2012 Brooklyn, Portland, Oregon, United States
Cave Printing
I printed in blue yesterday, mostly lid and loofah circles, mostly below the horizon line. I am craving gold and burnt umber. Things are almost all easier once you give them a try.
Today is International Women’s Day
Only in the United States can I ever come close to forgetting this.
Ago today
A year ago today I was waking up in the Newark Airport. A year ago, this beautiful little room where I am sitting was a dusty, spidery, dank repository of a decade’s worth of living in the rest of the world.

2011 Newark Airport, New Jersey, United States
Twixt the plane and the train
Goodness, I don’t even know how long my yesterday was, but it may have been longer than the usual 24 hours. Seems like forever ago I was in Bangkok, antsy about the bus pick-up, and justifiably so. But when the bus was seriously late, I was sent in a taxi to the airport, where my luggage was even within the limits.
It was a great trip, and with a bit of luck it will continue to be. Not a tough connection at Taipei, if a bit disorganized, and an amazingly comfortable 14-hour flight here. I’ve slept on and off, here and there, and I expect I’ll continue to do that for a while, as long as it’s after I’ve made the train connection in New Haven. I know where the link to the train here at the airport is, is and roughly how long it takes to get there, and I’ll be headed that way in an hour and a half.
I managed to find all my coffee-making supplies, so when I had a pretty good idea I wouldn’t be sleeping much longer, I found an outlet, and my computer and I both got energized.
This airport is a busy place at night, though it’s nothing like Logan. It’s mostly cleaning that’s going on, and the cleaners have been very polite, working around me to the greatest extent possible. Bright lights and loud announcements about security, too, nothing like Helsinki where they dim the lights and volume, and even had big leather couches last I checked. But here in the States, all the other weary, bleary travelers I saw were slumping in chairs, looking uncomfortable. I seem often to be the only one on the floor.
Today is International Women’s Day
Here in the United States, I briefly forgot that today is International Women’s Day.

2010 Don Khon, Si Phan Don (Four Thousand Islands), Laos
On the road
Leaving this morning for Pakse, then this evening for Vientiane. I don’t have to cross the border to Thailand on 23 March just because I can, I realized. I can spend some extra days in Laos. I can tube Vang Vieng and visit Nong Khiaw, maybe even take the dramatic boat ride to Luang Prabang from there.
Language
My French friend is so right about how speaking a language – and listening to it - brings what you remember of the language back to you. Even here, where French isn’t widely spoken any longer, my conversations with her and her family bring me back to it and it back to me. I copied some expressions from their guidebook, with Lao and Cambodian translations. Oddly, the two lists are similar, but not similar enough to make this task easy. I haven’t seen a lot of this island, but I may go exploring this morning as soon as it’s light. See les ruines and the other beach and maybe un iguan!
Today is International Women’s Day
And that’s a comfort, smack dab as it is between two blindsidings on 6 March and 10 March years ago, that I am reminded of because I review my life every day.
Ago today, the opposite
What will it be like next year, I wonder, reading these words in my darling digs in Siem Reap, Cambodia?

2009 Tarnow, Poland
Weather report
We had just been talking about how cold and icky it was, and how there was no reason not to go to the mall by the train station and eat ice cream while we waited for our trains, and something unfamiliar started falling from the sky. Is this sleet? my friend from Katowice wondered out loud. A couple of the examples we inspected on my jacket had the look of ice, but many more just seemed like lumpy slush. When I got back to Tarnow hours later, snow had already begun to stick. I missed the Goldhammera bus, equivocating. I decided not to wait for the Number 9, walked home in the snow instead. I woke up briefly in the wee hours and took note of a thin outline of snow on the tree outside my window, but I fell asleep again until 5:30, which feels late these days, and saw that the snow had fallen steadily through the night. The crows arrived on schedule, but not as many of them as usual are settling. I’d be reluctant to go out there in bare feet myself. The snow is falling hard now. I can’t wait to go out in it and see the forests on the way to Debica, and then to Rzeszow if it keeps up, and it shows no sign of stopping.
Ago today
I’m thinking about how much I’d rather be living this life than the life I was living two years ago. My friend and Polish teacher always asks me what I was doing last year, and a year ago yesterday she herself appeared in these pages. I want to give the words to her exactly as I wrote them. My friend from Katowice was here in these pages, too, a year ago this weekend. She had come to visit me in Debica, and we visited Tarnow together on her way home. I loved the city right away, I remember, though I had no idea that I would get to live here.