In The Museum of Joy

I most often travel solo, but I never really travel alone. Dad was with me today for this one, at least for a little while. He’s been gone almost 14 years, and never visited France, so I didn’t expect to find him here. And yet there he was. Still feeling a bit off kilter in […]

In Which I Stop

I hoisted my bulky suitcase, now a backpack, onto my shoulders and crossed the threshold into Strasbourg’s morning, subdued by fog. Around me, the sidewalks were empty, the only noise coming from my footsteps and the occasional creaks of the buckles and straps as the weight shifted with my stride. Quietly I padded through the […]

In Which I Look Deeper

There’s something about faces that is extraordinary. They are our most defining individual characteristic, and perhaps our most expressive. Without a spoken word, a face can effectively convey emotion, intention, judgement. So often, they are our first “tell” by which our family and friends read us. When we want to disguise our feelings we try […]

In Which I Appreciate Gothic Architecture

There’s something about permanence and persistence that always gets me. Things that come from the past and are still recognizable, retaining relevance long after they were first created. They tie us to another time and unite us in our humanity across centuries, millennia, and epochs, and sometimes they do so in unexpected ways. This is […]

In the Borderlands

The adrenaline rush of rebooking sustained me well into my flight out of JFK to Paris. I slept a bit on the plane, but by the time I hit the ground at Charles de Gaulle I was starting to drag and could feel the wall coming at me. Try as I might, the fatigue of […]

Off To The Cupboard With You Now, Chip

I was rushing out of my building on my way to the gym when my doorman stopped me. “You know what’s coming don’t you?” His eyebrows shot up. “You always seem to be here for bad weather.” I was intimately aware of the forecast, and had been for hours. A massive blizzard is bearing down […]