A veranda under a pouf of purple bougainvillea. A wooden table, the surface hidden by dog-eared dictionaries, coverless novels, and loose sheets of paper runed with scribblings. Two chairs from the 1950s, of metal tubing (rusting) and red plastic (decomposing). Propped against the peeling wall, a chalkboard with the days of the […]
The fat, neon-colored beetle of a bus bumped along the narrow highway as I struggled to keep from falling into my neighbor’s lap. The Indonesian guidebook warned there wasn’t a straight stretch of road on the island of Flores, crumpled as it was by its many volcanoes, and I was ready to believe it.
I had […]
It is dawn on the day of Nyepi, Balinese New Year, and the only sounds I hear are the sounds of the first morning of the world.
Light barely delineates my window, but roosters already call to each other up and down the street. Doves coo-coo-coo in the plumeria tree next to my porch and small […]