The jazzy music is soothing, pulling me away from the pain inside. Louis Armstrong is seeing bright blessed days and dark sacred nights and we’re thinking to ourselves. Behind me, a barista is frothing milk and the espresso machine seems to tune into the song. All the way at the back, an adorable little blonde is laughing quietly through her few missing teeth. To my right in a corner, a poor guy is facing two female supervisors in a job interview and sinking himself deeper and deeper each time he opens his mouth. The coffee is slightly vanilla-flavored and tastes heavenly, flowing down my veins and warming me up from the core.

It’s a rather cold winter night for BC and the temperature has hovered all day just below freezing. With the chilly outside air that was biting my fingers and icing the tripod’s legs, a hand-written sign posted above the counter sounds a bit surreal:

« All our ice cream melted during the power failure caused by the recent wind storm. We do not expect to get restocked until the New Year. »

The tide cycle is finally favoring my needs and sunsets have caught up with tidal pools. Here’s what White Rock’s beaches were like tonight, on this final stretch of the 2006 challenge. Let’s hang on, in three days, a new beginning.

Artists, rather than wasting their imagination tackling futile questions, use it to invent and create, thus standing between question and answer. The question is, am I an artist?

It’s bright, it’s beautiful, it shines, it twinkles, it will leave no one unmoved. It’s the Christmas Festival of Lights of Vancouver’s VanDusen Botanical Garden. 3 weeks. 1.4 million lights. One human dragonfly. Many, many people in awe. And then there’s Elana’s choir singing Petit Papa Noel and Kalinka. Precious! See for yourself.

« I wonder... »

I’d have to say that this basic thought defines, by itself and in two simple words, the essence of mankind. Tada!

Not convinced? Think about it for a second. It is at the root of anything significant that’s ever happened in our history - Columbus discovering the other side of the world - The Wright brothers leaving the ground on a flying machine heavier than air - Three W’s being bonded into an international web of information and communications - Everest being climbed for the first time without the use of oxygen - Man walking on the moon - Cousteau and Gagnan inventing the Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus - Pierre and Marie Curie flirting with radioactivity.

However, it is sadly also at the very core of anything terrible that ever occurred - Columbus initiating the systematic annihilation of anybody who inhabited the other side of the world - The Wachowski brothers deciding to create a sequel to the Matrix and turning a cult movie into a belly flop - Three K’s being bonded together into a white supremacist lunacy - Everest being climbed for the first time without the use of grey matter - Man wanting the moon and ready to kill for it - The Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus becoming a direct threat to our reefs’ survival - Enola Gay dropping a single Little Boy that would kill thousands more.

All of that began with a human brain tapping into its imagination and wondering « What if? » « I wonder what it would be like to rule the world. » « I wonder if I’d get more respect. » « I wonder if I’ll manage to become famous. » « I wonder what making a million dollars a year would allow me to buy. » « I wonder if I’ll ever get rid of the people I don’t like. » « I wonder if I could get rid of them without getting caught. » « I wonder if there is another world out there. » « I wonder if I can reach it. » « I wonder what happens when we mess with atoms until they go crazy. »

Then imagination would produce theories and images - and dreams - and hopes - and desires. Yes, imagination generates desires. And desires lead to greed. But they also yield change, and change is good. Yet any despot in a position of absolute power started his reign by one day imagining what it would be like to sit on the throne. On the other hand, every masterpiece in a museum was once born into the imagination of an artist.

By now you’ll have noticed that I am intentionally going in circles, oscillating between the good and the bad, between examples of inspiration and corruption. Such seems to be the consequence of imagination. It is our most powerful weapon and as such, can be devastating. But it is also our greatest gift, and it always has - and will keep - distilling every single one of man’s creations and achievements, may they be artistic, moral, symbolic, sociological, technological or purely out of this world...

...

Now the weird part is that this post was initially going to be about the extraordinary Festival of Lights at the VanDusen gardens. I was so mesmerized by the display of Christmas lights that I started thinking about the people behind it all and wondering what would drive them to such enjoyable extremes. From there I jumped to the conclusion that superior imagination would be needed to envision the whole project, and I got side-tracked. So I’ll post the pictures in the next entry.

Well donc, j’ai reçu une réplique fort pertinente et judicieuse à mon post intitulé « Farewell to the Year », lequel, semble-t-il, aura paru à certains un rien défaitiste. Ce n’était pas vraiment le cas et je me considère plutôt réaliste que pessimiste : je garde la porte ouverte alors que les pessimistes la claquent. Mais il m’arrive aussi de douter et de verser une larme symbolique quand, à l’exemple d’Achille Talon, la race humaine persiste et signe son propre mandat d’arrêt.

Quoiqu’il en soit, voici ce qu’André avait à répondre à mes propos. Inutile de préciser que je tiens les siens en grande estime.

