I was busy getting ready for a meeting this morning, and late. As I grabbed my notebook on the way out, I accidentally knocked over the small flower vase on my work table. Water spilled out and began to flow toward my external hard drive.

It surprised me, since there were dried flowers in the vase, and I wasn't expecting water. I wasn't expecting to knock it over either, but these things happen. It's what makes life interesting.

So the water is heading toward the hard drive, and my first thought isn't, "I better move it out of the way and grab some paper towels to clean this mess up."

No, my first thought is, "That would make a good picture."

I'm all hot and sweaty from walking. I used to to walk all the time--almost every day. But I gradually stopped doing it and got all out of shape again. I missed it, but not enough to actually get up and do it again. At least until the other day.

I finally started walking again a few days ago, motivated primarily by not wanting to be too out of shape when I see Malida in a little more than a month, and also because I like walking. So I started walking in the local park again.

As an illustration of how long it had been since I had been to the park, they managed to build an entire 1 1/2 mile walking track, complete with mile markers. It's nice--it passes through groves of trees, around baseball fields, and across stretches of green grass.

I got up this morning and walked it a couple of times, and daydreamed about high school. Some mornings in PE, we would line up and the coach would simply yell out, "Scenic, gentlemen!" This meant that we had to run (or walk) around the perimeter of the school. Like my new track, it also passed through trees, went around baseball fields, and across stretches of green grass. I remember it being about a mile, and we had to do three "scenics" during the class period. I hated it at the time, but it has somehow transformed into a pleasant memory of spring. It's almost always spring in my school memories.

So I thought about "scenics" this morning as I walked my new "scenic" (faintly hearing Coach Machutes yelling, "faster, gentlemen!"), and daydreamed about being in high school, daydreaming about the day when I would be out of high school and wouldn't ever have to walk scenics again.

I am taking a photography class over the summer--"beginning digital photography". It's one of the classes I skipped over a while back, but always wished I had taken. So I am going to summer school. My friend Paul is teaching it--he is the perfect kind of teacher--he has a real passion and enthusiasm.

This afternoon we were watching part of the PBS American Experience series on photography--it's a great series if you ever get the chance to see it.

Part of the eposide was about photography in the second world war, and there were some images from the liberation of the concentration camps.

I remembered when I had first seen those images. It was in my high school history class, one warm spring day, shown to us by our teacher, Mr. Remington. I remember that day so clearly.

I wasn't a good student. I cut class all the time and didn't really care about anything other than partying. My friends and I would taunt the teachers mercilessly, and I sometimes wonder why more of them didn't run off screaming into the night.

Anyway, I remember how different the class felt that day, almost from the moment I walked into the room. A film projector was set up, and Mr. Remington told us a little about what we were to see. I remember how serious he was--it was one of those times when you knew not to be a wiseass. He closed the curtains and started the film.

Something changed in me that day. I didn't become a better student or stop smoking pot, but I did begin to understand, in a very primitive way, that the world wasn't just about me. It's hard to explain, but I can trace a line from that afternoon to another afternoon last year, when I stood in a former high school in Phnom Penh, and cried as I looked at more pictures.

Part of who I am as a photographer is because of what I saw that warm afternoon so many years before, and part of who I am as a teacher is because of Mr. Remington and all the other teachers who taught so passionately.

Thank you!

This started out as a comment to something gurdonark wrote, but by the 5th paragraph, I knew it had to be its own entry.

I had a dream this morning that I had rented a cottage in the countryside, but decided to camp out in the garden instead. It was kind of damp, but I managed to get a fire going and cooked some beans. The two women who ran the cottage came out to see how I was doing, and we got to talking.

One of the women had been married for ten years to a guy who favored tweed on the weekends. The other had been living with a woman named Sandy for five years. Even though Sandy wasn't there, I have a pretty good mental picture of her. She has blonde hair and is tall. She has a good face.

I told them my story, and we kept talking until an IM woke me up at 4:50 am.

The IM was from Malida, telling me it was bedtime, and saying goodnight. It made no sense, because it was only 6:50 pm in Thailand. I wanted to go back to sleep and talk with the two women again, but it was too late.

Now I have to go to work.

I got to go to the roller derby again tonight. There is something about it that just draws me in. It's not just the sport itself--it is the whole culture that surrounds it. You wouldn't think it would have a positive vibe, but it does, and in a big way.



the sweaty betties won tonight.



yeah!

Right outside my window is a beautiful red rose, being beaten up by the wind. I decided to go out and rescue it, and was reminded of a quote from the Vietnam war: "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."

Anyway, it is now sitting on the table next to me and it smells good.

I came in the room to write about something else, but now I have forgotten what it was.

Distracted by a rose.

"...the waffle can be considered a dessert, but the pancake--it's always going to be a breakfast food. Look--you can put ice cream on a waffle, and it's totally cool, but you just can't do that with a pancake. It just wouldn't be right."

"dude, your theory sucks."

--two guys sitting next to me in an airport restaurant, drinking shots of wild turkey.

As I was getting ready for school this morning, I heard on NPR that Dith Pran had died of pancratic cancer. He was a photojournalist for the New York Times, but is better known for the story of what happened to him during the Cambodian civil war and genocide, which was later made into a movie called "The Killing Fields".

Here is how I first heard about his story.

I was flipping through the channels a number of years ago, and stumbled across a film of a Spalding Gray's monologue called "Swimming to Cambodia". It was not the kind of thing I would normally watch, but there was something about his delivery that caught my attention, so I kept watching.

He was talking about his role in the movie "The Killing Fields", and what it was like to be a part of the cast. He also talked about the events that had inspired the film, most of which I had never heard of. It got me interested enough to rent the movie, and I watched it.

It touched me deeply, in a way I find difficult to articulate. One thing that I came away with was a need to one day visit Cambodia, and see with my own eyes what had happened there.

I went to Cambodia and saw with my own eyes.

We are in Cambodia--in Siem Reap. We have spent the past few days wandering around the temples at Angkor Wat and vicinity. It is beautiful here--not too hot, not too crowded. I've had no time at all to look at the many, many pictures I've taken, but I'll get to them eventually. We are having fun. :)

After the wedding, and before we left for Cambodia, Malida took me to her family's village, about an hour out of town. I drove, which was way cool. I haven't had so much fun driving on the wrong side of the road since I was a teenager. We took grandma with us so she could vote in the village elections.



Malida shares stories and wedding cake with some of her aunts and cousins in the village.

go bruins! :)



Grandma and a cousin. Grandma took a liking to me early on, and made sure I tasted every strange food she could think of. Before we left for the village, she fed me "ant's nest soup", which was surprisingly good. Grandma also learned enough english to tell me I had a "good heart".



Nieces. They were shy at first, but by the end of the day they were following me all over the place.

We are leaving for Phnom Penh in the morning. It's hard to believe that I will have to come home soon. I want to stay.