"So many places to keep track of. So many sights."

It might have been just outside Munich or Rome or on the new road between Santos and São Paulo. It might have been in New York right after the war or in Budapest or Sydney, and now Miami comes to mind. I was always traveling. When she kissed me, when she took off her clothes and begged me to take off mine, we might have been in Prague. When the wind broke tree limbs and shattered windowpanes, we were in Stockholm or almost there. So many places to keep track of. So many sights. It might have been in Philly. I don't know. I can't recall her name, but she sat next to me and put her hand in my pocket, just slipped it in. Later she told me she never spent a night alone, so we climbed into bed and she kept falling asleep. I kept my eyes on the moon. But what I'm talking about happened before Philly, during the dark days when I would lose track of what happened after breakfast. The rain was so heavy, I never opened the blinds. There was nothing to remind me of where I was. I'm not sure but it might have been in London. She held my hand, then took off her clothes and posed before me, turning this way and that. I think she mentioned Bermuda. I think it was there that she wrapped her legs around me, there in that small room by the sea. I can't be sure. So much has happened. So many days have lost their luster. The miles I've gone keep unraveling. The air is tinged with mist. The cliffs must be closer than they look. I can't be sure. None of the old merriment is here, none of the flash and vigor, none of the pain that kept sending me elsewhere.

Travel, Mark Strand

"...there's not/ Much time for the man and woman in the rented room..."

I think of the innocent lives

Of people in novels who know they'll die

But not that the novel will end. How different they are

From us. Here, the moon stares dumbly down,

Through scattered clouds, onto the sleeping town,

And the wind rounds up the fallen leaves,

And somebody—namely me—deep in his chair,

Riffles the pages left, knowing there's not

Much time for the man and woman in the rented room,

For the red light over the door, for the iris

Tossing its shadow against the wall; not much time

For the soldiers under the trees that line

The river, for the wounded being hauled away

To the cities of the interior where they will stay;

The war that raged for years will come to a close,

And so will everything else, except for a presence

Hard to define, a trace, like the scent of grass

After a night of rain or the remains of a voice

That lets us know without spelling it out

Not to despair; if the end is come, it too will pass.

Fiction, Mark Strand 

. . .

I remember a period in late adolescence when my mind would make itself drunk with images of adventurousness. This is how it will be when I grow up. I shall go there, do this, discover that, love her, and then her and her and her. I shall live as people in novels live and have lived. Which ones I was not sure, only that passion and danger, ecstasy and despair (but then more ecstasy) would be in attendance. However . . . who said that thing about "the littleness of life that art exaggerates"? There was a moment in my late twenties when I admitted that my adventurousness had long since petered out. I would never do those things adolescence had dreamt about. Istead, I mowed my lawn, I took holidays, I had my life.

But time . . . how time first grounds us and then confounds us. We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them. Time . . . give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.

- Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

remember, remember the end of november

it is a good autumn morning

it is a good time for play

sun it rises

1: It begins with being lost

The desire to travel is the desire to be lost. "It is here, but not here," a young Polish girl I met on the bus station in Reykjavík reminded me. 

I am now here, then nowhere.

Coming to Iceland I wanted to be quiet and small in my aloneness like the island itself.

For my self to be as close to being nothing. 

What I found was that sometimes, nature also needs to be alone. (L.)

That place also desires to be lost, to be nowhere.

This Is A Love Story

"And we travel, in essence, 

to become young fools again--

to slow time down and get taken in, 

and fall in love once more."

- Pico Iyer

Keflavík - Vík - Kirkjubæjarklaustur - Selfoss - Reykjavík

 Paris - Strasbourg - Milan - Florence - Siena - Rome

Sofia - Smolyan - Plovdiv - Istanbul - Konya

Berlin - Dresden

60 days around Europe

countless new friends

never-ending goodbyes

more places I call home

a self learning, changing

the things i'll carry (a rough draft)

sleeping bag

outdoor jacket

city jacket (not packed)

4 long sleeves shirt

3 short sleeves shirt (1 shirt not packed)

1 tank top

1 scarf 

1 dress (luxury item) 

