In just a few days, I'm leaving for the Philippines to go help build some houses for typhoon victims. I've been lucky to have a few chances to travel before, but I've never done anything like this. I've spent some quality time with Google Earth hovering a few hundred meters above the site, trying to peer through the mass of cloud that always seems to enshroud the village where I'll be working. I've also been able to grab a few snapshots that people have taken and then geo-coded to the Google thing. I know it's nothing like being there, but it does form a strange kind of link -- a wormhole portal from my tiny basement screen to a magnificent stretch of beach-front jungle at the foot of a volcano. Our lives are riddled with those kinds of hypergeometric linkages. The wonder is that we feel so at ease with them that we often barely notice how we're leaping through space.
I'll geo-code some of the images I gather there, and I'll make sure word gets here. I'm not sure yet how much it will have to do with space (though I'm fairly certain I'll manage to get myself lost once or twice), but it will serve as one reason why book revisions will be slow for the next little while.
Comments