.

Tony and Jordan were married last June at the parents of the bride’s gorgeous home outside Sacramento. I loved being a part of the fun, and I have to say that the bridal party were some of the most energetic I’ve seen! Also see some photos of the wedding on the website of the very talented photographer, Kim J. Martin. She worked so well with the bride and groom to get those wonderful shots in the golden fields!

Thank you Tony and Jordan for letting me capture your special day at this beautiful location!

This is the view from my home desk. Every time I look up at this young oak, I can’t help but recite, in my head, a Jane Hirshfield poem I read in a class with Paul Willis. It’s one of many poems that have stuck with me. I just wish that I could share it in Paul’s calm, effortless voice.

-

Tree

It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.

Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.

That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books –

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

-

Disclaimer: I took one year of college physics and have read a handful of books on astrophysics and quantum theory. So of course I consider myself on par with Einstein, Heisenberg, and Hawking, and will unabashedly go forth into an academic field in which I have only wet my toes. Now that you know how conceited, sophomoric, and stupid I am for thinking myself anything other than a complete amateur, let’s move on to my hamfisted and flawed pseudo-scientific rant.

The physical world in which we live is far stranger than we’re normally aware of with our naked senses. Quantum theory, along with other advancements in physics of the last century, require some mental yoga to even get the gist.

Only a few days after writing down some of the initial ideas for this blog post, I heard a broadcast of To the Best of Our Knowledge on NPR, which interviewed Leonard Mlodinow, co-author of the recent Stephen Hawking book, The Grand Design. The interviewer introduces their subject matter of quantum physics by referring to it as “that famously weird, mind-bending science full of uncertainty and entanglement,” a good one-sentence summation of its bizarre implications. Near the start of the interview, Mlodinow makes the admission that “It’s basically incomprehensible. I mean, what does it mean that light is both a particle and a wave, or what does it mean that particles can influence each other from a distance. It’s mind-boggling, isn’t it?”

It is indeed mind-boggling, but I want to challenge the claim of “incomprehensible.” At least, no more incomprehensible or difficult to grasp than any other major leap forward in the history of physics. Quantum physics posits that one thing can be in two places simultaneously through superpositioning, light is both a particle and a massless wave, and string theory postulates that single dimensional bands loops on themselves to manifest what we know to be matter. “Mind-boggling” is indeed a good way to refer to modern physics.

And how can this all be? Quantum theory, and other fields in physics, explain phenomena which are not only counter-intuitive, but contradict themselves and seem downright impossible. When we observe behavior at an atomic level, it’s a completely different world from the one we know. But it is impossible to argue with the universe. It’s just that we aren’t wired for this invisible plane of existence; we’re wired for the scale of objects that can be picked up, walked upon, constructed, summited. Our minds, it would seem, are incompatible with some physical laws; they are not built to come to terms with what seems like nonsense.

Because of this, quantum physics and its absurd predictions are notoriously difficult to wrap one’s mind around. Because it is so counter-intuitive, we consider it a realm of understanding only for great thinkers and tenured professors.

But are not other truths of the universe counter-intuitive as well? For centuries, even with all the brilliant men that lived throughout those centuries, it was assumed (without bothering to test) that heavier objects fell faster than lighter ones. Until a quirky-minded individual named Galileo decided to perform the absurdly simple task of dropping two objects, and found that they hit the ground and precisely the same time, despite their weight difference. (Yes, the Pisa story is likely apocryphal, but it’s a good visual!)

And although we now know it to be incorrect, we can of course all sympathize with the Aristotelian belief that objects fall at a speed proportional to their mass. Drop a bowling ball and it slams onto the ground (or perhaps your toe) a moment later. Drop a paperback and it flutters to the ground where it lands with a plop. Drop a feather and, well, you get the idea. It’s what our brains naturally assume, based both on innate common sense, and experiential evidence.

This crude concept was, undoubtedly, very useful to the early human. Knowing that the boulder would not hesitate to crush you into a pancake was useful knowledge. Even observation confirmed our ancient ancestors’ assumptions: Snow elegantly floats to the ground, while heavy rain pelts into the mud.

So imagine the shift in thinking of the people of Galileo’s time. (Ignoring the fact that he was dismissed as a heathen by the faithful of his day. That is beyond the scope of this post.) Put yourself in that era, where you assumed your whole life that a shotput falls faster than a marble, and now some quack in Italy says they’ll hit the ground at the same time. And then, upon observing the phenomena, imagine having to wrap your head around the concept. It’s so contrary to how our brains are hard-wired. It’s software written in unfamiliar code. And there’s no immediately apparent reason for why these things behave the way they do.

