dealing with vagaries

I would love to shake hands with whomever invented the line.  Point A to Point B – a restful tension, sharpstraightgeometry.

Underwater but on land.  Above Singapore but below the surface.

Just landed in Singapore for a few days to do a couple of talks for The National Geographic Channel. Made the jumps from LEX/DCA/IAD/LHR/SIN in one long, transcontinental streak, but at some point over the Smoky Mountains shot this image on the pocketable iPhone. I like the pixelation – in fact, it’s given me an idea for a new essay…

Down here in New Orleans for AC360 – CNN covering the BP oil spill…

Farmland. Maryland.

“measures of mercury”

1000
1000
1000
feet above silent
crust
I cruise at altitude
bathed in the exhalation of others
while warning whispers
staccato blush our aura

I want to crawl
through the plexiglass
I want to stand on the flexing wing
before I dive
through layers of atmosphere
before I plummet
through layers of sparse molecules
and gaps that can’t be shaken by sound

I would eventually land in the sea
somewhere between two continents
irretrievable
and impacted
into my own particular
ether

and during this night
while a stranger
sleeps touching
my elbow
I want to ingest my own ether
as it drifts back upwards from the sea
too finely/finally
purified
to be noticed by gravity

The geometry of Gulu (Uganda).

Lira, Uganda that is – home to a highly-charged dance party.

“the electric slide”

canons
of distant heat lightning
blossom as electric flowers
dangling
over a dance
floor packed
with thirty men to every woman.

as the rain tumbles
down from those ionized petals
I can’t imagine each bump
and every grind
is safe from the suspect
wiring of distorted
bass and conductive pools
which tremble to the beat.

Two images I came across tonight in an old folder from my “Travel Anonymous” series. A random hotel room in Australia from an assignment in 2003. I remember I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t remember where I was – just too much time on the road…

Photo District News homepage- an image I shot of Anderson Cooper and virologist Dr. Nathan Wolfe in the Democratic Republic of Congo…