I have a feeling you're going to like this. You've got eleven minutes. I'm pretty sure when this speech is over, you'll be smiling. If you are, share it around! With apologies and love to Kate Alkarni....

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I'll be back in two and a half weeks– another sojourn, this time to Paris! More to come, as always. For now, talk to strangers, smile at grumpy people, take the courage to be honest, vulnerable, kind... let's retire "cool" as a thing to aspire toward, or rather perhaps redefine it with our own brand of excellence, not aloofness but a new approach, a new style, the type which doesn't rely on affectation or irony, but traffics in the strength of unvarnished truth, which at the end of things supercedes all else. The new generations don't need to know that apathy and guarded emotions were once vogue, and they can lead us in their enterprising joy to places we don't yet have the perspective to dream about.

​Thanks for holding down the fort for me in this glorious city we call home! 

Best,
​Nathan

I go to Paris on Tuesday. The blog will be down for another two weeks; I plan to return in late November, but for now– a word (plus pictures!) on Cuba, and a special video treat to come just before I leave!

Cuba is different. I rather wonder if these images will do better justice to my experience of the place than any words can, but I feel a paragraph or two of context is necessary (or, skip over that nonsense and take me to the photos already!).

I was in La Habana for about sixty hours, and I spent most of those hours walking the streets with a camera, pockets stuffed with film rolls. When traveling I like to get a sense of what ordinary life is like, here on the far corners of the world, spaces and attitudes and rooms people call home.

I won't say the major attractions don't hold interest, because for historical or cultural reasons they often do, but the superior thrill is slipping into the side streets, strolling by unbeknownst. An unshaved figure keeping to the walls, in a dirty t-shirt and scuffed jeans… I'm thankful I can pass for native in so many countries (as long as I keep my big mouth shut!). Slum-like in appearance but not in attitude, the adjoining Viejo and Centro municipalities are comprised largely of shanties and precarious solares (inner-city mansions subdivided into small dwelling units), and for me the biggest draw were the back alleys and residential areas, where I spent the most time. What does the air taste like? How are the silences different, and how are they similar? What has been invisible to me until now, and how is the light, the ever-present light, silent but benevolent, how does it read now, in my heart and in my mind?

I've often thought about how I might feel more comfortable in an earlier time period. Nothing extreme, you understand, just a turn back of the clock to a time more oriented around the tactile, before virtual reality, digitization, and the accelerated technological rush toward the 21st-century ideal, that unique and befuddling mixture of chaos and laziness. A time when telephones worked because they had a cord connecting to the wall, if you know what I mean.

Cuba offers just such an opportunity. For all meaningful intents it is a time machine, the most obvious indication of which are the vehicles. Not even China smells like this. The exhaust generated by a sea of Chevys, Daewoos, Citrons, and Peugeots may not be as visually polluting as parts of east and southeast Asia, but nasally, you won't forget about it. Genius mechanics toil away on the curbsides of countless roads, fixing up cars older than they are. Toilet paper goes not in the toilet but in a basket adjacent, which during the 90-degree heat caused its own sort of perfume; the bus system, generally for locals only, has lines which run only once every couple hours, and use buses obtained twenty years ago from a Chinese negotiation that didn't include a maintenance contract. Any description of their poor running ability would be an understatement. They are stuffed to the point that arms and heads stick out not just from the windows but the doors too; getting ejected from one has been compared to being birthed! Families spill out of the overcrowded city center, sitting on stoops or languishing in open rooms of collapsing, unelectrified buildings which recall postwar France.

I listened to the water drip from the ceiling cracks to the floor in my hotel room, creating a swamp-like element with its own hazards. For reasons too complex to explain here I didn't eat or drink on my last day there, instead guzzling uncalculated loads of tap water upon my evening return to the hotel, which tasted… different, and couldn't have helped with the Traveller's Diarrhea/Dengue Fever I contracted shortly after, knocking me out upon coming home for a period nearly as long as the vacation itself. 

