Monthly Archive for September, 2007

Costa Rica

I had the opportunity to spend a week with my parents in Costa Rica recently, and wanted to share some photos from the trip. They’re primarily from San Jose, where we spent most of our time, but a few are from the Tabacon hot springs up near the volcano Arenal.

Simply click on the photo below to see the whole photo set at Flickr:

The Flood

The world is a flood, a roaring flood
Of different voices and experiences
Each a call, a clamor for justification
Each drowning out all else

The song is shrill, fingers in ears
Eyes closed, mouth working
Streams that shatter instead of flow
(Just one sperm gets the egg)

Cast in the torrent we sink or swim
And in both the drift inexorable
Downward in the great dissipation
A waterfall of pure selfish Shout

By some chance an eddy forms
A silence outside the current
A strange vacuum we find, and
Hear ourselves for the first time

My great contribution to the world
My voice in its endless streams
Now in the beautiful stillness
Is heard as a strident “me, me, me”

In the clatter my voice was my own
As a puppet may be unique in all respects,
But still moved by the same strings:
Essence of chains though seeming free

In these backwaters there’s no need
To scream ourselves deaf in isolation
But listening together, a voice ex nihilo invades
Low frequency song from eternity past

The song was there in the flood
A hum of bass or treble dance of stars
But in the quiet heard for what it is
The tale of a different Stream altogether

Then a snake of a current grabs ahold
The quiet corner is no more
We disappear back into the noise
The striving to tell right from wrong

And we forget the sound of the voice
That alien song of still, deep pools
But we remember the memory,
And hope that by its magic
We might spin free from the flood once more

Photos from the Sierras

My community spent a week in the wilderness recently, trekking from Mammoth to Tuolumne in California’s Sierras. It was an incredible journey, filled with fun, rest, and even a few challenges along the way (including some adrenalin-pumping encounters with bears). Sadly, my camera broke on day 2, but I did manage to capture a few shots, and the last ones these lenses did see were, quite frankly, astounding. The colors involved in alpine sunsets are fantastic!

Just click on the picture to access the photo set.

Backpacking in the Sierras