Rollercoaster of Love...

...or untimely death.  Or love with a meth addict.

That said, this is an ostensibly functional amusement ride for children at the Kathmandu Zoo, Nepal.

Full disclosure: I totally desaturated all the colors but red to maximize the horrorshow-vibe.  I couldn't help myself.

The Golden Hour

A proprietor keeping an eye on his wares, the Durbar night market, Kathmandu, Nepal.

(Non-)Pomp & Circumstance

Mucking about before the graduation the of the brother (like the running of the bulls, but with more mortar boards and a slightly lower casualty rate).

Aural Tableau

A private music lesson in the park surrounding the Temple of Heaven, in Beijing.  This was a really beautiful and inspiring public space- full of music, games, and group exercise.

Living Color

The brother escaping an inscrutable installation; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin.

Hope, if not change

Four years ago tonight, this was the scene on my street.  I doubt there will be anything of the sort tonight- no organic 3am congregation, no dance parties, no pot-and-pan drum circles, no bouncing, no unfettered joy.  No feeling that we've reached some sort of turning point, achieved a milestone, made a start on a path toward a new way of doing things.  And in this case, that might be okay.  I don't think it's ever a good thing to think of a politician as anything other than a man, a flawed human like any of us, and tightly constrained by a system that has entrenched centuries of vested interests and patterns of political behavior.  There is a reason hope is considered by some to be audacious- all too often, it is mired in, made a travesty by, reality.

That said, it will be with a sigh of relief if I wake up tomorrow, check the final ("final") returns, and see an Obama victory.  There is always a lesser of two evils.

Down to the River (via elevator)

Trolley cars on the elevator to load a pile of tourists (us!) into Yangtze river cruise boats in Chongqing.  Visibility is maybe half a mile- enough to take in one of the many new construction projects expanding this already gargantuan city, going up on the other side.

Magic Market

The night market.  Yangshuo, southern China.

Monolith

Cue the monkeys.

It Tolls for Thee

And now a switch to western funeral traditions- this melancholy, beckoning angel tops a grave in the Woodland Cemetery near my house.  Its quite old, full of stately family plots, beautifully landscaped and my favorite place in the neighborhood to run.  This was taken at dusk a few days after an early-winter snow.

View on a Hindu Funeral, Three

Pashupatinath and the Bagmati river.  The crowd has dispersed, but the pyres will continue to burn for hours.

View on a Hindu Funeral, Two

There were two funerals that day.  The first was a military funeral, replete with honor guard, brass band, and attendance by a a politician/entourage with enough celebrity to draw quite a crowd of locals.  I do not know who he was, I only know he was not this man, Prachanda, former Maoist guerrilla leader and former Prime Minister, the only Nepali political figure I could hope to recognize on sight.  The crowd, mourners, politicians and soldiers, and together with the idle watchers, dispersed shortly after the pyre was lit.  I admit I was surprised that the time of observance would be so short, but then remembered that in western funerals, too, most memorializing and remembrance of the deceased comes before the burial.

In this image, the second man is prepared for his funeral rites as smoke from the first pyre fills the sky.  In the foreground, in the river, can be seen the remains of a previous cremation.

View on a Hindu Funeral, One

While visiting Pashupatinath, a holy area on the Bagmati River in Kathmandu, Nepal, we passed a series of stone pylons covered by corrugated metal.  Could not figure out their purpose until a group of soldiers filed in, bearing a body wrapped in white and orange, wreathed in chains of marigolds....

Sacrifice

Looking from the winding stairs to the facade of the Sagrada Familia, Barcelona.

Vignette

Two monks at the base of the Swayambhunath hill, Kathmandu, Nepal.

Bad Rubbish

Nepali children playing in an impromptu (and massive) garbage dump beneath a bridge in Kathmandu.

Ich Bin Ein

The Berlin Cathedral, juxtaposed with an Epcot-ish, 60s vision of future-modern architecture, the Fernsehturm, a television tower which is the tallest structure in Germany.  In the sunlight, a cross forms on the sphere- thus it is known colloquially as "the Pope's Revenge" (blahblah, secular democratic Germany, blahblah can't supress the power of jesus, shining forth from your devil tower, blahblah).

Angular Light

Shadowplay in the I.M. Pei-designed (as though you couldn't tell) exhibition hall, of the Deutsches Historiches Museum in Berlin.  I am a firm believer in letting light do the heavy lifting when it comes to architecture- it lends a dynamic, organic quality; a sense of slow, dignified movement within what would otherwise seem (to us mortals) an almost eternal monolith.  And Pei was a master.

Apparently he would only agree to design a small building integrated into the existing museum, as he did not want to distract from the surrounding architecture.

Heavenly

Temple of Heaven, Beijing, another dubious site for a four-man game of frisbee.

Ablutions

Two women having a wash in the morning sun, in Kathmandu.  This was a spring (maybe?  or upwelling from the nearby river?  whatever it was, it was not untouched by the dodgy Kathmandu groundwater) in a little shrine below the temple complex at Swayambhunath.