And the list goes on. Ancient civilizations assumed the Earth to be flat (Who wouldn’t?), until it was noted, among other indicators, that the North star appears lower in the sky when traveling longitudinally. Aristotle said that the natural state of objects was to remain at rest, while Newton found that objects in motion stay in motion, unless acted upon by another force. Diseases were often attributed to evil spirits until the invisible world of microbiology was discovered, and simple hygiene measures saved countless lives. It didn’t seem possible that light could travel without some medium to allow its transit, and physicists once searched for an omnipresent “ether” in vain. And before our recent understanding of the mass energy equivalent, it was impossible to understand how the Sun could burn for so long without going dim (No such generous fuel was known to exist on Earth).

Another well-known misconception is the assumption of geocentrism (Once again we can thank our buddy Galileo, and his brotha from another motha, Copernicus). How could it be possible that the Earth spins, rather than the heavens revolving around us? After all, at high speeds, things go woooooosh! It’s completely foreign to our daily experience … the fact that things on this scale might behave differently is, again, a hard concept to understand. Today, every educated child knows, against intuition and immediate observation, that the Earth is racing through the vacuum of space. We’re cozily along for the ride, all up to speed with the planet’s enormously fast but elegantly regular rotation and direction. Of course, we don’t think about this fact through most of our daily lives, since it is not useful information to know that you’re barreling through orbit at 65,000 miles per hour while stuck in rush hour traffic.

Aristotle’s model of the universe

And speaking of the vacuum of space: the reptilian part of our minds understands space and air to be one in the same. How can there be “empty space?” If there were such a preposterous thing, what would it be? Could we even consider such a concept to even exist? But using relatively simple tools such as air pumps, men of Joseph Priestley’s time (who first isolated oxygen) laid the groundwork for our understanding of the atmosphere we inhabit, packed with gaseous matter, unlike the vast majority of the empty universe.

Similarly, the quantum concept of superpositioning is a seeming contradiction, just as empty space exists while nothing exists within it. This massless non-thing called space can be bent and contorted despite containing nothingness.

I’ve given several examples of concepts in physics which seem to not sit well with human understanding. And yet, these counter-intuitive concepts are taught every day in high school physics and third grade astronomy.

So why should the more recent theories of quantum theory and relativity, which have been considered notoriously mysterious to laymen, be reserved only for the imaginations and conversations of scientists? I very confidently believe that these more recent concepts are no more strange or difficult to understand than past advancements were when first introduced. It’s a problem of lacking context; one of the beauties of the universe is the depth of its complexity. The operation of its laws and the manifestation of its forces seem to keep getting stranger the more we understand, as every generation continues to tread into unmapped territory. Just like microbiology, a whole world of previously undetectable phenomena occurs on an atomic and subatomic level, rather than the much larger scale that our minds are accustomed to dealing with.

Because advances in technology that have recently allowed the precise measurement of this tiny world, we know these things to be the stubbornly consistent nature of the universe. The physical laws of this universe are what they are. The only reason we consider some of these laws to be “normal” is because they can be easily observed. Counter-intuitive though many of them may be, they can still be grasped just as we have come to terms with gravity and chemistry and washing our hands on our way out of the bathroom even though they don’t look dirty.

Without regard for the cause and focusing more on the state of things as they currently exist, we can say that the Earth is a sphere because it is a sphere. We can say that objects of different weight fall at the same speed because objects of different weight fall with an identical acceleration. Just as we can say that light is simultaneously a particle and a wave because it is simultaneously a particle and a wave. Even though we understand “things” as we know them to be one thing and one thing only, we must accept the reality of the way this thing occurs, against intuition, just as we accept that the world is not flat, against immediate intuition.

The nature of the universe is a uniquely intriguing delicacy, and there is no reason for us non-collegiate bigwigs to shy away from its fascinating implications. In Stephen Hawking’s eloquent words from A Brief History of Time, which I ripped off to a great extent in the paragraphs above, the nature of the universe “should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the questions of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we would know the mind of God.”

As proud as I am about this, the recognition is unevenly distributed. The fear I have in writing this post is that some might think I’m unappreciative or trivializing the honor of receiving the award. I really hope it’s not taken that way, I don’t want to exude false humility under the pretense of saying it was undeserved. But I hope people realize that my short trip is a tiny gesture compared to the incredible work of so many others who have sacrificed far more than myself to further SOLD’s cause of ending child prostitution and human trafficking in Thailand.

I took 2 months last year to volunteer for SOLD, came back home, put a little promo video together, and got back to “normal life.” Meanwhile, the staff at the organization have spent years of their life working tirelessly toward the cause, and volunteers have spent up to almost a year pouring themselves into the project and their sponsored kids.

