ajira's journey

hiya!

I've been posting daily on my photography blog- check it out here.

Leave a comment there this month and you stand a chance to win a $10 iTunes gift card! My very first blog contest. So exciting.

Seriously though, getting comments from folks is so delightful. Apart from reassuring me that I'm not just sharing into a void, it's nice to hear from folks and get a conversation going.

Hope you are well!

warmly,
Ajira

As I drove home today I got entangled in the usual traffic that jams up the Interstate-80 highway around the Emeryville area. It is a place where several highways meet so it makes sense that it can sometimes bottleneck. I watched as people got irate with each other, as they took dangerous chances and seemed to become more careless than (I like to think) they would perhaps normally do.

I started thinking what I've often thought in these situations. Traffic (like most things) seems to be an analogy for life. If we all worked together, behaved like a community, then it could flow quite smoothly. We could all get to where we were going, and get there with support. What a world we could create. As long as we only thought of ourselves though, then we just complicated life for everyone... including ourselves!

Every time a driver took a chance and darted into a space that they could only just fit into, I wondered if the risk was really worth it. When someone rushed into the safety cushion I like to leave between me and the car ahead, I felt myself fill with rage and fantasized that if there was an accident I would roar out of my car (after checking that the baby was fine, of course) and smack the driver for behaving so dangerously. I caught myself, and laughed at such imagery and then breathed. Reminded myself that I do not want to add to the violence and disconnect in the world. I want to remember the gift that is inherent in every experience in our lives. Especially the experiences where the gift is least obvious... those seem to be the most profound. The gift in their dangerous behaviour was for me to remember what I care about, and choose to be grateful for this moment.

Every time a driver took a chance, I wondered if they were really thinking about what they were doing or if they were in automatic. Were they considering what might happen? Did they think they were invincible? Did they forget about their loved ones? What were they rushing for?

It is the ultimate irony. Every time one driver decides that their agenda is more important than everyone else's traffic snarls. They create exactly what they are attempting to avoid. Weaving from lane to lane, slowing each lane down and causing people to start and stop instead of just move smoothly forward. More and more people get annoyed and start taking more risks and then traffic gets more and more jammed. If we all breathed and took it as an opportunity to pause for a moment in our busy lives- just thought about what we were grateful for, or turned the music up and sang along... maybe we could all work together, drive more smoothly, be more gentle and thoughtful with each other and get to where we're going faster. And safer.

This seems like a solid recommendation to me. And coming from a rather mainstream publication, it seems like a sign that we ought to consider alternatives to a battle that is simply not working for the people. Check it out. Leave comments.

How to stop the drug wars

Are you on Facebook? If not, you might want to jump on the bandwagon now... it's certainly a great space to get connected with friends far and wide, old and new.. and it seems to have great promise for other networking possibilities.

And the future looks bright, in Facebookland at least.

Great article. Read it!

 Link

Link

This is a great concept... taking photographs of your home and making a photobook out of it!

Inaugural
Kathy Engel | January 16, 2009

This is the time
to be generous
this is the time to be brave
to watch
how the dove tails up, blinks,
sits tight over invisible eggs
and waits

this is the time to protect
a time to risk
to poet
this is the time to mother
to become curious
this is the time to father
the time to be a child
and listen to the world's striped
breath
this is the time to caulk blood
and love water

this is the time to build
to speckle and spackle
sorrow and happiness
understanding there was never justice
only enough love to keep the species going
against the constant backdrop of arrogance
this is the time to listen to a porcupine
follow a lizard
this is the time to undress

this is the time to redress
dance to the music of our youth
like we're still young
accepting our turtle bodies
this is the time to hear our children's music
this is the time to grow food
and give it away
to see time as a lover,
acrobatic, responsive, calm with familiarity
always uncertain
this is the time to reconcile
and this is the time to expect more
conquer less
this is the time to end torture
(and war)
to stop believing that because things have been
they must continue to be

this is the time for garlic
and a new Jerusalem
this is the time to distinguish between cruelty and absence
and not to be absent or silent
in the face of the intolerable
this is the time to insist
the time to become whole
and give back what you've learned in wholeness
eyelid of light
a disciplined gift of pure grace
for anyone who can breathe and for those
whose breath was stolen or just left them

this is the time to make maps to end hunger of the belly
language to fill hunger of the heart
this is the time to starve
the invader and
turn history back into a prose poem
this is a time to recognize the fuzzy lines --
lack of clarity is not indifference
a time to discern not judge
this is the time for storytelling
sad and defiant and laughing tongues
holding forth about bamboo and the miracle of living things
as well as the inevitable and what appears to be mundane
this is a time to dare being sappy and silly
to fill buckets with endless
alliterative lines replacing cellphones
and instant message

leading towards
lemon verbena
or a flat shining dawn over the spiral sea
to hold your coffee cup
in your hand as you walk into day
smoky java musk
and heartbreak
swirling before you
and behind you

this is a time for jasmine
to construct schools with plenty of light and paint
led by adults who love children more than state exams
this is a time to stare into the prison abyss
write songs
with wrinkled eyes and cayenne lips
this is the time for loving ghosts and fathers
who talk through their ashes
in farmland and film
to let bad ghosts hang out too
until they realize there's no place for them and leave

