Fashioning an inspired life
If you’ve ever been to Portugal, Macau will feel strikingly familiar. A “de-facto” colony of Portugal’s since 1557 it was – surprisingly – only handed back over to China in 1999. So it’s no wonder that the similarities are uncanny when walking the cobbled stone streets, looking up at the colonial style architecture in the city center or reading the street signs where Portuguese is…
Home when traveling takes many shapes. Sometimes it’s the room booked for three nights. Nondescript beige walls trimmed with thin chocolate molding. Green leaves blowing and bowing outside the window. Wifi that comes in and out. Air conditioning that can barely keep up with the heat pressing in from all around. A place to lay our heads, that’s all, yet one that becomes quickly familiar….
Nostalgia visits me sometimes. More often than many, I would venture to guess. When it comes, it weighs like a heavy cloud on my chest, moist and full of emotion, threatening to burst, in streams down my cheeks. Living in the past. Head stuck in the clouds, some would call it. And as I continue on this trip, the nostalgia reel collects quickly. New friends made,…
Dragging our suitcases up the street, I take a last look at the penjors now standing outside of every home, every temple in preparation for one of the biggest ceremonies of the year — Galungan. Impressive offerings made of bamboo poles and coconut leaves curve like long paper candy canes into the air, coiled loops and spiked mohawk edges defining the curves. It’s these scenes,…
Exotic is the word they use for places like these. Verdant rice fields make up the countryside, poles bearing makeshift flags of white t-shirts marking the spaces between the green rows. Engraved and painted swastikas stand out above temple entrances – the symbol startling, but reassuring, as meaning is restored to its original context. Thick thatched roofs sit on top of intricately carved temple columns, producing an…
I wince a lot when I remember all of the stupid things I once said. Oftentimes this reaction is sparked by a new conversation on a topic of which I was previously ill-informed or unaware. Mid-conversation, I remember an ignorant statement I said, silly naive musings uttered, or some other form of the like. I cringe. I crumple a little inside. I want to run away…