Christina Lukeman photography
I have talented friends. This girl is going places-do her justice.
-b
Everyday I wonder what I am going home to. If there is anything to go home to? It all seems like nothing now.
7 weeks.
mid way mark
I have been gone from my Vancouver nest 3 months today, and in two days I will be halfway home. This mid way mark, has brought on so much reflection on what was, and the tornado of weeks waking up in different cities and what each of those cities brought to my soul. I am feeling so full of gratitude for each experience I have been able to digest, in each country, and in each culture. There have been moments of awe that I can’t even delve into with words, without tearing a part the simplicity of the moment into an extravagance defeating the purpose. To be in Chile, sitting with a French couple so in love, and so crazy, driving across South America in a VW bus, full filling each of their travel desires through each others lenses. To be in Buenos Aires, feeling electrocuted by the sound radiating from the drum ensemble La Bomba del Tiempo, sharing a no holds barred dance with a cultural center scattered with every nationality of travelers. To be in Mar Del Plata, Argentina, playing guitar and singing with strangers who become your best friends in 24 hours, forgetting about your nightclub plans and instead, drink in the comfort of the most simple social pleasures. To find a connection without the fluidity of language, but with the heart, in both Argentinean people, the passing of a matte cup, and beautiful surfing woman that is so lost, but helps me become even more found. The moment when you say goodbye to the girl who became one of your most treasured friends in only 3 weeks, in the streets where you met, after sitting at the cafe that you loved, and crying because you are so happy to have embraced and shared time with such a beautiful igniting, soul, but also to be separated from it. And when your final moment is her words echoing across the San Telmo cobblestone: “I’ll see you in Vancouver.” Or to be arriving in Lima, where you will be living for the next 5 months, and so riddled with goosebumps because essentially you are alone, but after one month of traveling you have learned you are never really alone, and the curiosity of what awaits is amplified by the silence of your new surroundings. The moment you find a connection to your far away family, that is now so close, and fall in love with the cousin that is now your closest friend here. To be sinking into the typhoon of lust, that is laced with all the love that you always gave, and never received, in the half way mark of a journey that started off about you, and but has become about what others have taught, shown, and given. To practice a new language everyday, and walk into a new building, filled with new education in all different ways, and find yourself tongue tied with all the new words pouring from your lips. To be humbled, by language; put it in your place. To know that just because you are proficient in one, you still must start all over in another. To know that you aren’t changed, but altered, you aren’t found, but you’re no longer lost, and you’re only half way there.
-b
ode
As I find myself,
I don’t find you.
You are now
disapated into a
swiss holed memory.
The ash that paints
the day to dusk.
Blanketing
the remorse of
airplanes and I love yous.
I take the Clementine route of
impulse.
The chosen vacancy;
I forget you.
-b
Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must take mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.” - Eat Pray Love.
Eat Pray Love
Elizabeth Gilbert
beach rambles.
Lost into the infinity
of rocks I fall.
Beneath the cracks
to breathe the remnants
of a forgotten supply.
-b
The post cards I sent from Chile are just starting to arrive in the mailboxes of my loved ones. People forget how exciting it is to receive words on a paper sent from somewhere that’s not Facebook.
I can’t wait to send more.
I am going to backtrack and put up a few of my photos from my time in San Telmo, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
All photos taken with an iPhone 4 and edited on Instagram.
-b
traveling
Today is my last full day in Canada!
Don’t forget to check out and follow my new travel blog: http://btipladytravel.tumblr.com/.
-b
A month ago I learned that no matter how often you say “it won’t happen to me,” it still will. My eyes have been heavy. I go through each motion in the day with the promise of sleep approaching as a bribe for productivity and interest. I find my fingers dialing numbers they shouldn’t. I crave the inhilation of smoke, feeling the tar wrap itself around my lungs-exhaling the pleasure of cheap release. Stress subsided with the routine flick of ash.
I hold the defense of “I’m leaving…” clutched to my chest as armor. Something so much more waiting behind a simple phrase.
To leave it all behind and return to something more. Or to leave it all behind and return to what I will have to rebuild.
❧
Lover, lifer, writer. Journalism student, and Vancouver freelancer. This is my personal blog with a lot of my own poetry and intimate entries. I am continuously inspired by successful, talented and innovative women, and I try to reflect that as much as possible. I hope you enjoy.
"Cento" Copyright © Andrew Brinker 2011.
