Demarcations

V, W, X, Y... and Z

2011-12-29T00:24:00.003+01:00

So here I am in New Haven, Connecticut, after four years overseas, and it is possibly the strangest and most foreign place I have ever lived. Everything outside the Yale "bubble" seems marginalized and conspicuously divided by race and class, but I have established a couple of havens of my own, thankfully: V is for Victor Nicolaï, my haven who ventured out of the Alps to come to this alien land for the fall. W is for the ever-present, ironic haven of Wanderlust that continues to propel me toward discovery of X, the new and unknown. It is in this restless limbo that I have come to feel most comfortable in the world. Y is for Yale, which forcibly takes its fitful place as a haven as I incrementally learn to navigate all its X's and accept that my being here is not a mistake. Here are a few of the more tangible havens in my life:

My apartment:

View from my window, photo courtesy of Victor

My north-facing studio at the School of Art:

Photo courtesy of Victor

Though it proves difficult to venture very far without a vehicle and on pathetically insufficient financial resources, wanderlust does not relent and one does what she can manage. A visit to nearby Hammonasset Beach State Park on the Long Island Sound:

Photo courtesy of Victor

A haven is generally synonymous with safety. A candlelight vigil on 9/11 reminded us to be grateful for ours.

A weekend visit to Block Island, Rhode Island was a good respite from New Haven:

Sunday in the City from the empire state building:

Snow helps me feel at home.

First snow in New Haven

New Haven Lighthouse:

Photo courtesy of Victor

We took a much-needed trip to the White Mountains to climb Mt. Adams with Aragorn's dad, Jeff, in New Hampshire. Not the Rockies or the Alps, but a little topography undoubtedly also helps me feel at home.

The hut didn't provide much reprieve from the penetrating cold... Photo courtesy of Victor

Still too cold to venture out--sunrise through the hut window taken from inside my sleeping bag

Photo courtesy of Victor, who was braver


The ascent--photo courtesy of Victor

Photo courtesy of Victor

It was beautiful...

and cold...

and windy.

Jeff on the summit

Photo courtesy of Victor

Heading down

We were fortunate enough to be able to visit Colorado (the ultimate haven!) for the week of Thanksgiving, where we had some quality mountain time and Victor was able to meet my family. For some reason, I am [foolishly] never inclined to take photos when I am home. Perhaps I don't feel the need because the familiar landscapes and people are etched so deeply in my mind and heart. Awwww... Needless to say, the following images of Colorado are all taken by the ridiculously talented Monsieur Nicolaï, photographe extraordinaire de la nature:

...Eeeeeexcept this one which was taken by Gary

Ha! I took this photo with Victor's camera!

After Colorado, my sweet cheri français only had a few more days before returning to France. Though the decision to spend the semester together in a studio apartment in a very foreign place (for both of us!) after spending a mere two weeks in the other's company might have been a bit perilous, it was evident from the beginning that our judgment was sound and our three months were nothing short of blissful. My life in New Haven continues now that he is gone, but not without a great deficiency--he has been the co-protagonist of this chapter from the beginning.

It may seem like the past four months have all been spent gallivanting around the country, but these little voyages were really happening during the times in between intense and demanding periods of creating, producing, working, studying, intellectualizing, discussing... Here are a [very] few examples of my [abundant] work over the course of the semester:

Drawings

Monoprints

Cut paper and oil on linen (part 1 of an unfinished diptych)

Detail

Mixed media on linen

Digital prints on chiffon

Research--a trip to the MoMA in New York with friends/colleagues:

Mario investigates a sculpture by Huma Bhabha, one of our visiting critics

Drea ponders the complexities of a multi-screen video installation

Wayde appreciates the subtleties of a Ryman canvas

Lee Bontecou sculpture

Various installations, including one of the artists who has served as a real inspiration to me this semester, Eva Hesse (cylinders in background)

Dynamic whites of MoMA

Shortly after my final review (which we will never speak of, ever), I took a quick jaunt up to Boston to see my dear friend Emma, my brother Lee, my cousin Matthew and Meghan, who is my dad's girlfriend's son's wife (huh?). Unfortunately, I am a first-class idiot who was so wrapped up in the wonderful company of all these lovely people that she failed to take more than two photos, neither of which contain said lovely people. I am still punishing myself for such bêtises...

Boston at sunset

The Institute of Contemporary Arts

I was unable to spend Christmas at home this year, but I certainly had the next best thing: Christmas in Vermont with the Spauldings, possibly the world's most welcoming, generous and just plain cool family (other than my own, of course). A haven of havens, indeed.

Aragorn, pappy, Joan and Jeff

Mmmm... Vermont maple syrup=liquid gold

On Christmas eve Jeff, Aragorn and I climbed Mt. Abraham.

Summit

The remains of a helicopter crash from the 1970s

The descent isn't so bad in a couple feet of snow!

That night entailed a packed Christmas eve service in a barn, complete with a donkey, sheep and goat, and Christmas brought a snowy night hike up a nearby mountain by headlamp. The Spauldings' hospitality was such a wonderful gift.

So there you have it, my life until now on the East Coast and the various havens with which I am so undeservingly blessed. And not to forget Z--Zzzzz is for the haven of REST! So desperately needed after all of these crazy transitions and the first semester at Yale, and finally according me the time to update this blog! Happy New Year, everyone.

Metamorphoses

2011-12-24T03:57:00.001+01:00

It has been four months since I last posted. One would think that four months is a relatively short increment of time--a spell in the grand scheme of existence, really. But these last four months, for me, have signified lifetimes. I have experienced transitions and unknowns and births and deaths and rebirths like I have never known them before. The summer was the death of one beautiful episode and the birth of many others: the Alps, at once old and young like immense, resplendent mothers, concurrently imparted wisdom and an épanouissement as I took my last long walk (for a while) embraced and enfolded within their breasts.

I have experienced the sensation of falling asleep wrapped up in the blanket of one life and waking up in another numerous times before, but something about this time was different. Perhaps previously there was more of a clean break, so to speak--there were very few [already fragile] threads keeping me connected to what I had departed--whereas this time, my "new life" kept weaving itself back in with the old, tugging certain remnants along or revisiting fragments that had since unraveled and woven themselves in with new fabrics. For example, my first sojourn on American soil was to visit some former LAS students and their families in the Hamptons. Alps-->Hamptons did not temper the already strong dose of reverse culture shock, but beauty is undoubtedly found everywhere.

Montauk Point

Jonny looking towards Europe

Ariel: Venus on the Rocks

Long Island Sound, waiting for a ferry

The day going out with a bang--epic periods of my life always seem to be accompanied by epic sunsets...

