HOME

Home came to an end when I was 9 years old.
Home came to an end again a year and a half after.
I escaped home days after I turned 18.
Home has always been transient and mythical; constantly shape shifting and slipping out from my grasp. I cannot recount all the moments in which I have been lured into thinking that this place, this moment, YOU, is HOME. Then it shifts again and I am back in search of it. I have always felt that I am home in search of HOME, trying to find my way back to that mythical place once again.

We associate home with the trappings of Cable TV, Internet connection, running water, the first cup of coffee in your favorite mug, the smell of warmth lingering on your duvet and the bone crushing hug from someone who loves you. I have been shifting out of this mind set and trying to understand HOME is not a physical reference to a specific place but a state of mind, a boardening of the consciousness. Home is where I am. This has been a slow and difficult process.

Over 13 months ago I left a home that I had spent 6 years building with someone I loved. I have spent the entire year couch surfing from one friend's house to another, bed hopping from hostels to hostels.

In the span of 398 days there has been 27 flights, 160+ of long distance bus ride, 7 Countries, too much Tequila and Rum, endless hours spent talking to myself, countless friends who have extended their love and support and learned that a life time can be condensed to 432 cubic feet of space.

YOU. My darling YOU.
I lay my head on your chest and listen to the space between your heart beat and I am home. Yet I know that this feeling is not just you and only you. I have felt this way before; with a different heart beneath, with another set of arms around me. Experience tells me that I will again be home, with you, with another you.

Charles Dickens said that "Home is a name, a word. It is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke or spirits ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration." After a life time of searching, I have treaded the golden brick road and finally release the need for HOME to be an actual place, let go of any preconceptions and whispered the whispered the magic incantation.

I am HOME.

A home away from home

Oct 7, 2009

Cartagena, Colombia



My wondering of these last 10 months has finally gotten the best of me. I am in Cartagena and I cannot for the life of me convince myself to get out of bed this morning to head out to the market.

No matter how much I try to convince myself that my purpose here is to shoot, hence, I must get up, I do not want to. All I want to is stay in bed and stare at the white ceiling above with the molding and watch the ceiling fan circle around. All I want to do is lay in this little room of mine, where no one knows me, needs nothing from me, expect nothing from me, demands nothing of me. At least just for a little while longer, at least just for a day. A home for me, even if its only at 18000 COP per night, for the moment, this little white room is mine, all mine, a home away from home.



I know myself well enough to know that if I just give in to moments like this the feeling will resolve itself. Once I have had my fill, I will get sick of the stillness, and be ready for another chicken bus, be ready for another adventure.



I did manage to get up and head to the market for a very uninspired morning of shooting. Only to find my way back to my little white room a little while later and lay down to admire the ceiling, the consistency of the fan. It is now nearly 4pm and I have spent most of the day hiding in my room, listening to the world go by outside. I am almost ready to participate again, I am almost ready for you, Cartagena.



Now, only if I could stop sweating...

Charlie Grosso

www.charliegrosso.com

310-592-0895

She Tried to Throw a Broom at Me

July 19, 2009
San Cristobal De Las Casas, Mexico
Elevation 2349m



San Juan Chamula, a village that is outside of San Cristobal. Its market day. It's 6:30 am, I make myself leave my warm bed, grab my cameras and thank god there is coffee at this hour, I get on a collectivo and head out.

The market is the size of the town square. I am the only foreigner here. You can buy everything here. Pots and pans, live poultry, shoes, clothing, yarn, some sort of animal pelt, bread, produce, shoe polish, flowers, just about everything. This market has no structure or logic in the way that its laid out. I think the vendors just arrive, they find an empty spot and they lay their goods down. As the day wears on, it gets harder and hard to walk through the market. I am constantly walking in between stalls or forced to jump over a pile of chiles so that I don´t get run over by the carts, people and poultry. There are children every where; some are crying, some are breast feeding. There are dogs roaming looking for a scrap off the butcher´s table. I saw this one boy trying to shove a giant piece of salted dry fish into his backpack...it made me laugh so hard as the fish is clearly bigger than his bag.

The shooting today is a little easier than it was yesterday. The people are still resistent but there is so much going on here that they pay less attention to me. Although this one woman did try to throw a broom at me. She won´t even let me take a picture of her chickens. Oh well....

I smile at everyone I see, I greet them good day. The men return my smile and are a little easier with me being there, the children seem to respond to my hellos as well. Howeve, the women just look at me and well....they just look at me. I guess my charm only goes so far here in Mexico.

This town, San Cristobal, Chiapas, it reminds me so much of Tibet, I don´t know why. The market is make shift at best; tables, tarps, ropes and nothing more. All of this choas and beauty will be gone by mid-day. The morning is wearing on and I have done 4-5 laps around, in and out, the tourist are starting to arrive, its time to wrap it up. Just as I am about to finish the last few frames on this last roll of film, I see a pile of red delicious apples imported from good o´US of A. Red Delicious apples sitting pretty amongst fruits and veggies that are just in from the hill side. I guess you can´t stop progress/invasion.

I stop at one of the many ¨stalls,¨ grab a seat in the tiny chair and have a hot horcheta and a tamale for breakfast. The warm horcheta makes me think of porridage and it reminds me of home. I guess when you grow up with nothing, your taste for peasant food (as my mother likes to call them) never really goes away.

Tsukiji and First Impressions

Nov 29, 2008
Tokyo, Japan

First full day here in Tokyo and of course the first order of the day is to Tsukiji,the world largest fish market. I have been wanting to see this market ever since "Wok the Dog" became the project that it currently is. So naturally there is a lot of anticipation and a lot of expectation riding on today. After being some what disappointed in the markets that I found in Argentina, I was trying not get my hopes up, trying not to have any expectation.

