my blog is difficult to maintain from india.  most computers here are old, windows 98 pc computers with issues to be kind.  therefor, if you find yourself here, reading this text, wanting to know about india travels regarding leela and dave, you should really go here:

leelacyd.com

enjoy, we are currently in mumbai, and yes, it's absolutely crazy.

cheers.

wow.  we made it.  from arrival at LAX to our hotel room -- almost 30hours.  by far the longest single travel time yet by far. 

the communication is hit and miss, the food so far is great, the people mostly friendly, and our hotel is perfect.  we are staying outside of the city about 5kilometers, and there is hardly a sound in the air besides the ocean waves and the birds.  beautiful.  the city, all 20 minutes of what i have seen, is total sensory overload.  the streets are filled with signs, cars, and people, and yet through the madness of the crowds, people actually don't seem to be in such a hurry.  so far, so good, and as we recover from the traveling, the journey will take on a whole new form i'm sure.  we have to do many things, but today is very simple.  eat food.  find internet.  check and check.

Tahoe is magical.  Through its clear waters, I can remember a time when I was three feet tall, with a surprise in each grain of sand.

Moving out of our apartment was incredible.  The kind of incredible that wears you out, that makes you so tired that you can't think and your head gets all fuzzy while your body keeps throwing things in giant bags and boxes until you find yourself in an empty room, exhausted, holding strange items from under the bed that you never knew existed.

And then there were the parties, the extreme laughter and fun of having wonderful friends shower you with attention.  Saying goodbye really can bring people closer.  It makes you think about what this person means to you, and how much you value your short time enjoying their company.  In a world such as this, friends, close friends, are worth far more than anything you can posses.  They are an extension of what you love about humanity, and about what you value in life.  And good friends are hard to come by, and easy to take for granted. 

As we ready ourselves for the trip, I think with fondness, about the people in my life, and how they give meaning to the word Home.

Our wedding was filmed in Super 8 film, and I really enjoy the look, the feel and the general messiness of the film.  We edited the film ourselves and put some of the songs from the wedding in, to add an extra flavor of nostalgia.  If you are having problems viewing this online, and would like to download this movie to your computer, follow these simple instructions:

1)  Click the link below

http://www.infinitemb.com/download/4572/Wedding_Small.mp4/

2)  Scroll to the bottom of this new page and CLICK THE GREEN DOWNLOAD NOW BUTTON.

3)  You will have to wait 45 seconds, and after you wait, click on the "Click Here to Download" that will appear after you have the 45 seconds has counted down.

4)  SAVE the file, this may take a few minutes, but it's worth it.

5)  Open the file in Quicktime, and enjoy.

Tilt-shift miniature faking is a process in which a photograph of a life-size location or object is manipulated so that it looks like a photograph of a miniature scale model.  Says Wikipedia.

This guy Keith took this idea, which has been popularized recently by still photographers, to videos of near epic proportion.  I haven't watched them all, nor is Keith the only person alive doing them, but they are highly absorbing, strange, and I am seriously attracted to the way our eyes switch back and forth between macro scale and micro scale.  These are stunning, watch "Bathtub 2" and then maybe check out "Marti Gras".    Awesome.

http://vimeo.com/channels/keithloutitssydney#1789964

http://vimeo.com/channels/keithloutitssydney

I suppose I could use this to document this coming year, even if the only one reading it is me.

I am very excited, elated, about going to India.  I want to step off the plane, breathe in the air, be greeted by foreign people, and embrace this new space using most of my sensory equipment, and all of my cunning.  I shall dive into a large pool of Indian people and absorb their histories, their perspectives, their food, and just about about anything and everything that my little fleshy gadgets can grasp.

I just finished Contact: Carl Sagan, and I have to admit; I'm thinking of myself much more in terms of how an alien might see us, (even more than usual) or even another intelligent earth creature.  I mean, put aside the complexities of the mind, emotion, psychology, etc., and just think about the equipment we have to sense the world.  It's a very basic thought I know, but I find myself very attracted to thinking about things in these terms, because it gives me a new and different appreciation of our place in the universe.

It's like, in Israel, we went to this Museum for the blind, and they have you go through this tour with absolutely No light.  It's alarming at first, but it simplifies the experience.  What happens immediately when you close your eyes is that you are taking away the one sense that we tend to put most of our focus on, sight.  But there are these other senses there, you notice sound first, and you might not realize at first, but there is also a much hightened sense of gravity. 

That in itself is a very interesting feeling.  Weight.  Anyway, the longer you spend without sight, the more prominent the others become, and very fast.  It's like we are extremely intricate Mars rovers, or probes, and we make all these incredibly complex calculations constantly, unconsciously, and we learn quickly from the countless streams of data pouring in every second of every minute. 

This all goes without saying.  One thing, I guess, that separates us from a probe, is that we don't really have a mission.  We are gathering data, and not just as individuals, but globally as a species.  Since the very first story uttered, or the first written note, we are collectors.  We are master harvesters of sense, of light, of the tiniest fluctuation in our environment.  We do it for survival of course, but at what point does all this surpass the instinct to survive longer, more efficiently.  This is precisely the point when you pick up a science fiction book, or look out at the stars, and start dreaming of the day when we meet our brothers and sisters from the sky.  Maybe they will have something to say on the subject.

For now, I suppose I will have to settle for people who have grown up on the other side of the planet, who don't look or talk like me, and who might be able to teach me what to do with all the data we are all collecting.