It was during this stay on the East Coast that I was coming to terms with my departure from Europe, aided immensely by Victor Nicolaï's decision to relinquish his last three months on the Via Alpina in order to come to America. True, we had only just met three weeks before, but a coup de foudre is a coup de foudre, and since when have I been one to choose my paths conservatively? More on this in the next post...

Speaking of love, the next event on the summer itinerary was my baby brother's wedding--easily the most beautiful, authentic and most enjoyable marriage I have been privileged enough to be a part.

Dad pouring a 19 year-old bottle of Dom Perignon for the family just moments before the event

Photos courtesy of Josh and Nicole's very cool wedding photographers:

The wedding party

My adorable new sister-in-law, Nicole

Kugizaki/Koehn/Lockwood siblings

Craig, Keiran, Josh, Lee & Brian

Ickle Groomiekins

Aw, how cute are they?!?

Fun in the photo booth:

Dad and me

My adorable cousins

Le couple du jour

Two of the people I love most in the whole wide world, momma and ickle Joshiekins

Gary, mom and me

My other adorable cousins

Kugi men

Jordan, Lindsey, me, Josh and Chris

Chris, je t'adore

After all my time spent in the Alps, I didn't want the Rockies to feel left out. Aragorn, one of my best pals and most reliable mountaineering partner, proposed a trip in the Snowmass wilderness to conquer the Maroon Bells, the two most infamously dangerous summits in Colorado.

Top of Independence Pass:

While searching for a campsite, something extraordinary happened: we were driving up Castle Creek Road just outside of Aspen when out of the woods bounded a mountain lion, crossing the road at a small bridge, hopping the guard rail and descending the bank towards a stream. We were just able to watch the lion run into the trees bordering the creek and finally disappear. Seeing an elusive mountain lion in the wild is very likely a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Unfortunately it happened too fast to snap a photo, but incredible and worth recounting nonetheless.

Our campsite:

Special campsite visitor

We set out at 3:30 am to climb the Bells, which meant seeing the moon set and the sun rise:

Approaching the summit of North Maroon:

One down, one to go. Maroon Peak is the triangular summit at the right of the panorama:

The traverse took longer and was a bit more treacherous than expected. At a distance of only .4 miles between the summits, it took us all of two hours to get from North Maroon to Maroon Peak.

Views along the way:

Aragorn rappelling between summits (Maroon Peak is in the background)

Beautiful moss

Second summit--a wise person once told me, "quand t'arrives au sommet, t'es toujours moins con que quand t'étais en bas...":

The descent is always the worst; I always say I would rather go up twice than up and back down. I would add to the above statement, "tu es même encore moins con en bas que quand t'étais au sommet!"

The most difficult mountains in CO behind us, a cold beer and tired feet dangling in the glacial lake=bliss

The next day we decided to bag Castle and Conundrum since they were right up the road...

Lots more fourteeners off in the distance

More beautiful rocks

When the pounding, knee and toe-grinding descent is replaced by sliding on your butt down a giant snowfield, it becomes necessary to revoke my earlier statement.

Aragorn pointing out the best glissading route

Four fourteeners in two days. Booya.

Vast expanses bordered by goliath mountain ranges, and no sky in the world like Colorado...

One last mountain hoorah with mom and Gary was necessarybefore heading to the foreign country of Connecticut. I was tempted not to mention how this was the Hike of Disasters with the torrential downpour, me falling off a log face first into the river and mom and Gary neglecting to bring gas for their stove, but well, there it is. It was beautiful nonetheless:

The conclusion of the summer was a beautiful continuation of those things set into motion in Europe, preparing me for epic life changes to come.

Amongst Giants

2011-08-03T21:33:00.003+02:00

It turns out I couldn't bring myself to stay away from the Alps (or Victor Nicolaï), so we met up again in Zermatt a few days after we parted ways in Luzern. We hiked far above timberline until we were just below the glaciers...

I love the little plants that still manage to live up so high

That's me, dwarfed by the monumental glacier. Photo courtesy of Victor.

The following morning, we woke up to the most beautiful surprise:

Photo courtesy of Victor

Later on that day, the sun came out and the snow melted. We hiked around, drew, painted, and eventually ascended to a high mountain hut for hot chocolate.

Watercolor courtesy of Krysten, Photo courtesy of Vic.

Rothorn Hütte

The summit on the far left is the Matterhorn

Garçon fou

We descended in the sunshine the next morning:

Switzerland and Victor Nicolaï are both agonizingly beautiful. I am going to miss them with my whole heart.

Viva la Via

2011-08-03T21:02:00.003+02:00

There is nothing I can really transfigure into letters and words about walking 160 km/100 miles through the Swiss Alps that would not somehow cheapen the experience. To attempt to tell you about the Via Alpina and its unending green velvet blanketing every surface that allows growth, its young peak-mothers birthing boulders and glacier-mothers birthing cascades that tumble and plunge down to rolling rivers, its clear blue lakes doubling the mythical beauty in their reflections...would be futile.

And because I have already exhausted my metaphors about living simply and in the moment, I will stick to the more unaffected details here, like where I slept at night and what I ate, which in and of itself makes for some interesting stories...

I was joined by my dear friends Mo, who I met in Kuwait but came from Yemen where he lives and works for the UN, and Pierre-Yves, who I met in Leysin and with whom have passed many-a-day on piste and many-an-evening at the bar.

If you are interested in the itinerary, maps can be seen here.

Day 1: Adelboden to Kandersteg
The commencement of 100 miles. I left Leysin at 5:29am after returning from Portugal the night before at 9:30pm, just enough time to do laundry, re-pack and catch two hours of sleep. I met Pierre-Yves in Frutigen, we took the bus to Adelboden where Mo had stayed the night before, and we started walking.

Pierre-Yves

Mounting to the first high pass, Bunderchrinde

Bunderchrinde, 2585 meters

Descending into the valley

We each had our own tents which we intended to sleep in for the duration of the trek. But when we stopped just outside Kandersteg for the day and began to put up the tents, the rain grew steadily and steadily stronger until the sky was outright dumping water. We abandoned ship (actually we could have used a ship at this point...) and stayed the night in an International Scout Center surrounded by hundreds of kids adorned with pins and neck scarves. As the forecast called for rain nearly every day, Pierre-Yves and Mo dumped their tents and sleeping bags at the train station in Kandersteg the following morning. I held on to mine so as not to have to be obligated to pay for hotels each night.

Day 2: Kandersteg to Blümlisalphütte

Oeschinensee, complete with beach-bathing cows

Yes, this really exists

Blümlisalphütte, 2863 meters. Highest point of the trek.

