i’m sitting in a small mountain hut in the italian alps, just a stone’s throw across the austrian border.

the hut is called munt de sennes, and it is a rifugio – a mountain hut – for travelers through-hiking the dolomites, with hot showers and hot meals and a friendly hutkeeper who helps me hang my clothes to dry by the fire inside.

i had arrived earlier in the afternoon after a 5 hour trek from lago di braes, through rolling green hills and the gray, white-flecked dolomite rocks that gifted this mountain range its name. it is my first day on the alta via 1 trail, where i’ll be hiking fifty-some kilometers over the next few days.

in the rifugio kitchen i take a seat next to a middle-aged german lady. andrea is a physicist from a small town just outside of dresden, and over the span of two hours, three hot chocolates and a salami sandwich i listen to andrea talk about particle colliders and detectors and atoms and other things i know nothing about. when i ask her about the collider at her university, andrea’s back straightens and her stutter all but disappears. as she talks i feel as if i am truly seeing her, her true self, that had perhaps initially hidden away in the presence of this stranger from hong kong, but is now rising into the fold. 

though i barely passed physics in high school and don’t understand half of the words she is using, andrea’s passion for the subject filters through to me, a hand reaching out across the abyss. i wonder at all the things i don’t know about our universe, will never know. a world of particle colliders, of fantastic measuring machines, of bits of energy too small for the mind to comprehend.

does it really matter if i don’t fully understand? what does matter, i think, is the sharing – her passion, my curiosity. to hear the heartbeat of someone’s inner world: what a privilege. a boy from halfway across the world sits down next to a german physicist and from this encounter is born a kind of kindred love.

perhaps that is the wonder of nature, the long multi-day treks through mountains with no service and no wifi. nothing to pay attention to at the end of the day except the grass and the people around me, the hutkeeper’s husband walking by with a chicken in his hands, the german physicist telling me about how colliders can simulate the original big bang.

the presence of focus, of spending a day by myself, in nature, and then coming into the rifugio in the afternoons rejuvenated, richer, the edges of my solitude softened by a day amongst trees and lakes and mountains. ready for a beer, ready to talk and examine and discover other people’s lives. 

andrea retires to her room for a nap, and i continue sitting alone in the kitchen area as other hikers and travelers make their way into the hut for the evening. i have my journal and a book of poems with me, perhaps all i could want on a trek like this. when letters and alphabet become meaningless forms in my head, i rest my cheek in one hand and admire the mountain views painted across the windows along the rifugio walls.

small storms arrive, here and there. a spanish man maybe a few years older than me blows through the heavy wooden door, speaking in a smatter of broken german and even worse english. he is picking up a package for his friend; the hutkeeper tells him to sit down and brings him a plate of cheese while she checks the back room.

looking around the room bewilderedly as if not expecting to spend more than a few seconds inside, the man spots me and excitedly puts his pack down across from my table. he speaks spanish to me, and though yo no hablo espanol i see the friendliness radiating in his face – and when the hutkeeper arrives with the cheese he wants me to try some of it, and it is delicious. for the next 15 minutes we attempt a conversation over this cheese, spanish from one side, english on the other, about the cheese, how it’s so good, rico!, double thumbs-up – and it is fun and rewarding for us to attempt this communication.

when the hutkeeper comes back with a cardboard box in her hands i am slightly sad that the spaniard has to go. we give each other a warm hug of farewell. adios, amigo, i salute. bye, bro! he says, smiling, waving out the door with one hand and the box in the other until he almost trips on a loose flagstone. i know i will never see him again, and i wish him all the happiness in the world, and more. 

it’s dinnertime, now, the dusk fading into midnight blue, and i am still sitting at the same light-wooden table in one corner of the kitchen. i watch a beautiful austrian couple play cards at the next table over.

the two stare mischievously at one another, smiles like wildflowers by a mountain stream, and i look up as she suddenly exclaims and there he sits with his hand of cards spread out in front of him. a victorious grin on his face: cocky but gentle. she cusses in german and pinches him on the cheeks.

