Life’s questions choose us. I close my eyes and see myself on a sandy beach next to two Masai men, the three of us bent down staring intently at a jellyfish, a gooey, gelatinous blob of milky white flesh still breathing on the shore. My questions arrive: what is this and will it survive?
I come for a sunset and stay for the creature washed ashore for human eyes to ponder. In this snapshot, I am 41: half traveler, half resident, begging myself to glean the finer details of this island home that may distinguish me from the rest.
The two men standing next to me are also strangers to this land, more blood and milk than curry and coconuts. They’ve come with a reputation as warriors, but the three of us are just children in this moment, marveling at this newcomer.
I come for a sunset and stay for the creature washed ashore for human eyes to ponder. In this snapshot, I am 41: half traveler, half resident, begging myself to glean the finer details of this island home that may distinguish me from the rest.
The two men standing next to me are also strangers to this land, more blood and milk than curry and coconuts. They’ve come with a reputation as warriors, but the three of us are just children in this moment, marveling at this newcomer.
Sometimes we ask a question to the universe and receive what sociologist Molly Andrews calls “inconvenient data,” the answers we don’t want to hear are the answers we didn’t expect. These ruptures reveal exactly where we need to turn the page and read more, which requires a full suspension of disbelief and allowances for magic.
We talk about travel as a kind of trip, but we also know by now that we don’t have to go too far to travel far within. It all starts the moment we receive the first hunch that our parents actually can’t help us. And it’s relieving to see our parents in moments of relaxation.
As a kid, I would climb the yellow stairs just to watch my father sleeping on his side of the bed, positioned stiff like a mummy under a red, yellow and black striped wool blanket, breathing peaceful prairie puffs from his open mouth.
I’m reading a new book about surfing and this one sentence singed my heart: “And I saw surfing that day…that made my chest hurt: long moments of grace under pressure that felt etched deep in my being: what I wanted, somehow, more than anything else.”
A version of me still remains on that beach in Michamvi at sunset, examining the washed up jellyfish with two Masai men from the mainland. None of us quite belong here, and yet we belong to this moment. This photograph reminds me that the way we choose to “see” the world is just one of infinite possibilities.
Photo by Pernille Baerndtsen, 2016.
We talk about travel as a kind of trip, but we also know by now that we don’t have to go too far to travel far within. It all starts the moment we receive the first hunch that our parents actually can’t help us. And it’s relieving to see our parents in moments of relaxation.
As a kid, I would climb the yellow stairs just to watch my father sleeping on his side of the bed, positioned stiff like a mummy under a red, yellow and black striped wool blanket, breathing peaceful prairie puffs from his open mouth.
I’m reading a new book about surfing and this one sentence singed my heart: “And I saw surfing that day…that made my chest hurt: long moments of grace under pressure that felt etched deep in my being: what I wanted, somehow, more than anything else.”
A version of me still remains on that beach in Michamvi at sunset, examining the washed up jellyfish with two Masai men from the mainland. None of us quite belong here, and yet we belong to this moment. This photograph reminds me that the way we choose to “see” the world is just one of infinite possibilities.
Photo by Pernille Baerndtsen, 2016.