I am inspired by and in awe of my lovely sister Rachel, her husband Kevin, Nate and Rachel Sparks-Graeser, Tawee Donchai, Plah Chermui, Michael Manes, Michael and Heather Colletto, Deirdre Flynn (aka P’Dara), Shannon O’Malley, and so many others who have been involved with SOLD. And there are still other remarkable souls in Chiang Rai who are living out their passion for social justice by getting up every morning and selflessly choosing to make a difference.

Every single person listed above deserves a trophy room of awards for the real difference they’re making through their remarkable perseverance. These people truly inspire me in a way I can’t explain short of introducing them, and I hope that others are aware of just how much recognition they deserve. I’m honored by the award I’ve received, but my work is a small piece of the puzzle in a much larger cause. If you know any of these amazing individuals, please let them know how awesome they are. :)

Thank you again to BAPVA for the incredible honor, and thank you to those who are making a difference in Northern Thailand.

Responding to the question I get so often, “How was Thailand?” is impossible to answer in a blog post, let alone a word or a sentence. The only thing I can say about it completely honestly is: it was an experience.

Those two months were so greatly varied, it’s hard to apply a label even to the “overall” experience. There were highs and lows, successful days of filming and “off-days,” moments of pride and moments of embarrassment, days of feeling beaten back by the insurmountably rampant sex trade, and days of hopefulness in SOLD’s work.

As far as the primary reason I went over there, to film footage for The SOLD Project, I think we were very successful, and I hope the short time I spared makes a difference in their work. I thought that seven weeks of filming would present challenges for finding something new to shoot, but we always seemed to be busy capturing footage. At the same time, I don’t feel like I needed to stay there longer to get what we needed, seven weeks was just about the right amount of time.

We traveled to the red light districts of Bangkok, the beaches of Phuket, the busy markets of Chiang Mai, the rice fields of Chiang Rai, and everywhere in between. I don’t have an exact count, but in total I captured around 35 hours of footage. I also put a short video together, which is embedded below (the amazing score was composed by my brother in law, Kevin). Working on this project made me even more passionate about SOLD’s mission, and I hope the video brings in support for them and helps raise awareness about the tragedy of child prostitution.

Although the video was the main focus of my trip, it’s impossible not to get attached to certain aspects of a country when you live there for two months. It grew into more than a project or a vacation or an adventure; it became my home. I used to think that traveling meant sampling a culture, getting a taste of it, and then going home. My perspective has changed, and I can’t imagine myself ever “vacationing” again after digging into a culture and feeling like a part of it. It has, without trying to be too hyperbolic, changed my perspective on the world. At least to some degree.

It may already be obvious by my being vague, but I’m still processing a lot of the trip. I fell in love with the country and didn’t want to leave, but at the same time I’m thankful to be back home with friends and family (and hot water). I’ve been enacting my plan for returning to school and finally finishing my degree, getting back to editing weddings and putting together my videography company, and working my old job at PathLight. The Bay Area is my home, and despite missing the culture, the lifestyle, the friends I made, and the language of Thailand, this is where I should be right now, and I’m content with taking the experience of Thailand home with me, keeping a part of the country alive in how I continue to live my life.

I’d love to go back some day, and in fact, I intend to. But if I don’t get that chance, I’ll always look back on those seven weeks and remind myself that that was one of the larger steps that made me into my current self. I’ve grown from it, in so many ways.

Please excuse the mushy-gushy language that might be out of character for me. There are still a lot of emotions and incomplete thoughts that I have about the trip, and I was even reluctant to post this before they’re all settled into place. I’ll post here in the coming weeks to share some of the more specific aspects of the experience. Until then, enjoy the video, and leave a comment if there’s anything specific you’d like to know about the trip.

It all started at a breakfast in Santa Barbara. Kevin, Jedd and I sat together enjoying a late morning brunch, watching the ocean, and talking about our futures. Jedd was wondering what the next few months would hold for his life, and I jokingly suggested he move to Thailand. The SOLD Project had been dreaming of an update film, Jedd happens to be an amazing videographer (and editor!), and living in Thailand meant $1 meals for a few months. He li … Read More

via adventures in photo

I’ve been in Thailand for just over a week now, and I feel like I’ve already experienced so much. After a brief layover in Hong Kong, I flew in to Phuket, a tiny island in Southern Thailand that’s a popular tourist spot. It was supposed to be a relaxing few days to acclimate to Thailand and hang out at the beach, but it rained the whole time, and the beach was covered in trash. Although the vacation part was something of a let down, it did give me a chance to get over jet lag and relax in good company. Oh, and I ate a fish eye.

