Wednesday, June 18, 2014

(never) turning back

I had heard of Argentina for years, of its tumultuous history, its passionate people, how the helado is the best but its government is the worst, until the words in my head were a tangle of English and Spanish and I had a ticket booked and a schedule that took me from Buenos Aires to Mar del Plata (a tourist city by the sea) with my arts ministry. My heart was opened and my mind was baffled by the sharp dividing line between poverty and wealth, between being loved and being left, and I grappled to fathom a culture so different from my own.


Monday, May 26, 2014

Ciao means hello and goodbye

In Italy, you never know if people are coming or leaving, if moments are beginning or ending, and history and recession and winding roads from the hills to the sea all run together, but there's a consolation - there will always be pasta on the table.






Friday, May 23, 2014

the voices in the morning

There are voices I love to hear in the morning, and fall asleep to as they murmur along with the constant London rain, my family across the ocean. There aren't words to describe the way these fingers and toes and livers and spleens have wriggled their way into my heart.












Tuesday, February 18, 2014

my hidden quiet

I have lived in this house for over a year now, longer than any house since I "came of age," and the corners of it have become so much a home that I cannot even fathom returning to the country of my birth and having to let go of my favourite place to rest my bones.




Sunday, January 26, 2014

the pristine quiet

it was almost a cliche, plumbing the depths of my past in an all white house, with space and quiet and tears, and the sharp tongue of anger that I had hidden from for so long, but there was a freedom, too, in the quiet of the summer, in the hush of freedom.


Wednesday, January 22, 2014

fresh breaths

In the exact moment that I needed a fresh breath, an escape, my best friend's parents claimed me as their own and whisked me away to a city stuck in time, streets I'd read about, a day without having to face the pain.




(Bath, UK, and London, England)