All of which is to say, there are certain things about our age to be grateful for. I was thankful for the experience. People were kind. The architecture, the cars, the decay, texture, smiles, sun... I had have a great but exhausting time, as I generally do when traveling alone, where there's no one to hold you back, but also no one to help pace yourself. To walk ever onward through an endless grid of alleys, diving deep into the artist headspace and working with the light, wrestling with it, coaxing it, watching it change, was a dream. That I returned unharmed is a privilege. I believe all good pictures are actually pictures of light; I hope you enjoy these 81 photos from the trip, culled from 797 photos. As always, there's no digital manipulation; each of these is an uncorrected negative (or in the case of slide film, positive) scan. 

All photographers carry around in their head a roster of the images they've seen but weren't able to photograph– sunsets, faces, shadows, all when the camera was out of reach. In accordance with Joan Didion's claim that all the most beautiful things she's seen in her life have been from airplane windows, one such moment for me was gazing down at the Panama Canal, where an endless flotilla of ships stretched out over still aquamarine flats, way down there, motionless, receding into the hazy distance.

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​
The main purpose of this trip was to visit family in Jocotopec, Mexico; these pictures are solely of the districts in La Habana mentioned above. Other images will likely follow later.

(This is a story from long ago I'd saved for myself, but sharing it now feels appropriate. Hope you enjoy it.)

Five minutes after a phone conversation in which I got dumped, this guy showed up and asked if I wanted any fried chicken. He was an Ezell's employee, a squat and friendly face in the wee hours, absolutely loaded with tenders, wings, rolls, you name it. 

I don't usually eat fried chicken in the middle of the night.

Actually, I almost never eat fried chicken. I eat kale and scrambled eggs. I'm one of those. But what is it they say about rules? When a guardian angel offers you the hookup, and it isn't drugs, alcohol, or Five-Hour Energy, it's a sign from above the clouds, not to be ignored. The universe speaks to us in mysterious ways, and some of those ways include crispy chicken tenders, extra spicy, with a few wheat rolls thrown in for good measure.

He and I were parked at Rainier and Rose, taking advantage of an extra minute in the schedule to work out the negotiations. Take some, take some, he said. Take some rolls too.
No, no, I responded, gradually realizing that when it comes to chicken guardian angels don't accept no for an answer. He insisted that I consume, free of charge. This is what the universe looks like when it notices you need a little help.
"You're a nice guy," he said.
"No, you're a nice guy, man! This is my dinner! Thank you so much!"

It's not all about me, though. In the range of things which will galvanize the uninterested, particularly in the part of town we're in right now, fried chicken reigns high. It belongs to more than just bewildered dumpees. 

"Ay, hole up!" a voice rang out.

We'd aroused the attention of a young man seated halfway down the bus. Chicken was wafting through the air, and he was stirring. "Whatchoo doin with tha' fried chicken?"
"What?" said the guardian angel.
"Ah see you givin' him some." Picture the voice, if you will: half hardcore, with gold teeth and apathy, and half hungry toddler, tentative, feeling left out. Those two ends of the spectrum are rather closer than we often think, opposing sides of a single coin.
"You want some?"
"Hail yeah!"
"Cost you twenny dollars!"
"Ha!"

They worked it out. Angels don't discriminate in their chicken distribution. But you knew that. As he swaggered back to his seat, the young man smiled to himself, genuinely, the smile you make when no one's watching. We yearn to feel complete, if only for a moment.

"Thank you so much, again! " I said. I have a tendency to over-thank people. Can I help it though, if I'm awed by the familiar?
"Well, you a nice guy!"

"Love that dude," I said to the guy halfway down the bus after the Ezell's angel had gone.
"No way he eatin' alla dat!"
"Ooh, I think I will!"
"No, I mean him!"
"Oh, yeah, he had the hookup! That needs to happen more often!"
"Yuuup!"

