When I compress experiences from the last 6 months the only sensical reality is that in the 8th dimension some giant being decided to pick up a random stone (me) and skip it across some strange landscape...
8 months ago I was ready for a radical change. I decided to follow a near-totally blind path and I made the leap to another world - To the Old World - Europa. To marriage, to new work opportunities, new horizons... I was open to realizing what might be possible, and impossible. The pieces from this journey from winter and now back to summer are still circulating, realizing a shorter night and lengthening day as I do, but still in a fog and fighting for better clarity.
There was intense physical pain these last months, mental and emotional pain, screaming madness - and small spiritual epiphanies - perhaps. There was unconditional love. There was abused alcohol and drugs, an awareness that was far from free. A fallout of lessons and potential, a newly populated landscape of ghosts, broken promises and distant hope. I shook hands with people from at least two dozen countries, without a Euro to my name I slammed champagne and devoured opulent snacks at parties attended by hero activists and UN delegates, rubbed shoulders with next level storytellers, found and lost a dream job in Los Angeles, stumbled across worked and threatened landscapes of three continents... Spent long hours with jets, ferrys, buses, trains, cars, press boxes, on a bicycle, on foot - swimming through this quixotic miasma of wonder, fear, hope, realization, loss. I risked everything and nothing. I cried, a lot.
Perhaps the personal climate is a metaphor for global climate, micro within the macro. Perhaps. I may have zero left in my bank account but I have gained a pirate's treasure of experience. Stolen, collected moments... Now what will I do with all this new-found loot? Dream? Wish? Proselytize? Shrink?
Things happen, for a reason...
Perhaps this unfolding story, its deeper layers, are best told through the ocular eyes of inanimate objects, my albatross and ever-present companions - a Sony A7, a Nikon D700, an iPhone 5s.
all images ©Bennett Barthelemy
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| How long will it take the US to realize that this is the best vehicle - kid delivery, groceries, commuting, low emission... |
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| With the energy used to create one meal with meat (from field to table) you could make 50 vegetarian meals... |
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| The Atlas mountains of Morocco, small subsistence farming, a woman's co-op with argan oil at its center... |
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| Glimpses of the past and present. I traded a camera body for a trip to Morocco and the climbing guidebook for a rug |
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| Sleeping outside, sunrise, the backyard - things that make me smile... |
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| Did the world hit the two degree mark two months after the Accord was signed? |
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| Sebastiao Salgado, the Paris Undergound, a whale... |
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| The view from Les Mur Des Scorpion... this picture makes me think of palm oil plantations, big agriculture, GMOs... |
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| The ancient Medina in Marrakech |
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| Cheif Raoni accepts his award - is it true that two football fields of forest are lost every minute in the Amazon region? |
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| Crazy amounts of knowlege right here... Has the world heard what was said here at this tribunal at Cop21? |
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