After much debate, we decided to stop early and stay in this high mountain hut. There were rumors of another storm and we had a long, steep descent that would have been dangerous in the rain, so we bundled up and bedded down.

Day 3: Blümlisalphütte to Mürren

Woke up to this; will never be the same

The descent into Griesalp was like a real-life Chutes 'n Ladders. If you look closely you can see the trail zig-zagging along the cliffs.

Eternal green...

A little pause for some farmer cheese

Sunset and moonrise (below) from our hotel room in Mürren

At the top of the col between Griesalp and Mürren, we met Victor Nicolaï, a mountain guide and photographer from Grenoble. Victor is extraordinary. He had left Grenoble 31 days before on foot to traverse six countries along the Via Alpina over five months, ending in Slovenia. He asked if he could continue with us and we enthusiastically agreed, so we planned to meet the following morning and continue together.

Day 4: Mürren to Grindelwald
It turned out that I was the only one of our original group of three who wanted to walk on this day (Pierre-Yves and Mo decided to take the train to the highest point and walk down from there), so I met Victor and off we went.

Vic Nicolaï. How cool is he? We made a stop outside Lauderbrunnen for our first bread-making experiment. I suppose that's what you can expect when you backpack with un Français...

Paraponter in the Lauderbrunnen Valley.

I had recently been in this area twice, once to meet my brother and sister-in-law and again a few weeks after with my aunt and uncle. The highest point of the day's stage was Kleine Scheidegg, from where we descended to Grindelwald (the same walk I had done with my aunt and uncle just weeks before). It was my third time on this route and no less beautiful than the previous two times. Victor and I were planning to leave Mo and Pierre-Yves to stay in a guesthouse and camp somewhere, but it started raining again and we lost our motivation. The four of us slept in warm, dry bunks and ate Rösti for dinner.

Day 5: Grindelwald to Random Ski Lift Station

Photo courtesy of Victor

We woke up to more rain. After about ten minutes of walking, it was full-on pouring. We made a collective decision to stay in Grindelwald for the day, and after a few hours hanging around the rec center it began to clear. Vic and I siezed the opportunity to make a dash for a télésiege toward the next day's col in order to avoid paying another night in the guesthouse. It poured during the entire four-hour ascent and we arrived soaked to the bone. Luckily the lift house had a loft and a roof...


Home sweet home...

The rain stopped, the sky cleared and the sun peeked out just long enough to capture a bit of the landscape

The evening consisted of more rain, card games, lots of tea and a big fat pot of rice flavored with various wild herbs and greens Victor had collected throughout the day's hike. Ever read (or seen) Into the Wild? Yeah, that's Victor, only slightly less irrational and fanatical :)

Day 6: Random Ski Lift Station to Meiringen

Grill skills

Taken with PY's iPhone. Crummy photo but such a fantastic memory...

This evening was Mo's last, so we had a barbecue under the ruins of a medieval castle tower in Meiringen. Unfortunately I'm an idiot and failed to get any photos of the tower itself. Victor and I camped out under the ruins while Mo and Pierre-Yves retreated to their guesthouse.

Day 7: Meiringen to Engstelenalp
Mo's departure signaled the end of all English speaking and the continuation of my cours de Français vivant, immersion-style.

GREEN GREEN GREEEEEEEEEEEN!!!!

Campsite raclette

I slept on top of a picnic table next to this lake. At about 4am, the fishermen began to arrive. Shortly after the cows bid us good morning (with their alpine bells and wet noses, of course), then a pack of about 10 bicycles. Needless to say it was not the most restful night of my life.

Day 8: Englestenalp to above Engelberg

The best thing (ok the only good thing) about being woken up at 4am is the sunrise to follow. Photo courtesy of Victor.

Engleberg. You better have some idea about where you want to go...

Pierre-Yves departed from Engleberg, so for the rest of the trek it was just Victor and I. That night we camped next to a river under eleven waterfalls and five glaciers. I took a bath in the river (did I mention it was beneath five glaciers?) and we continued the ongoing perfection of our campfire bread-baking.

Day 9: Above Engleberg to above Attinghausen

It was another beautiful sunrise, but another storm rolled in late-morning. We decided to continue anyhow, but mid-descent Victor slipped on the wet rocks and badly rolled his ankle. It was pouring rain and there was no shelter anywhere, so I ran (literally) down the rest of the hill to the nearest farmhouse (about an hour) and asked the family if I could leave my pack under their covered porch. They kindly acquiesced, and I ran back up the mountain to take Victor's pack. We finally made it back down to the farmhouse, soaked to the bone, and the woman kindly called her father who came with a jeep to take us to a primitive télécabine that went up to the top of a nearby mountain. He didn't speak a word of English or French so we had no idea why we were mounting in the rickety wooden gondola, but when we arrived at the top there was a more modern gondola that descended the other side into Attinghausen. Unfortunately it was unmanned and all the instructions were in German. We never did manage to figure out how it worked, so I left Victor to search for a shelter for the night (it was still pouring rain at this point). We ended up sleeping in the enclosed porch of a vacated ski lodge:

Photo courtesy of Victor

Day 10: Above Attinghausen to Spiringen via Altdorf (my original goal, marking 100 miles of trekking)

Altdorf from above

The fountain of William Tell, a famous Swiss patriot

Our experimental bread-making culminated in delicious veggie tarts, followed by apple tarts for dessert

We spent several hours in Altdorf restocking our food supply and trying to let our socks and shoes dry a bit. That afternoon, we continued walking for several more hours until it began to pour rain once again. We ended up finding shelter in a two-story wooden playhouse in a schoolyard.

Day 11: Luzern
The weather forecast for the following several days was not looking good, so we decided to change our plan and make our way to Luzern by train, the nearest big city, to find showers and a place to do laundry. We stayed in a campground just outside the city with about 4,000 other tourists--a bit of a slap in the face after days and days in the Alps, but it continued to rain and Luzern was a lovely city in which to meander. All is well that ends well...

Et voila! The Via Alpina, the Alps, the friends, the green... I could not have asked for a better finale to my time in Switzerland.

Yavanna Yoga

2011-07-29T14:12:00.001+02:00

I mentioned in an earlier post that I spent a week in Northern Portugal (quiz: remember the wind turbine?). It was the perfect recovery after 1600 km on a bike and in a setting that could be described as no less than paradise. Yoga twice a day surrounded by impeccable gardens and 300 year-old stone farmhouses with a group of extraordinary women and exquisite meals--I won't say much more but rather let Yavanna, about an hour outside of Porto, speak the volumes it will undoubtedly speak for itself.