 « Je m’inscris en faux, cependant, contre ton « let the world be ruled by the cats and the dolphins ». Étant moi-même grand amant de la nature, avide de documentaires sur les animaux et pétri de réflexion (ça te viendra, je le dis en toute condescendance d’aîné), je constate que la nature est parfaitement implacable. Or, l’être humain en est issu, et s’il est cruel et erratique dans son évolution, comme aussi compatissant, ordonné et en quête de savoir et d’esprit, c’est que l’émergence de la conscience en lui ne pouvait pas, en l’extirpant des automatismes instinctuels de la nature, ne pas créer le mal en même temps que le bien. Et je prétends qu’en toute chose de nos sociétés humaines, le bien occupe beaucoup plus de place que le mal, nonobstant les apparences qui toujours nous ont leurrés à croire que tout va mal, voire de mal en pis. Je connais peu de l’œuvre de Teilhard de Chardin, mais j’incline à croire comme lui que la conscience humaine monte comme en spirale. C’est précisément ce dernier phénomène, la spirale, qui pourrait, selon moi, expliquer que d’aucuns (te coifferai-je de ce chapeau?) n’ont pas conscience de sa montée. Je récuse donc ces mots « we never, ever learn ». Dans la quasi éternité du temps, la patience est battue en brèche mais à tort. »

Hé-hé. En d’autres termes, « Mets ça dans ta pipe et fume, le jeune... »

Clearly, Mother Nature hasn’t yet exhausted her fury. The first two months of this winter season have already gone down in history, and the madness seems far from over. After November’s exceptional rain and snow, it was December’s winds that inflicted the worse wounds to our region, many of them fatal blows.

Last week, the Lower Mainland struggled through winds gusting at just under 100 km/h, leaving a quarter of a million people without electricity. In some areas, the power still hasn’t been restored and BC Hydro might be asking the GVRD population to turn their Christmas lights off, in an unprecedented attempt to lighten the load on the power grid and avoid another collapse. Somebody please tell Jimmy.

On the natural side of things, it didn’t go much better; forests were already extremely humid, trunks were soaked up with water and the soil was saturated and loose; then came the wind. As a result, the Capilano Suspension Bridge remains closed, weeks after the weight of a record snowfall crippled the trees and a large one seemingly collapsed on the bridge itself. The last assault must have made matters much worse, even though I still haven’t seen it with my own eyes. What I have seen, though, is the desolation in Stanley Park.

On December 16th, News1130 online declared « Stanley Park is an absolute mess after the windstorm. The Vancouver Park Board has stopped short of calling it a disaster but has closed the park because of the danger to the public, mostly from hundreds, if not thousands, of fallen trees. » And the truth is, Stanley Park has been scarred for many, many years to come.

It’s by taking a short walk into Stanley Park that one best appreciates the extent of the damage. Of course, the official advice is for people to stay out of the park until it’s safe to return and clearing is progressing well. I was, however, bound by my duties as a photographer and blogger and decided to take a quick walk into the park. A really quick one.

Days after the wind storm, crews are still working hard to clear the fallen trees from main roads and paths, but as I ventured deeper into the forest, I was faced with an inextricable maze of uprooted trees and snapped branches. What used to be a clean, well maintained network of trails has become an unrecognizable mesh of random obstructions. The Vancouver Park Board has admitted looking into letting commercial loggers in the park to help clear the logs, a scary thought if I ever heard one. Either way, the clean up will take months.

Once again, we are faced with a humbling and saddening reality: it took one single night to destroy what had taken decades if not hundreds of years to grow. The giants lying in agony on their side, defeated and bleeding to death as life slowly seeps away from them, seem to be begging for a « coup de grace ». They will, however, remain there for many generations to come - generations of trees, and of men too, who will be reminded every time they explore the park of the unforgiving power of nature.

And then, as I was waiting for my bus by Lost Lagoon, watching swans and ducks on the pond, not one but two pairs of Bald Eagles came flying low, at tree-top height, obviously unaware that a mere 300 meters away lays the third most densely populated urban zone in North America.

Even through such suffering, Stanley Park retains its dignity and magic.

