood Meridian

Cormac McCarthy

Optical Democracy & Unguessed Kinships

'The horse trudged sullenly the alien ground and the round earth rolled beneath them silently milling the greater void wherein they were contained. In the neuter austerity of that terrain all phenomena were bequeathed a strange equality and no one thing nor spider nor stone nor blade of grass could put forth claim to precedence. The very clarity of these articles belied their familiarity, for the eye predicates the whole on some feature or part and here was nothing more luminous than another and nothing more enshadowed and in the optical democracy of such landscapes all preference is made whimsical and a man and a rock become endowed with unguessed kinships.'

Blood Meridian*

Cormac McCarthy

* This book has taken its hold. Just like my great compadre DB suggested it would when she passed it on to me. Like the last scene of war movies. With his final gesture the dying soldier - blood on his face, gasping for breath, talking about a girl back home - firmly presses his dog tags into the outstretched palm of his childhood friend and closes the fingers over them. The one he dreamed of playing ball with for the Yankees.

I finished the novel. Now I yearn for the novel. I leaf through its pages a few times each day. In needs of its guidance. In a backwards sort of way, I often choose these images before I find the quote to accompany them. The novel has an uncanny ability to describe the world with absolute certainty.

Panasonic Nose Trimmer

The Saatchi & Saatchi agency imagined this set of ads that dangerously interact with their urban landscape; all in the effort to advertise a 'safe cutting system.' The Panasonic billboards are built around existing electric wires which string themselves through the schnoz to wonderful dramatic effect.

Click HERE for more images and info

Bird

Photographer Andrew Zuckerman has photographed and catalogued more than 80 birds for his latest book simply entitled Bird. Carefully recording the family and species, Zuckerman sets each aerialist against a clean white background which 'illuminates their colour and plumage in a way that is rarely ever seen.' It is in this feature that creates the illusion of detailed illustration; not photography. It fooled me in the most beautiful way.

Click HERE for more images and info

Cousins

Vampire Weekend's sophomore album Contra drops January 12th 2010. I heart VW.

Fraudulent Destinies

'They ate and moved on, leaving the fire on the ground behind them, and as they rode into the mountains this fire seemed to become altered of its location, now here, now there, drawing away, or shifting unaccountably along the flank of their movement. Like some ignis fatuus belated upon the road behind them which all could see and of which none spoke. For this will to decieve that is in things luminous may manifest itself likewise in retrospect and so by sleight of some fixed part of a journey already accomplished may also post men to fraudulent destinies.'

Blood Meridian

Cormac McCarthy

Inversions Without End

'And so these parties divided upon that midnight plain, each passing back the way the other had come, pursuing as all travellers must inversions without end upon other men's journeys.'

Blood Meridian

Cormac McCarthy

Bali Fire Show

See the power go out. See the night blanket Bali. And this is how I experienced my first traditional Balinese fire show. The fire show is part storytelling, part performance piece, part musical exhibition and part Hindu ritual. It tells the ancient Sanskrit epic of the Ramayana through dance and the unique interplay between a large chorus of men and the costumed character players. A group of men, about fifty in number, surround a ceremonial fire statue and begin the spinning of yarns. They are the background, the soundtrack, the voice and the world in which the story is played out.

The extended length of the show and the continuous rhythm of the dynamic chorus - felt through the soles of your feet and the pulsing of your ears - submerges the audience in the experience. And so, when the chorus carries the costumed warriors through the airborn swordplay routine, you are caught up in the battle and the integral role of the chorus. In this aspect it occurs to me that a talisman of this kind can only survive through generations. It cannot simply be taught. If you are a member of the chorus, your father and his father's father were members of the chorus too. It is inherent in every movement. In the effortless flow with which the men and women of the community tell the story. Together. This story and this performance is their birthright. And it is beautiful.

The Luna2 Private Hotel

A geographically appropriate piece of architecture. The Luna2 is a beachfront hotel in Bali Indonesia designed by American architect David Wahl, with interiors by owner and interior designer Melanie Hall. Classified as 'private', this Balinese paradise only accepts one guest booking at a time for the five bedroom beachfront house. The interior design and landscape takes its cues from the same local culture I've been navigating over the last few weeks, however; the design shapes itself after the Western tourist culture that will briefly call it home. A retro avocado green kitchen with teak cabinetry and contemporary sectional furniture frame out the Audrey Hepburn and Andy Warhol inspired prints.

Click HERE for more images and info

I swam in a waterfall today.

Pundi Pundi

Aside from the benefits of commandeering wifi from across the way, the Pundi Pundi is a most excellent outdoor restaurant overlooking a far reaching rice paddy. The view is a straight up stunner. So good, the tourist paparazzi who frequent Ubud have their way with the landscape from dusk till dawn. A soda water for my lady!

The Truth Disclosed

'It was a strange and melancholy illusion, evolved half-consciously like all our illusions, which I suspect only to be visions of remote unattainable truth, seen dimly. This was, indeed, one of the lost, forgotten, unknown places of the earth; I had looked under its obscure surface; and I felt that when, to-morrow, I had left it for ever, it would slip out of existence, to love only in my memory till I myself passed into oblivion. I have that feeling about me now; perhaps it is that feeling which has incited me to tell you the story, to try and hand over to you as it were, its very existence, its reality - the truth disclosed in a moment of illusion.'

Lord Jim

Joseph Conrad