Breathe

"Why do monks live in seclusion? That is asking why does a scientist work in a laboratory, or why does a sailor go on a ship or why does a duck swim in water. Why does a man go to his bedroom and get in bed when he wants to go to sleep? Why doesn’t he lie down in the middle of the street? A monk seeks silence and solitude because there his mind and heart can relax and expand and attain to a new perspective: there too he can hear the Word of God. . . ."   - Thomas Merton

Whew! Nearly three months into the new year, I feel like I've finally had a chance to come up for air. Somehow the work, the social events, and the travels stitch together in such a way that life gets fast forwarded without your realizing it. Though I'd never take back any of those experiences, it's come at the cost of being able to regularly and deeply reflect on them. I'm grateful for this moment now, to breathe, on a rare quiet Saturday while on business travel in Vietnam.

As an only child, I've always cherished being alone. If there's anything only children are surely to be spoiled by, it would be the time left to be with their own selves and thoughts. While I love spending time with family and friends, learning from and socializing with others, I've always felt the most profoundly spiritual moments in my life come at times I am alone. I remember, when I was 15, my parents and I visited a wind farm in Western Australia. My parents were taking pictures, as I hiked up and up to the top of a small hill. Standing amidst tall grass shuffling in the wind, and looking out at all those massive white turbines, as they eerily turned in unison. That image is forever etched in my mind, as a souvenir of that moment my teenaged curiosity turned to life's larger questions like, who are we? and, what are we doing here? 

Interestingly, my parents are now on a ten day silent meditation retreat in Eastern Thailand. No talking, no electronics, no books - only 2 meals and 11 hours of sitting a day. I'm not sure I'm quite there yet, despite my general eagerness of alone time. For now, a quiet morning alone with a pen and notebook will do just fine. 

More thoughts worth sharing on being alone in this month's issue of The Sun Magazine...

Very Busy People - Part 2

I feel like the access more of us have to a widening range of experiences is completely unprecedented*. Not only can we travel abroad for a year or return to grad school, but we fully expect that we can simultaneously manage a blog, start a small photography business, volunteer at a community farm (or at least learn how to compost properly!), and become a yoga instructor.

We were raised to be well-rounded and from that same mold, opportunists. The world has become our oyster is so many ways and we’d like to experience all it has to offer. If two roads diverged in a yellow wood, we would hike them both and then set out to blaze a newer, better trail altogether.

Furthermore, modern-day gadgets plus social networking and daily deal sites such as LivingSocial, Groupon or Jetsetter have made it even easier to fill our time with seemingly enriching activities (Explore Merlot & Monet!, Unlimited Skydiving in West VA!, D.C. Monumental Photography Tour!). Not only that, but there’s the additional pressure created when, in your “down time” cruising Facebook, you see how busy and accomplished everyone else is! The question now is, if a tree falls in a forest and no one posts about it on their Wall, did it really happen?

Very Busy People - Part 1

On the return bus ride from New York to D.C. last night, I was listening to my iPod on shuffle when The Limousines’ song “We Are Very Busy People” came on. Not only was I reminded of how much I like this song, but it also reminded me of the recent NYT article “The 'Busy' Trap.” One of my friends half-jokingly said she was too busy to even read it! After putting the catchy song on repeat, I watched the scenery pass by and mulled over our culture’s obsession with being busy.

When I was eleven or twelve years old, my parents enrolled me in a summer course (I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my idea) to help me plan, prioritize and multi-task better. We were encouraged to list our short-, medium- and long-term goals on a regular basis. A lot of parents must have been on the same wavelength as mine because now that I think about it, I don’t believe adults from my generation* have any problem identifying their goals. The problem is that they don’t know when to stop.

Over the next few days, instead of posting pictures from California like I said I would, I want to explore a bit more the preoccupation we have with well, being occupied. But for now, my short-term goal is to finish my pizza, drink a beer and catch up on some well-deserved TV (Breaking Bad, anyone?). 

So instead of photos from San Francisco, I will leave you with this clever video of SF Bay Area-based The Limousines.



THE LIMOUSINES from Mathieu Wothke on Vimeo.

*probably from my socioeconomic background, as well. But I'd like to think this behavior is increasingly present across the board.

DC Street Art

Hi folks, sorry I've been a little MIA lately. The last week has been a busy one with work deadlines, friends in town from Singapore and preparing for my parents' upcoming visit to DC (hooray!). But I thought I would put together a compilation of various types of art I've happened upon in the streets of DC. There are some others here and here.  

 (anyone know where can I get a copy of this sticker?)

(the three previous pictures feature an installation that is no longer in existence. It has since been painted back to the drab rear wall of Whole Foods it once was. However, the artist has since added the art in the following picture to add some more flavor to the building's exterior. I believe this is the work of Shepard Fairey, a guerilla street artist known best for his Obey campaign as well as his iconic Obama poster). 

Have you seen any of these, or other provocative/fun/colorful street art around DC? Do you think it's distasteful or a necessary form of expression?

Developing International Pornography

Oops. I meant to write "International Development Pornography". Certainly caught your eye though, no?

