This is the end of the first phase of The Human, Earth Project.
In the past year, it’s grown from a simple idea to a complex network of people all over the planet. I’d like to take a moment to thank everyone who has made it possible – those who contributed their time, money or energy, and those who liked it and shared it with their friends.
There are hundreds of people who have brought the project to this point, and three without whom it would have been completely impossible.
The first is my brother Nick, who by chance was staying at my home in Canada when the idea for the project fully crystallised last November, and has been absolutely crucial to its development ever since. While I dream of new directions to take the project, and how best to share it online (in over a dozen languages!), it’s Nick that’s chipping away behind the scenes to make it all a reality, and patiently enduring my endless questions.
My friend Tracey has also been incredibly supportive. It was at Tracey’s home, and with her help, that I first assembled a collection of my portraits last September. The first phase of the project came full circle in these past two weeks, when Tracey again gave me a home base to work from here in southern California. She’s the one who reminds me to eat and sleep and sit up straight when I get buried too deep in preparations.
My father Keith has also been of invaluable assistance – not only in the past year, but my entire travelling life – when I find myself stranded on the far side of the world without the necessary paperwork. It happens more often than I’d like to admit and, in a pinch, I’m incredibly grateful every time Dad picks up the phone and sets the wheels turning in the right direction.
I’m writing this from the departure lounge at LAX, and have fifteen minutes before I go through the gate to whatever lies beyond. I’ll leave you with a few words I wrote in 2009, on my first journey through Asia…
If poetry
Could be condensed
So that it was no longer a liquid or a gas
But solid matter
So that you could reach out
And touch it with your hand…
If poetry
Could be taken
From the realm of ideas
And made real…
If poetry
Could be truly felt
Not only with the mind
But with the senses…
If poetry
Could be seen
Could be heard
Could be smelt
Could be tasted
Could be touched…
If poetry
Was a place
Where one could go:
A place that contained
All the love
All the pain
All the beauty
All the poverty
All the joy
All the madness
All the mystery
All the cruelty
All the faith
All the riches
All the life
And all the death
That was ever set down on paper, then surely
The only name for such a place would be
Asia