then i watch as they tilt their heads and look at one another the way two flowers angle towards one another under the sun. there is so much love in their eyes that i can feel it, easy and tender, pushing through my bones from five feet away. their love balloons across the room as it envelops me, around the other guests sitting at their tables, through the wooden walls of the hut, and to the cows and goats and chickens tutting away outside, under the stars.

i wonder if andrea would see the couple and think of two particles, colliding, sparks flying across the rifugio – and whether she would attempt to explain their love with physics or science. maybe she would say something about how things can become larger than the sum of their parts. or, perhaps, she would refer to the second law of thermodynamics: entropy always increases, and perhaps that is not such a bad thing after all. 

love… it blooms, i whisper softly to myself. it is blooming in the laughter of strangers, in the quiet conversations, in the rhythm of my trailworn steps through these mountains. love is alive, here, growing, unfolding, constantly. i had thought i only witnessed a moment of spring, but i think it is always here, an eternal, endless season.

love: it is always here. all i need to do is open my eyes to see it, spread my arms to receive it.

🇵🇭 life updates:

• 🌊 i’m two months into a three-month stay in the philippines, where i’ve entered full-hermit-mode to focus on writing my book + surfing.

• ✍️ i’m at 120+ pages and counting. the goal is to finish the book before i leave.

• 🧪 i recently launched , a 4-week creative residency in vietnam. come spend 4 weeks in da nang with us this winter.

👋 if you enjoyed this post,

1. leave a like. clicking the ♥ below really does help :)

2. follow my journey on instagram. this is where i post stories, vlog updates, and photography from wherever i am in the world.

3. share this piece with a friend ❤️

Share

somewhere on that tree, i know, a branch leads to these same mountains in northern peru, two hundred years into the past, when my people first arrived on the broken shores of this fiery land.

5:00am, tinco, northern peru. 
i feel the familiar catch of breath as i sit up in bed, covers gathered around my chest. even after three weeks, the altitude still works its strange effects on me.

altitude: it is a hand hidden behind your chest, grabbing your lungs in its fist when you least expect it. i can hike a long distance just fine but lose my breath when i lean down to tie my bootlaces. 

it’s still dark as we move towards the campo, a pack of wolves gathered in collective silence, each lost in our own thoughts as we rub the sleep out of our eyes. the temperature veers close to freezing at this hour, especially with the wind; every breath draws a shimmer against the darkness. beneath my windbreaker is a down jacket, hood up, my chin pressed tightly into the zip.

it’s not sunrise yet, officially. but as we walk, the slow creep of dawn begins to color the sky. a faint glow washes against the sandy beaches of brazil, climbs over the morning birdchatter of the amazon rainforest, and leaps over the towering peruvian andes before blowing a muted purple above our heads.

in that mysterious time of dawn between night and daybreak, when the stars begin to share their stories with the sun, we early risers lay witness to the whispered secrets of the universe.

i’ve never been a sunrise person, let alone a pre-sunrise person, but on mornings like this, i feel part of a nocturnal heritage that only a few can claim. like a leaf on a towering tree, a yggdrasil of sorts, i can reach my hand through the wooden grey and weave my fingers through all the twilight dawns humans have ever known. somewhere on that tree, i know, a branch leads to these same mountains in northern peru, two hundred years into the past, when my people first arrived on the broken shores of this fiery land.

time passes. the walk to the fields is only a few miles, but when you walk in darkness everything feels infinite. 

e turns around and mouths to me, look. her face glows gently with a wonder that warms my heart like a loaf of freshly baked bread. a new layer of snow had fallen over the mountains overnight, covering the peaks with a silver, translucent glow; the eponymous cordillera blanca. in the waning dark, the cordilleras loom as slumbering silhouettes, giants dreaming under the weight of a violet sky.  

eventually, the dirt beneath our feet turns to honeydewed grass and then the gushing tread of mud. stalks of maize stand tall, silently, judging us for interrupting their sleep.

