Do For Love

Do for love, there is no try.

considering the experience behind this creation, this image and memory will always move me to tears

“lacrime di felicità”

New environments often pose unique challenges for balancing. A source of both delight and potential frustration. Here is a good reminder to listen and accept the conditions of my context. In this case I let myself get frustrated many times, perhaps expecting too much. So, I listened to the wind, and responded.. with a balance style customized for the locale. . .

“One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls.”

― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

This creation was as frustrating as it was satisfying. Spent most of the afternoon exploring this new spot… windy, with no sign of letting up. Under this long grass were thousands of crabs burrowed under the soft sand. They would pop out when no humans were close and then jump back underground as soon as I laid eyes on them. Incredibly fast. I guess the most frustrating part was working with so much wind, while hoping to finish a creation that satisfied my high standards… stuck inside my own box of top heavy styles… So i gave up all past formulas, adapted, and decided to build next this baby mangrove tree. Not expecting much at this point…

The two humans on the left side of the photo were some local researchers taking soil samples for some kind of study. The human on the right, is my friend Pascal, with whom i’m here visiting.

After working through a couple variations with these rocks, i finally settled on this one. fairly simple. quite stable in the wind. Surprisingly beautiful in this time and place.

But right as the sun got close to setting, 2 rangers called us out, since we obviously appeared to be “foreigners”… They said only locals were allowed to be in this place and that we had to leave. Of course I began freaking out inside. Losing precious time to photograph such a lovely moment..

We listened to them. And they eventually left, while the new dilemma became whether or not to risk a ticket to run back out to my creation and photograph it with sunset skies… ADRENALINE was high. Foreign place. unfamiliar with laws and rules.. Pascal could sense the fire in my eyes, so with a bit of encouragement I risked the rangers’ recent presence to sprint back out into the field with camera and tripod — snapped a few shots of peak sunset color… and sprinted back to the main path, where the rangers left us only 20 minutes ago..

ps, the food here (Taiwan) is wonderful!