the tides of change have finally arrived...

...and people are beginning to jump into the river of God with their clothes on.
(photo taken in Tamarin Bay Mauritius)

new home away from home

...three guesses where I'll be in 3 weeks! *YAY!*
(these aren't my photos)

full circle

The doors in Yemen are exquisite - despite their age, you could probably hang them in modern art gallery around the world.

I took this photo in about July 2004. I had been walking with my dad through a labyrinth of winding passageways within the ancient city of Babel' Yemen when I came across this particular door.

As we looked closer we noticed that there was actually a white horse locked away inside (so hidden that friends still battle to see once pointed out). No-one around for miles and no evidence of anyone having been around either. I spoke to the horse for a bit in broken Arabic, took a photo and continued on my adventure.

I'm not a ‘horsy-person’ but I’ve always wondered about that solitary white horse locked away in the middle of nowhere...my heart had been broken by he's sad eyes. I wondered what happened to him and if he was still alive.

It is common to have camels working in mills on the ground floor of peoples homes (after all that is where the livestock sleep at night). These camels were often taken in to work as foals and are no longer able to fit back out through the small doorway... so they just live in these little dingy, cramped, cave-like rooms.

A couple years later I was looking online at pics taken in Yemen and stumbled across this one taken at the end of 2006 by a Frenchman named Yves Lambert.
Once I gathered my composure, I was filled with the overwhelming realization that God had orchestrated all of that just to communicate something to me. That this photographer had been to that exact door (literally in the middle of nowhere) at the most precise timing...and then followed through by posting his image online for me to find.

When I told my mom, her response was that she felt it was a very significant picture for the end times church. I'm not sure if I’d take it that far but its definitely prophetically significant in my own life...and especially that I'm only now uploading this for the world to see. Considerably sizable in my life right now actually...

heart

Just when I thought I was open-handed, God starts teaching me about being open-handed...

ruined

who actually knows what Ive been waiting for...tic-toc...
all I do know is this - I am properly ruined.

change

Everything we know should always be subject to change...
even our knowledge of Him who never changes.

woohoooo!

kindness

Daddy God is altogether good...He is altogether faithful...He is altogether patient...He is altogether Loving...He is KIND.

goodness me

more pics of Mauritius...how did these get here? *lol*

no more monkeys jumping on the bed

And I'm finally working on my very last album ever (well, provided Lisa gets married before me, that is!) due at the end of the week. The 'last of something' is usually the most difficult but always liberating in some or other area, even if only in personal growth or self realization. People say the 'first of everything' is especially memorable, but my last wedding is cause for collosal celebration, marking the official closure of a very long, hard, barren season of work, work and umm...more work. What better way to end it than on a tropical island. Hmm...but in order for a new space to open up, the old one has to increase by giving way for the new and in order for a seed to grow it must die...which usually means it has to endure a painful winter season to see new life.

(lack of sleep makes me especially philosophical...deliriously philosophical actually)

Sorry girls but I wont be attending another wedding for a good while...yes, its official: I'm on a 'wedding sabbatical'.

sigh

I wish with all my heart I could be fast asleep in my bed right now.

i can't sleep

old books

Why's it so hard to find classic analogue 'documentary-style' portraits of the Masai online?! For crying in a plastic spoon...

I was visiting my aunt and uncles place this last week with my mom (before she leaves to join my dad in Uganda). My uncle is an artist and he has these incredible old coffee-table books stashed up in his studio....you know, the types where you want to hold your face really close to the pages and breath in deep while turning them ever so slowly so as to best make use of the exquisite smell. Its the smell of wisdom and experience, trapped timelessly on sheets of semi gloss paper (a smell up there with leather, roast chicken and afternoon summer rain on hot dry sand). Silent journeys that only rarely brave their way back into the world to be revisited by an appreciating eye. Mm...that smell brings back sweet memories of lying on a wool carpet as a little scruffy-haired kiddie with my brother, paging through piles of old encyclopedias - he'd tell me stories about Sweden and Greenland and World War 2 and 'spontaneous combustion'. He was my hero...there was nothing he didn't know *lol*

Most of my uncles books document life in the 40's (both pre and post war). Stunning! But amongst these books, is a very large one on Kenya (probably photographed in the early 60's and printed sometime in the late 70’s maybe). Its full of huge fine-art 'documentary-style' black&white portraits. Images still alive they've been so well photographed! Why don't they make photographers like that anymore?

I could have actually just sat for hours with the book pressed up against my face, eyes closed, just taking in the delicate smell of the experience...but I couldn't...the photos were just too breathtaking to ignore. Moving. Almost spell bounding. The kind of quality you just don't find nowadays.

The digital age I tell you. Anyone can snap mindlessly away with a digital camera to flood the airwaves with crappy photos until they get their ‘one in a million’ shot...like literally. That's why I hate digital! It trains people into becoming visually lazy and self-indulgent. Did I mention that I desperately need a digital camera? Aargh...the irony of it all!

There’s a Maasai warrior I sometimes see walking around the area I live. He must be about 7 feet tall, rich almost red brown in colour and robed in traditional red Masai fabric. He stops me dead in my tracks every time. Such presence and beauty.

sweet presence

better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere

liebermarlene

I stumbled on this girly while searching for ideas on alice-bands and pretty little hair things. Her name is Rhiannon Leifheit, a stylist from Atlanta with the most massive collection of little vintage dresses. She has the sweetest little wardrobe I've ever seen. So worth having a look see.

when you were a child

When you were a child
I called you my own
And you were mine
When you were a child
You could not stand alone
But you were fine

I want to know that child again
Maybe time has changed you
But Love remembers when
You called my name and like the wind
I carried you away
It seems like only yesterday
When you were a child

When you were a child
The world was the unknown
But you were wise
To simply trust in me
That I will never leave
And hold on tight

- lyrics by Jason Upton

bokmakierie

I ♥ your style JP! Have a look at some of his work.
(Oh, and I ♥ sushi and chocolate also JP! ;-) Charge it please...thank you very much!)

separated at birth

My long lost twin and I sometime in 1980. I am on the right.

smitten

God's love is infinite. the purest romance imaginable. the fact that God (creator of the universe, holy, righteous, all knowing, all-powerful) pays attention to the most arbitrary details of our hearts to woo us closer to Himself. to remind us that He sees us. nakedly. as we are. flesh. to the core. unmasked. inside out. and that He is literally just that, ‘smitten’ with us.

I recently asked Him to take all of my heart...along with every dream...in exchange for more of Him. and he has done just that.

mauritius

ok - so I'm actually just going to show off right now...cause I can!!

(hmm...yes...this is where I'll be today in 3 weeks time)

joao silva

A hero of the struggle and one of the four South African photographers associated with the ‘The Bang Bang Club’ documenting township violence in the early 90's as apartheid was in its last throes. Joao Silva and Greg Marinovich (the only survivors of the group) wrote an autobiography after the name which has since been turned into a movie. Some of his photos give me goosies. No words.

ghetto blaster

A boombox, also known as ghetto blaster, jambox, or radio-cassette, is a name given to portable stereo systems capable of playing radio stations and recorded music (usually cassettes), at relatively high volume. Designed for portability, most boomboxes can be powered by batteries, as well as by line current.