There was no avoiding it: My entire being and all my camera gear was covered with barley flour.
There was barley flour on the two camera bodies I was using, and on my lenses. The powdery stuff had made its way into every nook and cranny of the camera bag that I had hanging from my shoulder, and there was gray dust all over the black jacket I wore.
I spent a number of days last week with my friends in the Seattle-area Tibetan community. I was photographing their observance of Losar, Tibetan New Year, and barley flour is a big deal in Tibetan culture. It is used to make a dough called tsampa that for centuries has been a staple for the people living on the high, cold Tibetan plateau. On Losar, barley flour seemed to me to be a kind of sacrament, thrown into the air during a ceremony that welcomes in the new year with prayers for good health and prosperity.
Like most other cultures, Tibetans have traditionally marked the new year by eating and celebrating, but I have spent Losar with my friends for the past several years now and there has been little or no celebration. Political and human rights circumstances for my friends’ brothers and sisters who remain in Tibet are simply too dire. Tibetans living outside their homeland have decided that Losar should be a season of meditation and prayer, not partying.
And so, once the hopeful barley flour had been thrown into the air, my friends headed into their quiet, peaceful monastery. I went in too. I was a little dusty, and dust can sometimes present a problem if it gets inside camera equipment.
I decided to consider barley flour dust to be a blessing.
