New Horizons

After a hiatus, I'm happy to be posting again. I created this blog as a way to share photos of the places I live and the people in them. Often the most interesting elements to me of a new place are those that bridge the familiar and unfamiliar, both in cities, landscapes, and particularly the people you meet. If you will suffer my liberal arts background welling up....
Dag Hammarskjöld, who was UN Secretary General up until he died, and was also an amateur photographer and poet, best captures this tension in a title-less poem that was the last entry of his personal texts recovered after he died. The texts were since put together into collection called Vägmärken (Markings).
Here's the poem:

“Is it a new country
In another world of reality
Than Day’s?
Or did I live there
Before Day was?

I awoke to an ordinary morning with grey light
Reflected from the street,
But still remembered
The dark-blue night
Above the tree line,
The open moor in moonlight,
The crest in shadow,
Remembered other dreams
Of the same mountain country:

Twice I stood on its summits,
I stayed by its remotest lake,
And followed the river
Towards its source.
The seasons have changed

And the light
And the weather
And the hour.
But it is the same land.
And I begin to know the map
And to get my bearings.”

 -     Dag Hammarskjöld – Vägmärken (Markings)

Now with a new mold-free camera in hand, and a renewed interest in documenting with photos and words, I'll try to post regularly on life in Yangon and places in Southeast Asia.