The little one...

This picture was taken in Hong Kong during our visit. (It is, to date, my favorite from the trip. It may only be my favorite because I have only received a few....
....HINT!!!!! <-------why do I even try that? The man doesn't know how to take a hint! I should give all four of my readers his email and let them pester him for the PROMISED pictures!)

At any rate.....The picture was taken at the entrance to the Ruttonjee Hospital. Only now am I wishing we had had the foresight to also have taken a wide angle picture of the entrance. This is where people went to find help, and I thought that it was just an alley, hidden between the fruit vendor and another market.

I was standing in what I thought was an alley, waiting on JJ to return from a "meat market" photography shoot. As I did for much of the trip, standing there and watching the lives of hundreds or thousands of people, pondering the essence of existence, mine and theirs, wondering what mattered & what did not.

This is one of the things that mattered. I watched as this little princess grabbed an orange from a basket, looked up, at the woman I assume was her mother, with a determination that is almost exclusively reserved for little ones, turned, replaced the orange and then decided upon this, the perfect orange. I fell instantly in love. With the orange or the girl? Perhaps a combination of the two. A princess and her orange!

As I stand there and try not to obviously stare, thinking of the thousands of oranges before, wanting to know the thoughts of this princess, transporting myself back to a time when all that mattered was finding the succulent, sweet and tangy pulp within and savoring it.

"What type of orange is that?" I ask the returning photographic genius. "I don't know." he says and starts to walk away. "No, look at her." and he does, and he sees.

What he sees? I can not say. Perhaps he sees all the oranges of his past or projects all the future oranges in his life? Perhaps he is allowed a glimpse into the quiet determination of my little princess, a reflection of self? Perhaps he too falls instantly in love.

Perhaps we two found help in an alley that was also the entrance to a hospital.