today we will weed, plucking and grooming the soil to protect the crops from the suffocating hands of lesser grasses. i plant my feet into the ground and stretch backwards: my lower back, i know, is going to burn with the fire of a thousand suns tomorrow. 

two hundred years ago the first chinese laborers arrived on the shores of this distant sea, a little-known continent south of the americas, even as their brethren were sent in droves to mine the gold rush a continent above. they came from the southern provinces of guangdong and hong kong to work the fields and raise sugar and cotton from the land; almost all of them arrived as indentured laborers, locked into exploitative contracts and as mistreated as the slavor labor they were intended to replace.1 in time, these brave arrivals escaped the chains of indentured labor and began to grow roots in this mysterious land of forest, desert, mountains and sea. they learned the local language and forgot their own.

today, lima’s barrio chino (chinatown) is thriving, and chifa restaurants  – a peruvian flair of chinese food  – have spread even as far as the tiny mountain town where i’m living. i cooked for my host family the other day, and was pleasantly surprised to learn that the flavors were both novel and familiar to their mouths.

it’s a strange privilege, to follow in the footsteps of my people centuries later. they came with little other option, to trade the poverty of home for another, more hopeful kind of poverty; they came out of necessity. meanwhile, i show up with a backpack, volunteering my time and labor for a taste of the farmer’s life. there’s a bit of irony in this, isn’t there? 

in chinese philosophy, they say that time moves in cycles. i’ve always liked the phrase. there’s something comforting to the idea that we move in familiar patterns, weaving a spiraled glaze through the cosmos.

people often misunderstand the concept of cyclical time as something that is rigid, predetermined. but what they don’t realize is that something changes with every cycle. our feet may dance to a similar rhythm, but we do not walk the exact same steps. over time, these missteps and variations result in a completely different dance of their own.

i wonder how many cycles have passed in the two hundred years that lead me here today.

a stray dog’s bark perforates my thoughts: we’ve arrived at the fields. slowly, gingerly, as if unwilling to shake ourselves from this waning dream, we unhook the shovels from our backs and give ourselves to the earth.

🌄 what’s happening in my life:

• i’ve spent the last few weeks in the andean mountains of northern peru, hiking and volunteering on a local farm in exchange for food and accommodation. the farmwork is tough, but wwoofing is something i’ve always wanted to try. so many stories to tell here – excited to share more :)

• i’m an editor for write of passage this month. it’s been a beautiful (and hectic) time helping students develop their writing craft. also my first source of income since leaving my job over a year ago (woohoo).

• steadily chugging along on my book. finishing up the japan chapter and entering the 2-month indonesia saga… a lot happens here, and i’m both excited and nervous to put it all to paper.

Leave a comment

📚 what i’ve been reading:

• memoirs by pablo neruda. if you’ve ever wondered how a poet writes memoir, look no further – this is some of the most poetic prose i’ve ever read.

there was a creek far down the slope, and the sound of its waters came up to me. it was my childhood saying goodbye. i grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests. and now, on the road to freedom, i was pausing for a moment near temuco and could hear the voice of the water that had taught me to sing.

🎵 what i’ve been listening to:

adriatique has been getting me through the farm days; home is their best. allllll this time…

and of course, i’ve had some latin american songs in the mix…

thank you for reading an earlier draft of this piece.

👋 if you enjoyed this post,

1. leave a like. clicking the ♥ below really does help :)

2. follow my journey on instagram. this is where i post stories, vlog updates, and photography from wherever i am in the world.

3. share this piece with a friend ❤️

Share

dear kora,

i’m writing to you from mirissa – a tiny beach town on the southern coast of sri lanka. the days are hot – like really hot, and sticky, especially in the afternoons, when the heat hangs off your skin like honey and all you want to do is melt into a puddle and die. but no matter: you’re back in the ocean after a 4-month surf hiatus, and you’re surfing, twice a day, at sunrise and sunset, in uncrowded lineups, rain or shine. you walk home with sand between your toes. life is good.

the past few months have been full of ups and downs, eh? on days like this i think, often, of who you are now and who you were half a year ago, before the big leap into the unknown. from the outside, you wouldn’t have guessed: you look pretty much the same, except for that scar on your arm from falling down the stairs in tokyo, though one friend did recently say that you look a little bit wiser, as if life has forced you to grow up a little. and they’re right: it’s still you on the outside, but everything inside has been completely realigned. you’ve been uncovering, replacing; rearranging, transforming, rebirthing.

