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My path courses along the edges of the battle(s), like that of a war correspondent. I strive to avoid the mayhem where I can and turn my gaze to what is still left of the real planet, untainted and reflective of the past best achievements of my neighbors.
In this tale, I aim to illustrate my thoughts with images/photographs that can add a dimension — using the very media that otherwise is drowning my fellow humans. The photo graphics, presented everywhere in these volumes, are intended to provide the final texture to a phenomenal journey around the world. The photos are for the most part my own, but a few additional borrowed illustrations and images are selected in order to transport the special reader to the same time and places referenced in the text.
The pictures here are of a younger me among the local tribes of Indonesian New Guinea, otherwise known as Irian Jaya, reflects my own sense of timelessness, and placelessness too. These companions are Dani tribesman in the Baliem Valley. We urban (or urbane) humans share many things with even people who live at earth’s ends, we still are communicating with our less adorned relatives, and we can admire their ways and means. Thank goodness.
When curiosity and delight in these things begin to fade en masse, then our advanced civilizations themselves may be in jeopardy. To lose a fundamental appreciation of the framework of these people’s lives, and of the perspective of our ancestors and history in general, is to forewarn of a potential new “Middle (dark) Ages," or a choking off of both our reality and imagination. That framework was built on myth, religion, scientific curiosity, reasoning, and faith — all of these.
