I AM WATCHING Day of the Dead festivities in Oaxaca, Mexico. The holiday is in full swing, welcoming the souls of the dead back to the land of the living for one night a year, to celebrate, to commemorate, to honor and remember those who are gone from our sight.
I AM LEARNING about Dia de los Muertos, a lively holiday celebrated over 5 days when the dead are thought to return to visit the living. Here in Oaxaca, Mexico, the city is resplendent with traditional decorations. Special foods are prepared and eaten. Ofrendas, offerings placed on altars, are seen everywhere with photos of the departed, honoring their lives, their favorite food and drink set out to refresh them after their long journey from the underworld.
I AM ADMIRING a henna tattoo I have gotten in Goa, a vibrant, colorful seaside town on the west coast of India. I love my tattoo. It is temporary, inked on my skin with brownish red henna, a semi-permanent vegetable dye. It will last 2 weeks if I take care of it. Don’t get it wet, don’t rub it, treat it gently and enjoy it for a fortnight.
I AM FEELING like an intruder. I came to see a beautiful 400-year-old church in Moldova, somehow built with neither nails nor mortar. The church is stunning, the peaceful grounds neatly groomed. Flowers bloom everywhere. White doves flit around the roof.
I AM PHOTOGRAPHING inhabitants of a dog shelter high on a hill overlooking Dubrovnik, Croatia. The setting is stupendous. I don’t understand why this land hasn’t been appropriated for luxury condos or a beautiful hotel.
I AM DRIVING to the Cape Cross seal colony on the Skeleton Coast in Namibia. This desolate, windswept stretch of sand and driftwood is aptly named. Remains of shipwrecks litter the beach, or sway in the rough surf, too treacherous for a salvage operation, left to slowly rust and rot, waiting to be claimed by the pounding waves.
I AM HEADING to the airport in Oaxaca, Mexico with my taxi driver Oscar, a big burly man who smells of cigarettes and speaks very little English. It is 3 o’clock in the morning.
FLYING: 1. If you don’t know what PreCheck is, you shouldn’t be in the line. 2. If you don’t know how to flush it, you’re not allowed to use it. 3. If you’re not going to drink it, don’t order it. 4. Never order red drinks on an airplane. 5. Control your children.
I AM MEDITATING in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I arrived a few minutes late. The traffic was terrible and the tuk-tuk driver let me off at the wrong corner of temple Wat Suan Dok. I quickly take a seat in a plastic chair in the meditation room. I am the subject of disapproving glances from everybody there. I smile weakly.
I AM LOOKING at the skeleton of a 3’6” tall woman on display in a glass case in the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. Mary Ashberry is her name, dead in childbirth, the year 1856, long before the antibiotics that could have saved her were discovered. Her baby’s cracked, broken skull lies at her feet, a tiny piece of a tiny being.