Surrealism supplanted reality the moment I landed in Pyongyang, North Korea. In front of the airport terminal, beneath an enormous painting of Kim Il-Sung, a long line of women in traditional dress chanted “Welcome Pyongyang!” as they pumped their fists in the air. At the airport I was paired with an “escort” who wouldn’t leave my side the entire time I was in the...
Half an hour by motorcycle outside of Phnom Penh. A peaceful spot by the riverside. A place where fat lazy bees buzzed, and where crickets sawed songs in the grass. A dirt pathway wound through this scene. I followed it until I met with the overgrown pit of an exhumed grave, its sides eroded like elderly gums or the caved-in face of a hobo. There were dozens of them, choked with stagnant...
moonlight echoes through nighttime streets reverberating off walls of limburger cheese and the yellow plaster of peeling bandages over Poseidon blue. razor wounds or Time’s shaving nicks? black cats scuttle through dead-end alleys like fading dreams they dissolve into cognac fumes rain dogs howl and the light peels away as the evening train mourns its passing with a brassy...
Vagabond Dreams Outtakes are “deleted scenes” from my book. Think of them as a “Special Features” disc of outtakes and curios. This incident took place in Guatemala… Guatemala City lay far below me, shrouded in the valley’s pre-dawn silence, as I wound down the corkscrew highway from the highlands. My head hung in half-sleep, swaying with the motions of the van...
I’m 31 feet below ground at the Delta One (D-01) launch facility, standing in a reinforced concrete tube, behind a foot-thick steel blast door. A loop of Cold War tunes plays in my head: The Final Countdown, followed by 99 Red Balloons (the English version, with that sexy accent). I’m facing a grey metal control panel with several bakelite telephones and a number of switches —...
Road Wisdom represents a way of travel, a way of seeing the world. Road Wisdom is an absence of preconceived agendas, short of going deeper. Road Wisdom is the collection of lessons imparted by the all-knowing road, if only you loose your grip long enough to get out of your own way and simply follow wherever it might lead you. Road Wisdom has no time for the mundane, the 9 to 5, or the...
If you follow my News page, you’ll have heard that my latest feature article was just published in the current issue of Outpost magazine (July/August 2009). You can find it on newsstands for the next month and a half, or if you’re not in Canada or near an international magazine store you can read it right now on the Articles page of my website. It’s always nice to see a piece...
You’re alone in the middle of Algeria. Your entire library of irreplaceable and out of print topographical maps has been confiscated by the military, and they suspect you of being a spy. It’s all just a bizarre misunderstanding of course, but they’re talking about deporting you. If they do, you’ll probably never get another visa to the country. This may be your one and...
Vagabond Dreams Outtakes are “deleted scenes” from my book. Think of them as a “Special Features” disc of outtakes and curios… I had finally come to grips with my task. I pondered the question of how to turn living into something more than just existing. Time is our worst enemy. Youth seldom considers time; it seems so endless. But youth is characterized by...
A Postcard from Celeryhenge Deep in the forests of a rainy northern isle, far beyond the cities and the moss-choked walls, lies one of our most enduring mysteries: the world’s largest primitive megavegetal site. Who or what piled these stalks in such deliberate patterns, and why? Was it an observatory to track the movements of the bowels? Was it an ancient site of worship? Was it just a...