@12-31-Places-I-slept-2024 Tags: travel, Taipei, friends, family, memory, Bangkok, America, Tokyo, life, Hong Kong, list, new year, Places, places, places slept, year end, wrap, change, travel, personal geography, hope, family Permalink: /2024/places-I-slept-2024 Thumbnail: _Dece … | Continue reading
As ever this endeavor reminds me of the things we leave behind, or will shortly. Tracking these lists, and reviewing them, points out changes I’d have otherwise ignored. Usually these shifts indicate job changes, such as my frequent crossings of the El Paso / Juarez border, which … | Continue reading
We wave goodbye in front of the station. They turn right, under the Yamanote line and towards their hotel. We turn left, towards home. We walk slowly, at toddler speed, through streets we know. Past the temple, re-opened at last. Past restaurants and the sento. It’s a perfect fal … | Continue reading
In the wind I stand on one of the docks stretching into the harbor in San Francisco and watch the sea lions. Twice I try to take a video of their playful noise, and they, used to this tourist game, go silent immediately. The wind is brisk. All non-runners wear jackets. My compani … | Continue reading
I stand on one of the docks stretching into the harbor in San Francisco and watch the sea lions. Twice I try to take a video of their playful noise, and they, used to this tourist game, go silent immediately. The wind is brisk. All non-runners wear jackets. My companion remarks t … | Continue reading
I try to always live in the before. Before whatever terrible event will cut this short. Before we stop being able to fly to frisbee tournaments in different countries. Before we needed masks. Before we needed visas. Before we were so injured. Before our bodies hurt. Before we wer … | Continue reading
For much of the past three decades I’ve traveled to chase plastic on grass. More recently on beaches as well, as the sand requires no cleats, which means packing lighter. The frisbee teams we were part of define so much of our memories, both individually and as a couple. Are part … | Continue reading
#From boxes once again For the first time in years, I have a day off in a hotel in a country not my own. For the first time in years, I am sick in a foreign country, and hunt familiar cures. My colleagues bring me coconuts and local concoctions, which I appreciate. It’s been a wh … | Continue reading
Our memories, I’ve often written, are fragile things. They are temperamental stores of meaning that capture in bursts rather than extended pans. For each critical moment, a last conversation with a friend or being present at someone’s wedding, there are hours and hours of unremar … | Continue reading
On the Shinkansen passing through Hiroshima I think about events of twenty plus years ago and possible other lives. When I was young I never understood the types of phrase uttered by my elders. “I haven’t been to Italy since the ’80’s,” they would say, in ’97 or ’04. “Loved it, b … | Continue reading
For two years, we have the kind of view that I will never be able to capture adequately, never be able to share completely. From our vantage point we watch the rain roll in from the north, pour down on distant islands and sweep over Kowloon until it obscures one of the world’s ta … | Continue reading
My cousin and I sit at an outdoor bar off of a highway in south Jersey. It’s a decent spot for a July evening. The humidity is much lower than earlier in the week, or than New York last week. The two of us having an hour or two together like this, as adults, is rare, the last tim … | Continue reading
examples Thumbnail: _New-York-grass.jpeg Thumbnail caption: Playing on grass with New York behind My cousin and I sit at an outdoor bar off of a highway in south Jersey. It’s a decent spot for a July evening. The humidity is much lower than earlier in the week, or than New York l … | Continue reading
I return from Singapore on Friday morning slightly sick, the last of our family to pass through this particular wave. The two early morning late night days on the road did, of course, not help, though they were useful in other ways. My phone, reactivated, brings good news: partne … | Continue reading
I stand on the balcony and watch the cherry blossoms. The world is beautiful, and oddly calm. My partner is correct in her explanation: “everyone is in a park getting drunk for sakura”. The weather is perfect, just barely chill, and restaurants are indeed empty for a Saturday nig … | Continue reading
The 2019 discovery of Rofmia in many ways represented the culmination of all my prior backpack hunting. After years of traveling with the North Face Base Camp Duffel and the Outlier Rolltop rolled up inside, I’ve transitioned to a true one bag solution with the Rofmia Backpack. A … | Continue reading
