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passages
THE VIOLINIST
Most plots in life are stillborn. Ends dressed up as beginnings. Strangers slipping in and out of sight as though they only pop into existence the moment we encounter them, as though we make them up as we go along, like extras populating our film set. Likelihood in all its strictness had dictated that the story of the violinist would start and end synchronously, the moment I saw him volunteering his tune atop a dune. But somehow reality deviated from its script, and as I moved on to forget all about him, I walked straight into an unforgettable fairytale. Pointing my feet towards Russia’s Kaliningrad border, I descended into the sandy valley where determined steps fast subsided into an amble. Along the lagoon. Into the forest. Where the trunks stood taller than any temple’s columns. A portal between the Curonian Lagoon and the Baltic Sea. And in its wooden heart, with not another soul around, there was the violinist again, now resting on a moss mattress. Just him and a picknick and him. Not very alone in his own company. And me not very alone in mine. Something in us, some poetic longing must have been as much his as it was mine. Ours together. And driven by the same longing, I moved on. Again. Because you can’t hold these moments as much as they hold you. Finally, I saw the beige light at the end of that green tunnel. The beach. I dipped my toes into the sea and followed the surf down to that final EU frontier. The border ran through sand. Lithuania and Russia separated by something that runs through your fingers the moment you lift it. Again, not a soul or around, much less a tank. I took one step across the border into the no-man’s-just-sands-land. Then I went back. And as I walked up the beach, there he was again. At the final destination of our story. Third time’s a charm, but first and second time no less so.
Nida / Lithuania · 2023
Nida / Lithuania · 2023
BLEACHED YESTERDAYS
Yesterday got old. It was time to bleach it. Putting on that same self the next day, it felt fresher.
Colonia del Sacramento / Uruguay · 2024
Colonia del Sacramento / Uruguay · 2024
TEN THOUSAND NAMES
That was it. No political speech, no calls for resistance. It had all been said and shouted before. That was it. A simple list of names read aloud. But nothing, nothing could have been more powerful. Every name said everything. Every name belonged to one killed Palestinian child. Still belonged to them, still meant something, still meant everything to those who mourned them. One name, one life. Ten thousand names, ten thousand lives. A million dreams. It takes a long time to read ten thousand names and the forever-too-young age shackled to them. Sarah Asaad Mushtaha, 7; Lana Asaad Mushtaha, 6; Atef Dabour, 15; Maha Fadi Al Baba, baby… And as much as the laces of those children’s shoes had set roots long after the square was cleared, the names lingered in the air like the pigeons that weren’t doves, like they couldn’t be set free fully. Because they were ten thousand so far and that was so far from an end that it defied words. Only the names could tell.
Amsterdam / Netherlands · 2024
Amsterdam / Netherlands · 2024
NAUGHTY BOYS
One had to wonder. Who were the Naughty Boys and why were they so naughty? And were they really all that naughty? Their vandalism was art, their tag philosophical – or was the symbiotic alignment of their branching Ys with the shadow branches mere coincidence and their statement not all that deep? Was this handwriting real or made up? I mean, was or is it someone’s actual, natural longhand or is it calligraphy? How did they choose which Naughty Boy got to put the tag, or had to put the tag? Could the whole collective be just one liar? But then why? To mislead? To not feel so alone? I don’t think so. You think so? Were they (I guess by now this could be a plural-they or a singular-pronoun-they – by now as in at this point in the passage or at this point in human history, even though the epicene they has been around since the 14th century I suppose, much like the word epicene has been around since the 15th century – anyway, going off on a tangent in these parenthesis much like those aforementioned branches) drawn to this hue of blue the same way I was (and did you have to go back to the beginning of the sentence and read it without the parenthesis to hitch the two parts together)? Or was I really drawn in by their doing more so than that blue? And was that color a mirror or their mood? After all, a lot of fine naughtiness is soaked in blues. Dunno. Maybe their naughtiest act was to raise all those questions. Or did they never mean to raise any of them? Did one really have to wonder, or was it just me? Am I an overthinker by any chance or by any measure? Or am I a naughty boy, just leading you astray on a wild-goose chase for answers that don’t merit questions? Anybody still here?
Cát Bà / Vietnam · 2023
Cát Bà / Vietnam · 2023
NIRVA-NAH
I liked the reclined Buddha, nestled under that rolling tongue of cliff-rock with plants sprawling over his sleep like dream catchers. And there were big spider webs there, plotted by big spiders, but he didn't mind them because he was asleep and his skin gilded, and no critter would be able to penetrate it. He couldn't even feel them. He couldn’t even feel. That part was a bit sad. But maybe not for him. The Buddhists want to escape the pain of desire. Good luck with that you foolish sages, I said – I’ll take a good spoonful of whatever you leave behind. Sleep well.
