(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.

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.

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.

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)

Quiet Nothings

These are from quiet moments in June 2011. My parents gave me their old comforter, which I carry around in my trunk and used for several adventures. The mirror self portrait is from the morning after I got back from England, and it contrasts with the one in the England post that I took the evening I left England.