The seasons shift. I sit at tables half exposed to the weather, one whole side of the bar opened up to the street. It will remain like this for much of the rest of the year. Outside, just past the small awning, it pours, the kind of Asian cloudburst common to this time of year. F … | Continue reading
At twenty months 5’s language explodes. She sings twinkle twinkle little star after hearing it a half dozen times. She says the abc’s and constantly makes small sentences. We are astonished onlookers. We have no pride in her outbursts, only shock. I am often an open-mouthed obser … | Continue reading
This review is more than half a decade old. Perhaps it has been waiting for some unknown inspiration, or perhaps I simply forgot. The oldest of the three bags mentioned below was given away to a friend heading to Berlin years and years ago, in San Francisco. Otherwise every word … | Continue reading
On Thursday we slip out, taking calls from the airport mid-day. By dinner we’re in Tokyo, eating sandwiches and milk on the Skyliner, holding on to the grip handles of the Yamanote, and wandering the little streets we know before bed. It’s a good way to start a long weekend. It’s … | Continue reading
The scars on my side are ten years old. I pass the anniversary in San Francisco, and bike to Four Barrel at 7 am for a coffee to celebrate. Sitting outside in the chilly morning air, with my e-bike on hold next to me, I look around at how much has changed, and how much hasn’t. Ju … | Continue reading
“I used to have the best jean jacket,” she tells me over dim sum in Hong Kong. “I left it in the taxi to the airport when I left Berlin. That was fifteen years ago. I still think about that jacket.” My mind goes to my favorite garment, a green corduroy and laminate North Face bla … | Continue reading
I go to bed in a hospital room. From the window I can see our apartment. This is closer to home than any of our other hospital stays, and less stressful. We age, we injure, we heal. Or we go through the traumas of childbirth, and heal. The pain is not always evenly distributed. I … | Continue reading
I go to bed in a hospital room. From the window I can see our apartment. This is closer to home than any of our other hospital stays, and less stressful. We age, we injure, we heal. Or we go through the traumas of childbirth, and heal. The pain is not always evenly distributed. I … | Continue reading
My colleague arrives in Singapore at nine am two days late. His original flight was canceled due to a blizzard. He’s understandably confused by the weather. Together we visit a customer and wander Tanjong Pagar without purpose. I am here to welcome him, to help him procure the es … | Continue reading
The year ending feels very long. I wonder about this, about perception in a family of three rather than two. Twelve months represents so much change to a being of eighteen. I expect the next few will feel likewise. The list below, considered as such, is an impossible mishmash. I … | Continue reading
I think we should do socks full of fruit Her idea is better than any I’ve had, and she prepares, and we do. It’s 5’s second Christmas, too early still for memory, we expect. And yet let’s be too early rather than too late, rather than caught with no traditions of our tiny family. … | Continue reading
I walk a mile in the sun near New Braunfels, Texas. It’s not a place I ever expected to be, and so I walk eyes open, taking in the yard signs, the state of things. It’s new country, in some ways. Or I’m new to it. Both can be true. Texas has changed a lot since I lived here in tw … | Continue reading
I walk a mile in the sun near New Braunfels, Texas. It’s not a place I ever expected to be, and so I walk eyes open, taking in the yard signs, the state of things. It’s new country, in some ways. Or I’m new to it. Both can be true. Texas has changed a lot since I lived here in tw … | Continue reading
For four days I wake to the sun in a hotel in Batam, Indonesia, and put on music. Burial and Sofia Kourtesis soundtrack the sunrise as I stretch, shower, and head downstairs for coffee. I am back in the world, visiting factories in towns I’d never otherwise have known about. I’m … | Continue reading
Finally the pace feels true. After a few years of being unrecognizable, we are again in motion to a degree unfathomable with quarantines, with flight bans. Hong Kong is again a home base that features the world’s best airport train, rather than a home base of remote islands. In t … | Continue reading