Subscribe now

7 months ago you questioned whether you even wanted to travel because it all felt so pointless. and you were angry at yourself for even feeling that way. you felt stupid, and shitty, and guilty, because traveling the world was supposed to be a dream come true, until it wasn’t.

6 months ago you cried for the first time in years. i still remember exactly where you were sitting at the time: on an empty staircase, above an overpass, somewhere in the japanese town of uno, tuning out to the faint wash of the ocean in the distance, waiting for the call to be over. you had, at 25, finally learned why loyalty is something people explicitly value – loyalty, something you’ve taken for granted your entire life, you poor naive bastard. when it’s finally over, you call mom on the phone, almost as a kind of gut reaction, something you haven’t done since you were just a kid in boarding school, and her voice makes you cry even more.

i can tell you now that the pain has dulled to a faint, nearly forgotten ache. but i will also tell you that the part that broke you the most – the realization that a sense of sadness will pervade every memory you had with these 2 people you spent so much time with, and the place that you spent it in – hasn’t gone away after all this time, and that i started writing this today because a song came on shuffle singing “don't you dare let our best memories bring you sorrow” and that ache flared up again. and it hurts me to tell you that this sorrow, because that really is the best way to describe it, is probably something you will feel for the rest of your life.

when you tell people that the journey has had its highs and lows, these were the lowest of lows. you will stumble more times than you care to count. sometimes you will wonder if it wasn’t a stumble but a hand that had pushed you to the ground, and you will wonder too if you had in some way invited that hand to do so, as a consequence of your ego, fragile chaos, and what an ex once called “bouts of unconscious self-centeredness”. but you’ve been learning, too, to forgive yourself, your many flaws, and moreover, that maybe you can acknowledge these flaws without also making yourself feel like crap.

i’m proud of you, by the way. for getting back up. every time. doing whatever you could to keep moving. this tenacity, this thing where you keep pushing through, that mom once said she admired most about you (you always remembered this), to move the mountains and heaven and earth. because you carried yourself to the highs, too.

5 months ago, you stepped out of a reef break in lombok, indonesia and for a few minutes you couldn’t even speak. it was the most beautiful wave you had ever surfed in your life, in perfect conditions, six feet of glass over a barreling right and a peeling left, and you surfed it at sunset, with an orange shimmer hovering above the crest of each wave. surrounded by the ocean and the mountains and distant islands, you feel as if the world is carrying you in her arms. you can’t speak because it’s impossible to put that sense of wonderment into words, that feeling of vast infinity, of awe at everything the world embodies, and the fullness of life and majesty within it.

you write five words in your journal that night: the world is so big.

4 months ago, you sat in the kitchen of a mountain hut in italy as an old couple played cards at the table next to you. the fireplace crackled by the door; the smell of potatoes and bacon drenched the air, and the couple’s laughter filled the room. suddenly you felt their love unfurl like a sail on the main mast – watching the way she smiled at him, the way he always kept one hand on top of hers – and it embraced, enveloped and covered you like a warm blanket over your own heart.

it’s a memory you will think about often. how does a scene, a moment that was not quite your own, still bring you so much joy?

