return to cape town

i am working for greatguides.org again– doing website design tweaks, user-experience designing, media production, and more. it’s good to be involved again after being out of the loop for most of the last year and it’s even better to get back to freelance work. i miss it a lot, and i certainly hope to never do retail again.

i will be here until june, and until then expect more adventures from me- its one of my goals for the year. others include cycle a lot to prepare for my 2012 aids/lifecycle ride to raise money for hiv/aids awareness, outreach, testing, and treatment. and to shoot a lot of film and photos. and to read more. and floss more. make more friends. to really fight to be the person i want to be. at the end of 2011 (a dull and rather un-enriching year) i had a feeling 2012 was going to be good. now it’s time to do just that.

.   .   .   .

the other night i took a hike, and thats where these photos come from. check out this video of me during the same hike…

it was amazing. a moment when you stop and think “THIS IS RIGHT”… “DO THIS MORE”. just what i needed. time to explore, feel the ground move beneath my feet, sun on my face, and wind in my hair.

its about getting back in touch with the things i know are good and listening, learning, and being open to the new things in my life.

the other day i went to sit in a garden and listen to a south african poet ian mccallum talk about his poetry and about working in collaboration with a sculpter on a project on display in kirstenbosch gardens. a lot of his work focuses on how we can get back to wilderness, channel wilderness, and the future of wilderness with climate change. it was great chewing on nuggets like

“the rising” by ian mccallum

one day your soul will call to you with a holy rage.
“rise up!” it will say…
“stand up inside your own skin.”
unmask your unlived life…feast on your animal heart.

unfasten your fist…let loose the medicine in your own hand.
show me the lines…I will show you the spoor of the ancestors.
show me the creases…I will show you the way to water.
show me the folds… I will show you the furrows for your healing.

“look!” it will say…the line of life has four paths -
one with a mirror,
one with a mask,
one with a fist,
one with a heart.

one day, your soul will call to you with a holy rage.

and

We have to stop speaking about the Earth being in need of healing. The Earth does not need healing. We do. Our task is to rediscover ourselves in Nature. It is an individual choice. And how or where do we begin? We begin exactly where we are right now, when we look at the world as a mirror, when we discover that our sense of freedom and authenticity is linked to the well being and authenticity of others – and that includes the animals, the trees and the land. - Ian McCallum

(above is one eight-hundred-year-old tree- for the most part- as it sprawls across the ground and up as it wishes. i had lunch here and took in my reflection on ian’s thoughts)

i am lucky to be here, but mainly to be reminded that if you want something in life you can get it if you fight like hell for it. back in baltimore, i never got outside into really natural spaces. that was because i let myself get caught up in it all. now that i flew from the cage, i can see the places i could have escaped to but lacked the energy to do so. there were times that i tried, but they were few and far between. i need this. this is right. i know it with every bone in my body.

and i can’t stop thinking of one of my favorite lines from calvin and hobbes – “if people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, i bet they’d live a lot differently”

anyway, i hope all is well, and cheers to another year of adventure blogging.

-tbk