After a few quiet years we are again walking borders, starting with the one closest to home. The high speed train between Hong Kong and the rest of China, which had only opened shortly prior, was stopped for most of the pandemic. Hong Kong’s gradual return as a transit hub has be … | Continue reading
Back in North Park after a few years, I am most surprised by the sound of the wind. On this hillside, looking south towards Elk Mountain some 30 miles away, the ferocious whipping noise contrasts with the stillness and spectacle of the view. Aside from tree leaves rippling in the … | Continue reading
@: 09-15-The-length-of-life Tags: life, family, weather, history, personal geographic, hope, the future Permalink: /2023/the-length-of-life Thumbnail: _Otsuka-station-festival.jpeg Thumbnail caption: A northern Tokyo craft beer festival in front of Otsuka station, September 2023 … | Continue reading
Walking through Victoria Park I realize we are building something. Like all such internal acknowledgements it is both belated and overwrought. Of course we, in the sense of our partnership, are building something. We have been, for fifteen plus years. We have been, in some sense, … | Continue reading
Crossing Wun Sha behind a turning Tesla, the distance between leg and side panel. Lately these scant centimeters1 impress me. We have spent enough time in the US recently to remember the differences: cars stopping for us mid-street while we wait on the sidewalk for them to pass. … | Continue reading
We ride through Minnesota and into Wisconsin in the back seat of a rented Jeep. Two of us are comfy and content with our windows down, glad to have made it this far. One of us is unhappy about her car seat, but we’ll all survive. It’s a wonderful place to be, the back seat of thi … | Continue reading
Time with people. Even though they will all be dead soon too, even though the world is on fire, even though our lives are transient and brief. What matters is our time together, regardless of circumstance. Financial capabilities matter only in the service of our friendships, of t … | Continue reading
Nothing is perfect and everything changes. On my first father’s day, we walk through Tai Hang to a sushi spot we use for celebrations. There’s a specific kind of place we frequent for our own occasions, those moments we want to mark together as a couple. Most people have one, I t … | Continue reading
“I think it’s Wednesday, the evening, the mess we’re in- The city sunset over me- We spend the weekend in Taipei, on bicycles and in playgrounds, in restaurants and a friend’s home. It’s the kind of quick hop short haul weekend we imagined common on moving back to Asia. It’s the … | Continue reading
An apartment with a good view in a dense city is one of the greatest statements of human beauty. Watching the apartments over towards Leighton and up the hill above Tai Hang with an eye on the whole rather than a specific point is beautiful. In the several hundred apartments I ca … | Continue reading
For a long time the person I used to be wondered what he would remember. He took photos to invite recollection, and put songs on repeat in foreign hotel rooms to build clear trigger points. Looking back now these are the tactics of someone on the go, someone with little stability … | Continue reading
On a Friday afternoon I walk to a shop in Mong Kok in search of new climbing shoes. The errand itself is unremarkable, and takes 30 minutes. The transit, from my small neighborhood on the island to one of the world’s densest places, takes another 25 each way. The act, of walking … | Continue reading
Across a small street from the trash collection point in Tai Hang, the workers rest in an alley. It’s their break room. They eat lunches there, sometimes shucking their fluorescent yellow vests for a few moments. Underneath the one small tree, they have water, sit on the curb, or … | Continue reading
Standing on the balcony I can see so many of us. Two teams play rugby on the pitch near the library. Next to the field a group does sprints on the 100 meter track. Around them dozens of joggers do slow loops. Across a wall and worlds away six tennis courts are filled with lessons … | Continue reading
On the back end of a good set of days I look at the Pacific from the wrong side and breathe. The air is clean here, a bit north of Los Angeles proper, still connected to its urban sphere. The airport we’ll head home from on this loop is just visible in the distance, a string of p … | Continue reading
In retrospect 2022 was the hardest year. The best summary is that it ends much better than it began. Hong Kong spent the first half of the year in the kind of pointlessly strict lockdowns we’d thought finished. Despite having the highest death rate per capita proving the waste, t … | Continue reading