3 months ago, you met someone. and when you think of her you think of soft grass, of nights spent dancing the hours away in berlin, of chickpea on toast, and of the sunlit forests on the western edge of the city. you surprise yourself because for the first time in years, you think not just This Is Good, but more importantly, This Is Worth Holding On To. i can hear you holding in a gasp already, because although you have always sworn – passionately – against distance relationships, you will, unbelievably, try long-distance to make it work.

and in less than a month, you will see her. and you will spend december, your favorite month of the year, with her, and with your sister, your family, and your cousins as you forge a new season together in the beautiful, beautiful time that is winter in hong kong.

and now, today, this morning. you step out of the waters at madiha as the rising sun glitters behind you, and you stop to watch the surf as your friends take their last waves in.

walking down the beach a hermit crab catches your eye. he’s battling a tiny sand hill, which to him must have seemed like a mountain; ever-so-cautiously, he begins a halting, adorable scurry up the grains. when you shift the weight on your feet (squatting is, after 2 weeks of surf, quite painful for you) the crab ducks back into his shell, and the momentum sends him on a floundering tumble all the way back down.

you can’t help but chuckle. sometimes, you are that hermit crab, you think. and you’re reminded of the story of sisyphos, who spent his life rolling a stone up a mountain only for it to roll back down to the bottom every time.

but then you look at the hermit crab again.

a set of spindly legs slowly emerge from the shell; two small eyes peek out furtively. brushing off the tragic fall, the amber-patterned mobile home whirs into motion once more.

and you watch as he tries again.

with love,
kora ♥

Share künstlerroaming

i haven’t written a vignette-style piece in a while, but for me these are the easiest to write; when the inspiration comes it flows. you can read my other vignette pieces here :)

I’ve been in the habit, lately, of driving out of Canggu in the evenings and into the rice paddies west of town, where the traffic is nonexistent and the sweltering Bali sun reflects off the paddy waters to my left and right. I drive for miles and miles, with no destination in mind, no real sense of where I am, weaving in and out of old farmhouses and empty fields and household temples, until the sun and her reflected counterpart kiss like lovers and become one in the earth-shattering event that is sundown. 

I never used to understand why motorcyclists wear earphones on the road. The thought of anyone in a two-wheeled vehicle zooming in between cars and lanes while plugged into a playlist always seemed incredibly foolish to me, mildly suicidal even. 

Well, that’s changed. It’s been a month in Indonesia and I can’t imagine driving anywhere on my scooter without my AirPods. I usually put on something fast-paced and intense for these rides, hip-hop or R&B, but lately on these sunset drives it’s been songs that make me feel some type of way, songs that make me feel like a pair of wings might sprout from my back at any moment and lift me into the sky, songs that make me think sentimental (corny) things about how grateful I am to be alive and how everything is going to be okay. There’s no better feeling than flying 60, 70 down an empty country road as the wind buffets your hair, pressing your shirt against your chest, raising a small dust cloud behind you, the roar of the engine muted behind a thumping beat. In these moments, I have my own Perks of Being a Wallflower tunnel moment: I feel fucking infinite. 

I’ve always loved driving at night, and I keep going even when the sunset fades into dusk. Indo feels more primal, untamed in the dark; it’s pitch black except for the rare streetlamp and the faint lights of other drivers in the distance. There’s a subtle threat beneath all this, a faint acknowledgement of the risk but I think it’s beautiful and it makes my heart beat a little faster. I think about how Bali now is unrecognizable from 10 years ago, completely different from 5, and will be unrecognizable once again in 5. Time moves slowly now, I think to myself, but it feels fast once it’s in the rearview. 

Waxing poetry aside, wearing earphones on the bike actually has a functional purpose(!): Bali traffic is intensely loud. The thrust of the throttle, the relentless honking, the clamor of tourists and vendors all around you… sometimes the din is so overwhelming I can barely hear my own thoughts. So yes, not only am I listening to music on a scooter, but I also have noise cancellation on…

Share

But the thing is, I’ve realized that the music makes me a better driver. I find myself way more relaxed, way more.. locked in. Music brings me into a flow state when I’m on the road, similar to how I feel when I’m surfing; my mind is relaxed yet alert, and everything I do – every little motion – is part of a single fluid movement that neither interrupts nor riles my sense of calm. Even as I weave between cars, pass other bikes, check my mirrors, or honk at the occasional transgressor, my mind is at ease and I’m simply flowing. Traffic implies a struggle, a fight against time and stillness and the torrential onslaught of other drivers, but in these moments traffic is not an opponent for me to beat down but more like a maze with translucent, spongelike walls that I gently pass through like water. I become a part of the traffic itself – a stitch in the fabric, a cell in the sprawling, living ecosystem that is driving in Indonesia.

