The Air We See

Every day it seems like I try to color correct for air pollution.

I sit in front of the computer staring disheartened at the hundreds of photos that pass by my way and know, no matter what I do, there is no way to make them in the style that I want to.
Because if I had my way, the air would be clear, the images crisp, without the violent yellow or brownish haze. Without the distancing, the softening, the perceptible impossibility of perception. It can't help but disturb me.

Not long ago I stood on Dragon's Back in Hong Kong, looking down at the shining water and out at the perceptible haze. "It's nothing." They say... they claim. There are just dust particles in the air.

Dust particles... Particulates floating in the air, blurring our gaze, browning it. To fly through the glorious white clouds, only to find a brown layer sitting muddily and ugly on the top.

And I sit at the computer, trying to take out the yellow, the brown, heighten the colors, the sharpness, looking at the pictures and knowing, there's nothing I can do.

Because no matter the changes I make, no matter how hard I try to correct for the air... the pollution is still there.

I can't remove it from the pictures.

Vagabond tho the travels now are ending

Forgive my long absence. As with many writer or artist... it is hard to continue such meanderings of the mind and the texts when you are met with company. And so it was with me. Sometime after my last post my friend Ger joined me in Japan. A strange creature this Ger, I had known him for a week and we had decided to live with one another for a month in Asia. Good? Terrible? Who was to know, for an adventure not tried was an adventure not had. And so, off a bus in Tokyo I met the Jester who had challenged me and befriended me and who I had treated in kind, five months before. So, as only the most adventurous moments will allow, we decided to take that leap of faith and see what would happen.

Have you ever walked along the road and found a friend who could walk at your side through lifetimes and whose company you would never tire of? So it was with he and I. We traveled for two weeks in Japan together, going from Tokyo to Kyoto, to Hakone to Tokyo to Odawara to Tokyo before finally catching a flight to Hong Kong. Every moment, every night, day, a new adventure as we rediscovered friendship and companionship.

I have returned now to the states and to the vast glorious skies of the hudson valley. And I will attempt to write more soon. When it's not the middle of the night.