He chomped away quickly, burning the chicken candle at both ends. I held off, as I was driving, of course. I've driven through the tunnel eating an apple, and I really have gone up Rainier Avenue chomping on raw kale– it's what you do when there's no break time: stretching and bathroom at the terminal, then eat on the road– but a bus driver chowing down on Ezell's and smearing grease all over the steering wheel would just be bad form. Don't you agree? How could you trust the guy? We're not wired to have faith in an operator who's wolfing down pork ribs. 

As such I let the fried chicken aroma waft up from the dashboard. Ah, yes. This is healthier anyway, I thought, dispatching one of the wheat rolls. The smell was all I needed. It was the scent of kindness, of gestures offered willingly, for no exchange. It was a distant and gentle wink, a reminder that planets do align, though perhaps not in the way we shortsighted earthlings might prefer… a reminder of the long view, in which life contains not just valleys but peaks, details, comforts, and mysteries, to be seen only by appreciative eyes. 

"Ha, ha, ha," he laughed, in his gravelly voice, clipped and far-flung. That's an Eastern European accent maybe, or perhaps Russian. We're passing by a set of whirling blue and red lights. I never look at accidents. My passengers can do that for me. People complain about Looky-Loos, but have you noticed how they too look themselves? I find morbid neck-craning artless and tiresome. We can all agree Looky-Loo slowdowns on the opposite side of an incident are among the most grossly unnecessary parts of the traffic organism. Do you want to be gawked at, when your leg is broken? 

This fellow, dressed in a tattered assortment of grays and browns, was observing the carnage to our left, and it made him cackle. "Somebody had a heart attack, ha, ha. Always somebody having a heart attack!"

I was having my Looky-Loo thoughts and considered taking offense, but decided otherwise. What would be the benefit? No need for such theatrics. I may think empathy is important, but he has his own perspective. I did what has saved me in the past– search out the common ground. Getting along makes life easier.

"Every day," I agreed.
"I never had one," he rumbled. I loved his accent. Niiyever. "I have high blood pressure, but so far no. I just drink beer and vodka all day." Wodka. "But I have no heart attack!"
"You don't want that!"
"I love beer and wodka."
"No, I mean a heart attack."
"Oh, I don't care about that." 
I didn't say anything, but he heard my silence anyway. My silence thundered out, well, you will, if it happens….
He replied to my thought with, "if I'm going to die, I'm going to die."
"That's true." This man's wisdom lies in repetition.
"Better to die in bed than on the street. People retire then the next day they die. Me, I am going to live. While I'm alive, I'm going to live."

We come to this game equipped with our past experiences, and we tackle it based on those, in the way we think ideal. Was his final thesis so different than mine, when I tell myself to drive this trip as if it were my last chance to do so? A good friend once told me, the worst thing we can do to ourselves is put off our goals, passions, interests, on the faith that there will be time to do so in the future.

That time may not materialize.

The outline of ourselves exists to be filled out not later, after the mortgage is paid or the kids are grown, but in this breathing minute. This turn, carried out with the precision I know I'm capable of; this greeting, my eyes twinkling for my fellow brethren, whom I may not know again. Such ideas bring out the best in me, and remind me of the value of making the most of that short window of time we call "now." 

There is nothing else.

"Aw, man," he groaned.

His outstretched hands said it all, long limbs extending from an oversized jumpsuit as he moved closer to the bus doors with a hobble. He was about to ask for a ride, and I decided to just go ahead and thank him preemptively. I appreciate when people take the energy to ask me. It's a risky move based on the behavior of some other operators. And, crucially, they're taking that risk solely for the purpose of offering you some respect. They know they could just storm on and head to the back with nary a word. They don't get anything out of it, except possibly a refusal. 

