The stone walls aren’t ancient in my mind – that word reminds me of some movement of people, some civilization like Rome or Greece. I felt that these fences were the work of individuals who were living in the area and put them up for themselves. But I also doubt they’re prehistoric.
The sense I gather from them is that they’re expressions of people from a timeless era, of a pre-modern, non-progress-based time. They felt unconscious to me. Nietzsche wrote about how the ability to forget is the key to living in the present – you’re filled with wonder at the smallest things if they’re new to your consciousness. I don’t know if a circle-based time meant remembering everything or forgetting everything. Living in a circle, though, is definitely a more animalistic way of experiencing time, and that’s where these walls come from.
I spent four days on my scooter wandering this little region to the north of Tours, France, blown away by the access the scooter was giving me. When I pulled off the main highway onto this tiny road that might as well have been private, these two horses (and a third one erased) were just posing for me. I was realizing the dream of riding a scooter in the countryside with a nice camera and all the time in the world.
Nobody at home knows where I am; nobody here knows who I am.
2001
The night I returned home from three months in Paris I had a dream: I was arriving back in Paris and I said, “I’m back, I’m finally back.”
That winter I woke up in the evening, my roommates were gone for the break and I kept one room warm in the top of the house. Mine was the only light in the neighborhood. I would be awake the whole night, depressed, and during the day I’d sleep and I’d dream, “I’m back, I’m finally back.” I didn’t see daylight for a week.
But things got better, as they do, and I met a girl (read more)
We got into Punta del Diablo so late that we couldn’t really tell what the town was like, or even how close to the ocean we were. The next morning I woke up at 6am with the sun and when I stepped outside this man was walking up with his thermos, cigarette and the ubiquitous yerba mate.
To drink it, the Uruguayans fill a gourd with the tea leaves, then pour in hot water. They drink it through a special straw that has a filtered end so it can draw in the tea without taking the leaves. When the tea is gone they pour in more water.
When I saw him I asked if I could take a picture and only really snapped this one shot, the first shot I took in Diablo, and the best.
If anyone from Punta del Diablo is reading this and knows this man, I’d love if you would contact me.
Bert Teunissen photographs people in their own kitchens and dining rooms in a series called “Domestic Landscapes.” The photos are gorgeous, shot inside by natural light, but they’re also uncomfortably intimate like we’re looking at the inside of a person’s skin, not just their kitchen. Most of the series are shot in Europe (it’s broken up by country on the website) but there’s one series from Japan during which I kept asking, “Why is he shooting these people at a restaurant?” I guess I’ve never been in a Japanese home….
I’ve spent a lot of time in people’s houses as well, but in the US I rarely come across a home that exhibits a personality’s corners the way Teunissen’s European homes do.
The other website I’ve been loving is the David Lynch Interview Project. The filmmaker has sent a team across the US to conduct four-minute interviews with locals and they talk on a variety of subjects, but often about themselves.
While window washing I’ve had a lot of four-minute conversations and though I don’t think such passing glances can give a full picture of a person’s life, it tells you what they want you to hear in four minutes.
I was in India during the tsunami. I was eating dinner with a friend in a restaurant that sat at the top of the beach and we started hearing waves, the Arabian Sea, which was a surprise because it was low tide. People were shouting and I ran to the front of the restaurant to see Indian men knee-deep in water, grabbing chairs and tables as they drifted away. I thought, “How desperate they must be to think about chairs and tables when this is happening!”
The people in town were spooked because they’d never seen the ocean act like this. (read more)
If there is a god, then why do stupid things happen to smart people?
by Mike
Azure and I have had plenty of health care encounters abroad, so I thought I’d tell some of the fun stories about how we get treated when we leave our own country.
Chipped tooth, France 2001
I chipped my tooth biting into a sandwich (yep) and called a dentist recommended by a friend (read more)
It was light at 4am because we were so far north and I laid on the couch where I woke and watched the men get ready to go fishing. For a few minutes I pretended I was doing serious independent travel and imagined describing the scene in my dispatches home: “These men are obsessed with coffee. They drink it every morning, at least two cups, and then bring a thermos with them on the boat. When they run out of coffee on the boat everyone crashes and takes turns napping on the narrow benches. They play cards late into the night and laugh constantly and have dedicated their lives to fish.”
You have to be pretty cheap to find places like this.
Y’all want to know about our finances anyway. I’ll keep it oblique so there’s still a sense of wonder and enchantment.
