Workers building a new shop in the market pause for lunch

I’m continuing to photograph people and life inside the Russian Market (Psar Tuol Tom Pong). I hope to finish work by November, and we’ll see what comes next.

So far I’ve enjoyed the project. Every time I enter the market I get to practice speaking Khmer and meet new people, most of whom are friendly and enjoy having their pictures taken. This week I’m taking steps to make it official: writing a letter to the governor of Phnom Penh asking permission. I learned that I need permission if I’m not “taking tourist pictures.”

Preparing a fresh duck

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Following is a prayer by Macrina Wiederkehr entitled “The Empty Water Jug” that I read on a friend’s blog today. My friend works and lives among the poor here in Phnom Penh. She is daily confronted with needs and suffering she can’t meet or alleviate, but she keeps going outside and facing what she finds there. Such living will strip illusions away. We live with overwhelming struggles and sorrows never far away, and beauty and abundance. What a joy it is when they really meet.

“…full of things…smothered by gods”

Jesus, I come to the warmth of your Presence
knowing that You are
the very emptiness of God.
I come before You
holding the water jar of my life.
Your eyes meet mine
and I know what I’d rather not know.

I came to be filled
but I am already full.
I am too full.
This is my sickness
I am full of things
that crowd out
Your healing Presence.

A holy knowing steals inside my heart
and I see the painful truth.
I don’t need more
I need less
I am too full.

I am full of things that block out
Your golden grace.
I am smothered by gods of my own creation
I am lost in the forest of my false self
I am full of my own opinions and narrow attitudes
full of fear, resentment, control
full of self pity, and arrogance.
Slowly this terrible truth pierces my heart,
I am so full, there is no room for You.

Contemplatively, and with compassion,
You ask me to reach into my water jar.
One by one, Jesus, you enable me
to lift out the things
that are a hindrance to my wholeness.
I take each on to my heart,
I hear You asking me
” Why is this so important to you ? ”

Like the murmur of a gentle stream
I hear You calling,
” Let go, let go, let go! ”
I pray with each obstacle
tasting the bitterness and grief
it has caused.

Finally
I sit with my empty water jar
I hear you whisper
You have become a space for God
Now there is hope
Now you are ready to be a channel of Life.
You have given up your own agenda
There is nothing left but God.

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Sovanna Phum had Apsara dancers last night, so we all went to see. Sovanna Phum runs on a tight budget. They often have other kinds of contemporary and traditional dancers, but they only rarely have Apsara. Apsara dancers require intricate costumes and extensive training, so naturally they cost more. Backstage two or three young men, plus other performers, helped the dancers get dressed. Parts of their costumes had to be sewn on. Here are a few photographs. I’m starting to hold back the best photographs as I think about when and how to show them for the first time.  On a side note, I’m really enjoying getting to know the people at Sovanna Phum. I was able to help them get their website updated and teach them how to do it themselves. I’m looking forward to learning and telling some of the stories behind the scenes.

After the show the headgear is put in plastic and everything goes back into a metal chest

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Sometimes Japan surprises you. The cities have great parks, with carefully planted trees and occasional rivers coursing through nearly endless gray concrete neighborhoods. This park by the river in Kouzu has another surprise, an anomaly. An old man tends a shed filled with odd bicycles contrived (perhaps by him) and hand made: pandas, tandems, bicycles propelled by bouncing, and others, plus regular unicycles and ten speeds. And every afternoon he signs them out for free to whoever comes and asks. Kouzu is my wife’s home town. We often went walking and riding by the river when we stayed there.

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An article by John Walsh tracing the reasons why Ernest Hemmingway committed suicide — laying out a trail of self-destructive and self-deceptive behavior stretching back to his childhood.

Walsh acknowledges Hemmingway’s genius, but he doesn’t hold back.

It’s easy to be spiteful about Hemingway. All his posturing, his editing of the truth, his vainglorious fibbing… But it’s hard to shake off the feeling that what he was doing wasn’t bravery, but psychotic self-dramatisation. And when you inspect the image of Hemingway-as-hero, you uncover an extraordinary sub-stratum of self-harming. You discover that, for just over half of his life, Hemingway seemed hell-bent on destroying himself.

The article gets some push-back in the comments, probably deserved, but there’s a story here worth examining intently.

Hemmingway aside, it makes me wonder about writers and photographers losing touch with themselves and reality, or becoming prisoners of the images and stories. I know what it’s like to kick words around like stones as I walk, or eat, or drive — spinning out threads of plot and dialogue, or casting about for images everywhere I look. Sometimes it takes my wife or kids several attempts to call me back to attention; and sometimes I return on my own and wonder what I’ve missed.

I’ve claimed that writing about reality, and photography, helps me engage with the world. But that’s not entirely true. It’s engagement with reality that gives me something worth writing and expressing in images. If I don’t engage first, it’s only fabrication. The world is full of that in literature and every kind of art — not to mention in journalism. Works of pretense may be more profitable than works of revelation, certainly easier to come by, but they don’t accomplish much lasting good for me to produce them or anyone else to consume them.

I’m not in position to judge Hemmingway or the value of his work, but his story makes me pause and consider my own authenticity.

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