I don't know about you guys, but I've been receiving some interesting envelopes in the mail lately. These envelopes, usually from an organization with a mission to end child hunger, are covered in and contain images of little brown children with dirt-smudged cheeks staring out at you with imploring eyes. The envelope is encouraging- "You can help feed this child for only a nickel a day". But the weird thing is that there's an actual nickel in the envelope! If you tear open the envelope to get the nickel (and to figure out why they are sending you money) – BAM! You come face to face with an even more devastating photo of a hungry child – this time, the kid has even dirtier cheeks, possibly a cleft-lip, and his teary eyes are as wide as saucers.

By now, I've figured out how to open the envelope just enough so I can fish out the coin without seeing any of the actual contents. I've collected about $1.25 in change so far which I’ve re-distributed to some homeless people around Dupont Circle. But that’s besides my point, really.

My curiosity lies in the creation, selection and motivations of such images. Since those billions in aid dollars that were raised for the famine in Ethiopia some thirty years ago with the wide distribution of images of emaciated, naked, black toddlers, the library of so-called “international development pornography” has only grown.

How effective are these images? Have we become desensitized to them as we’ve faced increasing exposure to such pictures? And most importantly, do these images inform our concepts of worthy beneficiaries of aid?

Going beyond the targeted mailing campaigns of select US-based aid outfits, what kinds of images are associated with international development issues being discussed in mainstream media? Given the extraordinary reach of international news networks these days, it is incredible to think of how narrow and shallow most news content is.

I will never forget - three years ago, I picked up the Washington Post Sunday Edition at our neighborhood Safeway. On the front page, above the fold, was a large centered photo of a black woman in the middle of a birthing room in Sierra Leone. Even if you missed the picture, the author paints it for you in the lead paragraph.

The special edition was about maternal mortality in Sierra Leone, voted the lowest ranking on that specific development and global health indicator with one out of every 8 women dying in childbirth. Certainly something extremely important to raise people’s awareness about, but why not mention that the District of Columbia itself, the home of The Washington Post, has a shameful maternal mortality rate for being the capital of the United States? Furthermore, maternal mortality stats across the United States show that black women are three or four times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. But it's certainly easier to commentate on maternal mortality in an impoverished, poorly governed country in Africa.

No pictures for this post. I couldn't find any good ones. Don't even get me started on the Google image results you get if you search for "hungry American kid". I'll give you a hint, anyway. Google asked me, "Did you mean: angry white kid?" or "Did you mean: hungry African kid?"

Oy vey.

Memento Mori

I just started reading a fascinating book purchased from my beloved Kramer's Bookstore. On Photography is Susan Sontag's perspective of photography's purpose and its effect on society. First published in 1973, Sontag's analysis draws on the works of a range of photographers from Stieglitz to Arbus, Warhol to Muybridge. I'd like to share a more thorough write up with I'm done but even the introductory chapter is full of thought-provoking conclusions that I have to share. As one reviewer put it, "Not many photographs are worth a thousand of (Susan Sontag's) words." I'm not sure whether I'm in agreement with all of her words yet, but here are a few that I had to underline regardless:

"In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe"

"...photography is not practiced by most people as an art. It is mainly a social rite, a defense against anxiety, and a tool of power"

"All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person's (or thing's) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time's relentless melt."

"To take a picture is to have an interest in things as they are, in the status quo remaining unchanged (at least for as long as it takes to get a "good" picture), to be in complicity with whatever makes a subject interesting, worth photographing - including, when that is the interest, another person's pain or misfortune."

"That most logical of nineteenth-century aesthetes, Mallarme, said that everything in the world exists in order to end in a book. Today everything exists to end in a photograph."

Do you agree with any of Sontag's conclusions? What do you think the purpose of photography is?

When Life Gives You Lemons...

...make some lemonade. Spiked, preferably. This weekend is another scorcher so we decided to make lemonade from scratch. I adapted this recipe, substituting basil for mint. I'll take a tall one please, heavy on the ice.

I've been thinking a lot lately about finding work-life balance. Especially since some recent changes at work are threatening to throw my parents' fall visit off plan. Every day at the office poses a challenge - should I eat at my desk so I can get out of here by 5:30? Should I stay late so I can knock out this one assignment?

In a meditation retreat I attended a couple years ago, the Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh said that too often, we think of time in segments. We divide our day into “work time”, “study time”, “parent-child time” or “me time”. But really, all of your time is “me time”.

I try to remind myself of this whenever I feel inclined to rush through work-related tasks mindlessly so I can take a long lunch, or attend a yoga class.  In reminding myself that the present is “me time”, I can bring my mind’s full attention to the task at hand.

This proves increasingly difficult within our society, particularly for my generation and younger, as it adapts itself to interacting with tabbed web browsers displaying multi-paneled webpages that are light on substance and heavy on the pictures, polls, and links. I’ve noticed my weakening ability to focus even when reading magazine articles. I got up twice while writing this entry – first to take some carrots out of the oven, and then to make myself a tomato salad (yes, my mind’s digressions mostly involve food). I even wonder if you, my dear reader, have made it this far in my post without taking a peek at the luscious lemonade recipe link or discovering who Thich Nhat Hanh is.

As I reach the bottom of my glass, I ask – what do you do to stay balanced?