"You're cool," I replied. "Thanks for asking."
He was in bad shape, limping heavily on an oversized leg cast. His stoic look and build resembled that of RZA, of the Wu-Tang Clan, except this man's stoicism was interrupted periodically by flashes of pain, shooting up from his leg to spider out on his face. His brain must have been moving slowly now, because he started offering an explanation for his free ride request anyway. "I misplaced mah transfer somewhere today…."
"Here, lemme give you a Night Owl." At this time of night everyone gets Night Owl transfers, but I verbalized it to offer some comfort. "I appreciate you askin'. How's it goin'?"
"Oh, it's not." Groan.
"Hope you don't gotta wear that cast too much longer, I see it looks kinda heavy duty…."
"Ah hope so too, mang. Iss no joke." You imagine Job sounding like this, weary and forsaken. 
"Just as long as it's off before Thanksgiving, you know what I mean?"
"Yeah! Well, mah birthday December,"
"Okay yeah,"
"So I'm hopin',"
"Yeah. It's not a permanent thing then."
"Oh no way."
"Good good, just as long as its not permanent. That's a whole other thing."
"Yeah. Just tryna rest up."
"Oh, yeah, gotta take it easy on ourselves every now and then. Can't be Superman all the time."
"No way."
I tried to comfort him by starting in with, "well, they say a bone never breaks more than once in the same–"
"I got my shin shattered completely."
"Oh, no."

He paused, watching me. I called out Orcas Street. Somebody got on and gave me a fistpound, sharing how glad they were to see me back on the 7. Then, having some sort of mental evaluation, our friend leaned in, saying, "man, I'ma tell you tha story of how this shit happened. It was the stupidest shit anything's ever happened."
"Okay yeah, tell me,"
"So I know Tae Kwon Do, right,"
"Okay,"
"And Jujitsu. I been practicin' it fuh years. Then I'm at this bar, talkin' to some dude. He be squarin' off like show me what choo got, and ah be beefin' like let's do this, le's go. Then all of a sudden he pulls out a gun and shoots me in the leg."
"What? That's terrible!"
"Yeah."
"What?"
"Yeah."
"That's not what guns are for!" Not quite sure what I meant by that. Shooting things, I suppose.
"And he din't even–"
"Oh, wow. I'm sorry."
"It's just starting to heal up. Ain't nothin' I can do about it."

I sat there, impressed that he hadn't voiced word one regarding any sort of revenge-oriented inclination. He wasn't processing this event that way, in the sense of I've been wronged, and if only I could find this guy, all this pain would be rendered as nought… it takes some mental discipline to look beyond such things. I said "man, well, you got a good personality." 
"Iss done, man. Ain't nothin' I coul' do now but be present."
I'm usually the one who says that. How refreshing to hear someone else talking about the value of presence. 
"Egg-zactly," I concurred, "bein' present. It's the only way! Easier to be happy."
"Yup."

​I gave voice to another element I could sense in his tone: that he conceived of martial arts as a craft, and that the crowning disappointment of this affair was, more than the injury itself, his opponent's complete disregard of such. "…'Cause that's an art, Jujitsu, a discipline."
"Yo. Does your phone have Facebook?"
"No, I'm still using one of those flip phones!" Don't act surprised, dear reader! I shoot on film and listen to vinyl– what were you expecting?
"But choo got a computer, right?"
"Yeah."
"You should check out this fight I did. I'ma tell you the name quiet 'cause I don't wanna say it loud on the bus. It's Weed Man–"
"Weed Man,"
He said the following in an entirely serious voice– "Weed Man versus Dope Dealer on the Skinny Pimp Show."
"Now that's a title! I'm not gonna forget that name!"
"On the Skinny Pimp Show. Check out some uh the stuff I'm workin' on in there. Weed Man versus Dope Dealer. Das the stuff I'm talkin' 'bout." 

