№ 819. Impossible Places

№ 792. Travel

 

Twillostory

№ 693. Trivial Pursuits

Saveur

My habit of treating toothpaste as a souvenir is about celebrating rather than elevating the trivial — I’m not chasing quality, authenticity or meaning, those most overrepresented pursuits among world travelers. So I pick whatever seems fun, interesting or tame, depending on my mood. It’s a low-stakes exercise with just one rule: My selection must comply with the 100-milliliter limit for packing in my carry-on.

The effect of this habit is Proustian but its origin is not. About a decade ago, I chose to ignore some advice I was given before moving to Japan for a study-abroad program. Japanese toothpaste, I was told, might not be to my liking, so I should pack a few tubes of my favorite brand to take with me to Tokyo. Shunning even the most inconsequential new experience seemed to me a bad way of approaching a new life in a new country. I was 32 and had learned to wring all that I could from my days as a working stiff. Why shouldn’t I do the same as a slightly-too-old university student in Japan? I stretched my student loans and scholarship money so I could quench my thirst for novelty by drinking from the well of everyday experience — which, in Tokyo, runs deep with small consumer delights.

Among these delights, buying toothpaste I would never find in an American drugstore proved to be a reliable way of enlivening an otherwise unremarkable daily activity — one that we often treat as routine but that I try to embrace as a ritual for chasing the fog of sleep from my waking hours. Each new and unfamiliar flavor recalls a time and a place, but also serves as a gentle tap on the shoulder — a reminder to look at myself, not through myself, in the bathroom mirror and to appreciate even those moments spent brushing away the seeds of inevitable decay.

 

№ 673. Space Invaders

 

Space Invaders - Ravenna, Italy

Space Invaders - Perth, Australia

№ 660. Visita Iglesia 2022 Through Square Lenses

 

№ 603. The Hippie Trail

majalahka.com

№ 590. Travel

You’ve said that you don’t keep track of how many countries you’ve visited. Why is that?

Why would you? Is it a contest? Anybody who brags about how many countries they’ve been to — that’s no basis for the value of the travel they’ve done. You could have been to 100 countries and learned nothing, or you can go to Mexico and be a citizen of the planet. I find that there’s no correlation between people who count their countries and people who open their heart and their soul to the cultures they’re in.

 

Mercury News

 

№ 544. Witness

 

№ 539. Constant Discovery

“I do not accept any absolute formulas for living. No preconceived code can see ahead to everything that can happen in a man's life. As we live, we grow and our beliefs change. They must change. So I think we should live with this constant discovery. We should be open to this adventure in heightened awareness of living. We should stake our whole existence on our willingness to explore and experience. ”  ― Martin Buber 

№ 517. Travel

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all of one’s life.” --- Mark Twain

 

 

 

If you are an avid traveler, you hopefully soak up new and interesting information everywhere you go. Volunteer travel, however, takes experiential learning to the next level. 

In most cases, volunteer travel programs allow adults and families with vastly different backgrounds and life experiences to contribute to an important project in a developing community.

№ 508. The Paradoxes of Enclosure

At a time when the rule of life across the globe has been disrupted by the paradoxes of collective isolation, a sensitivity to “the small,” to containment and enclosure, presses upon individuals, families, and society in unexpected and often confounding ways. Like Jones’s experimental letter forms, we awkwardly jostle for space within the confines of our homes, balconies, and gardens. Even communal spaces like parks and grocery stores seem to have shrunk, as attempts to heed social distancing alter our awareness of space. Our sense of what counts as crowded has changed, as we learn to accommodate these new rules. Meanwhile, many of us, particularly those in self-isolation, are simultaneously learning just how vastly vacant even a small space can feel.

We can recalibrate our senses to the mysteries of the small through meditation on that paradox of paradoxes, the Incarnation, with the help of this little wood block by David Jones. Throughout Jones’s work there is a marked affection for “things familiar and small.” It is inseparable from a spiritual practice of attention—tuning our senses to that which is easily overlooked or undervalued. Wrapped up in this sensitivity to the small is a care for the fragile, the vulnerable, and a discovery of the surprising resilience of the delicate. It is guided above all by the conviction that it is through refinement of our attention that the wonder and mystery of the created world, particularly in its relation to the divine, reveals itself most fully to us. Focusing on what is small and seemingly commonplace becomes a portal for seeing all things in light of the love of God and thus yields, paradoxically, the most generous and capacious of vantage points.

As the whole world fights to contain a contagion through the mantra “stay at home,” uniting and separating lives in various ways, our spiritual labor in this time may be to find these openings for grace within the multiple circles of our everyday circumstance as these widen and intersect with others, and in light of their relation to the divine Other. We are in truth, as Julian of Norwich reminds us, enclosed not by walls or government guidelines, but by the enduring intimacy of the love of God. For “he is our clothing that for love wrappeth us and windeth us, holdeth us and all becloseth us, hangeth about us for tender love that he may never leave us.”

Grand Mosque at Djenne, Mali

№ 495. Work from Home: Traveler's Spirit

Travel teaches us that there’s more to life than increasing its speed. This quarantine has been therapy for a workaholic like me. Perhaps the pandemic is the universe’s way of telling us all to slow down. And, like travel, this crisis is reminding us of how we need one another, and we need one another to be safe and cared for. Hard times highlight the importance of public services and good governance, as well as the value of neighbors.

№ 465. California on My Mind

 Here's an unabashed California nostalgia. Old songs never fade. They're just remade into new music videos.




Here's another big city story tinted with the recurrent song California Dreaming --- Chungking Express.

№ 453. Paris 2012

№ 452. Venice 2012

 

№ 449. Travel & Uncertainty

"Uncertainty is where things happen. It is where the opportunities — for success, for happiness, for really living — are waiting." --- Oliver Burkeman

Planning the next trip. We need a lot of insider tips.

Here's one funny, wise guy who loves to travel and monetized it. He plays the piano, too.

№ 371. Natural History Museum Through Square Lenses

№ 365. Travels and Travails

To sit outside a Paris cafe at breakfast is to observe the city as it wipes the sleep from its eyes: the soft clink of a cup and saucer, the turning of newspaper pages, the passer-by with a cigarette who asks for a light — and me, at my little round table, nibbling a speculoos, sipping my café crème.

№ 348. Siargao Through Square Lenses 1

Two-hour long flight from Manila and one-hour van ride from the airport later: Cloud Nine! Instagram and heavenly bodies!

A cancelled room booking? No problemo. Here's to sand on the heels, breezy, beach side happy hours at 4 PM on a Friday!

Cold showers and creaking bathroom doors? Throw in that crusty, flaky croissant. And that steaming espresso, too!

Heavy rains en route to the mangrove forest reserve? Crabs buffet for five, quick. And an extended three-hour paddle board-swim in the emerald lagoon.

No dessert? No serving spoon? No wifi? Nothing that a quickie surf lesson before departure and lechon Cebu during the lay-over won't fix.

More lemons please!

№ 323. Hokkaido Through Square Lenses 2

More pictures, field trips and food finds....