A few days later we flew to Chiang Mai, a city in Northern Thailand that I quickly fell in love with. It’s very westernized, but still feels uniquely Thai. At the sprawling night market you can get a get a great meal for under a dollar, and the city’s rustic urban feel allowed me to get a few shots I’m really happy with.

In Chiang Mai I also met Tawee, The SOLD Project’s program director. He’s a brilliant man with an incredible story. Tawee grew up poor but always dreamt of becoming a scientist. He now studies microbiology at Chiang Mai University, researching HIV. He’s a perfect role model for SOLD’s students, and I’m so thankful he’s working with the organization.

Although I love Chiang Mai, it is no exception to Thailand’s reputation for sex tourism. The first night I walked through the red light district, I was somewhat in shock. When you know everything that’s involved with prostitution here and finally see first hand these girls’ bodies being sold to tourists, it’s heartbreaking. I didn’t manage to get much usable footage, and for the rest of that night I was shook up by what I had seen.

The next night we went back, and I kept reminding myself of my reason for being there. More confident, this time I was finally able to capture the tragedy on film; exactly what I had come to this country to do. I’m so thankful that I had this second chance, as the footage is essential to the final film.

The next day we took the bus to Chiang Rai, where The SOLD Project is based in Thailand, and where I’ll be staying for most of the trip. Their resource facility here serves as both staff office and classroom for their child prevention program. Here, they host daily after-school activities and tutoring for students who are at risk of becoming victims of prostitution.

The kids are just like kids anywhere; they love games, crafts, cartoons, ice cream, and joking around with their friends. But many of them are neglected by their parents, and have little hope for the future. Children this age are often taken out of school to work, and some are stolen from or sold by their families into the sex trade, where they are trafficked or put on the streets against their will. It’s this tragic reality that broke my heart in Chiang Mai.

But after seeing the confidence of these students, and their eagerness to work hard in school, it’s obvious that SOLD is having a huge impact on these kids who before had little hope. It’s made me so thankful that I have the opportunity to come here and do my small part to further SOLD’s efforts.

Next week, we’ll be taking the 12-hour bus ride to Bangkok, where sex tourism is heavily prevalent. And although I’m nervous about what I’ll witness there, I realize more than ever just how important it is to tell this story. I feel a true sense of purpose in my work, capturing this story so it can be told to those with the means to help.

I’d like to thank everyone who donated to The SOLD Project in my name. Without your help, this trip wouldn’t have been possible, and I’m so appreciative that you’ve allowed me to come here and do my small part in fighting this tragedy. Kop khun maak khrap!

thesoldproject.com

On October 12 I arrived in Phuket, Thailand, for a little pre-trip rest, acclimation, and a chance to get over jet lag. It was me, my sister, my brother in law, and our friend Praise, who was a bridesmaid in Rachel’s wedding.

We spent a few days together, enjoying the beaches, exploring the tiny island, and sampling some strange delicacies. I was reminded of Praise’s wonderful heart and ceaselessly loving personality. Even though it rained through our whole stay, she brought joyfulness to those overcast days. A few days later she flew to Singapore to spend some time with her father and brother, and then went home to California.

Searching my inbox for her name is surreal. E-mails dated just a week ago alert me about comments she’s left on Facebook videos, her laughing at my pictures of the kids from the resource center … everything was normal. Then, e-mails marked just a few days later notify me of her trips to the hospital, friends searching desperately for anyone who could help the doctors figure out the cause, and finally, a message letting us all know what happened. I have this snapshot of the past week, this timeline, all in one window, and from this vantage point it’s shocking to see just how sudden the shift was.

This was just a few days ago that we found out, when Rachel, Kevin and I were staying at a hotel in Bangkok. The early morning phone call hit us all like a freight train. Rachel had looked up information about her viral infection the night before, but we passed it off thinking, “She has good doctors, she’s young, she’s a healthy person … I’m sure she’ll recover.” As I write this, I’m still in utter disbelief. Perhaps partly because we’re half a world away from her grieving friends who are reminiscing and planning the memorial service. It doesn’t seem possible that this is something that could occur within our sphere of existence.

I wish I could say more about my reaction to this, my feelings, or a more insightful reflection. But the truth is that none of it is real to me yet. I wish I had more insight, but I’m at a loss for what to say. I don’t know if it will eventually hit me, or if I just need time to process, or if it will always feel like something that happened in a bad dream.

Without hyperbole, I can confidently say that Praise was perhaps the sweetest, most loving, and most genuine person of anyone I’ve known. The world suffered a great loss with her passing, and her life was a blessing to all who knew her. Please keep her family and friends in your thoughts and prayers as they continue to process this, to mourn, and to go through the hardest of their grieving in the coming weeks. May they find strength and peace.