Luang Prabang / Laos · 2023
Luang Prabang / Laos · 2023
BRICK LORD
A summer's work,
Mud burned into brick,
Soil fruit in his hand.
Blocks growing from the ground, layer by layer,
His blood in them, his scrapes their scrapes,
All colors earthy in this dirt rainbow.
A son's son and a father's father,
Glass bead cataract eyes with a vision,
Youth in his age, warmth in his strength.
Always helper,
A giver this builder,
Building more than just a building,
Giving more than just hope,
Giving love.
To those children in his care,
Packed like sardines in the old dorm,
School principal, custodian angel.
The first step always the right step,
A long time coming, a long ways away,
Brick kingdom lying dormant underneath the drapes.
Large shirt, but he larger, larger than life,
Few know his name,
Mud hero.
Kitende/ Uganda · 2017
Mud burned into brick,
Soil fruit in his hand.
Blocks growing from the ground, layer by layer,
His blood in them, his scrapes their scrapes,
All colors earthy in this dirt rainbow.
A son's son and a father's father,
Glass bead cataract eyes with a vision,
Youth in his age, warmth in his strength.
Always helper,
A giver this builder,
Building more than just a building,
Giving more than just hope,
Giving love.
To those children in his care,
Packed like sardines in the old dorm,
School principal, custodian angel.
The first step always the right step,
A long time coming, a long ways away,
Brick kingdom lying dormant underneath the drapes.
Large shirt, but he larger, larger than life,
Few know his name,
Mud hero.
Kitende/ Uganda · 2017
ANTMAN, SANDMAN
Antman, sandman. How vast your ambition, how tall your expectation, how steep your inclination to match your purpose. You climb whatever you can climb, transcend whatever you can’t. No height shortens your sight, no fall cripples your gall. Your every summit a mere means not an end, a steppingstone to a higher throne of a bigger sandcastle in a wider sky. What bliss that you don’t know of those dimensions beyond your grasp.
Deadvlei / Namibia · 2017
Deadvlei / Namibia · 2017
ECHO TRAP
– and following his own echo got him trapped in his jagged ways before he knew it, and after he knew it. But it was a shortcut to himself, his agency, and his well-chosen freedom to be right or wrong on his own terms.
Valle De Las Animas / Bolivia · 2014
Valle De Las Animas / Bolivia · 2014
COMMUNAL COMMUTE
Day in, day out, day in, day out, day in, day out... Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Monday. Allies aligned in highway lanes, side by side through dawn and dusk. Calendar days and weeks and months flying by like unheeded road signs, years and decades going past, until the exit.
San Diego / USA · 2008
San Diego / USA · 2008
LIVELIHOOD
His skin was leather, testimony to a noble life spent beneath the generous Ethiopian sun. He looked 80 but was probably closer to 60 when deducting the dignified furrows a career of arduous labor had etched into his face. And while his reticent demeanor expressed a polite indifference to my existence, I somehow felt like he would guard that bit of stranger’s existence with all of his if necessary. He exuded an air of loyalty to his responsibility as a scout. All he carried into the mountains was a small rucksack, a quilted jacket, an umbrella, a shawl that inexplicably sufficed him as a blanket throughout the relentless altitude nights, and the AK-47. Ka-lash-ni-kov, rat-tat-tat-tat – what a perfect last name to invent a rifle, I thought. The phonetics and connotation were a match made in Russia. What kind of machine gun would a “Wilson” or “Gonzales” be? But if the rifle made me feel any safer, it made me feel unsafer in at least equal measure. I disliked the tangible proximity of death the gun established, notwithstanding that this one was more livelihood than weapon – a tool of life and death that was foremost a tool. Some written or unwritten rule obliged him to carry it, and me to be babysat by an armed veteran. Wild animals or humans are no real threat here, but a family going hungry is.
Simien Mountains / Ethiopia · 2017
Simien Mountains / Ethiopia · 2017
DECISIONS, DECISIONS
Decisions, decisions. They matter. And yet, it's not the decision that defines our happiness, but how we (get to) look at it. Riddled with pessimism, every fork has but two negative outcomes. Riding the tailwinds of optimism, any road is the right way.
Namibia · 2017
Namibia · 2017
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.
La Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires / Argentina · 2014
La Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires / Argentina · 2014
BE LIKE YOU
When I grow up, I want to be like you. Audacious and loud like you, tough and tender like you, poking around and getting in trouble like you, raw and unfinished like you.
