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»  Click here to see more images from Northern Mali, January 2004.  «
»  Click here to see more images from Southern Mali, December 2003.  «




»  Click here for more of the nomadic peoples of Northern Mali.  «


One recent, stolen afternoon, I took a long walk in Redwood Park, a park in the East Bay hillls I've been to countless times, and was so moved by the trees that I wanted to make an album titled "ALL GOD'S CHILDREN CAN DANCE." Because the trees do. They invite me to dance too with the rustle of their garb, caress me when my eyes follow their limbs, lead me and follow me, until my heart is heavy with the sap of emotion yet soaring with the highest branches. But that's only one way to look at it. They don't play with me of course, because they don't need me, as I need them. In any case I decided not to use that title, a phrase that is only understood in fleeting moments. The trees stretch these moments into eternity, and I will try again and again to show anyone who cares to look, what is so touching about that.

Best to take a walk with me.

I will be traveling again in a few days, this time to West Africa: Mali and Mauritania. New worlds. Please look for new posts here soon; I'm looking forward to them too.

»  Click here for more of these very ordinary trees.  «



















I've forgotten what it's like to see kids working. In the long walk in countryside today, I see all the kids are working: herding cows and sheep, washing, plowing, doing what they can alongside the adults. Then at the fabric store, I bought a piece of red cotton for a sarong just because the ten-year-old and her six-year-old sister are running the store on their own, and they're so adorable I just wanted to please them in some way.

In these places they haven't learned to stick their hand out to the tourists for candy or for money, nor to sale postcards or carry a little shoe polishing stand. They haven't learned to be aggressive, and there's nothing as tender as when the naturally shy ones warm up to you. I wish I can talk to them better... tell them about little kids in China, who also carry a full day's work load before they're ten, and such eager and sweet smiles on their dirty faces.


The Cloudherd's Song

Never having done anything ever but watch
and never having actually watched anything,

never having attended to anything but cloud
and never having touched one or learned

its numbers or colors or rightful names
(except once on the slopes above Darjeeling

I wore out into the morning and breathed you in,
mother of atmosphere, green air,

eternity, vagrant, the monsoon
had brought you and I took you entirely in)

I call you cloud and call myself yours.

— Robert Kelly

» Click here for more cloudy pictures. «






“The epiphany of my life came along long ago, when it struck me that sadness was a recognition and affirmation of the sweep of beauty in the world, the promiscuous swirl of it through our lives, and the scars it leaves behind.”
— Bob Shacochis, author

Chinese New Year's parade and festivities, Chinatown, New York. It's the year of the Ram, or Goat, or Sheep, or year 4700. The festivities are mostly a facade, thin. The details are nice, but without the crowds, there's not much of a show. But I appreciate the young men and women with their bleached and colored locks and their good looks doing the drumming, taking up the baton of tradition that's the lion's head, dancing their way into each storefront and wishing auspiciousness for the coming year. Some traditions and some sense of community are passed down. I pass through the parade streets alone, reviving old memories and collecting new ones. I'm an outsider to this Chinese community, and most others, yet I appreciate them deeply, if only for a smile on a Chinese baby girl's face.