TravelWriting

  • James Joyce once described the rolling waves of the Irish sea in such a manner as to completely, unabashedly obliterate any notion of beauty surrounding the thing: “The sea, the snot-green sea, the scrotum-tightening sea.” Someone evidently had several qualms about the sea. Well, he had a dexterity with words, anyway. Though I certainly do…

    Read more →

  • It is my first post of 2017! Hello, new year! Hello, resolutions that will likely peter out by February! Please, stay awhile! (Especially you flaky resolutions. I see you loitering by the door). This year is different in that I, like I’m sure many people have, grown up a great deal. I am not setting…

    Read more →

  • “The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.” – Ernest Hemingway. I am offended by the blankness of the page before me. If this page had eyes, they would be watching me expectantly, waiting for my next move, taunting me with the blink, blink, blink of the cursor, hungry for…

    Read more →

  • A Day in Montreal

    I awoke last Saturday morning to winter in Montreal. It was not the biting sort of winter Chicago usually falls victim to, not the kind that says “boo” on one decisive day in late November when the day prior had been a balmy and unostentatious 65 degrees. No, this was winter with poise. But the trees, still dripping…

    Read more →

  • The other day I heard myself say the following words aloud: “I feel like my life hasn’t really started yet.” I might have been walking beneath the gradually changing leaves or driving with my hands clutched tightly on the steering wheel. I might have been staring into space, mind preoccupied with future things, faraway things, abstract…

    Read more →

  • “Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.” -Mother Theresa. One of the most dangerous fallacies we often give credence to is that at some point our hearts reach a maximum capacity. We place a ceiling on the amount of love we are permitted to spread, and once we hit it, we resign ourselves…

    Read more →

  • “Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.” -Seneca. Oxford is the kind of beautiful that places a gentle hand on your shoulder and urges you to take a seat, your eyes cast to its fawn colored edifices all the while. It’s the kind of beauty that coalesces past and present with such…

    Read more →

  • “If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears.” -Cesare Pavese. Traveling — really traveling — is daunting. It should scare you just enough to leave your fingers trembling against your plane ticket, just enough to leave you entirely unaware of what lies ahead, just enough…

    Read more →

  • London is difficult to put a finger on. In addition to being absurdly large in dimension with too many Tube stops going in too many directions, the city contains labyrinthian cobbled roads that seem to wind in on themselves, continually leading the wandering visitor back to where she started. All too easily, you could spend…

    Read more →

  • “She is free in her wildness, she is a wanderess, a drop of free water. She knows nothing of borders and cares nothing for rules or customs. ‘Time’ for her isn’t something to fight against. Her life flows clean, with passion, like fresh water.” -Roman Payne In a word: go. Go to Howth. Smell the…

    Read more →