Az and I budgeted about 50 Euro per day for us as a couple this winter, which works out to about $1000 per person per month, not including airfare. We spend less traveling than we do at home.
Here’re 20 tips for traveling Europe on the cheap: (read more)
Azure’s shadow against a home in Cartagena, Colombia.
Whether you’re traveling with your partner, a family member or a close friend, you GOTTA establish expectations beforehand because chances are you’ll want to tear their throat out just because they eat pudding with a Swiss army knife or something like that. Love the people you love. That’s my motto.
I wrote up these points in the first person (“Here’s what I promise I’ll do”) because I can only be responsible for my own actions & reactions.
I read somewhere that to travel well you need patience, tolerance, respect and a sense of humor. To that I’d add a Rolex and rock-hard abs, just in case. But I’ve been thinking about some actual travel advice we’ve developed for ourselves over the years. Here they are. Just below. Right… now. Below. Look down there now, the next few words don’t matter. Slicey trickster temple mat. See? They didn’t matter.
Quarter Year’s self-imposed rules for long-term travel: (read more)
“Granite Island: A Portrait of Corsica” is a beautifully written chronicle of Dorothy Carrington’s time in Corsica (which spanned decades). Even after the second world war Corsican peasants were living very much in the same way their ancestors had for centuries. In the following paragraphs Carrington, visiting from London, writes about her experiences living with a Corsican peasant family near Sartene.
“… I had not understood how far my daily load of anxiety was a craving for the things every peasant knows: space, silence, and food that is not stale. (read more)
Azure and I agreed that Bonifacio is one of the most spectacular cities we’ve visited – it’s built on a cliff that’s surrounded by water on 3.5 sides and it’s pretty much waiting to fall into the water, as you can see above. From Bonifacio you can see Sardegna, Corsica’s Italian sister to the South. Bonifacio is hundreds of years old, of course, and somewhere up here was found one of the oldest inhabitants of Corsica, a woman whose grave was dated to ~9000 years ago.
We found the town itself to be one of those annoying seasonal towns that’s a shell in the off-season, so there’s nothing to do, nothing that sustains people. Tourism keeps em going the rest of the year, of course, so when we were walking around the town our interactions felt uncomfortably artificial. We were much happier in Sartene where there was a university and some commerce and free wifi only half an hour away.
I was lucky enough to win* (* from my dad) a trip to Yakutat, Alaska last weekend! The first day we got in we went to the Hubbard Glacier and navigated small icebergs to get close enough to hear the thunder of ice breaking down. The glacier is 70 miles long and we were looking at its mile-long face.
In the last two weeks, two of our photos have been named Gadling’s Photo of the Day! Gadling is one of the biggest travel ‘blogs’ on the ‘internet’ so I’m pretty excited about this development. All the more reason to start trying to sell these things. (read more)
Azure & I visiting 2/3 of the Frost family in Buenos Aires last year.
by Mike
Thaipusam is a Hindu festival in which revelers purify themselves through fasting & prayer. Some of the devout make shrines on platforms that are hooked into their skin and they carry them in a circuit to the temple while their family cheers them on. The only reason I have any idea this exists is that I accidentally stumbled onto a procession in Little India in Singapore – they had shut down one lane in either direction to allow the march, but cars still buzzed by.
There are literally thousands of other examples of how travel has educated me in ways that a traditional education simply never would have. I think of it as education by proximity and experience.
My cousin Maya Frost is doing her part to encourage this method of learning. She’s written a book called, “The New Global Student: Skip the SAT, Save Thousands on Tuition and Get a Truly International Education.”
She explains how to study abroad in a way that’s CHEAPER than paying tuition at home! Azure and I travel every winter for less money than it would cost to stay at home. We travelers know the tricks – and Maya’s put it in a book. If you’re a student at all interested in seeing the world, and you want to do it in a way that doesn’t break the bank, then you should check out her excellent book. Parents of students should check it out as well so they know what options are available for their kids internationally.
We love to travel and learn. We like eating and sleeping and going on the internet and we can do all of those things from anywhere in the world. We are originally from Seattle, but no longer stay for the winters. We must leave and see new places and great ways to live. We enjoy living well and seeing how others live well.
This winter we traveled in Indonesia, Thailand and Myanmar, then came home for a brief break and are now in France.
You are encouraged to share your thoughts and suggestions. We hope you enjoy reading our blog!