4 pairs of tights/leggings 

2 pairs of jeans (1 pair not packed)

1 pair of shorts

1 pajama 

1 swimsuit 

1 pair of flats

1 pair of hiking shoes

1 pair of boots (not packed) 

2 lightweight towels

socks and undergarments

not included: toiletries, electronics, book, pens and notebooks, travel documents, snacks, first aid kit, fashion accessories, and other small items

30: to learn every day every where

The Importance of Elsewhere by Paul Theroux

As a child, yearning to leave home and go far away, the image in my mind was of flight--my little self hurrying off alone. The word "travel" did not occur to me, nor did the word "transformation," which was my unspoken but enduring wish. I wanted to find a new self in a distant place, and new things to care about. The importance of elsewhere was something I took on faith. Elsewhere was the place I wanted to be...

The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human: the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to change the circumstances of your life, to be a stranger, to make a friend, to experience an exotic landscape, to risk the unknown...Chekov said, "If you're afraid of loneliness, don't marry." I would say, if you're afraid of loneliness, don't travel. The literature of travel shows the effects of solitude, sometimes mournful, more often enriching, now and then unexpectedly spiritual.

defacements

Matthew Cusick

emotional landscape

puzzles by sarah hermans

The Republic of Dreams

She lay so still that
as she spoke

a spider spun a seamless web
upon her body

as we spoke
and then her limbs came loose

one by one
and so my own

- Michael Palmer 

my baby shot me down

BANG! BANG!

how to: romance

The Moon And The Yew Tree

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky ----
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.

The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness ----
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars
Inside the church, the saints will all be blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness -- blackness and silence 

- Sylvia Plath

Stykkishólmur

"For those who are lost, there will always be cities that feel like home."

 - Simon Van Booy 

It is not possible to be lost here.

seeking south

antarctica

good night sunday night

Crush

Maybe my limbs are made
mostly for decoration,
like the way I feel about
persimmons. You can’t
really eat them. Or you
wouldn’t want to. If you grab
the soft skin with your fist
it somehow feels funny,
like you’ve been here
before and uncomfortable,
too, like you’d rather
squish it between your teeth
impatiently, before spitting
the soft parts back up
to linger on the tongue like
burnt sugar or guilt.
For starters, it was all
an accident, you cut
the right branch
and a sort of light
woke up underneath,
and the inedible fruit
grew dark and needy.
Think crucial hanging.
Think crayon orange.
There is one low, leaning
heart-shaped globe left
and dearest, can you
tell, I am trying
to love you less.

Ada Limón

 

 

riding for the feeling

It's never easy to say goodbye
To the faces
So rarely do we see another one
So close and so long

I asked the room if I'd said enough
No one really answered
They just said, "Don't go, don't go"
Well all this leaving is neverending

I kept hoping for one more question
Or for someone to say,
"Who do you think you are?"
So I could tell them

With intensity, the drop evaporates by law
In conclusion, leaving is easy
When you've got some place you need to be
I'm giving up this gig for another season

With the TV on mute
I'm listening back to the tapes
On the hotel bed
My my my apocalypse

I realized I had said very little about ways or wheels
Or riding for the feeling
Riding for the feeling
Is the fastest way to reach the shore

On water or land
Riding for the feeling

What if I had stood there at the end
And said again and again and again and again and again
An answer to every question
Riding for the feeling

Would that have been a suitable goodbye? 

  

Love Is Like Life But Longer

Love is like a bookmark.

It divides us with a before and after

and always without words.

Love is . . .

Love is like life

but starts before

and continues after.

We arrive and depart in the middle.

haiku after the earthquake

people resigned to the wreck
meek in their hopes for order:
smooth stones, raked sand, empty space

(a mind of winter)

danna ray

be present every day

i'm sorry but you were holding me back

intertwined

more works

here

and here

never too early

to dance to gold panda

"You heard it. Mark it down. REPEAT."

my boys look so good

yes

p.s.

happy birthday, buster!
 

friday night was hella dope

@ 1015 folsom/ 103 harriet
 

four hours of dancing with 

loose shus

com truise

and 

gold panda

this man is golden

i'm with you but i'm lonely