Instead, I was stricken by the silence quivering with life, gliding effortlessly atop the polished smooth river in a mist that seeped onto the shores. The mist flew as a flock in harmony, skidding across the occasional waves and ripples in the virescent waters. The occasional haunting cry of a bird high above the mist and steady gurgle of the stick plunging into the water to push us forward only served to entrance us into a hush that swelled into the jungle far beyond the shores we sailed past. We drifted through the languid morning in a hollowed trunk that bore the scars of tried-and-true trips while nonetheless teetering as a scrawny wet chunk of wood. At shallow turns the water tumbled on top of the smoothed rocks and pebbles in giddy white delight. Here and there we saw a peacock amid the tall dry grasses flanking the banks or crocodiles waiting patiently on an island for the sun to dispel the ashen morning. Their solitude only highlighted the loneliness in the dense trees beyond. In contrast, the numerous dark holes along the steep mud bank that our guide pointed out caught swirls in the water that conjured an anticipation of living reptiles lurking deep within them.

I saw more birds than I can ever distinguish in this hour ride, heard running water speak in a tone I had long forgotten since childhood, and felt the embrace of an alien but comforting silence more socially adept than any international city with all its personalities and entertainments. I took many photos attempting to capture the white wings of ghostly vapour. All of them fail to capture my experience in that time and place, but each of them inspires a vision for others to see in the future in foreign places.

I fell in love with the ragged island of tangled wood. I knew it would make a wonderful photo, without knowing what the photo would be. When I finally sat down and had a proper exchange with it in front of my computer, it suggested that I revisit the black and white dark rooms that I grew up it despite the lures of the rainbow spectrum. As it teased me to work, I rediscovered the ethereal beauty of crisp and infinite blacks seeping into sibilant blazing whites.

Happily, I was at a wedding that revealed what I now think should be the heart of a wedding: that two people want to celebrate how far they’ve already come together, while making a commitment to growing further. How does one celebrate and share one’s joy with those one loves? It just so happens society conveniently provided the ritual of a wedding, so that’s what they did.

That day was full of laughter – thankfully because not everything went perfectly smoothly – and many genuine smiles. The one above is a very genuine smile from a very silent and aloof uncle. I have only ever witnessed a handful of them, and also ever only spoken to him a handful of times, with a conversation that barely lasts a handful of words. However, he is the one who has always given me the most red packet money during New Years, given me actually affordable prices on my glasses, and unconditionally lent me a Hasselblad medium format when I asked back in Gr. 12. I think this would be one of his happy days, when he sees the niece whom he is closest to happily married to her new husband.

The other is my grandmother, who despite being forgetful in her old age, still remembers the rituals of a Chinese marriage, and is determined to be happy on the day of my cousin’s wedding. She often doesn’t know that I’ve repeated the same line five times already in the past minute, but she does know that she is forgetful and still has the tenacity to find some way to remember that special day: she asked for a photo – some evidence that will (happily) prove her wrong when she wakes up the next morning to argue with her sons and daughters about what my cousin is up to these days.

She’s too told to accurately track my past 10 years: I have been surprising her the past 5 years by suddenly growing taller than my mother. But her unwavering concern and delight at seeing my return every year has been a source of great joy for me. Even as she is forgetting parts of us, she is shedding light on how someone can approach age and how someone who was loving will be loved despite that – notions that we have many years before we forget.

A wedding is usually marked as a “new beginning”. However, when you see all the people gathered there to support the honoured couple, it is very much an acknowledgment of the past, and our relationships in the present. If it is allowed to be, a wedding can be a bonding experience: a once in a lifetime chance to see as many of the multiple facets of an individual’s life as possible. It is one of the few occasions where, if genuine, is an opportunity to be delighted in seeing two other people’s happiness – even if you know you have to catch a flight a 5am the next day for a flight home and will hate work the next two days.

Pashupatinath is the name of one of Katmandu’s most famous temples, which ironically is closed to the thousands of tourists that flock there every day. Instead, most non-Hindus make due with circling the massive collection of temples surrounding the landmark, and go from one small temple to another just the same (until the tour guide points out the minute differences and imposes a sense of alien importance to them with a long-winded narrative). There are enough of these shrines, and enough complexes for the more adventurous tourist to snoop out – free of the cacophony around the taxi and square area, as well as the competing tour guides shouting over each other at their massive tour groups.

While this particular set is probably only around 10-15 feet in height, the shrines that correspond to the five elements sit on top of a raised square platform. As such, they are the first thing that greet you when you walk through a modestly low, wooden archway of a dusty red brick building off the side of the main road down to the entrance of Pashupatinath. The two-tiered platform is surrounded by a wide walkway that doubles as a courtyard, complete with a well and other sacrificial altars. Facing the courtyard are two levels of doors and windows complete with rooms inside. The shouting and honking from beyond seems to hover above the courtyard without actually encroaching on the silent tranquility that dwells there. It is quiet enough to hear the scrape of soles on the uneven red bricks worn from the seasons.

Perhaps this place is free, or perhaps it is more than simply a set of shrines that keeps the tourists away. Like many religious sites in Nepal not rampaged by tourists, they constitute a nucleus that reflects the centrality of religion for many Nepalese. And just as their physical location reflects their spiritual importance, the function of these shrines is just as telling about the way religion earns its centrality: on the other side of the square courtyard, below them, sitting on the two tiers of platforms are…

… the elderly. This is their shelter, source of food, place of socialization – their social welfare so to speak. The sagging wooden shutters and slightly bent open doorways reveal rooms the size of closets that just fit a bed, and the food plate underneath. People sit inside them, people stroll in the courtyard, chat, wash their clothes, drink water. They sit here now because they are waiting for their lunch.

