Live With It

Wires. In Beirut, you live with them. No getting around it. Might as well line them up, compose them as part of your image.

It's just that sometimes, I wish I didn't have to.

Dirt

It's just dirt.

And dirt don't hurt.

To Read

I should read photos the way other people read palms. I'd look at the lines, study the wrinkles and recesses. Feel the texture, consider the pliability and color of it.

I wouldn't forget proportion or scale or relative flatness or roundness. I'd read that photo carefully, slowly, looking for signs and warnings, ominous forbiddings and hopeful protections.

And after contemplating it long enough, I'd tell you exactly what it means.

With This Place

So many houses, so many lives, so many stories.

All of them here together, all of them of a piece with this place.

If Beirut Were Monte Carlo

I have a favorite daydream that I sink into fairly often. It goes like this: to further establish the city as a player in the big-leagues of international tourism and consumption, the powers that be decide to host an annual Formula One Grand Prix in Beirut. In my daydreams the race would be like the one in Monte Carlo--right in the city, a road race. It would be nothing like Bharain's middle-of-nowhere boring track. Of course, the race would have to include this stretch along the corniche:

And the route should include the reclaimed land to the north of Downtown. There's plenty of open space out there for pit crews.

Beneath the Wires

The sky was clear and bright, and I liked this view coming from Achrafieh toward downtown. 

The bell tower belongs to St. Elie-St. Gregory the Illuminator Armenian Patriarchal Cathedral

Going My Way

I'm leaving town.  Are you?  If you're going my way we could travel together.

I'm going into the jungle.   What about you?

Aged and Worn

There's a store in Clemenceau called Metal and Wood where they sell furniture, chairs, accessories for the home. These items are imported from India, and all of them have amazing colors, paint in layers applied and then sanded away, distressed, applied again, finished beautifully. They look aged and worn. Maybe they are. And I love what I've seen there. This window reminded me of it.

When the Rain Stopped

The rain comes and goes all the time these days. On the first rainless day in way too long, I was lucky enough to spot this sun-washed balcony.

Light caught all the little details that I've come to love so much.

From the Shadows

Step out of the shadows, emerge into the light.

Take a deep breath, and then let it out slow.

Order

I like order, orderliness, organization. I derive immense satisfaction from sorting, arranging, de-junking, tidying up, stowing away, and throwing things out. I like efficiency, cleanliness, rationality and functionality. I like streamlined, ergonomic, well-thought out design.

That's real life stuff. When it comes to photos, I might like anything.

And it turns out I do.

Unique

Each floor of this house seem to call out in a stage whisper, "I'm different, I'm special, I'm nothing like the rest of them."

They belong together.

Go Ahead

It's a green light, go ahead. Walk.

The red caught my eye, flat and solid and dirty. I wasn't thinking of the contrast with the leafy green trees, but in the photo it's so obvious. That solitary hanging bulb tugs at me for no rational reason at all. And what about the paint white and peeling, and corbels curving along on their way?

It feels good to share this photo. I like it better thinking that now, someone else might like it too.