The Flux Capacitor

The shortest distance between my new home and my old apartment in Dhaka is 12,272 kilometers. Or expressed in miles its 7625. Or by boat it's 6626 nautical miles. You choose. Either way it's far by any means of expressing distance. I could go into the emotional distance of it all but that's just not my thing.

This morning I dropped five dollars into a coin machine at my local laundry-mat. As the coins dropped down like some low budget slot machine it hit me just how far I am from Dhaka. This feeling has come over me before but for some reason it wasn't until today till I wanted to know just how far I was. My brain could connect the dots better than my eyes could so seeing it on the computer, in actual quantifiable numbers, helped pound in the last nail that I am actually back in my home country.

I left Dhaka on January 31st. It was a Saturday. With the plane racing the sun to see which one of us would hit the mark of the east coast first my mind went to autopilot as what I was experiencing felt like a dream. I still don't know why I left other than to follow a dream. I gave up one to follow another. Doing so was in the simplest terms an act of faith - the space between reaching for one wrung on the monkey bars and the other felt infinite.

But I am here now. I am home. I am taking the time to learn the craft of documentary photography to return to Bangladesh (possibly) and others like it. With this new skill set in hand I aim to photograph images of suffering, hope, destruction, and great achievement. In the act of taking a photo comes with it the possibility to change the way we all think about the world around us. In so doing we can all connect the dots between ourselves and those right next door or dozens of time zones ahead.

Time travel is quite a trip.

30th Post

Late again posting. My time here in Maine has been focused on just one thing- photography. This has led to not keeping up with this blog. But, plans are in the works for next weeks more planned out post.

It's my 30th post and I wish I could offer something free like a t-shirt or photograph...which now that I mention it I think I will do in the near future (minus the t-shirt offer).

As school moves through the last stages of winter I find myself looking towards the summer and finding a long-term story to document. If anyone out there reading this has an idea they think worth documenting - overseas in particular - let me know. More soon.

Home again, home again, jiggity-jig

I'm drinking freshly pressed apple cider. It's snowing outside. By this evening we're supposed to get 8-12 of snow. The radio was just playing Neil Young's Sugar Mountain. I'm home... in the sense that I am living in a rented apartment back in my beloved New England. More specifically I'm in Maine which I have long considered my second home.

It's snowing outside. The radio just switched tunes to someone I don't know but keeps my interest as I write. I've been back from Dhaka almost a month now. A month of flights, packing, unpacking, packing again and finally unpacking one last time (till I have move again).

There have been a few interesting things going on in Bangladesh since I left. Most recently a rebellion took place within the capita, Dhaka, leaving some 140 officers dead. The stand-off between the countries Bangladesh Rifles (BDR)- boarder guards, over pay and command structure lasted for two days. Some 1,000 suspected BDR attackers are currently being tracked down. To read more about this fluid situation please see: Bangladesh Manhunt for Mutineers .

It's difficult to get an accurate sense of what it is actually like to be in Dhaka now. I hope to find out more and if I do will post what I find in next weeks posting.

My old familiar home

Two weeks and entering my third since I left Bangladesh to begin my switch from volunteer to photojournalist. It's snowing outside and I realize that winter didn't seem real to me until now. My brain is spilt between the snowy scene out my window and that of the one I woke up to every day in Dhaka.

The program I chose to participate in has already proven well worth my time. I plan on talking about it more in future posts but for now I'm still caught between the world I left, the world I am in, and the one I want to enter in to.

Dhaka, so many miles away, still feels like it could be just around the corner.