A Visit Home

arkun=thank you in Cambodian

For a few days now, I've been under the weather, the weather which keeps changing and holding on to itself. I never worry about winter lasting too long in NY because what it leaves in its wake are the tough little sprouts, who wend their way up no matter what they think is happening up there and they stumble out color and bloom so gracefully, you'd think it was a surprise ballet.

The backyard now, in this still new feeling apartment of a year and quarter, is all the way on the other side of the basement door, three flights down. I was doing laundry the other day and opened the door on it and all these bulbs were psst-ing at me, "Take me upstairs! Let me bloom before your very eyes!" So I did that and look at what happened! I might have missed it otherwise since I don't do laundry nearly often enough.

The rest of the winter we are lucky to have a lot of sun and if I were around often enough I'd appreciate the sunny-ness of it all, producing vines and plants that otherwise only come around in summer. So I am thankful for that when I visit these rooms and these old photographs and our cats and the old pine cones with wintry connotations that I threw out the window hoping they'd assist something else out there, and the blossoms I stole from the garden which quickly blossomed in front of me and us and our Spring-like capabilities. 

Cambodia Blessings

We just returned from a very inspiring trip to Cambodia. Exploring around the temples of Angkor, we were lucky for many reasons: the opportunity to come to the place we only had in our dreams for many years, the opportunity to observe, opportunities to receive and count blessings, to think about what is real, what will happen, what might not, what doesn't matter anyway.

When you visit a country with such a wealth in it's history of intense grandeur, arts and spiritual depth, combined with the terror and confusion and guilt, with still so much of it's past to come to terms with, we found out it is possible to be very rooted in the present, to connect with everylovelyone we met, and hopeful with possibility. How do you let all of this out of your suitcase when you get home? How do you bring any of it with you? 

Cambodian Children's Fund

Friends International

Somaly Mam Foundation

Something New Thing

It's been a while. So here are some pictures of new work*, a new season, finding ourselves where we are for the Holidays.

(*that we'll have with us every weekend until Christmas at the Brooklyn Flea's Gifted Holiday Market.)

A Word about Markets

 Krishna Rajendra Market, Bangalore

We spent 25 days in the South of India in August. We arrived in Bangalore just before dawn, climbed into a taxi and watched the city wake up in the mist, the way it always seems to wake up in India. Misty and with a steady momentum, as if the city waits for daylight all night and without much ado, steps out, no fuss.

22 hours in the air, a day to recover and then where to head first. There's a silent agreement between us that we feel best in a market so it's where we go with the most excitement, just to get our bearings, where the city finds its soul. Here you can see the necessities of everyday life, what is possible for who and what is not--it's how a city eats, what it wants, the things it needs, who it is. You can tell the hierarchy by its inner circle of prized fruits and vegetables circulating outwards to home stuffs and sundries and puja paraphanelia, to the outskirts where the very poor sell a few small chilies or limes spread out on torn fabric, puppies circulating, cows, motorbikes, rickshaws, taxis, Marutis, very few Ambassadors left.

I guess it's how we get acquainted with a place.