Taking a ferry across the Mediterranean Sea from Algecira in Spain to Tangier in Morocco, one of the first things I noticed is how conservative the Moroccans are compared to their neighbors across the narrow strait.  Women are typically covered as you see on TV, hair and sometimes face hidden.  Many men wear long hooded robes with prominent beards untrimmed. It makes a boy from the sticks very conscious of his own dress.

Back home, shirts are optional and bikini tops not an uncommon sight during the summer.  There, the principle of being yourself and letting the world beware makes for great ad copy and sells a lot of sneakers and ironic t-shirts.  We pride ourselves on the appearance of individuality.

Here, families are close-knit and a man sitting on another's lap is a common sight in the streets.  Despite that, the current in the air blows conservatively and in a country where public lashings are not uncommon, the first thing I did on arriving at the Hotel Continental was to discreetly go into the men's washroom and turn my t-shirt inside out.  A graphic that's funny in Spain (if you're not a matador) just isn't worth 20 lashes in Morocco.

The highlight of my trip through Spain the last few days is not the friendly wait staff at the Ciudat de Prat hotel in Barcelona where we spent the night after missing our flight to Valencia, nor is it the splendid gardens of the Palacio de Nazaries in Alhambra, though you should stop by if you´re in Grenada.  Rather, the highlight of this trip thus far is losing my luggage somewhere between London and Valencia.

Having to do without anything but what´s in my pockets and on my back for the last three days has reminded me that one can get by and be happy with very little.  Simple living, if you will.

In a culture of consumption where having the latest cell phone is a regular topic of conversation, decisions become simpler.  In the morning, after a nice hot shower, and the question of whether I should change my underwear pops into mind, the simple and blissfull answer is, ¨No, I will not change my underwear today.  Let´s find something to eat.¨

We dance with arms embraced,
twirling beneath the night,
the world a blur around us,
the center between us.

A little misstep,
a little stumble,
I catch you,
or do you catch me?

Our soft-slippered feet
tap lightly across tiled floor, 
carrying our laughter
across oceans to rainbow's end.

We leave our footprints in the sand
and in the grass of foreign lands,
chasing the summer sky,
the blooms of spring gone by.

Fall encroaches,
and in the winter of our lives,
pale snow settled on wrinkled brow,
we look back,
on two ribbons of light,
leading us to that night,
when our dance first took flight.

Much of life runs at a pace indistinguishable from one to the next.  As much as we try to live every moment, we lapse into an easy rhythm with eyes looking no further than the next step.  It is with difficulty that we remember what yesterday's lunch was.

Then there are those moments when a cathartic agent enters our banal lives and we are shocked into living the moment as a participant rather than an observer.  Such an agent of wakening in my life this past week was James Van Alden.  A man more passionate and stubborn about his craft would be difficult to find.

A couple of hours with James reminded me of what a person with a camera can be; not a photographer, anyone with a camera and a trigger finger can be a photographer, but that rarer of breeds:  an artist.

A photographer is a cataloger of the world around him.  He records the events, places, and people of his time.  Some of his images might be more artful than others, but his subject matter can never transcend the corporeal world we live in.

A man like James Van Alden creates.  He makes tangible the ethereal world of dreams and visions.  The images he creates do not exist outside of his imagination until he wills them into existence with broad strokes of light and shadow.  His brush is the camera and his palette the unspoken desires that walk our dreams.

If God is the man who creates, let no serpent deter James Van Alden from his path.