The irony is that prior to this trip, I’ve had a lifelong aversion to mopeds, scooters, and motorbikes. I didn’t even like go-karting – even on a contained track, wearing a helmet, the fear of being so physically exposed to whatever might come hurtling at me (or me at it) made me deeply uncomfortable. In college, my friend drove me to class on his motorbike and I remember screaming at him to slow down every ten seconds, swearing to never do it again as I got off and wobbled into the classroom on shaky legs.

But that’s the thing about fear, isn’t it? It’s not some unconquerable impasse that can and will always stand in our way. Fear is more like a steep mountain that we can get over if we really put our mind to it. Pete, one of my best friends, used to be terrified of heights – it prevented him from passing certain steeper sections on hikes, and he’d wait until the rest of us finished the hike and came back. But Pete kept hiking, and gradually he climbed higher and higher until finally this fear of heights was whittled down from an impassable wall into a smaller, scalable rock. In less than a year, we were hiking Kauai’s Kalalau trail together, one of the top backpacking trails in the world with a terrifying “crawler’s ledge” section; he barely paused at that part. Fear had become an uncomfortable but familiar friend.

I think – I know – Bali traffic would be infinitely more terrifying if it weren’t a maze I could pass through but one that I had to navigate, shivering in fear at every corner. To pass through it I had to flow with it; to flow I first had to step out of my comfort zone and practice driving a scooter in Indonesia. Like Pete, I had to put in my reps and force myself onto the roads so I could learn to be comfortable on a two-wheeled vehicle (and, more importantly, get to the beaches I wanted to surf).

Flow dissolves fear. Flow comes with practice; practice requires nothing but time and effort. Fear, I think, boils down to a willingness to try (or the lack thereof).

But yes, the music helped, too :)

written in canggu, indonesia on june 24th, 2023.
polished and edited in berlin on august 28.

Leave a comment

After Australia, I spent a few days back home before jetting off to Portugal at the start of May.

I don’t know where I’m walking except it's towards what the guy at the kebab stand said was the “cooler” part of town. 

Lisbon, I’ve decided, is a city that demands to be seen from the ground. My feet draw a soft, pleasant patter from the cobblestone roads; the sound is layered, textured, oddly comforting. Above my head, red rooftops sprawl across the cityscape like a burgundy moss. The architecture of the city astonishes me at every turn: the multi-paletted walls, the mosaic of azulejo blues, the way the buildings frame the sky and city like a Wes Anderson still at every intersection. If you find yourself at the top of a hill, you’re in luck. Turn around and let the city spill in front of you like a just-finished carpet, unwound for the first time.

As I walk, the street fills with the motions of locals getting off from work. The clink of beer glasses, chatter of rapid-fire Portuguese, and smell of something fresh out the oven fill the air.  

Amidst all this, a small yellow sign outside a cafe catches my eye. The first word, chocolate, brings me to an abrupt pause mid-step; the second word – mousse – turns my feet 180 degrees and into the shop where a cheery-looking girl waits at the register. Chocolate fucking mousse, I think to myself. It was not on my agenda for the evening but there are certain pleasures in life I cannot deny myself.

5 minutes later I’m crammed into a corner table outside between a vanilla-looking couple and two businessmen in the middle of a passionate debate (though from their raucous laughter I assumed it was about anything but business). It’s 6:30pm – 30 minutes until sunset. Between bites of mousse (some people like eating their mousses horizontally, layer by layer; I on the other hand eat vertically like an excavator – digging down at each part of the crème fraiche until I feel my spoon tap out at the bottom of the bowl) I wonder where to catch my first golden hour in Portugal. I’d like to spend it, ideally, with a beer in hand. And maybe a little live music to ease the soul. 

