a journal of adventures in the far east
The first photographs shot in the middle of the night, this is a series that was born when the exposure of the original, raw images of a photography excursion was increased dramatically and the veil of night was lifted. A moon and city street lights exchanged for a blazing sun. What began as a revival of my photography outings, spurred by, at times, nothing more than a thought—an unexplainable feeling, a connection to something I do not know—is now a story, when sixty-three kilometres to Beirut becomes zero. An exploration of forms, contrast, and light as they come together for a sudden creation of an alternate reality, an adventure that may never happen, that will happen, or has already happened. Here is the evidence that the underside of a bridge in the middle of a suburb can at the same time be the underside of a bridge in the Middle Eastern sands of the outskirts of Beirut, where if you listen quietly enough between the rare passing cars, you will hear the distant market. If you are even quieter, you might smell it too.
37 kilometres to Beirut.
Day 135, Year 567
The first river I had seen in this part of the planet. My hand as it writes this note cannot dance precisely enough upon the fibres of my notebook to describe the feeling of liquid water on a tongue that had been parched for two days in the desert sun.
A warm welcome to Beirut.
Day 135, Year 567
With an invigorated energy, which seemed to be the only rational reason as to why I made it to Beirut despite a leaking tank that I attempted to fix with clay from the bank of the only river I had seen for weeks, I saw the market. Rather, I became aware of it even before I passed the threshold of where groups of scattered building became more dense and could finally be called Beirut. The fumes from the fuel spitting onto me were having trouble hiding the brilliant smells of fresh fruits, dishes, and even handiwork, which had the smell of a forest, perhaps a little burned, with a hint of the taste of a wound or two that was braved during the creation those masterpiece.
Through the night I slept under the stars and moon, my canteen of water spilled. Not a drop was left by the time it came to my attention hours after the hottest morning sun of the revolution banished any droplets of the precious sustenance of life from the inside of the metal cylinder. Though the puddled sank quickly into the ground, the anxiety of losing my only source of water lingered. That is until I found an oasis, a river of small width amongst dry, unforgiving dunes. Despite my discovery, a day without this liquid while travelling in the harshest sunlight had drained me of my energy and capacity to produce grounded thoughts. My arrival to Beirut, a commendable trading post at which I would surely not suffer a death from thirst, much less hunger, was quickly interrupted by my question of the date. For, I truly could not calculate it, the number sixty-three running in my head for a reason I could not remember until a very kind individual let me into their home to sip from a bucket of their most prized water. A sip that reminded me of the journey I had just endured, one that slightly slipped from existence but now came rushing back.
The feeling of achieved safety as my throat became as smooth as the clay plastered on my motorcycle engine was painfully shocking in contrast to what might have befallen me had I not reached this city. It was day one hundred and thirty-four of revolution five hundred and sixty-seven. The revolution, I will admit, I would not forget unless I was living my last minutes, dying from thirst, for this revolution specifically was one filled of much change in my existence—a number of revolutions I had not kept a decent enough record of. Twenty-five or was it twenty-six? With a murky mind I realized that my motorcycle, which had been resting peacefully in the fiery sun that was comparably as hot as the engine whose walls burned my leg as I dismounted my contraption was gone. In a state of complete lack of shock, both from my still recovering mind and, truly, comparably eventful past weeks, my first thought was this: how could I have expected to buy a motorcycle for such a reasonable price? This was, undoubtedly, the result of my fierce bargaining of a couple days prior.
I took a moment to think about the interconnectedness of it all working as it does, a bad sale disappearing from my possession. I stumbled out to beneath a bridge on the outskirts of Beirut, far enough from the city so that all that I had left, myself, was not somehow stolen as well but close enough to the market to quench the mounting hunger in my stomach through the smells in the air. Maybe this was the work of the kind individual who let me into their abode for a lifesaving drink. Maybe it was not. Regardless, the heat made it difficult to have much energy, moreso with the added rumbling of a demanding organ. My next steps, armed with nothing but the clothes on me, the empty pockets of which should have stored the currency left on my motorcycle, would need to be calculated. How, I was not completely sure, but in the heat of day one hundred and thirty-five and on the hot sands and streets of Beirut, most undoubtedly and most least, they would have to be quick and few.
A photo essay series that began along with the revival of my photography excursions.