Beautiful Anita, dear friend and hands-down best yoga instructor EVER

An afternoon at the beach

And just outside of nearby Caminha

Caminha

Town square

Many of the small villages in Northern Portugal are known for their beautiful tile-work

One of the highlights of Yavanna were the superb meals. Fresh, artful salads for lunch and all manner of delicacies for dinner...

A walk to the local church with fellow yogis (from left) Anita, Tracy, Cindy and Heather

Gorgeous Yavanna

Sian the chef and Eunice the proprietor/owner. Such lovely women.

A few of us took an evening to ride to the top of a nearby mountain where there is a long row of the aforementioned wind turbines.

Ariane from Leysin and myself

Night out at a local restaurant, with local fish caught that day.

The town of Valença

A toast to Yavanna, Anita, and all the strong, beautiful women with whom I had the honor of passing a week!

Le Tour de la Liberté

2011-07-29T06:00:00.000+02:00

This summer has been Epic (the capital <E> is on purpose). Above all I have learned the beauty of simplicity and the freedom of needing nothing more than what can be carried on the back of your bike or your body, and this awareness makes moving everything I own over the ocean even more of a slap in the face (not to mention that I am typing this from a Starbucks in the middle of Manhattan after several weeks of walking through the Swiss Alps with nothing but my backpack and good company...more on that later...).

Maybe it was necessary to take these true, unembellished physical journeys in order to prepare myself mentally and emotionally for the life transition that I am weathering as I type these very words--to solidify the significance and the beauty of really and truly living in the moment, regardless of whether I am surrounded by rows and rows of vineyards tumbling down steep banks to quaint villages, the stark white of high mountain waterfalls and glaciers interrupting endless velvet green, or the sweltering heat rising from city cement, subway grates and thousands of strangers...

My first adventure this summer was 1000 miles and three weeks on a bike, making a little buckle through Switzerland, Germany, Luxumbourg and France with my dear friend Tiffany Cooper. We began in Leysin, leaving from my front door and pedaled our way north...

Yvoire-les-Bains vieille ville

Unfortunately not my bike

Towards Colombier--long first day after 120 km

Lake Neuchâtel

Neuchâtel marché

Les prés et champs du blé parsemé avec les coquelicots...

GRUB! Everything tastes better when you're camping.

On our second night we camped in a tiny town called Altreu that was declared a stork refuge in 1995. The echoes of stork mating calls didn't exactly lull us to sleep, but it was an incredible thing to witness.


Tiffany: There are no nests up there. Why are the storks on that roof? Krysten: Because they're on a date. Tiffany: But they're not doing the mating call! Krysten: Well you don't mate on a date. You mate when you get back to the nest! Tiffany: Oh, yeah...

Old astronomical clock of Solothurn

Basel/Bâle

We stayed the third night with lovely friends Ruben and Sara Mota at their chic apartment in Basel

The Rhine would be our guide for the next week or so...

Necessary truc de gros!

Next night in Marckolsheim, Alsace, France at a lovely Chambre de Hôtes. Garden view from our kitchy room.

Mmmmm... French p'tit dej is hard to beat. As the propriétaire said, "Il faut prendre la force!"

More Alsace

Fuel

After a week of pedaling all day, every day, we took a rest day in Karlsruhe to spend the afternoon with sweet Michael Jooß, a friend I met while traveling in Tunisia last year.

Worms cathedral

A stop in Maintz

Day 9 in Bingen, finally getting into the beautiful part of the Rhine. Can't have a bike tour without battle wounds...

Nothing's going to hit her...

This part of the Rhine was peppered with old villages, castles and vineyards spilling down towards the river. So beautiful.

Obligatory German tea time :)

Koblenz was our northernmost point before turning east along the Mosel. We stayed in the youth hostel located in the ancient fortress on top of the city's highest hill. Riding there was not the most amusing activity, especially when we were forced to turn around and ride back down due to a huge garden festival, but we managed to storm the keep nonetheless...

Next night in Cochem on the Mosel. Even more beautiful than the Rhine.

Team Green

Posh, impressive dessert, eaten only to avoid walking back to the hostel in the pouring rain of course...

I realize this is not an exciting photo, but it is necessary to document that we were caught in a flash flood this day. I've never seen such rain. Seriously.

Trier, the oldest city in Germany

We cut across the Shire of Luxumbourg into ridiculously, fairy-tale beautiful Luxumbourg City.

Then headed south back into rolling hills and farmlands of Lorraine, France

Towards the end of the tour we took another rest day in Stasbourg (after riding 150 km the previous day). Its gaudy but impressive behemoth of a cathedral absolutely towers over the main square.

Barr, the first village in the lovely Route des Vins d'Alsace

Back to Leysin from Basel by train after lugging everything that was stuffed into our paniers across Geneva to the train station in giant pink trash bags...

Ah the bliss of simplicity, thinking only about the next stroke of the pedal or letting the pedal strokes propel the thinking, so to speak. Such a wonderful experience, shared with a wonderful friend in a wonderful part of the world.

Voici Ma Famille, Ma Terre, Ma Vie (Here is My Family, My Land, My Life)

2011-07-08T23:19:00.003+02:00

I suppose the title of this post says everything necessary, but lucky you, I am going to elaborate anyhow. When one leaves home and spends her days in unfamiliar lands, she learns to find home wherever she may be and slowly realizes that this feeling is just that--a feeling instead of a structure or a space, and that this feeling comes from within and at times is more a conscious decision than a feeling at all. Though her true family could never and will never be replaced, the people with whom she surrounds herself become her surrogate family, she grows comfortable with the land she daily treads (even the Arabian desert, to an extent), and all of these things fuse with and indeed become her life--familiar, comfortable, warm.

I have spent the last three weeks on a bicycle with nothing but two paniers to carry my life along the shoulder of the road (blog post and WAY too many photos coming soon...). Inevitably, under my current circumstances and nothing else to do but pedal, I was able to do lots of reflecting on my time in Europe, speculating about the life that lies ahead and personal analysis of the idea of home (when I wasn't thinking about when and what I was going to eat next...). I am slowly beginning to realize that, although my impending move from Europe is outright devastating, I will somehow gather and re-bottle the notion of home that I have allowed to spill out from inside and surround me in Switzerland across the Atlantic and pour it out again in New Haven, Connecticut.