East London / South Africa · 2017
East London / South Africa · 2017
TIME SHARDS
Then I slowly turned around, wiped the dust off my shoulders, and started picking up those time shards. The youth yonders and coastal frontiers, where we lost wasted fears in our liquor tears. Disposable second selves we stole from supermarket shelves, honest robberies with indifferent intentions, our knuckles still so shy. Those bright nights of twisted lights and burning turns, when muddy visions made for handsome decisions. The way molten words dripped from our fire lips and galactic hopes boiled in our kettle hearts. Soul runs to the nearest heaven, blind break-ins at the wrong gates, trespassing artists with wings for feet. Just once more I want to climb onto those rolling stones that were our shaky thrones, put on my filthy crown to cover this metallic frown, find golden change in my leaky pockets, drink from rusty faucets, bathe in the flickering dreams of emerald streams where I sing my silent song forever long, walk through those lava marshlands, sinking into the dawn with a most innocent yawn.
Granada / Spain · 2017
Granada / Spain · 2017
COEXISTENCE CONTRAST
As the sun climbed the dune, so did we. And it came to me then, again, that all is contrast and contrast is all. All the arch opposites, born with the bang, were there before me – light and dark, hot and cold, the infinitesimally tiny and the infinitely vast. And so were their earthly cousins: left and right, day and night, up and down, life and death. At the seams, where they met, they lent meaning to one another. Their very existence depended upon it. Because everything, every thing in this space-time cauldron boils down to an essential juxtaposition, a molecular love-hate-bond with the other half. One constant temperature would be no temperature at all – we wouldn’t even have a word for it; an undetectable attribute can never become a perceivable concept, so no such thing can be a thing. To live was to balance between these extremes, to tiptoe along that ridge, a crest in this ocean of sand, where the particles always shift while the whole remains the same. But, as much as I understood the necessity of the other and the importance of balance, I wondered if there was always more of one than the other, as to not cancel each other out. And I believed then, that at the end of the day, there was always a little more light than darkness. Of course, this can only be true if something else is false.
Deadvlei / Namibia · 2017
Deadvlei / Namibia · 2017
MARKET THEORY’S REALITY
With his famous Five Forces framework, Harvard academic Michael Porter gave the business world a tool to determine the competitiveness of an industry. Thanks teach, that looks handy! For a business to enter under favorable conditions, the forces should be weak. Let’s look at retailers in Kigali’s Kimironko market for instance. Threat of new entrants: strong; threat of substitutes: strong; bargaining power of customers: strong; bargaining power of suppliers: strong; industry rivalry: strong. Well, it looks like this market isn’t a good fit for aspiring shoe vendors. Unless, of course, it’s all they got, and life isn’t a theory but a reality.
Kigali / Rwanda · 2017
Kigali / Rwanda · 2017
UNSEEN, UNHEARD
What if you were unseen, unheard? Where would you look for solace, whom would you call upon?
Lake Victoria / Uganda · 2017
Lake Victoria / Uganda · 2017
THE LAST TUSK
Just one more, we said. One more can’t hurt. Let’s take that one.
Just one more, we said, once more.
Until one day, there was just one more.
Minneriya National Park / Sri Lanka · 2015
Just one more, we said, once more.
Until one day, there was just one more.
Minneriya National Park / Sri Lanka · 2015
STILL YOU
Two pairs of glasses on your head, when you forget what you forgot. Figments and fragments in a dance, reality’s beat as near as it is far. But with the last moment already lost, your grip on the present is all the more firm. And when it’s all blue, you are still you, through and though.
Montreal / Canada · 2016
Montreal / Canada · 2016
topic
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lost touch
grasping for roots
How far we are from what's akin. How far we have gone from where we began. How far we've come is how far removed we've become. From our roots. From the matter of what matters. From where we need to be, back, to stay. To co-exist in defiance of odds we're stacking against ourselves. To co-outlive our collective suicidal tendencies. To co-struggle towards survival. To sail this kin-ship home.
A TOUCH OF NATURE
If velvet were crisp to the touch and soul fibers green… as though a faint childhood memory or ancestral longing or DNA artefact had guided her hand towards this touch of nature. A firmly loving touch, less speaking to curiosity and more to familiarity, a touch of what’s always been akin, fiber-deep underneath.
Paris / France · 2022
Paris / France · 2022
A N A L O G U E V A R A
And then the whole cabin went black for the landing, for reasons no one asked about. And only two people resisted the grip of mass-resignation and kept up what kept them up. One, across the aisle, reading her book, tracing and traversing the vertical Japanese script-scape up and down the pages. The other, next to me, writing. Maybe the same thing I’m writing right now. When was the last time I saw someone engage a reading light? Years ago? Decades ago? I can’t possibly remember. And now two at once. A good day for humanity.
in flight · 2023
in flight · 2023
topic
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home-o sapiens
home is where the home is
The first home is given, the last home is chosen. And along a long road with many detours I arrived at the realization that the place itself doesn't matter so much, but who you share it with and how your experience there begets your feelings, only to re-realize down the road that the place too matters, how it speaks and whispers to you, even if you don’t understand what it’s saying.