It’s raining in Vancouver. The sky is overcast and dark in all directions but the south, where a little light and a hint of blue sky shine through the madness. So I hop on a bus and go as far south as Canada will let me. Along the way, the wind picks up and road signs begin a wild dance in the chilly air. When I get off the bus a few kilometers from the border, over an hour later, the rain has stopped momentarily but the sky is moving past me towards the north at a tremendous speed, as if late for a spectacular collision with the Coast Mountains. I head down the hill to the beachfront of White Rock, catching my first glimpse of the shoreline and getting my hopes confirmed: white caps as far as the eye can see and wide surf all along the coast. Sea and sky are having a fight, competing in a display of fury and darkness. The camera comes out of the bag. My tripod, however, stays put. It is too flimsy and won’t be of any help in the 60+ km/h gusts. I’ll just have to boost the ISO and keep the shutter speed as high as possible, grainy look or not. Neither bracketing nor HDR today. A few people are attempting to surf, watched by a flock of Canadian Geese resting on the beach, obviously thinking that if they find it wiser not to be flying in this weather, humans should consider making the same choices about their swimming. People are walking around head down and eyes half closed as rain drops suddenly turn into hurtful pellets. I spend most of my time with my back to the wind, protecting the camera the best I can and having a hard time keeping it dry and the lens clean. Going from a shelter to the next, I shoot, hide, dry the lens, and shoot again, happy as could be. The break in the clouds soon closes back up and the rain becomes more insistent. Final darkness falls on the little town and I finish taking a few shots of the surf illuminated by Christmas lights, having mounted the camera on the tripod and using it as a monopod, leaning it against a handrail and pushing on it with all my weight to try and steady the shot. Then I bail out of the night, catch a shuttle to the main bus stop and wait under a porch while small hail pounds the streets. When the bus finally arrives, I settle into my seat and letting warmth slowly come back to me, I turn my music on and slip into a daze.

Another year has gone by. Another year of global fear and meltdown, another chapter full of international typos and fighting between the lines. Another long page written in bloody history books which for only index feature those lifted up high by tyrants and blatantly missing a negotiation table.

One never ceases to be amazed, reading mankind’s virtual history book, by its complete lack of creativity. At any point in time, we can flip back the pages from the present to a near or very distant past and realize that no matter how horrible the battle, it’s all been done before.

For the second time in our little world’s recorded existence has the dominant species acquired the ability to destroy itself and take the planet along too. Man-caused global warming has now joined nuclear science in a very select club with only global killers for members.

But our micro-scale performance is just as catastrophic. We kill children to kill time. We steal from the poor because it’s less expensive than stealing from the rich. We blame it all on others because they blame it on US. We sue, and we rule, and we envy, and we take, and we break, and we rape, and we crash, and we shoot, and we spit, and we yell, and we fight, and we reign, and we segregate, and we sermonize, and we swear, and we grab, and we sell, and we buy, and we consume, and we waste, and we never, ever learn.

So with Christmas just around the corner and the New Year only a block away, I don’t even know where to start with my wish list.

May mankind finally awake from an all-too-real millennium-long nightmare that has left our knees week and our head under the blade. May the global suffering be eased a little, and then, why not, a lot. May politicians become obsolete and let the world be ruled by cats and dolphins. We’ll get lots of sleep, playing, and swimming.

And thanks for all the fish.

So my riddle was silly and too easy. Ok, it was the Earth, South America to be more precise, and Chile to be even more accurate. My point was simply to illustrate how extraordinary our blue planet is, and how abstract Mother Nature manages to become, seen from space. The images were obtained with Google Maps, it’s that easy. Online satellite images on Google Maps are even nicer than those of the PC-based Google Earth, IMHO. They leave me speechless.

So I’ve prepared a little slideshow of some of my favorite views, directly in Google. Keep in mind that a lot of data is being loaded, so slow connections beware, you’ll need patience. However on a fast connection, it’s almost instantaneous. In any case, it’s worth the few seconds wait. You can browse through the overlay slideshow with the upper < and > arrows and close it with the X.

For those of you not yet familiar with the awesome Google Maps (is that possible?), here are a few pointers:

• Once the page has loaded, you may navigate by simply dragging the map.
• You can zoom in and out with the mouse’s wheel or by sliding the graphic cursor on the upper left corner.
• Three main modes are available in the upper right corner: map, satellite (the one I’m offering you) and hybrid which is a combo of the first two. That’s about it.

So click here and prepare to be amazed...

[ Or jump directly to 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 - Australia 2 3 4 5 - Halong Bay - China 2 3 4 5 6 - Asia - Middle East 2 3 4 5 - Africa 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 - Past Home Mixing Bowl - Present Home - Utah Arches Bryce - Giza ]

Update: well, it seems that once again IE6 is proving to be crap. As of now, the slideshow will only work correctly in Firefox, and maybe in IE7. Clicking on the above links in IE6 will get you into the slideshow to the point where Google Maps loads but then there is a conflict in the script with Google’s and nothing happens. The quickest fix for now is to right-click on the stopped Google « Loading » page and hit « Refresh »; the map then attempts to load incorrectly in Hybrid mode and you must click on Satellite to finally get it to load correctly. Sorry. I will try to figure out how to work around yet another IE weakness but the bottom line is: people! Switch to Firefox!

Today’s post is a riddle. Here are close-up pictures of one of the most beautiful rare gems known to man.

It can be sculpted but will easily crumble.

Its beauty can be harnessed but not directed.

It can be tamed but never slaved.

It can be sold but color decreases its value.

Blues are the less expensive but most valuable.

Who can tell me exactly what it is and where to find it?