October 2011
19 posts
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My imaginary alter ego has fun in Chiapas
A few days ago I got this charming note:
It was a pleasure to meet you in Chiapas. I wish we’d had more time to chat and hang out. I was one of those who was out into the wee hours of the mornings, every single night. It was like being 20 again :) Did you do that too?
My correspondent went on to say that she was headed for Nicaragua, and that she hoped to see me in Switzerland. Only...
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Steve Jobs goes Kerouac in India, attends Kumbh...
I’m reading the new Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson. In 1974 the future Apple founder quit his job at Atari to go look for a guru in India. Isaacson writes:
Once he got healthy enough to move, he decided that he needed to get out of Delhi. So he headed to the town of Haridwar, in western India near the source of the Ganges, which was having a festival known as the Kumbh Mela....
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From the mailbag: "He does not understand my...
From S in Phoenix:
My husband tolerates my travels but is never happy when I leave—he does not understand my wanderlust at all, and it is somewhat of an obsession. I appreciate the opportunities that my career in travel has allowed, but I always wonder how my life might have been much different had I chosen a slightly different path. Your book allowed me to vicariously live some of...
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"I'd never bought anything under the table that...
Some years ago I spent a couple of months in Cuba. This is one of my stories.
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From the mailbag: "I make it a point to visit a...
From Dennis in Chicago:
I too enjoy travel and have been to many places, and despite the fact that I’m now 41 and entrenched in a career, I make it a point to visit a new country each year, or at least have 1 travel adventure each year.
My words immediately struck me as lame. It was... →
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The things she carried: Only occasionally hot...
A few days ago an interviewer from a Hong Kong magazine asked what I brought with me when I traveled. You mean psychologically, I asked, or like actual objects? It’s an open-ended question, she said, offering me no shelter. So I said the usual stuff about bringing an open mind, a sense of adventure, blah blah blah. But then she asked me to send her a picture of stuff I brought when I...
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Global Languages, and I don't mean the spoken word
Yesterday I dropped into a yoga class in Vancouver. It was just like the classes I take all the time in New York—same moves, same music, similar words—with its own little twists, like free tea and little spray bottles to wipe down the mats. It made me think about the fact that I could step into a yoga class anywhere and feel instantly at home. My body just does those things. I...
