Deep Breaths

Ready or Not?

“So, are you ready?” My father asked me this question two nights ago as he collapsed into the couch next to me.  My nose was pressed into a map of Iceland, where I had been uttering low guttural sounds in various attempts to pronounce the names of small towns along the Ring Road.  With an… Continue reading Deep Breaths

The Zen Killer

Within the rectangular garden at Ryoanji Temple, the fifteen rocks and meticulously groomed white gravel represent the “quintessence of Zen art”. Arranged in no particular formation by a nameless monk in the 15th century, the brochure suggests each visitor “find out for himself what the garden signifies”, and millions of miniature rock gardens in psychiatrists’… Continue reading The Zen Killer

Fashionably Light

I read the other day that backpackers tend to suffer from two afflictions more so than from anything else. The first is the inevitable traveller’s diarrhea (aka Delhi Belly, Rangoon Runs, Tokyo Trots, Montezuma’s Revenge, etc), for which we have enough ciprofloxacin, azithromycin and loperamide to plug a hole in the Hoover Dam. The second… Continue reading Fashionably Light

Countdown

Please accept my apology when I tell you that I haven’t channeled a writerly thought in now nearly a decade. In fact, it is with distinct physical discomfort that I sit alone tonight, in the darkened kitchen nearing 2AM, banging away at this keyboard in what is now my seventh effort to get this damned… Continue reading Countdown