Most of them smile lots. Some yell at you for taking pictures. If you can speak Nepalese, they would keep you for half a day to chat. In general it seems the idle their days away, passing it with the friends they either met there or went to this elderly home with.

Even in the poorest of countries, societies have ways of caring for their elderly. In Chinese tradition, the (good) children generally take their parents in and take care of them. In the Canadian one, the government finances them with almost an unlimited supply of subsidized medicare (which includes a handsome amount of expensive drugs that help some make fortunes), and provides a retirement fund.

Much of Katmandu is blanketed in darkness the sun sets. The night is absolute, and people are forced to follow the cycle of the sun. When one is cold, one seeks out the searing rays. When one is warm, one hides behind the abundant shadows in the streets.

There is very little nightlife outside of Thamel, where the expats gather, in Katmandu. Nightlife is a luxury that takes light and energy for granted. It gives us gather and illuminates our lives and the places we frequent. For the places that have so much light, is it too difficult to share a little with others, or at least to point it in other directions every now and then to see what is in the periphery shadows around us and infinite shadows beyond?

Having light is nothing special, but it is not a granted; we simply happened to be born into places that have it. We didn’t even have to walk into it like this woman did.

My pictures are worth no words. Words desecrate it. A photo is, or suggests something, visually profound. Writing is grammatically and intellectually insightful. Speaking is aurally forceful and animated.

What can I say about this piece that will enhance it? I do not know the significance of it myself. I do not know how the piece would be altered if the man’s arm was left out, if there was Pashupati temple tourist mayhem behind, if there were burning bodies on the right, and street vendors with a colourful array of flowers some 500 metres back in the square.

I remember that I heard the flap of wings, remembered my error in delaying a few days before, brought my camera up, and pressed the button on instinct. The result is no perfect, but it is a testament to that moment. I know that the most critical element was that the birds took flight. If the rest of the composition was perfect, if the boy was a bit further along, the head out of the way, the arm out of the way, and if I had a wider angle to catch the steps leading into the river, what difference would that make to the birds?

These young men are digging earnestly in the mud for gold; they are working through trash and muck, decomposing food, ashes, and rotting flowers. They are trying to find the jewelery of the wealthy dead who have been cremated, and whose ashes have been sent into the river. They are working hard to reinject capital into the economy: capital that has already fulfilled its ceremonial purpose and has already helped (if it can) the the individual who has moved on.

Are these not admirable people? Is this not an honourable job? Are they less determined and tenacious than the average person? Are they less resilient than the average person, who would not doubt scorn their transgression of social norms?

This doorway is under a three-story sagging brick building. It could easily have been missed in a shadowy corner. Looking through, it’s like a secret garden. Walking through, there is an impressively open communal space complete with temples and stupas and wells fed by a complex underground sewage system. It is all contained by intimate homes making up the three to four story enclosure.

I do not remember seeing this scene as it remains now, as the shop was probably a little brighter with the sunlight. However, when I reviewed it immediately after, this image produced a stark visual insight into Nepal. It set the tone for my photographic adventure in this little country.

And like the surprise of an instantly appealing photo, my week in this developing country became an overnight catalyst.

I suppose you could always bring more along if it makes an easier transition. But there is always a sinking thrill in seeing your new place. The rooms are usually smaller than they appear, not as sunlit as the photos, and might either be barren, or too littered with the history of its previous inhabitor. That’s from the doorway. Taking the first step through, is taking the first venturing one of commitment. However many more steps you take afterwards, and in whatever direction, your head is going to be moving back and forth, your eyes taking in as much information as they ever will, your fingers laying contact with your new abode: the information, for once, is all relevant, all you, all yours.

And what are you going to do with it?

Funny that you never consider, as you set out to do your chores for the next while is all for one very simple desire: making yourself comfortable.

What can you not live without? There’s the basics: food, water, shelter, warmth/clothing, sleep. Everything else is up to preference really.

Oftentimes people write about children, adolsence, an adults, old age, and everything in between – with the exception of university students. Why? I suspect it is because university is a condensed formative experience: the assimilation of ideas, and the steady compromise between survival and ideas. We’re too busy trying to figure out to live to actually record the process.

Incidently, we never record our leaps and bounds that land us in springs, or fields, but more often than not, in puddles and off cliffs. It is the time that one learns to fend for oneself, the only aid being a phone call home in a dire emergency upon realizing one doesn’t know how to do laundry, or boil an egg, or clean the bathroom.

Last year I learned that dumplings must go from freezer to boiling water if they are to remain intact and individual. And to think that I thought myself brilliant to remember to defrost them.

This year I learned that wardrobes are ridiculous to assemble, and can be fixed with stubborn smacks and random exerting and inserting. Desks as long as I am tall, however, are simple to build, but difficult to co-ordinate the final inserts.

I also learned that mini ovens blow the circuit breaker for my bachelors, and with experiment, that one energy saving light may be turned on, with the hot water boiler, and a – a miracle! – two lights might be on when the oven is going. That was experimentation after blowing the breaker twice within 5 minutes.

Within a few days of moving into my bachelors, I also learned that fridges are never to be turned to full, and mini fridges will either freeze everything, even out of the freezer compartment, or that the freezer compartment will be inadequately cold if the vegetables are not frozen.

Somewhere along the way, I learned to cook a little. It began with boiling eggs on the corner of the room opposite of where I was building the wardrobe. The ones I didn’t finish would be frozen in the fridge accidently – with the curious result of ice clustered on one side along the cracks of the shell, and the white dry, but still freezing. Forgetting about it at room temperature for an hour meant an alarming pile of mush that went into the garbage.

They say we should make reflections and new years resolutions. Reflecting is much easier when your past leaves pieces for you to rediscover years later.