glimpse: BABEL
a world, a pen, a camera
photoprose · photopoetry · photojournalism
In the end, the journey wasn't all that much about traveling.
My soles brought me places, but immersion taught me places, taught me people and lives.
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as seen on
As months became years and then yesteryears, the initial journey became a nomadic lifestyle.
hurling little answers at the big questions in life
tales from alongside the road, where the journey is not all about traveling
a stream of words and rattling trains of thoughts going just about nowhere
a selection of very short very true stories
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selected
life
A Homage to Education
empowerer, character-builder, freedom fighter
Education happens – wittingly or unwittingly, willingly or unwillingly – all around us, in all of us, all the time, lifelong. Our teachers don’t always look like teachers: they can be social milieus, inner monologues, nature, culture, travel, or anything that makes the brain spin. read more
travel
Volunteering vs. Voluntourism
sss
self-organized engagement vs. vacation packages – structures, results and ethics
...organizing your grassroots engagement independently, might not only help your own experience and wallet, but also the community you work with. read more
Absolutely Relative: Colorful Matters between Black and White
Matter of fact or matter of perspective?
What often appears universal truth is more often veiled by the intangible and intelligible colors of opinion. read more
shortest stories
Gunpoint
They asked for water. When I turned back around, three shotgun muzzles were pointed at us. I would have cursed the map right then, but there was no time, and my tongue was in my stomach. read more
Why let any guidebook, travel blog or superficial advice shrink your leaps of discovery to baby steps in their footprints?
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selected
urban
North America
from the back alleys to the avenues and back
From across the pond a child had dreamt what are memories now. see more
essays
INTO SPACE
solo exhibition, Paris
Self-domesticated kings of the smallest corner of the universe, we hide inside our makeshift womb in a fetal curl and snip away at the umbilical cord that connects us with our surroundings, mother nature and father space. see more
essays
The Moment Next Door
noteworthy normalities hidden in plain sight of destinations extraordinaires
All too flattened by the genericness of mass-experience, it is time to make space for the moments next door. see more
people
Outside Job
when your office isn’t anywhere near an office
...nobody robbed us of our freedom; it was an inside job we signed up for. Outside jobs, by contrast, are not always a deliberate choice and oftentimes the harder labor, but they come with a certain spatial freedom... see more
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glimpses
UNSEEN, UNHEARD | What if you were unseen, unheard? Where would you look for solace, whom would you call upon? see more
SUNFLOWER CEMETERY | And when they ask us why all the sunflowers are dead, we’ll just tell them the truth. see more
LIVES I’VE NEVER LIVED | When I see you and the place you call home so tenderly, it reminds me of a life I’ve never lived, a dream I’ve never dreamed; but my longing is painless, my melancholy sweet, my smile pure. see more
DEATH BIRTHING LIFE | You are not gone. Because when you went, all of you stayed here. Peekaboo. You didn't need that white marble heaven after all, or an ending repackaged as eternity. You just changed once more, effortlessly. see more
Miles astray the tourist highway the beauty didn't vanish. And beyond beauty there was something raw and real behind these easy facades – challenging discoveries, unsung heroes and cultural normalities that were ever new, different and hypnotizing.
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selected places / stories
Africa | South Africa
Kamhlushwa / Humans Living Passions – Community Enrichment from Within
meet the extraordinary Imagine Scholars
As founder Corey Johnson puts it: “I’m incredibly proud of all the huge successes, but the real goal is to create good people." explore
South(east) Asia | Nepal
Himalayas / Hiking Alone, Astray & Everestless
when you set out to see Everest, but Everest doesn’t care
And after a while, seeing or not seeing Everest became a mere matter of perspective. explore
Europe | Spain
Barcelona / Revolution in the Air, But Where?
people carry on ordinarily while the political stage is in flames
...yet, between these societal lines, where the quintessence of our life as human beings dwells, our situation remains largely the same, despite political turmoil... explore
South America | Brazil
Rio de Janeiro / No Hard Feelings
distinguishing between place and experience
...my harshest criticism towards many travelers, and especially the ones armed with blogs, is that they don’t distinguish between a place and their experience there. explore
South(east) Asia| Indonesia
Jakarta / Beautifully Ugly
well worth the visit: inner beauty and authentic travel
We all adore the world’s Venices, Grand Canyons, and Machu Picchus, while few postcards leave the Jakartas. But they are the places that grow on you and stay in you. explore
There was a diverse complexity and a unifying simplicity at the heart of the human condition. Lives differed vastly from one place to another, but the more so within one nation, region or group. Everywhere one can find the same distinctions: optimists and pessimists, introverts and extroverts, folks lending hands and those using elbows, dreamers and doers, dreaming doers. These conspicuous similarities, our universal differences, unite us as one species of monkey merely disguised in a human wardrobe. In the same breath, our distinct experiences assemble unique minds, feelings and memories - our very own worlds.
"Are the people who live there unhappy with their situation,” I asked upon looking down from the futuristic gondola onto a mishmash of sheet metal and dirt roads. "Why? They have a roof and something to eat. It suffices them,” were the kid's exact words.
It's not so much the place itself that becomes a love affair to one or a footnote to another. It's your experience there, the people you share it with, the little coincidences, which ultimately write a narrative you merely co-author.
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about
Inspired by a slow, immersive and messy journey around the world, MilesAstray is a mongrel of photography and writing.
But, as much as I believe that happiness is an individual pursuit, social ties seem like the one universal remedy for most worries in the world.
