The Perfect Yellow

A few years ago I had paint chips propped up on the window ledge in my living room. All of them within a few shades of this:

I was looking for the perfect yellow, something like an orange tinged lemon or a really yellowy butter or an egg tart if you bumped up the saturation.

Nothing Special

An ordinary day, and ordinary window.

Open to anything.

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.