Until that time, here is the penultimate documentation of my time en Suisse, my family (real and surrogate), my land, and my incumbent life:

Sunset view of Lac Léman from Prafandaz

Sunset view of Monthey and Les Dents du Midi from my balcony

Sunset view of lower Leysin and Le Dent de Morcles from my balcony

My brother and sister-in-law were recently in Switzerland and I was lucky enough to be able to spend a few precious hours with them in Interlaken. Sadly, I forgot my camera which explains the lousy quality of these photos taken with my phone:

Michael (sister-in-law's sister's boyfriend), Maria (sis-in-law), Luisa (sis-in-law's sister), Lee (brother). Could I confuse you more?

We visited a series of ten waterfalls inside a mountain. Only in Switzerland...

My last official night working for the Leysin American School--a farewell dinner at Les Fers in the mountains above Leysin:

A group of us took advantage of the spring evening and hiked up the hill

Drinks were on the school that night

Broccoli and Fuzzy, my surrogate brothers

Mike, brother from another mother and le meilleur prof de Français du monde

Pablo. Enough said.

Les Fers was simply not enough. A large group of us felt the need to draw out the evening at the Lynx. Much to the following morning's dismay, that still did not suffice for Laura and I, who continued la siorée at Le Leysin with my beloved garçons Français:

The interminable two-person dance party

Cédric, Romain, moi, Matthieu

A few days later (it took that long to fully recover), I met my original Swiss family, Les frères Rochats (and Isabelle!), in Lausanne:

Lovely Lac Léman

Isabelle, Stany, Gaël

Mes frères Suisses. We met originally in 2003 when Tim and I were backpacking in Europe and have seen each other each year ever since. They even came to Kuwait to visit. Now that's family.

Vous allez me manquer, mes chers

My dear, dear aunt Kooky and uncle Oscar graced me with their presence for the first few days of my summer vacation. We had a fabulous time catching up, discussing culture and the differences between Europe and North America and gallivanting around Switzerland. We spent the first day training to a high, tiny hamlet in the Alps and walking down:

Thunersee from the train on the way to Interlaken

The Lauderbrunnen valley and its abundance of waterfalls from above

Kleine Scheidegg and the north face of the Eiger shrouded in mystery above

Mmmmm...apple strudel of epic proportions....

The Eiger (which looms in the background of most of the following photos)

The town of Grindelwald is below

The next day brought us to Gruyère and the Caillers chocolate factory:

The old city walls of Gruyère (again taken with my phone, as are the next two)

Cocoa beans

Cailler Branche machine

Can I have her job?

The best part about the tour is the tasting room at the end--all the chocolate you could ever want (and then some...)

Lausanne the next day--where our family has its roots with my great-grandmother, Margueritte Reguin.

I have loved the last two years of my life here. The tragedy of saying farewell is hitting me au fond now, as my departure draws ever nearer. Today I leave Northern Portugal where I have just taken part in a week of yoga, the company of extraordinary women, and delicious, healthy food, all in a backdrop of perfect paradise (more on this later...). While I was here, I had the opportunity to do a bike ride to the summit of a nearby mountain, on top of which there is a long row of wind turbines. I stood directly under the massive blades, powerfully falling and rising one after the other in perfect rhythm, and was awestruck by the verity that these colossal machines would be completely dormant on their own--that it was a fierce, invisible force that dictated their ability to move and at what velocity, and that they would be utterly useless without this imperceptible impetus. As I stood in the wind, hypnotized under the rotating blades, I was forced to remember that I chose to let a bigger, unseen force direct me to this point in my life and that without it I would not be moving forward.

Deep Italy, Deeply

2011-07-05T12:30:00.002+02:00

Part of the life I am giving up and will miss desperately is the opportunity to take students on fall and spring cultural trips to various coveted European locations (read also: free vacation). Sometimes this can be an absolute nightmare depending on which constituent of the student body signs up for your particular trip, but his spring, three other teachers and I took 22 angelic kids to Sorrento, Italy. It was a true cultural experience touching on the people, history, geography, food, landscape, nature, agriculture, music, leisure, and color of the region. I felt privileged to have access to even just a taste of such a beautiful culture, people and part of the world, and with such a lovely, fun and engaged group of teenagers. We took a ten-hour train ride to Naples, then a bus to Sorrento where we spent five days exploring various aspects of Sorrentinian and Amalfi life.

A stopover in Naples--city with a stigma:

Sorrento is a small city with a big character.

In the courtyard of our hotel

The citrus-hued architecture of a nearby piazza

Our street--so full of character it was peeling off the walls

The heart of Sorrento and its cobblestoned roads leading down to the Mediterranean harbor

Ciao bello! Our adorable waiter on our arrival evening

On the second day we went to Pompeii, where we tolerated hours and hours of an Italian tour guide nearly as old as the ruins who spoke endlessly without really saying much of anything. Nonetheless, it was an extraordinary piece of history to behold and the kids were inhumanly patient.

Our brilliant group sitting in the Pompeiian amphitheater


My characteristic Chucks treading on various shades of ancient marble

Textures of Pompeii:

Excavations are still wholeheartedly underway

Chariot tracks in the ancient roads

Decorative frescoes in a bourgeois villa

Classically colorful Japanese tourists

Ancient artifact storage rooms

Kate from Ukraine and Tom, my sweet Swedish faculty son: young and fresh amidst the ancient

One of the lava-preserved victims of the eruption, not so young and fresh...

The sleeping giant still overshadows its city-victim. What if it were to erupt again suddenly and tourists thousands of years from now are walking around Pompeii looking at lava-preserved tourists looking at lava-preserved Pompeiians....?

Omar Youssef from Egypt, giver of magnificent hugs and one of my favorite kids ever, who I taught last year and who lived in my dorm

Yoshimi Sugiyama, Japanese fashionista, who I also taught last year and also lived in my dorm

Vibrant life among the ruins

More vibrant life among the ruins, the Savoy boys: Brian from Taiwan, Kenny from America/Kazakhstan, Joey from Canada, Michael from America/Bosnia, Ben from America, Kevin from America, Yoshi from Japan and Valentin from Switzerland. How could you not love these kids???

You wouldn't know from the photo, but these lava-soil lemons were the size of my head. Seriously.

After Pompeii, we ravenously partook in a "Slow Food" lunch at a local farm, where everything was grown, produced and cooked within the surrounding few kilometers:

Around Sorrento:

The Italians have a tradition of representing true love with padlocks. Oftentimes in areas with romantic Mediterranean views, one will see stacks bolted to cast iron railings with inscriptions of "Antonio+Isabella" or "Giuseppe+Giulia"

God lives on the Italian Riviera

Fellow chaperone Alex the history teacher gets serenaded at dinner

One of the most wonderful things about Italy is the extent to which its culture is inseparable from its food. The next day we took a cooking class:

Our chef, Camilla, and Carolyn, trip leader and theater teacher

Mamma Mia making gnocchi

And the kids following suit

The result

Definitely a hands-on experience...