this is the time to remember the future
like lentil soup
adding one at a time, each ingredient,
a piece of the possible, the savory — cilantro,
rosemary
seasoning according to the tastes of those you love
this is a time to recount the words of favorite writers
and laborers
and find the words of writers you've never heard of
painted onto walls and train cars
anywhere
books hidden in dusty shelves
in small villages surrounded by birds and possum
this is the time to remake a family
and make dinner

this is the time for atheists to pray and zealots to let go
to marvel at the way a sea lion
gets lost on the shore, nods
then waddles back to the waves,
and smile with the realization that the world is not yet
coming to an end
but not become complacent
this is the time to suck out the garbage, all the plastic bags
suffocating salt whispers and ocean roars,
the hump of life
to gasp at the sight of a 5 ton whale
its perfect shining arc
white tipped lime green fin extension
proving there is a form of life whose
structure and purpose remain exquisite

this is the time to twang country music, skit skat jazz
and reach for aria's in languages you may never understand
this is a time to be with animals
and remember when you were an animal
lying in a field in the warm horse snort
newly cut grass turning to hay
the sweetest tonic

this is a time to intervene in matters
of bureaucratic pain and idiocy
and not accept the appropriate
a time to make small things matter
and imagine big things
this is a time to turn the faucet off
and rain poems


June 2008 SeaChange Cottage, Provincetown Mass



Kathy Engel is a poet, cultural worker, producer, and creative and strategic consultant for peace, human rights, and social justice groups. She is the co-founder and founder of numerous organizations including MADRE and Riptide Communications. She is the author of Banish The Tentative and Ruth's Skirts, and teaches at NYU.

                                                                                                                      -Thoreau

So much going on...

the pregnancy: just three months and a bit left of that now. It's been rather rough... not the glowing, skipping experience that I expected but truly beautiful all the same. Especially with feeling the baby's movements since the 9th week. She's a mover and a shaker that's for sure! And now it's just a few weeks until we get to meet her in person! We're very excited.

the business: Ajira Darch Photography took rather a back seat once the morning sickness phase (which lasted all day and night for months) kicked in. There has been some movement though, with a website for my portfolio... and a blog added to that site. Jobs and my photographic life in general are chronicled there. It's a passionate work in progress and I am eager to hear comments and feedback...

the writing: it's been quite up and down with long periods of almost no writing. I've recommited to it though for this coming year. I'm not sure how I'll be sharing it though, so stay tuned for that.

Well, that's about it from me. What's up with you?

Ever thought about how insignificant we are compared to the universe around us? This photographer celebrates that in her photographs... check it out and let me know what you think?

Link

Link

Since there's an email going around warning everyone about this 'new dangerous virus' I checked it out on Snopes.com and this is what I found. So, have a read through the snopes.com post about it before you forward this email to everyone in your address book.

They'll thank you for it. Really.

Link

Amazing images of the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Especially striking because of the little imagery we've seen of this atrocious event in human history.

The FDA is again taking public comments this week about regulating
nanoparticles in our personal products and food. Nanoparticles have
been shown to be small enough to pass the blood-brain barrier. This
is particularly disturbing given that the fundamental properties of
matter can change at the nano-scale, creating physical and chemical
properties distinct from those of the same material in bulk form.

What impact these materials have on our brain or at the cellular level
is unknown; we just don’t have the science on this. That makes
unlabeled inclusion of such materials in the things we eat and put on
our body a risk we can’t afford.

Friends of the Earth has a form that allows you to submit your name to
a petition and add your own comments. They'll deliver those comments
to the FDA for official inclusion in the public comments they are now
seeking. You can sign on here.

"To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget."
-Arundhati Roy 

Image X 08

This looks like an amazing workshop. Unfortunately it is currently $1,699.00 (full price for workshop, hotel & dinner) over my budget...

Would be gladly and graciously accepted as an early birthday/Xmas/unbirthday/Hanukkah/justcosiloveyou/Kwanzaa/new year gift.

I'm just saying.

It's been a while since I was consistently posting but as I keep saying, I DO want to get back into that. So, in the next few weeks I'll post some pictures...

Why is it that I always remember my Tuesday noon yoga class on Monday night, and then again on Tuesday around noon!! Never on Tuesday morning so I can actually get ready and go to the class though. Something always seems to come up in the morning.

Well, I'm rather anxious this morning so that's probably not helping. I really need to line up some work now... the dough is running out... been running out but I've been in denial. A little bit. Faith and Denial.... is there really a difference between them?

I've been thinking lately that perhaps one idea that may help me in my quandary is to basically schedule everything and then just make sure that I stick to it like glue. Sticking to anything like glue is a little anti-Ajira (not to be confused with aunty Ajira)... I'm very much a 'go with the flow' person. Some people sometimes mistake this for wishy-washiness but I protest! It's just being open to the moment. Ha ha ha. Ok, sometimes it is wishy-washiness. But not always.

We're going to Long Beach for the weekend. I'm doing the pictures at the wedding of aunt Catherine and uncle Steve this Sunday. So excited.

So much to get done before we leave!

I know I said I would load the pictures from aunt Helga's and cousin Laura's visit but I haven't finished the post-work yet. Argh... and I have so many more pictures to share since then! :-)

I'm going to focus on getting ready and if I have some time left over before we head out I will certainly get on that. Otherwise, I'll get on it once the wedding furor has died down late next week.