We got off the subway and I smelled fish! My heart quickened and I was immediately excited by what could be waiting for me. Lets just say that I will be spending every available day shooting at Tsukiji for all the mornings that we will be here in Tokyo. It lived up to any expectation that I might have had.


After about 2 hours at the market, we wondered around for some coffee, shared a bowl of noodles for breakfast number 1 and proceeded to wait in line for a spot at a tiny sushi restaurant just outside of Tsukiji for some of the freshest sushi in the world! We waited 2.5 hours for a seat! Yes, it was amazing! As we waited in line, I had a silly thought, "What if they ran out of fish?"

We are in one of the most technologically advanced cities in the world and yet we have had nothing but tech troubles here. Our blackberries do not work since Japan is on their own cell network, I can't get money out of the ATM because Bank of America is stupid. So I am having a bit of crackberry withdrawl here. It seems rather ironic that I can get money out of the ATM in the boarder town on Laos without needing to inform BofA of my travel plans and yet here in Japan, they wish to hold my money hostage as a means to protect me. Blackberry was happily delivering me emails at the base camp of Mt Everest but not here in Tokyo. Ironies of ironies.

First impression of Tokyo is that its a lot like Taipei, Taiwan. With the only difference being that I can only understand about a third of what is going on and have virtually no ability to converse with anyone. I have wanted to see Japan ever since I was a child, how strange is it to find that it is a lot like HOME?

Well...that is the first impression at any rate. There will be more concert thoughts on Tsukiji and everything else later, after a little recovery from the jet lag and crackberry withdrawal.

A Life Open to the World

Nov 25, 2008
Los Angeles, Ca

The recent issue of The New Yorker has an article about Jeffery Alford and Naomi Duguid. They are cookbook authors but a more accurate description would be culinary anthropologists or culinary geographers. They have published 6 cookbooks since 1995 and I currently own "Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet" while the rest are logged into my 28 page wish list on Amazon.

The thing that really caught my attention in the profile piece about Alford and Duguid is not just the partnership that they have and how they essentially raised two child on the road but their attitude towards traveling..."they travel light, on anything headed in the right direction - a riverboat, a mountain bus...when nothing shows up, they hitchhike or rent a bike or walk....[Duguid] call this 'staying vulnerable' to the people, the place, and the possibility of a new taste where ever they get dropped off...they talk about arriving in a place and having no idea of what they'll find there. The awe that comes with that - it's always present."

This idea of staying vulnerable to possibilities is I think one of my favorite things about traveling and why I think I am always itching to get back on the road. Yet something happens once the plane hits the tarmac at LAX - somehow the mind shifts and I becomes less vulnerable. Why do we feel less safe at "home" than we do in a strange land? Is it because when we are here, we feel that we are measured by our accomplishments and if we don't have enough then we must fake it? Especially in a place like Los Angeles?

How do we stay vulnerable to possibilities and yet still protect ourselves?

Where to next is a frequent question that I get at my Q&A sections and I have been thinking of South / Central America and Africa. Yet I have had Central Asia and Mongolia stuck in my teeth for over a year now - and Burma since this summer. The article ends with Alford and Durguid writing a cookbook that is focused on Burma. Burma again - is the Universe trying to tell me something? Meanwhile, I am tentatively slated to go down to Mexico / Cuba next spring and Chile next winter. But all of this could change depending on my grant status.

As I try to define and refine the "partnership" I wish to have, I can't help but look at the Alford/Durguid model to be a measuring stick of sorts. The profile describes them to be opposites yet symbiotic. They were able to agree on all the big important life questions within days after they meet in the low oxygen city of Lhasa at 3600km.

Irrespective of what the final definition is, what I do know is that I would like a life that is open to the world, where I am vulnerable to possibilities, adventures, regardless whether I am in LA, New York or a nameless town in middle of no where.

Nov 24, 2008, The New Yorker, The Hungry Travellers by Jane Kramer

Home is the edge of the world in the mind of god

Nov 12, 2008
Los Angeles, Ca

I have been having much trouble with the concept of home of late as you may know. There is desire to not just see the world, to go to some of the most outer edges. Tibet, base camp of Mt Everest case in point. The top of the world! Now its the end of the world, Patagonia.

Ironically, few days after I returned from Argentina, the Patagonia catalog arrived at the house. I have never made any purchases from them before as I am far more of a fan of NorthFace products, but somehow, somewhere, they got my name and a catalog came.

The catalog have little essays inside with some great images accompany them about Chile, conservation in Patagonia and etc. There is this one essay by Jeff Johnson, titled "Home."

"I had sailed from California to Chile, a four-month journey that led me far off the beaten path. An extended stay on Easter Island had been the turning point for me as I finally let go of the trappings back home - a slow and difficult process. But it was here, floating in a river on the every edge of Patagonia, that I realized home is not a physical reference to a specific place on earth but a boardening of the consciousness. Home is, after all, where you are."

Yes, Home, maybe just that, where you are and nothing more. Not the trappings of cable TV or running water, not the smell of coffee or the warmth of your duvet. But home is the unspoken love in my mom's hug or the embrace of a loved one.

I sometimes wonder if my desire to see the world, and the extreme ends of the world is not to somehow to have a peak inside our significance by seeing "...the Earth; the Solar System; the Universe; the Mind of God.” as Thorton Wilder described in Our Town.