how much does your life weigh?

"make no mistake, your relationships are the heaviest components in your life"
Ryan Bingham, Up in the Air

i love traveling but i hate packing. flying makes me anxious. i hate going through the check in line, immigration, body search and you know the drill. so when i arrived home after a full day at the spa courtesy of sister, who baby sat N and took care of packing three suitcases, all i had to do was shower, change and look good for a 14 hour long flight.

i ran a quick and final check through the room i had occupied the last three months at my parents house. bedroom-empty. bathroom-empty. closets-empty. drawers-empty. suitcases packed and waiting for me at the door. and by empty i mean devoid of my belongings of course.

so now that all my belongings were safely packed away then why did it seem there was still something missing. after three months away from home, work and my life i had been super excited to get back to some normalization. why was it then that i felt incomplete. like a big part of me was left unpacked. something very precious to me was not in those suitcases.

i could hear my parents and sister playing with N, making the most of these last few moments with him, capturing his every move in the camera of their minds. and it made me realize what Clooney so aptly put into words in Up in the Air, "how much does your life weigh?". and after all the knick knacks were packed away in those suitcases that stood there silently, constantly reminding me of the goodbyes that were to follow. what remained were the "....people you trust with your most intimate secrets. your brothers, your sisters, your parents.....You get them into that back pack, feel the weight of that bag. make no mistake, your relationships are the heaviest components in your life."

and we said our goodbyes. i went through check in. my luggage was not excess. but i felt very heavy. "how much does your life weigh?" at that point in my life it was excess by three months worth of memories, love, arguments, laughter, tears, friends and family, in which every second was lived a hundredfold its actual potential. im back now with a heavy heart but fond memories.

Spanish holiday

the city view from the palace; generalife

Briefly blogging about my Spanish holiday the other day forced me to go through some of the photographs of our memorable vacation. I thought I will share some of the adventures with my readers and begin right from the end: Alhambra, Granada; the perfect culmination to a Spanish retreat; the epitomy of islamic architecture, romantic, surreal, spiritual and poetic. I’m also sharing some of the pictures that survived the ill-fate of our Nikon experiment, that don’t do justice to the surreal beauty of the palace.

column detail,ornamental relief, interior

I will not say much as words are not enough. I will let you bask in the reverie of the palace, let imagination take flight, let your thoughts travel back in time, walk through the cool and windy courtyards, delicate and slender columns and arches, enchanting gardens and let you reflect in the glittering pools that are embedded in my memories forever.

“We seem lifted up into a purer atmosphere; there is serenity of soul, a buoyancy of spirits, an elasticity of frame that render mere existence enjoyment..” excerpt from one of the most well written books on the Alhambra that we picked up from their bookshop, Tales of the Alhambra, W. Irving, that you can read here.

courts of lion

And i know i said i won’t say much but i couldn’t resist sharing this from the above mentioned book, “The peculiar charm of this old dreamy palace is its power if calling up vague reveries and picturing of the past, and thus clothing naked realities with illusions of the memory and the imagination. As i delight to walk in these vain shadows, I’m prone to seek those parts of the Alhambra which are most favorable to this phantasmagoria of the mind, and nine are more so that the court of Lions and its surrounding halls. Here the hands of time has fallen the lightest and the trances of Moorish elegance and splendor exist in almost their original brilliance.”

arch detail

More to come on the rest of the cities we traveled to. till then i hope you enjoyed this. a lot many times i had heard people tell me that you have lived if you have visited the Alhambra. i understood exactly why after this.

Project 365 @ one week

Today i have successfully and a little painstakingly, (due to little N's injury) completed my first week of Project 365. and here it is in a nutshell.

We bought our Nikon D40 in December 2008 for a Spanish holiday that we were off to. Bad idea! Never buy a new camera that too a DSLR that you’ve never used, right before a 2 week long vacation. Bad,bad,bad!

That is not to say we didn’t take pictures. Oh we took pictures. We took over a 1000 pictures that have not been sorted out to this day. But unfortunately only a handful turned out fairly decent. The rest make for a blurry stack of memories resting somewhere in F’s external hard drive.

Upon our return from a blurry and nauseous vacation we found out I was pregnant with little N, thus the nausea. Our silent disappointment at viewing what we were expecting to be a great work of art, (after all it was a a Nikon D40) we both made a silent resolution to never forget our point and shoot ever and to better acquaint ourselves to the Nikon. This of course was in preparation of little N’s arrival. The following 9 months, instead of reading baby books for parents F religiously read the manual so he could take better pictures and by the time N arrived he was officially the self-appointed photographer of the family.

Then mat leave happened, F got busy at work and we lost our family photographer to the corporatee world. It was time for me to take charge. And i finally picked up the camera and it was magic. And since then it has been impossible to put it down. Of course, all of last year has been about little N., Catching his every move, his expressions and all his firsts. This was reinforced by my free lance work with Art Strollers, as their PR consultant and event photographer, during my mat leave where I was surrounded with babies at all times.

But now finally after a year of trial and error, lessons from friends, short workshops and reading the manual thanks to Chez i can say the journey has begun. Project 365 is a great project for any self taught, self starter. It is a great exercise in practice makes perfect and forces you to read the manual, experiment with the camera every day, come up with creative shots and not to mention, creates a sense of commitment. I have thoroughly enjoyed the past one week and heres to hoping the remaining 359 days are just as nicheilious!

sharing of ideas, viewpoints, discussions---HOPE

Hi there !!
Well it has been a week since we returned wow feels longer.
I had a great time in Cuba I believe because of Fred he definitely brings
people out of there shells. I wanted to send you a few cds I think that are
very powerful in the words and intent. The night we talked about the people
in Pakistan and how that part of the world has been forgotten and of course
the other areas of conflict I was very impressed by your compassion both you
and your wife and knowledge. I guess you could say you two gave me hope
that with education and understanding we can and will make a difference in

our life times. If you would like please send me a address and I will
make copies and send them to you.
Let me know All the best Arlene McCormick Hamilton

F replied:

Galileo Galilee once said
"I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him".
That has been the motto in my life. I am humbled that you found our
knowledge to be of essence. In meeting you I found that knowledge is
also still respected and now I am sure that there is a lot we will
share in the future. I feel that with education there comes
'responsibility' ...where understanding develops 'liberal ideals', both
of which are the essence of human hope. ..........