Tom separating eggs

Fresh basil and gnocchi texture paddles

Tiramisu: not so pretty, but delicious

Pizzetti

The final product of our careful gnocchi-engineering

An afternoon at the beach followed our feast (you didn't catch me in a bikini that day!!)

Japanese cuties waiting for the beach bus

Classic Italy, old and new

Ben being buried

Dinner that night:

Melon and prociutto

Seafood risotto

The following day was a hike to the tip of the peninsula. Our guide was born and raised on the Amalfi Coast and spoke wisely about the flora of the area and what the local Italians are doing (and have been doing for thousands of years) to sustain their land.

I adore these tiny old Fiats and their intrinsic 1960s Italian film nostalgia

Vai! Vai!

Mediterranean flora:

The ethereal island in the background is Capri (yes this is still on planet Earth)

And fauna:

At our destination there were roman ruins, medieval towers, slightly more modern yet still dilapidated military lookouts, and a contemporary lighthouse. Layers and layers of history all in this one little spot.

Valentin looks like he should be on that boat

Fellow chaperone, ESL teacher and hands down the most dryly hilarious person on earth (who ironically nearly had me wetting my pants), Pablo

Ancient [Phoenician?] script in the sea cliffs

I freaking love these kids

The village where we began and ended the hike

Protected orchards

A sweet finish to the day with gelato-making back in Sorrento:

Lemon

And walnut

A perfect ending to a really good school year and a region that will not be soon (or ever) forgotten. Ti amo, Italia!

Le Soleil Guérit

2011-05-23T11:51:00.000+02:00

This morning I was woken up first by a resounding symphony of cowbells followed by a cacophony of trilling birds outside my window. I started to wonder what sounds will rouse me out of sleep in the upcoming two years. Engines starting on the street? Beeping delivery trucks in reverse? The footsteps of the stranger in the apartment above me? All of these things that were once normal are now foreign, replaced by the melodies of the Swiss Alps which have become my normal, my familiar.

My family keeps expressing their happiness and relief that I am "coming home", but I feel much more that I am leaving home, venturing to a strange and unknown land.

Here are a few activities and events that have become part of my life this Spring:

I started rowing on Lake Geneva with some girls from LAS

Some of the adorable students who undertook this endeavor with me

My second Tour du Lac--a relaxed weekend circumnavigating Lake Geneva with fellow teachers.

A stop in Vevey along spring flora

Maria, Tiffany and Laura

Not to toot my own bike horn, but this photo is ridiculously awesome :)

The vineyards of Lavaux, a UNESCO world heritage site

Tulips at their tail end in Morges

St. Prex

Marta en passant

A Rolle domaine, traditional lunching and wine tasting stop

Ian and Aaron in a giant wine barrel. Enough said.

Our bikes lined up and a bit out of place at Le Rosey in Rolle, the most expensive boarding school in the world.

Our hotel on the French side of the lake


Vive la France!

Since January, I have been sharing a panier of weekly local organic produce with Tiffany, which has given me the wonderful opportunity to cook more creatively and center most of my meals around a few lovely, in-season vegetables at a time:

Chicken and leek pie in a spelt crust. Rhubarb in the background, which eventually became part of a custardy tart.

Choupomme, betterave and fromage au chevre stacks. Tasty and pretty!

Last weekend I did a short but rejuvenating yoga retreat in a tiny mountain village called Les Granges. These early morning shots were covertly taken on a meditation walk...

And of course the compulsory shots from my balcony, just to brag about my view and give you a small, demarcated, merely virtual taste of what I will so desperately be missing.

I have been waiting all spring for the cows to return to the field below Savoy. I adore the steadfast melody of bells reverberating through the village.

Full moon, celebrated with Sion, Darby, Laura and lots of vin rosé...

The unsteady result of full moon and rosé

Yes this is real.

Who needs gold when you have a charming, sun-dappled alpine village at the end of the rainbow?

Remember my last post? My heart finally did explode when I looked out my door and saw this. I died instantly from beauty overload. I'm actually typing this from heaven.

No caption necessary.

While I feel an inexpressible joy and anticipation for the endeavors on which I am about to embark, I feel at the same time a profound sadness and loss to be leaving what has truly become my home.

Two Feet and a Heartbeat

2011-05-04T22:00:00.001+02:00

Recently I have had this abnormal bout of feeling completely content. Strange, right? When have I ever been content? It just seems impossible not to be when I have such magnificent friends, family, am surrounded by the most beautiful landscape imaginable and have more things to look forward to than I am able to keep track of. A friend laughed at me the other night when I told him that sometimes I feel as if my heart is going to explode for not having the capacity to handle the copious amounts of beauty I am constantly experiencing in my life (maybe it's because he thought I was melodramatic, but it was more likely because I was ungracefully trying to express this in French...), but it's true. It brings me an immobilizing, gorgeous physical pain in my chest from time to time...

Sunday, Tiffany and I went on a long hike. We were chatting about the various reasons an American may be less-than-inclined to return to her country after experiencing life abroad, specifically a life in an international boarding school in Europe, and suddenly, looking out over the drama of clouds playing out in the sky over the mountains--the matriarchs--that embraced us on every side, I had a surge of overwhelming thankfulness for the ridiculously privileged life I lead. I blinked back tears, not to resist the urge of crying for joy, but rather not to obscure the staggering view laid out before me. The same thing happened during a long run the very next day. An irrepressible swell of contentment and gratitude nearly debilitated me. It was the realization that I am living my life to the best of my ability, pursuing and realizing my dreams, experiencing and appreciating every facet, and that I am doing this all by myself, by my own will and my own capacity, just as my two feet were carrying me along the trail, one in front of the other, from point A to point B and on to a constellation of points beyond...

Voila, the aforementioned awe-inspiring hike:

More or less right out my door

With the spring comes the cows and their bells, gradually grazing their way up the mountains with the green

My village from above and les Dents du Midi behind. Words fail to communicate how much I will miss this.

Speaking of getting from one point to another by the faculty of one's legs, the Tour de Romandie, a stage race which is part of the UCI World Tour, finished its first stage in Leysin last week. It runs in the old Romandie region, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. It began in 1947 to coincide with the 50-year celebration of the Swiss Cycling Organization.

Certainly this team could spare just one little $10,000 bike...

