Words to live by: Adrienne Rich on responsibility to self

Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you…it means that you do not treat your body as a commodity with which to purchase superficial intimacy or economic security; for our bodies to be treated as objects, our minds are in mortal danger. It means insisting that those…More

Absence

The thing that haunts me, is how normal my father’s absence feels. Has felt from the beginning.More

A camera built to endure klutzes: the Fuji X-Pro 1

I bought the X-Pro 1 with the 35mm f1.4 lens in July 2012. Earlier that year I’d sustained a neck injury that meant DSLR gear was too heavy to lug around. I wanted something smaller and lighter, which still delivered DSLR quality images with good low light handling. Until that point, I hadn’t come across…More

Somewhere down the crazy river…

Yeah, I can see it now The distant red neon shivered in the heat I was feeling like a stranger in a strange land You know where people play games with the night God, it was too hot to sleep…. – Robbie Robertson, Somewhere Down The Crazy River Singapore. Home to eternally anxious masses, the…More

Life, death and gratitude: A year of gypsy living

2013 has been the best year of my life so far. I say this not only for the great parts of the journey, but the shitty bits too. I say this because through it all, it felt like I’d actually lived for the first time in my life, rather than just existing for no discernible reason.More

On bright stars in dark nights.

2013 was year where my desire to go walkabout with possessions in a bundle at the end of a stick – or a couple of bags in my case – came true. I’ve been on it for a year and a week today, but rather than some far flung locale, I’m writing this post from…More

On Lingering

It seemed like my father lingered. When the monitors holding testament to the continued attachment of his body to its spark of life finally displayed flat lines, his chest rose and fell, propelled by the machine that forced oxygen into his lungs. Too ravaged to breathe on his own in those last days, he breathed via…More

Numbering loss

My entire understanding of my father’s death at this point, rides on numbers. September 4 – the stage of cancer he was diagnosed with.More

Time and tide, Tangier

September 2013 In Switzerland, they have watches. In Morocco, we have time. They, and by extension, we, had time in Morocco. This is a place that where frequent periods of lengthy rumination have intrinsic value. The bustle, while ever present, never intrudes. There is time to read and write and sit and stare, watch the world…More

Vanishing Monument

April 2013 “Look outside!” spat a scowling Flemming, pacing in front of the heavy sliding doors while I sat up in my corner of the room, rubbing my eyes. Still foggy from sleep and the wintriness of a spring morning on the Colorado Plateau, I duly complied, and was greeted by the sight in the…More

Transient vagaries

In close to ten months of travelling, the hardest and most constant challenge I have had – beyond the isolation, helplessness at otherwise ordinary tasks of everyday living in a new place, utter loss when everything is going wrong and no one is speaking the same language – is being sick.  More

Ukendt Kunstner

I first heard Ukendt Kunster’s Neonlys album (free – yes really – download here) this past April, somewhere in the sweeping wilds of New Mexico. Hooked off the bat. Ukendt Kunstner – Danish for “Unknown Artist” – are Hans Philip (rapper) and Jens Ole McCoy (producer). All their lyrics are Danish. I don’t speak Danish.…More

Ten

…the number of months of gypsy-jangling, not the Pearl Jam album. Every month i survive on the road, intact and sometimes even flourishing (to ongoing amazement), I come back to this sign. This was painted inside the bus stop near my eldest sister’s home in Washington state, where I spent the first three weeks of…More