One thing at a time, I remind myself. I pay for the mousse and pop over to the bodega next door. It’s a dollar fifty for the local beer – Sagres. I ask the cashier to crack it open for me as I dig into my pockets for small change. 

First rule of sunsets: go as high as you can. I chance on a sidestreet steeping upwards; just as I’m starting to sweat, the cobblestone path spills me onto a terraced park looking over the city. And voilà: a 3-piece band stands against one of the terraces, playing an acoustic set redolent of Rema and early Bob Marley. Behind their silhouettes, the setting sun slowly brings her face down to touch the Tagus River. 

I’m leaning, now, against the side of some stairs facing the band; the sun warms my face like a gentle blush. A pretty middle-aged woman sitting nearby catches my eye as she talks to her friend. I squeeze a soft smile at her in acknowledgement. 

Someone once told me you can capture the soul of a city by its sound: I disagree. I think the heart of a city lies in its smell. Sounds can be muffled, muted, misdirected, orchestrated; smells, on the other hand, cannot be hidden. Whether a smell is an aroma or stench cannot be covered up and is a simple fact of nature that reveals itself inevitably in time. 

Closing my eyes, I exhale between my lips and try to capture the city of Lisbon in one breath. I smell cigarette smoke, a sweetness like the fresh custard tarts the Portuguese are so famous for; I smell fresh grass and worn sneakers moving across cobblestoned streets. I smell a cold evening zephyr that reminds me of the California sun. But most of all, I smell an unmistakable essence of desire and intrigue, like a cool wind moving down the streets, snaking through doorways and windows, winding its way between the soft grip of interlaced hands and the folded spaces between bodies pressed against one another in alleyways all over the city. 

Lisbon, I realize suddenly, is a city of love.  

I think this realization would normally excite me but on this particular evening it just makes me sad. 

I knew without looking that I was surrounded on every side by couples; that this park was not just a sunset spot but a sunset spot for lovebirds, and for a second a rare anger swells inside me at the way couples manage to unconsciously occupy every god-damn viewpoint that has even a morsel of romantic charm (can’t they just leave some space for the rest of us?); then just as quickly this anger falls and reduces itself into something between melancholy and frustration as I think that, until 3 weeks ago, I would have been one of those couples. 

Until 3 weeks ago. Until 3 weeks ago I had someone to watch the sunset with, someone to laugh alongside at how everyone was taking the same picture, and on whose shoulders I would drape my sweater over as the the sun started to disappear and the sky glowed like embers in the gold-orange aftermath; and we had, often, caught the sunset together, on mountains and beaches and lanais across Honolulu, showing each other our favorite sunset spots that we discovered separately but now colored ours with the dye of shared experience and memory. 

I find myself sipping my beer self-consciously, as if these people actually cared that this stranger in a navy blue flannel and beat-up converses was, in fact, here alone. 

Or maybe I felt self-conscious because I had, up until that very moment, chosen to forget the second rule of sunsets: that it’s always, always better to watch it with someone else.

The sun falls behind the distant mountains as I empty the last of my bottle. I dare myself to look around again; the middle-aged woman is still there, still talking to her friend. But this time, when she catches my eye again, she gives me a smile of such pity that I wonder if I maybe look very, very sad. 

I’ve always thought that first days are exciting and bittersweet at the same time. To get to where you are now, you first had to leave something behind; an invisible string, joining past and present, follows you on your journey forward, growing longer and thinner at every step over time. But on that first day, the string is still taut and every movement tugs at you, beckoning you back towards the past. You want to turn around but you keep your eyes forward, stoically, though part of you just wants to cry.  

On this particular first day, I notice myself sitting with a little empty space to my right, as if to leave her room, out of habit, to be by my side in Lisbon, watching the sunset together like we used to.

We were still talking, at least at that point, and I decide to send her a text. First day in Lisbon, I write. Street band playing a rooftop park at sunset. 

Wish you were here.

Vignette (noun): a brief evocative description, account, or episode.

Photos taken by yours truly, in Lisbon, across a few days in May 2023.