Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

I've posted about a thousand new images to BME. Just a teaser really — the rest will go up on Tuesday, and for tomorrow there will be an amazing column by Jim Ward about the history of Doug Malloy. Enjoy this update, and expect more shortly…

I also wanted to share with you an excerpt from a letter from the BME movie's one-man shooting team over in Thailand (and more places too), an old friend and old teacher, Jon Cobb.

The Thai have superior kindness, beauty and patience despite abhorrent poverty. I saw a woman with her arms amputated above the elbow that had the bone still extending several inches beyond the muscles, badly grown over with keloided flesh, rocking for change. You don't get it, the arms looked like running, dripping, melting wax.

I didn't have change, couldn't search my bags in the crowd without getting pickpocketed (late in the night markets, not wise alone) but I leaned in, greeted her as a Thai (“sawasdee ka”, like swastika) and she lit up like God had been inside her testing me right then and there. Amazing people.

Sadly, I saw a blind deformed boy of maybe ten being led around on a chain by a blind man playing a monkey organ (like the street people with a trained monkey used to do). The boy was walking on his heels, arms grotesquely postured like I can't describe, and the calliope sounds of the organ were making the spectacle of poverty and handicap horrific and colorful in the extreme. I'll never forget that.

I would move here if I could though, I'll explain the wonders when there's more time. The food is the best.

Off to Mynmar right now, if the Buddhists don't take extreme offense to the Jaina crosses on my feet I will have a superior time. They take Buddhism extremely seriously, any hint of disrespect is serious. You cannot even take a representation out of the country at any price now…

Love to all,
Jon