Entering Dubai
I remember
I landed in Dubai emboldened by my recent travels to Dhaka, Bangladesh. That experience proved to be one of the most engaged and inspiring trips in many years. The land is alive with their future infrastructure burgeoning on their frontal lobe!
Dubai is immediately a universe apart. The worlds along the Persian Gulf, and “The Tales of the Arabian Nights” were my “Star Trek” as a child. My dreams and drawings as a child always transported me to a weaving of fantasies. I never realized where or what I was dreaming about until the day I began reading about the adventurer Sir Richard Burton.
The Burg Khalifa the tallest building in the world and so much more
With Burton I realized I am never going to live long enough to investigate all of my dreams.
The man traveled over 3 continents and spoke 29 languages. The continents are easy. I am barely acceptable in English. I will never accomplish something (like Burton) that will educate nations.
It is not a sad assessment. Merely a realization that enough will never be enough.
Making my exit from the airport I spread my arms wide. Dubai was mine.
I envisioned Burton whispering the seductive translations of the Kama Sutra into the sands of the Dubai Desert. Some feel, Dubai is this place where the desert is dying. But as you watch the sands dancing in the wind, you realize in part that Dubai may be the heart of the future.
Consider the Mangrove Forest the historical exotica of the Persian Gulf. Then marry history, culture and volumes of towering architectural edifices reaching into the stars. Suddenly a new universe is rising before your eyes. Imagine the opening titles of Game of Thrones displaying architectural pop ups at every glance and you immediately appreciate the thrill of my moment. “Winter is never coming”.
My taxi drives me along the highway. I recall my inner Burton to see what he might do in this new experience. I romanticize my travels, because I am living my dream. I am traveling earths’ known universe. I compose these moments visually and in notes, because when it vanishes, so will I.
It is clear that writers such as John Le Carre, Sir Richard Burton Hemingway and so many others have deduced; in order to write about a land, you must visit. There is a rhythm to witness that races the heart. The visual heart records our world between each Monarch Butterfly’s flapping wings. We see what others cannot. Our heart maintains a bit of calm amid the universes’ chaos.
My car blurs past wild structures. I espy the “Museum of the Future”.
I am excited about the upcoming expo Dubai 2020.
The Museum of the Future
to be completed for expo 2020 Dubai
Dubai might be the Petri dish for design and architectures’ future.
The Burj Khalifa (the present tallest building in the world) waved in front of me. I began my collection of photographs. I studied, I embraced shapes and sounds of this desert metropolis. Is it first on my wonders of the world to visit? No. But we travel to feel the footsteps of the past and be apart of the future before us.
The Burj Khalifa the tallest building in the world
I felt like a Caracal Cat venturing into daylight for the first time. My eyes were awakening to a sun bright new day a new vision. Unsure of my direction I scampered wildly for miles in every direction with my cameras swinging like wings behind me. The winged photographer knew that every left and right turn was a reminder that these visual moments were there for me to capture; the reason I became/am a photographer.
The scampering cat
Let’s celebrate the Caracal Cat’s adventures: Chasing Sir Richard Burton
There was something episodic about this desert journey. My photographs are mere impressions of buildings and the streets they inhabit. These impressions may become something formidable in the near future....I gotta keep on chasing Burton.