"better than anything I have ever seen. It will haunt you. trust me."

Everybody creates a world - shopping, working, eating, love, friends, experiences, passions, etc - it is something that we expose, like an image in a darkroom, over the passage of time, occasionally moments, brief and puctuating, more more often over months and years and seasons. Sometimes we are active participants in that creation and more often than not we are passengers, it just happens. I hate when it just happens. I have always want some say in the deal. Maybe that's the creative bit in me. The bit I keep chasing--like I just said to a friend in an email--like a firefly, on-off, on-off, it goes. And I keep chasing, sometimes where it's been, sometimes where I think it's going, and even sometimes where I hope it will go.

These past months I have spent increasingly engaged in creating my own new world; it has become a very active persuit, mentally, spiritually and physically. Part of that creative perambulation has been trying to experience the world not just through my own eyes, ears, and touch, but as well, the thoughts and writings and expressions of others. Today I was catching up on "others" and read Paul Melcher's "Thoughts of a Bohemian" blog, which is linked in the upper right of this blog. He has posted his thoughts and links to war photojournalist Ashley Gilbertson's NYTimes Magazine piece The Shrine Down the Hall - here are Melcher's words about the images:

"These images by Ashley Gilbertson are the most powerful images of war I have ever seen. They are dramatic by what they do not show: The fallen boys. Instead we see the remains of Life brutally interrupted, the trophies, posters, gadgets that once made them happy and proud. Suddenly, their absence within these personal space become unbearable. And death, the death of a US soldier takes a new dimension. It is no longer a soldier from within many, an anonymous face under a helmet, but a person, an individual, a life that is missing."

Even more powerful perhaps are a photographer's words in this amazing interview with VII The Magazine: The Consequences of War. Set your world aside for a few minutes and watch this. War is one of the most hideous acts we humans do, there is no reason for it, only excuses. I couldn't agree with Melcher more, this is, "better than anything I have ever seen. It will haunt you. trust me." Ashley you have my greatest respect for what you have created and are saying in words, pictures and actions.