"You think of travelers as bold, but our guilty secret is that
travel is one of the laziest ways on earth of passing the time.
Travel is not merely the business of being bone-idle, but also an
elaborate bumming evasion, allowing us to call attention to ourselves
with our conspicuous absence while we intrude upon other people’s privacy
— being actively offensive as fugitive freeloaders. The traveler is the
greediest kind of romantic voyeur, and in some well-hidden part of the
traveler’s personality is an unpickable knot of vanity, presumption, and
mythomania bordering on the pathological. This is why a traveler’s
worst nightmare is not the secret police or the witch doctors or malaria,
but rather the prospect of meeting another traveler.
Most writing about travel takes the form of jumping to conclusions,
and so most travel books are superfluous, the thinnest, most transparent
monologuing. Little better than a license to bore, travel writing is the
lowest form of literary self-indulgence: dishonest complaining, creative
mendacity, pointless heroics, and chronic posturing, much of it distorted
with Munchausen syndrome."
- Paul Theroux
Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
build
I very much want to learn how to build houses. From the ground up to the roof and then through all the small details. After years of sitting in front of the computer editing photos, nothing gives me more satisfaction than to do some work with my hands where you can take a before and after picture and see the real life result of your work. Something someone can live in. Where to begin is the only question...
Monday, March 01, 2010
letter to jessica
I have been a little anxious lately - wondering about what the next step is as the end of my time in Egypt draws nearer. The project I am working on will probably be finished by May but my contract extends to July. I don't feel ready to go back to America, I'd rather make crazy plans elsewhere.
I'm really excited to hear about the projects you are working on and always impressed. I hear you about getting bored! I know it probably sounds funny to people working 9-5s but they don't see the other side of things, and I know that feeling all to well. I feel the same way about my life in Egypt. Ready for a change of scenery. I'm starting to brainstorm things I could do photo projects on so I think we absolutely must do something together.
I don't have anything spectacular brewing, but some spectacular dreams, and it all started with two people - Jesse Hadden and Manfred. Let me explain. Jesse mentioned a bike trip him and his gf took from portland to his hometown in Montana on bike. Having never done a big bike trip I thought this was the coolest thing ever, and we agreed to do a big bike trip this summer around August. We'll see. Then while living in Egypt I met this dude Manfred, a traveler from Vienna, Austria. He has basically been driving all over Africa for the last 6 years. He drove from Vienna. The man is great. His blog is here: http://www.thisfabtrek.com/home/tfthome.php It is a never ending journey. You can really get lost on this page. Currently I believe he is in Jerusalem. Ok, so after meeting him it became clear to me. I must to a cross-continental africa trip. Then I asked my mother to bring this book to Egypt with her "Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town" by Paul Theroux. I figured the more I can read about such a trip the more all be inspired/informed. So there's that trip looming in my mind Cairo to Capetown. But now lately I've been thinking, it doesn't necessarily have to be a road trip. There's company's like this: http://www.tourdafrique.com/epictours/tourdafrique/in-depth that do the whole trip on a bike! Mind you they are averaging 77 miles a day (GASP) and charging an arm and a leg ( they cook for you and protect you against catastrophy) but one could take on a similar trip on one's own... it would just be terribly difficult. These guys also do a trip from St. PEtersburg through Europe by the Baltic Coast to the Adriatic Sea! Basically I have a whole lot of fuzzy ideas about cross continental travel. I even listened to a pod cast about some dudes who rode their horses across America. Amazing.
Now, in terms of stories? Let me see here.
• 20somethings not making it in the American economy and looking elsewhere (us. . .)
• Burnesh of the Balkans: Women who lead their lives as men (from CBC Dispatches podcast)
• The Roma Gypsies in Rome
• Locals being fucked by the tourist industry everywhere (i.e. people'se houses being bulldozed now in Luxor for some phoney archeology)
• an in-depth look at a Native American community ( i.e. the one living on the outskirts of the G. Canyon)
• Inuit Indians being screwed by the white man in northern Canada (have a buddy who is working to defend their rights in canada)
• New Orleans. . . now
• The Amish – the gap year where they go out into the world and fuck shit up
• Trash island http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch
• Nauru: the world’s smallest island nation (8square miles) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naur
Bringing video, photo, and good writing (you) together we could make one of these happen. Some of them have been done as radio stories, some as TV stories. But the fact is there are stories everywhere. Anywhere we want to go we can make it happen.
