From the category archives:

traveller’s fragments

North Otago Sojourn

3 June, 2009

in in Aotearoa,traveller's fragments,we are family

When we run away, it’s usually to North Otago.

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Early winter words

23 May, 2009

in at home,commentatrix,in Aotearoa,O internet,teaching & learning,traveller's fragments

I’m working solely with weekend creativity at the moment, as my cold proves difficult to shake and I complete my workplace tasks in a slightly zombified fashion.  Or not: I came home sick on Thursday and spent most of yesterday in bed.  I dislike minor illness with a passion.  It fails in its role as memento mori, since it places one in the class of walking wounded only, but at the same time it incapacitates the body enough for the mind to get on to some really first-class worrying.  Thus my catarrh and neuroses feed each other and Arthur gets woken in the middle of the night as I run my hands along his sides to make sure, for no reason, that he’s still breathing.  From the same location, the señor orders me not to sleep on my back, so he isn’t woken by my cold-related sleep apnœa, wondering, should I wake her and tell her to breathe, or not?

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In lieu of holiday anecdotes

4 May, 2009

in the social round,traveller's fragments

My recent visit to Japan was my third.  On all of these three I have made many mental and pen-to-paper notes, with the intention of writing up everything later, and on each occasion I have felt–what?–not so much stymied as muted upon my return.  Increasingly I shy from the conventional “on this day I did this” touring narratives, and yet don’t seem to be able to come up with an alternative.

When it comes to Japan, I think that part of this is something like travellers’ superstition.  I love that place, and hope to be able to continue to return in future, perhaps even with the señor in tow.  These emotions leave me feeling in part that if I say too much about my adventures, I’ll break their spell, that I’ll be able to return to them only in print, rather than in the storehouse of memory.

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There is a slideshow and it’s [beat] so slow

27 April, 2009

in O internet,traveller's fragments

Embedded below the cut is a slideshow of my holiday photos from Tokyo, Yokohama and around the Kantō region. These images form an incomplete record of my trip, since several of my friends worked on the “best camera takes the pictures” principle, and mine was never the best. Let the achronological record begin!

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The orientalising dream of the returned traveller

21 April, 2009

in traveller's fragments

I wafted in, on the scent of the last of the cherry blossoms.

Everywhere were tiny elegances.

Even the urging toward civic-minded behaviour was done with grace, albeit an authoritarian grace.

These TwitPic images are ripped from my phone. I hope to assemble a wider composite of my adventures with a certain amount of help from from my flickry (which I’m still editing) and my friends’ lovely photos in the next few days.

ETA: looks like you can’t hotlink to TwitPics.





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