Yes, this man is filming a giant television screen. My friend Graydon aptly coined this "telenarcissism"

Russia's Pavel Brutt, the clear leader of the stage

Ukraine's Oleksandr Kvachuk in second

The stage was filmed from above. See some nice cycling and Leysin footage here.

The peleton making its way through the village...

It was raining...

The soaking wet cyclists (and spectators) were rewarded by this

A few days later, a group of us biked to Aubonne to see a time trial stage of the Tour. It was my first 100 mile ride.

All of our bikes locked to a post--probably not even necessary in Switzerland

Cavalcade of security motorcycles

A team Radio Shack rider and his rosary

Aren't they cool? I think I may start wearing one of these helmets to work...

Taylor Phinney from Boulder, CO

This really is on planet earth, seriously

Time trial bikes are works of art

The oblong chain ring allows for more drive at the top of the pedal rotation


Cyclists warming up before the race. Radio Shack is Lance Armstrong's team.

Can you believe these bikes??? Swiiiit-swoooo! (That's an onomatopoeia for a whistle :))

This weekend I will do my own Tour de Romandie en vélo, but a bit slower than these fellows and involving significantly more food and wine than I'm guessing is even permissible for a professional cyclist. I am riding around Lac Léman (a.k.a. Lake Geneva) with a group of teachers over two days (photos certainly forthcoming!). Until then...

It's in the Air

2011-05-01T20:53:00.000+02:00

Springtime in Europe is magical, right down to this tiny American School corner of the Alps. So many things come alive and are celebrated, whether it be the mountain flora rejoicing for the sunshine, kids reveling in their transition into adulthood in their last days of high school, dozens of cultures coming together to appreciate their differences, or the gratefulness for a working body that can pedal a bicycle through the pollen-filled air. Life here is truly beautiful, wonderful, magical, and I will miss it with my whole heart.

Tiffany and I about to board the cog after our ride to Martigny--practicing for our three-week bike tour this June

Spring balcony dining with glamor girl Nicole

Green creeping up, pink pouring down

Prom!!! I love this fashion show and the fact that it takes place in a castle, but nonetheless I hope this one to be my last.

With my Swedish son, Tom

Mental note: stop taking photos next to gorgeous 18 year-olds in designer dresses

Some of my favorite Savoy boys looking clean cut & proper

Apparently all the teachers decided to go with black this year...

With my Colombian son, David

Valentina from Venezuela and Joao from Brazil, a few of the seniors I have the privilege of teaching. Valentina will win the award for outstanding art student this year. She is brilliant and will undoubtedly go on to make a difference in the world.

This is my friend Shaun Acharya, pronounced like the first part of "a cherry on top". Naturally this is what I call him, and it's appropriate--this guy is all about seizing every possible opportunity to try new things and has an insatiable appetite for life.

Alejandra from the Canary Islands--one of the coolest girls I have ever known

More indulgent spring cycling. There is something so fabulous about hopping on a bike and cruising down the road by the power of your own legs...

Tiffany next to the Rhône

Hence the "indulgent"--a long lunch break on the French side of the lake

The Alps through a field of canola flowers

HELLO SPRING!!!

I have had dreams of sitting in fields like this...

I was fortunate to be invited once again on the field trip to France, helping to chaperone 145 students but really just meandering around markets and medieval cities while I would otherwise be working.

Students congregating in Thonon-les-Bains before being released into the outdoor market

En effet, c'est ça, et c'est ce qui va me manquer avec tout le coeur...

When in France, do what the French do

Lunching in Yvoire, a lakeside medieval village

Yes, they are real

Adorable.Yale is worth leaving this, right??? Isn't it???

My favorite school event of the year: International Day. It fills me with joy to see our students' pride in their countries and cultures, and how being here has taught them to celebrate from where they come while simultaneously appreciating the cultures of others.

Mexico/México

Ghana

USA

Japan/日本国

Meat pies of Kazakhstan/Казахстан

Other various offerings of Kazakhstan

Turkey/Türkiye--the country, not the food :)

Germany/Deutschland

Spain/España

Ukraine/Україн

Mexico actually brought in a real Mariachi band this year

Packed house

Switzerland/Schweiz/Suisse/Svizzera/Svizra

Merengues with crème double, strawberries, blueberries and mint. Very Swiss. Yep, will definitely miss this.

Sweet little Mexicanos

Brazil/Brasil

Sweden/Sverige

I have tried never to take my life here for granted and overall have done a fair job. But now that my time here has a definitive ending, every tiny morsel of existence seems (and indeed is) so precious.

Springing Off

2011-04-08T12:41:00.000+02:00

With the spring comes change. This has been a reliable constant in my life. It's astonishing how quickly a multitude of questions about the immediate future can be answered. One week ago, I was hanging in the balance between two very different trajectories, both wonderful and rewarding but with entirely different destinations. One, in fact, did not have much of a destination at all but was rather just a pleasing, very safe and secure existence teaching students from all over the world in the heart of the Swiss Alps. Who could complain about such a life? The other has a very certain destination, but one that is simultaneously a point of departure that ambiguously leads to a vast delta of possibilities and involves a great deal of risk and uncertainty. Aaaaaaand which path do you suppose I chose?...

To be fair, it wasn't me who chose. When I applied for four MFA programs in December, my resolution was to let happen whatever would happen, to let the universe decide which orbit I would fall into. I would do this with the absolute consciousness that whether or not I was accepted into any of these programs, I am, at the very core of my being, an artist.

I sacrificed my original South Africa-bound spring break plans in order to attend an interview for the Painting/Printmaking MFA at Yale School of Art. It was a miracle even to have made it past the preliminary selection jury, so I decided to jump with abandon: I changed my flight and shipped my canvases across the Atlantic, following shortly thereafter into the great unknown (AKA Manhattan and New Haven, CT), where I was lucky enough for mom to join me:

The spectacular night view from our first hotel room near the UN

Yale. I haven't yet gotten used to the name on my lips or the Y-a-l-e keys under my fingertips...

The terrible weather did not deter us from a campus tour

The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library

Housed in a modern building made of luminously thin marble panels, through which the outside light radiates even on cloudy, sleety days. So beautiful...

An original Audubon

Wondering if this is where I belong for the next two years...

Louis's burger joint: The home of the first American hamburger and 100% worth the grease

Back to Manhattan after the interview. There was an Abstract Expressionism exhibit at MoMA from which I had to be dragged by the ankles at closing time.

This is quite possibly my favorite painting of all time. I love the implication of myself as a non-descript, passing moment in front of its timelessness. Thank you, Mark Rothko, for your artistic genius and mom for your unintentional photographic prowess.

