It is important in my recent work to maintain the integrity of memory and place. This is why I insist on using only the photography that I capture at that moment and in that particular place. Each of these travelogues is part recollection and part commentary on the culture that I experienced traveling there. In a sense, each is a journal entry of the people I meet, the places I walked and the things that filled my senses and thoughts.
"The meek inherit the earth while America consumes it, yet even Copan burt out in the jungle at the hand of the prosperous Maya."
We continue to strive to be greener, with the worry that modern civilization is wearing out "mother earth." But think about the ancient people and how in-tune they were with the earth, yet Mayan cities such as Copan exhausted the land so much that the city could no longer sustain itself no matter how cultural, and advanced it had become.
"Awakening to the smell of eggs and 300 year old timber, plaster and stone... Rabbit on about the bombing."
While we were flying over the Atlantic to Ireland, the operation Shock and Awe was rocking Baghdad with bombs in the night. Over the course of the first week of the war, we four Americans only saw the conflict through the eyes and ears of the United Kingdom. Breakfast conversation was far from normal.
"Despite the fact that it once was a cinema house, it still looked like a barn."
This modest but faith-filled church met in a structure that most of us would liken unto a barn. This, of course, made no real difference in the large scope of things and the grateful and happy spirit of this congregation makes many of our petty complaints null having been blessed with life in the United States
"The bedlam halted in the marketplace—esta perdida, gringa palida. Cheque leque?"
I'm always fascinated by colloquial phrases in other languages. In Honduras, saying "cheque leque" would be like us saying "Okie Dokie."
"The greensward was like carpet and the stone whispered like voices behind curtains."
Newgrange is one of the most ancient sites in Ireland. Intricate decorations were carved into the stones millennia ago, but in the erie silence of this place, one could almost touch and feel the staunch significance of this structure.
"Civilization cradles the diesel transit to and fro the metropolis and las ruinas rumble beneath it."
I can't help but imagine the ancient sites that are shaken underground as these public buses roar above. Civilization builds and builds, layers upon layers.
"Greater love hath no man than this... in the meantime, the Maya were distorting the craft of sacrifice."
"If there is room to breathe, there is room to pass along the panamericana."