Puppy’s barbershop, Cuba
“Puppy’s Barbershop:You’re ugly when you arrive, but you’re handsome when you leave.” My eyes wandered from the handmade sign, past photos of a younger Puppy, along the fuchsia bicycle with a handmade… Continue reading
Category Archive: vagabond urges
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Campeche nights, snakes and ebola
August afternoons in southern Mexico are punishing, but when the sun goes down off the coast of Campeche, the air takes on an apologetic softness to reward you for surviving the broiler hours.… Continue reading
Dear fellow Oakland protesters, and others
Dear fellow protesters in Oakland, thank you for coming. I know you’re angry, so to not waste your time I’ll get to it: What is the point? Your point. Your purpose. Your goal.… Continue reading
Gifts in Granada
That last post about Tarifa came from an old journal, a paragraph not relevant enough to include in my book, but I enjoyed giving it a little life somewhere else. Another such moment… Continue reading
Alone together in Tarifa
If Spain were a big, worrisomely lumpy breast, then Tarifa would be the downward-sagging nipple, poking across the Strait of Gibraltar at my goal for the day: Morocco. But Tarifa was also the… Continue reading
Where to find, where to miss, and how to kill the divine.
The coarse wool of my djellaba was scratchier than the sand blowing against my bare legs. Maybe the other way around. One does not customarily wear shorts in the desert, but I welcomed… Continue reading
Havana night
It wasn’t the belly full of savory ropa vieja or the day spent in the sunshine glow of Cuba’s capital city. It wasn’t the colonial facades of buildings, crumbling in Caribbean splendor, nor… Continue reading
I have my answer. And my ticket.
I have my answer. March 2008 I went to Belize. My first international trip (nearly the first time I’d left California) in ten years, it touched off a wanderlust that made me… Continue reading
I don’t believe you, but I love you anyway
They tell me this is one planet. All the same one. But I’m not sure I believe them. Because I remember walking down a backstreet in San Salvador, where children stopped their… Continue reading
Why would you want to go there?
I told a Salvadoran friend of mine that I would be passing through his country, and asked what he thought I should do there. His response surprised me. “You’re going to El… Continue reading
