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…
“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
Sometimes you wish you never knew the story behind the image…click here to see why…
The wheels hit the tarmac this morning in Singapore after 24 hours from NYC via Frankfurt. My traveling companies were the ever-reliable Ambien, a couple of drinks, baseball cap pulled over the eyes and two deeply lodged earplugs.
Out here shooting television commercials for Singapore Airlines, one in town here, the other in Japan. A la Bill Murray/Lost in Translation – “For relaxing times, make it Suntory time…”
I’m back in DC now– crashed hard in my own bed last night– always nice. The thin foam mattress I slept on under mosquito netting in Chad doesn’t compare. The nights there were sweat-drenched and buggy. Add in the wacked-out dreams that Malarone (an anti-malarial drug) throws in the mix, and there goes any restful sleep. Every morning I’d wake up in my little bungalow in Zakouma National Park and the floor would look like a civil war battlefield, littered with the bodies of thousands of insects that had somehow crept their way in during the night. There was no point in trying to step around them in the morning– just too many. Crunch crunch.
But enough of that. I was covering a story on elephant poaching– here are a few images…
I’m in a hotel room in N’djamena, Chad– watching a made for TV rip-off of The Karate Kid on a fuzzy screen. “Mr. Miyagi” looks either Indonesian or maybe Filipino in this version— and the faux “Karate Kid” is a blond-haired dude who just finished up a musical montage by, believe it or not, running down a beach. With characteristically perfect timing, the “Karate Kid’s” archrival, as all bad guys do, rolled down the window of his limo in order to watch said “Karate Kid” training on the beach. Hollywood is indeed a thing of beauty. And by the way, the whole thing is dubbed into French. Ouch.
It took me over 27 hours to go from Hong Kong to central Africa. Last week’s promo tour for “Somewhere in China” was fantastic, and completely hectic. I flew out of Hong Kong— known for it’s neon, and landed in Chad after dark, a place almost completely devoid of light. Flying in to central Africa was disorienting. None of the recognizable signs of a city– just faint embers and dying filaments eking out their existence on the black earth below.
The city neon to the city noir.
After a 20+ hour transit we just touched down in Manila to do a bit of a PR tour for “Somewhere in China”—the National Geographic Channel travel/adventure series my brother Pete and I are hosting. It’s six one-hour episodes covering China top to bottom and starts airing on NGC this Sunday, October 12 for the next six consecutive weeks.
So the Channel flew us out here to Southeast Asia for a week to run around giving a bunch of interviews and to host some photo workshops. Here’s the schedule in case you can make it to any of the workshops.
MANILA:
Oct. 13 – 1:30 pm
Filipinas Heritage Library (Makati Avenue – Ayala Triangle)
KUALA LUMPUR
Oct. 16 – 7:30pm
Westin Kuala Lumpur
HONG KONG
Oct. 19 – 2 pm and 4 pm
Hong Kong Space Museum
In between the workshops it’s back-to-back TV and print interviews…going to be a busy week.
And after finishing up the second workshop in Hong Kong I fly straight out that night to do more work with CNN in Chad. I would imagine there’s not too much demand for a nonstop Hong Kong – N’Djamena, Chad flight unfortunately…
I’m sitting in Air France’s business class lounge on the way home from Johannesburg. Plane’s boarding a few and I’m about to spend the next 22 hours in transit. I’ve been flying mostly business class lately, which makes a HUGE difference when you have to walk off the plane and get straight to work. But I noticed a funny thing on my last flight out here to South Africa. There are a lot more bald heads in business class than in economy. It’s not hard to figure out why that would be, but I realized last time I was seated directly behind one of those bald heads, it reminded me of the old ice bridge between Siberia and Alaska. Hair on the sides of the head with a bald bridge separating the two, much like the Bering Strait separating Asia and North America. I imagined the man’s remaining follicles braving the high winds and exposure of the his dome like ancient Inuits, marching across his scalp in a poorly executed comb over, trying to find a better life in another land.
I have no idea if that makes any sense outside my own head. But it made me laugh.
There’s a French drama playing on the cabin screens, dubbed into Mandarin, subtitled in English. We’re spaced out between rows 6, 7, and 8, our carry-ons divided among all the left over overhead bins. We were the last ones on the plance so our bags are jammed in wherever they could fit. It’s three hours into the 5-hr. flight to Urumqi in western China. I always forget how massive this country really is. If we didn’t have Alaska, the US would be dwarfed by the PRC.
We’ll sit in the Urumqi airport and then hop an hour or so flight into Kashgar. I love the name Kashgar– for some reason it conjures up images of total desolation– frontier life on the outskirts of civilization. I can’t wait to see how my impressions match up with reality. This is a part of China I’ve always wanted to see. I’m expecting a landscape and culture more akin to Mongolia than your standard fare Han-populated China.
Jason, our associate producer, just leaned back over his window seat in front of me to point out a road cutting across the earth below. Besides some distant mountains, it’s the only semblance of topography on a bleached landscape. It’s chalk and grit 30,000 feet below. Monochromatic until the land starts to mingle with the faded atmospheric blue of the horizon line. Yeah, I think desolation is the right word.
It’s going to be odd to see blue eyes on a Chinese person. Forget about blonde hair. But of all the places in the country, this is going to be the spot with the most genetic diversity. The most radical departure from the classic black hair and dark eyes of the stereotypical Chinese. It’s a funny place to introduce our producer and soundman to the country. We’re starting them off in the most atypical part of the country– although I guess the reality is that this is as much part of China as any other part– north/south/east/west. That’s going to be a bit of a brain stretch for me– to incorporate this part of China into my childhood concept of the place. In some ways– it’s not too far off from squeezing our bags into chalk-full overhead bins…