There must be a way to combine an amazing bike/road trip with a photo/story. We just have to figure it out and attack it.
What is floating around in your head? Do you have a timeline for India? Have you been to goa? sounds like such a weird place.. i taught english to a russian lady who ran a club there. it sounds like maybe it would be really annoying compared to the rest of india. are there stories to cover there? problem is i've got friends in all different places - New Zealand, Africa, India, gotta pick a place. . . So let me think
Best,
Sara
I'm really excited to hear about the projects you are working on and always impressed. I hear you about getting bored! I know it probably sounds funny to people working 9-5s but they don't see the other side of things, and I know that feeling all to well. I feel the same way about my life in Egypt. Ready for a change of scenery. I'm starting to brainstorm things I could do photo projects on so I think we absolutely must do something together.
I don't have anything spectacular brewing, but some spectacular dreams, and it all started with two people - Jesse Hadden and Manfred. Let me explain. Jesse mentioned a bike trip him and his gf took from portland to his hometown in Montana on bike. Having never done a big bike trip I thought this was the coolest thing ever, and we agreed to do a big bike trip this summer around August. We'll see. Then while living in Egypt I met this dude Manfred, a traveler from Vienna, Austria. He has basically been driving all over Africa for the last 6 years. He drove from Vienna. The man is great. His blog is here: http://www.thisfabtrek.com/home/tfthome.php It is a never ending journey. You can really get lost on this page. Currently I believe he is in Jerusalem. Ok, so after meeting him it became clear to me. I must to a cross-continental africa trip. Then I asked my mother to bring this book to Egypt with her "Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town" by Paul Theroux. I figured the more I can read about such a trip the more all be inspired/informed. So there's that trip looming in my mind Cairo to Capetown. But now lately I've been thinking, it doesn't necessarily have to be a road trip. There's company's like this: http://www.tourdafrique.com/epictours/tourdafrique/in-depth that do the whole trip on a bike! Mind you they are averaging 77 miles a day (GASP) and charging an arm and a leg ( they cook for you and protect you against catastrophy) but one could take on a similar trip on one's own... it would just be terribly difficult. These guys also do a trip from St. PEtersburg through Europe by the Baltic Coast to the Adriatic Sea! Basically I have a whole lot of fuzzy ideas about cross continental travel. I even listened to a pod cast about some dudes who rode their horses across America. Amazing.
Now, in terms of stories? Let me see here.
• 20somethings not making it in the American economy and looking elsewhere (us. . .)
• Burnesh of the Balkans: Women who lead their lives as men (from CBC Dispatches podcast)
• The Roma Gypsies in Rome
• Locals being fucked by the tourist industry everywhere (i.e. people'se houses being bulldozed now in Luxor for some phoney archeology)
• an in-depth look at a Native American community ( i.e. the one living on the outskirts of the G. Canyon)
• Inuit Indians being screwed by the white man in northern Canada (have a buddy who is working to defend their rights in canada)
• New Orleans. . . now
• The Amish – the gap year where they go out into the world and fuck shit up
• Trash island http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch
• Nauru: the world’s smallest island nation (8square miles) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naur
Bringing video, photo, and good writing (you) together we could make one of these happen. Some of them have been done as radio stories, some as TV stories. But the fact is there are stories everywhere. Anywhere we want to go we can make it happen.
There must be a way to combine an amazing bike/road trip with a photo/story. We just have to figure it out and attack it.
What is floating around in your head? Do you have a timeline for India? Have you been to goa? sounds like such a weird place.. i taught english to a russian lady who ran a club there. it sounds like maybe it would be really annoying compared to the rest of india. are there stories to cover there? problem is i've got friends in all different places - New Zealand, Africa, India, gotta pick a place. . . So let me think
Best,
Sara
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