With that out of the way he switched gears, settling into a more ruminative mode: "Th' only thing is, people be lookin' at me different nowadays. I's at da bar with my bro, this' when I was on crutches, it was two girls there. And man, didn't none of 'em wanna talk to me when they saw the crutches."
"Okay that says more about them then–"
"And I'm like, iss temporary, it ain't nothin'!"
"That's ridiculous. 'Cause it's not your person, your personality, your character."
"Character, yeah!"

I should have added, 'even if it was permanent,' but I wasn't thinking fast enough. It was a different element of that last exchange which stuck with me afterwards, though.

You don't hear the word character used very often anymore. It seems to have been replaced with accomplishments. How petty. I'm glad he agreed with the fundamental obviousness of one's character as the meaningful definition of personhood. Moments like this bolster my belief that formal education is basically meaningless when it comes to true wisdom. They don't teach that in school. I'm thankful for what I've learned at University, particularly the ability to contextualize, and impose structural frameworks on thought processes, and I believe I'm a better thinker for it... but not a better person. Academia focuses too much on the binary, the quantifiable.

Or as Andrei Tarkovsky put it (in his 1972 Solaris, based on the Stanislaw Lem novel): "In his endless search for truth, man finds only knowledge."

Image courtesy Twentieth Century Fox.

Directed by Ridley Scott. An astronaut (Matt Damon) is presumed dead and abandoned on the Red Planet. With Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Chiwitel Ejiofor, and others. Trailer.

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I won't go on about The Martian for as long as I did below with Sicario, I promise. It's not that kind of movie. You walk out of Sicario simultaneously drained and fulfilled, in the way the great, heavy works of art can do (remember that last paragraph in A Farewell to Arms?). The Martian is a bona fide crowd-pleaser, but it's made with formidable craft.

This won't be a proper review, but I'd like to make a note of how it compares to Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity (my review here) and Chris Nolan's Interstellar (thoughts here). All three share in an outer space setting, of course, and in that they expect their audiences to pay attention. But where Gravity is largely about the self and works as a metaphor for loneliness, and Interstellar concerned with matters of the heart, The Martian is preoccupied with engaging by way of the mind. Film tends to be an appeal to our creative, intuitive, and emotional leanings– it engages the intellect, sure, but moreso it can reach our soul, if you'll allow the word. It succeeds as the great art form of our period because it combines all the other arts and, at its best, arrives at that special place shared by music, where language is transcended. 

The Martian is not so lofty in its aims, but it accomplishes something perhaps equally impressive: it's a significant pop cultural entity that is also a celebration of intelligence. Wait a minute. When was the last time that happened? The screenplay trusts that we're going to be excited by complicated scientific solutions, dialogue scenes where knowledge and creative intellectualism is what carries the day. I, for one, was thoroughly compelled. The picture ends on a note reinforcing the power of rational thought as the great and ever-available problem-solver for our lives. When disasters face us, we crack our knuckles and get down to business, the film says, figuring out one side of the issue at a time before moving on to the next.

Ridley's confident filmmaking aplomb all but conceals how unusual of a message this is. Those of you who know his work (Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, or what I consider his masterpiece, Kingdom of Heaven: Director's Cut) don't need to hear me expound on how rich his painterly visuals are. He breaks from usual form a bit by imbuing the picture with a tone that doesn't take itself seriously, and Drew Goddard's on-point screenplay combines wit with science in a way that seems like no other approach was possible, as if to say, you know, being bright can be fun too. Damon, in the titular role, clearly having a great time, reels off the one-liners with pleasure. His charisma adds significantly to an already engaging film. 

In fourth-quarter dramas, stateside foreign releases and indies we as audiences expect to be treated with intelligence, and we generally are. It's nice when a filmmaker has the ability and opportunity to do the same on a studio tentpole. Ridley's other work, Nolan's, or pieces like Fincher's Dragon Tattoo come to mind. As a French-Chinese hostel-mate once told me when I was traveling abroad: "America makes the some of the absolute dumbest, most horrible movies… and also some of the absolutely most complex, intelligent, amazing ones too!"