Vegas

I visited Vegas for the first time a few weeks ago. It was interesting. While I enjoyed the trip and doing simple things. It was a sad place. It is the epitome of all that is wrong with the current social reality. Characterized simply by waste. A waste of resources, energy, time, and most disturbingly human potential; luxury and excess to the highest degree while people are sleeping on concrete. Patrons of corporate capitalism and destruction ignoring the existence of the homeless as they walk less than five feet from where they sit or lay in order to get to the next place, they can gamble hundreds or thousands of dollars away, wearing shoes that cost more than all the worldly possessions of these, apparently non-existent, human beings. 

Nature has a way; it has its way.

 

At a glance: Henri Cartier-Bresson

In a world that is buckling under the weight of profit-making, that is overrun by the destructive sirens of Techno-science and the power-hunger of globalization - that new brand of slavery - beyond all that, Friendship exists, Love exists.

                                                                         Henri Cartier-Bresson

Romania 1975

"Let our scars fall in love"

So little of what one is threads itself through the eye of empty space.

Nevermind.
The self is the least of it.
Let our scars fall in love.

—

From The book of Nightmares by Galway Kinnell

Some of the people along the way.

In waiting for these images to load I began thinking about the things we can learn from those who enter our lives. And how, if we are open to it, we can learn from every person that we meet no matter the duration or extent. It is not always easy. It requires humility, empathy, and the practice of love.