Lilypad chameleon

View directly over Ground Zero's impressive progress from our second hotel--reflection pools and One World Trade Center well on their way to completion

Sun-spotted downtown

Among other New York highlights were every breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert; some quality mom time; and the opportunity to see some former students and the hospitality of their lovely family.

I can now look forward to more of the above, because out of over 600 applicants to the Painting/Printmaking MFA, I have miraculously been selected as one of the 22 accepted. So here I am, soaking up every last iota of the remainder of my time in Europe as I prepare to spring off into yet another new adventure.

Crows

2011-03-02T14:33:00.000+01:00

Crows are often associated with death because they are scavengers. They are dark and mysterious and can be pervasive at times. But what about these qualities is not beautiful in its own way and representative of the natural course of things? Everything has a life span, everything eventually goes back to the earth. Without dark there can be no light, and without mystery there is no magic in our experiences. The death of something almost always means the birth of something else.

One of the most marked experiences of my life happened while trekking in Nepal a few winters ago. We had stopped for lunch at a tiny hut on a hillside, tundra tumbling steeply down to a deep ravine carved over thousands of years by glacial runoff. Fixed to the outside of the hut was a tiny mirror. It was the first time I had seen my own reflection in over a week and it was surprising, not for any particular reason except that one forgets what they look like after a stretch of not thinking about it. Seeing myself--looking into my own eyes--made my smallness in this universe, my insignificance, my mortality all very real among the massive Himalayas. With this on my mind, I walked farther along the hillside and stood on top of a small boulder, just letting the cold wind wrap itself around me and capitulating to the vacuum of time and space.

Right then, abruptly, a flock of crows appeared out of the ravine and surrounded me, showing off their bright yellow beaks and sleek black backs from above, below, behind, straight on and exactly level with my eyes, like I was invisible as they went about their hovering in the thin mountain air. I'm not sure why this was so powerful. Perhaps it had to do with the feeling of melting into nature, fusing with the rocks and air and grass, being an inconsequential yet inseparable part of it all.

The other day at lunch I was standing in the frigid air on my balcony and without any forewarning, a massive flock of crows manifested itself in the same spirit of that which I had experienced in Nepal, but this time in Switzerland, the Alps, Leysin, my building, my apartment, my balcony. Once again, I was completely irrelevant to their affairs, just coincidentally standing in the middle of their existence. From my position I saw them intimately from every side, like they might see one another. I almost felt like I was one of them.

Each time I have had this experience, first in Nepal and then in Switzerland, it has indeed signified the death of something big. Both were/are times of confusion, of questioning my heart and whether it tells the truth, of some degree of suffering. But again, the death of one thing almost always means the birth of another. And birth means life. So I wait, learning to indeed trust my heart and where it leads the rest of me, even if it is into the dark and mysterious.

Alors On Mange!

2011-02-22T16:37:00.001+01:00

If there is ever a reason to travel, it is food. You may find this less-than-profound, the idea of going to a place just to shove stuff in your mouth, but if you have been lucky enough to experience other cultures in their many beautiful forms, you know that food is the sun of culture--all else revolves around it, is grounded by it, is warmed by it and relies on it as its source of life. We gather around food. It is in the center of our relationships, our family and social circles. It is our joy and at times our despair, our sustenance and at times our demise.

I just returned from Lyon, regarded as the gastronomical capital of France and possibly the world, depending on your taste buds. Here, appetite is not an issue. As a tourist, you eat whether you are hungry or not, and you love every minute of it. Not very French, I know... Our entire weekend was a slave to the palatable delights of this illustrious city, all activities second to that of putting fork to mouth.

Here is the weekend in images:

The Saône at night

Vieille ville, home of the famous Bouchons--tiny, tight holes-in-the-wall serving up dishes upon dishes of Lyonnais specialties

I love how you can see my paint-splattered Chuck Taylors in this shot...

Music teacher Andrea and I in front of a fountain sculpted by the same French sculptor who is responsible for the Statue of Liberty

Opera house

Chic paniers

Lovely Tiffany

Inside the courtyard of the art museum

Place Bellecour, one of the largest plazas in Europe

French delicacy Foie Gras

Difficult not to be jovial in a French bar...

The vieille ville à la Krysten:

...Aaaaaand more food, market-style...

Fabulous restaurant, Le Canut et Les Gones

Synonymous with heaven, this dessert was called déclinaisons autour du chocolat

Lyon cityscapes:

Fourvière with its basilica and Roman theater:

Les filles presques Lyonnaises...

Lovely long Lyonnais weekend. Must return when I need to put on a few kilos...

Equinox

2011-02-03T21:59:00.000+01:00

A friend had this word, equinox, tattooed on her shoulder over the weekend. She said that she loved the idea of equal amounts of light and dark in one day--that for her it represented balance. It is a beautiful word, a beautiful concept, for the earth's axis to be tilted neither toward or away from the sun but rather to be at a perfect equilibrium, even if only for a mere 48 hours of every year. That anything could truly have balance in all of these tiny, chaotic worlds of all of these tiny, insignificant people all colliding with one another to create the grand chaos of life is truly extraordinary.

Balance seems to be an impossible concept for me to wrap my head around. I don't do well with gray. When there's gray, I panic. I try desperately to sift through each tiny molecule of pigment in order to compartmentalize it into either black or white. The beautiful thing about the days of Equinox is that they gradate gracefully, almost imperceptibly between light and dark, black and white--one fading to and the other fro, without any fuss or spectacle.

The Equinoxes also symbolize transition--the inevitability of winter and its cold blackness or summer and its bright heat--these two are overpowering in the cast of seasons because their dramatic inequality between light and darkness demand our attention. They are both beautiful and challenging, but I find the in-betweens, the times when things are divinely dying or exquisitely coming back to life the most beautiful and meaningful, and the easiest within which to live, fully paying attention to the immediate beauty without anticipating the winter or summer to come.

So with the help of the Equinox, I am realizing that the most poignant periods are the in-betweens, where one finds their balance before the inevitable darkness or lightness comes plowing in in all its force. The here and now is here and now and it is beautiful. It is hard, it is painful, it is testing, it is taxing, but it is beautiful.

A few moments of light and dark and dark and light:

At Glacier 3000, where there is actually still snow

The darkness of the massifs peeking out through the clean white

I can handle THIS drama...

Night Glow at Chateau d'Oex

Worth every moment of numb digits

The ethereal jellyfish are actually paragliders trailing tails of sparks

We can always count on a warm glow in the blackness of night

The thing about the Equinox is that really, there is no gray. There is gentle pink and violet or blazing orange and red between the black and the white and the white and the black. And it is full of beauty. That I can wrap my head around.