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Tryin' Like Hell Not To Be Political...

The North-West Frontier

10 o'clock, February 10, 2003

From Brendan Beely, Rob “aphrael” West's younger brother, currently in Afghanistan with the 82nd airborne, pictures.

I had a dream a couple of weeks ago, compounded probably from childhood memories of Iran, the month I spent in Granada and Córdoba after Oxford, and Ali Khamraev's The Seventh Bullet.

In the dream, I was travelling through an Afghanistan without the bandits, civil war, not-so-civil war, famine and downed MiGs. An Afghanistan with no more poverty than, say, Estonia. An Afghanistan where you could rent a car in Kabul, head up to Mazar-e-Sharif, maybe drive out to Balkh to have a picnic and see the ruins.

At least I got the mountains right.

Comments

Thanks for the Alhambra link! I did a tour of Moorish Andulusia back in '90 and was in alt over the architecture etc.

As far as the war, there's a small voice in the back of my head that's screaming that there's GOT to be a way out of this other than the direction we seem to be taking, but the rest of me is numbly trying to ignore the rumblings of the avalanche. Best wishes to those who will be on the front lines, and may it prove to be worth whatever sacrifices they make.

—— Rachel Heslin, 10:32 AM, Tuesday, February 11, 2003

I guess what I'd like to see is half the effort being poured into Paul Wolfowitz' pipe dream — democratizing the Arab middle east by putting a bunch of crooks and thugs in charge of Iraq — put into rebuilding Afghanistan and supporting guys like Brendan.

But it looks like what I'll have to settle for is not being expatriated just for saying stuff like that.

—— David Moles, 10:58 AM, Tuesday, February 11, 2003

*sigh*

Yeah, I'm a big fan of building and evolving and taking the time and effort to properly amend the soil, then plant seeds and nurture healthy new growth (education vs prisons, helping build Mexico's economy and accountability within the sociopolitical structure rather than just deporting illegals -- heck, education and a sense of communal responsibility as a foundation for LIFE), but these sorts of things apparently take too long and aren't showy enough for those who seem to be in charge of our national policy.

Three cheers for the Grameen Bank!

—— Rachel Heslin, 4:22 PM, Tuesday, February 11, 2003

Yeah, the Grameen Bank kicks ass.

—— David Moles, 5:30 PM, Tuesday, February 11, 2003

By the way, when Polyphony 2 comes out, one could do worse than to imagine that shot of the Alhambra as the backdrop for my story “Theo's Girl”.

(I shot four rolls of film myself on that trip, but all my pictures turned out to suffer from what I'm guessing is lack of lens cleaner. Next trip I'm taking the Pentax as well as the Lomo, just in case. Scanned, they're just barely good enough for the Web, so I may put them up some time.)

—— David Moles, 5:39 PM, Tuesday, February 11, 2003

The first time I went to Europe, I took a lot of pictures for the first 3 weeks, then dropped the camera one too many times on a friend's cement driveway (it was one of those auto focus point and shoot ones.)

Although many of the pictures are beautiful or artistic or bring back memories, I found that the camera had actually been making me lazy. At the point that it was no longer there, I started journaling, and those notes bring back far more of the impressions and feelings than the photos themselves.

Of course, I still love photography and have it on my list of Skills I'd Like To Develop (so to speak) One Of These Days.

—— Rachel Heslin, 1:00 PM, Wednesday, February 12, 2003