Term: Issue 09: Borders
Explore all pages categorised under the heading Issue 09: Borders below.
All categories can be seen on the main index page.
Maps of the Mind
My studio in Osaka is in an area which has been undergoing rapid transformation. Invitations to local events or exhibitions often take the form of postcards...
A Review of Praisesong for the Widow
For Avey Johnson, the protagonist in Paule Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow, typical travel advisories are ill-equipped to outline the anguish and awakening she encounters...
The Long Journey
I was accustomed to the intense heat, but that morning it seemed to me unbearable. Perhaps because I was looking forward to completing my goal....
Elsewhere: A Reminder to Write Down Our Stories
I know I’m about to read a good travel story when it starts out with the unearthing of old, dusty journals. I know this because...
Six Saturdays of Beyblade
It was raining hard that night and the howls of stray dogs echoed across the village. What I remember from those scenes come as passing...
Searching for Bánh Mì in East Berlin
We said that we went to Dong Xuan in Berlin in search of bánh mì. But, what we were really curious about were the market...
In Guatemala
In Guatemala cannas grew wild, sloping up the twisted path to the hilltop where men slit roosters on altars. One flapped headless in a man’s...
Subtle Entanglements
October — Willapa Bay, WA: The morning I arrived at a monthlong artist residency, I read from Patricia Highsmith’s journal: What to say about Yaddo?...
Decolonising the Border
It’s hard to imagine a more evocative (or more urgent) travel theme than BORDERS. The pieces featured in this issue of Decolonising Travel all engage...
The Hidden Universe: Adventures in Biodiversity
We estimate there to be some 8.7 million species globally. For plants, we believe around 2 in 5 species are at risk of extinction –...
Painting on Printed Matter
Russell has long painted on printed matter. Here follows a selection of works—made between 2002 and 2023—that use postcards, maps, and various flight and travel...
The Boundary
I am teaching Jhumpa Lahiri’s “The Boundary” to a class of undergraduate engineering students. For many of them, English is a language they are made...
Three Steps Away
You cannot recline on that bench. A gently arching backrest would have been nice but the bench is attached to a wall. Its legs, made...
The Neapolitan Atavism
28 February 2028. In a world parallel to ours, and not much unlike it, the Centro Direzionale di Napoli is abandoned. Everyone has relocated to...
The Littoral Truth: The Granite Kingdom and Coast of Teeth
Where we live helps to frame our identity – it is not the only factor, but it is a significant influence on our language, our...
Design for Migration
Design for Migration is a platform that highlights design projects that deal with migrant issues. Here we speak with the organiser — Matteo Moretti.
A Heart of Summer
I once lived in a three-bedroom unit in an elegant condominium in Simei, in Singapore. My two flatmates were fellow Filipinos: Antonio was an engineer,...
Things that went with the water
In these images I focus on climate change, displacement, identity, women, and culture through a series of portraits made with a shallow depth of field...
Creating space for histories
Amsterdam’s Museum Van Loon, a mansion built in 1672 and previously inhabited by descendants of one of the Dutch East India Tea Company founders, was...
Mr Tashi
In June 2015, Thida Nathalie visited Ladakh, ’The Land of High Passes,’ in northern India. The first interview with Mr Tashi was accidental, spurred by...
Tribe
Longwa sits on the ridge of an east Indian hill bordering Myanmar. The path is trailed with potholes and unreliable rides. Without strong conviction, constitution...
The Box with the Sunflower Clasp
To my great sadness, I have no memory at all of my mother’s voice. By the time I was three months old, Ilse had taken...
Book Review: Ingrid Rojas Contreras's The Man Who Could Move Clouds
The Man Who Could Move Clouds: A Memoir (Doubleday 2022) by Ingrid Rojas Contreras charts new territory in its genre by allowing for profound uncertainties...
Prague Spring
“Only those who struggle for their freedom are worthy of it….”-Plaque in Bratislava commemorating the Velvet Revolution. How can the patterns go on and on?...
Great Grandmother
My Great-grandmother was the first woman in Nebraska to file for divorce—it wasn’t granted. No one will ever believe her. The wood stove hummed with...
Airspace in Wartime
Amid clouds claimed by no king, my boy sketches the sky. Below, Sweden slouches southward. To the east, artillery barks at the wind. In national...
Boundaries
The soldiers dig new boundaries around us. We crouch in our basement, clutching at candles. Our whispered prayers make the flames dance. In morning rubble,...
In Praise of Birds
I wrote a poem once, aged sixteen, all about a bird. Red kite screeching, dancing in the air. I see her again now, distant cousin,...
Letter to East Lothian
You’ve put the hills to my back. A changing skyline of colour, Purpling in summer when the heather blooms. And winding roads to nowhere. The...
Cyborgs on the Seme Border
Their ribs stood out, with prongs of bird-like feet and insular palms. We made ourselves a glass of violin so we could see what the...
Crossing the Hinterlands
Memories come to mind like excavated statues. But this in particular is peculiar to the smallest fibre, grain of sand, drop of water & landscape...
That There is Life after this Body/Border
there is __a__ black sky hovering over my polity [another] [our] & that is why i burn our hearts and count [we] [mop] our brother’s...
Primal Sound
Is metaphor for silence beyond our recollection. We are unable to translate boundaries – the pale land of distant stars we arrived from. Our bodies...
Years after Rilke's Death
What served for a young woman’s days? A life in silence? This house was built with its own vow, a wife in silence. His quiet—a...
The Man, the Kid, and the Holy Ghost
The train whistle blew. A body plopped onto the bench across from Bart just as the train lurched forward. The grizzled man cracked open his...
The Confluence
“Potverdomme!” Marty pounded his fist on the antique table, knocking books to the floor. Used to the interjection, I murmured, “What happened this time?” I...
The Bookshop (Once in Pisa)
When I read the anonymous email I knew immediately that it was you. The urgency in your voice sounded loud in my ears like Sunday...
Forgetting as an Act of Remembering
I do not have the luxury of forgetting who I am because I was not given the privilege of knowing who I was to be...
World on Fire
Looking back at this Comix now, almost a year and four months after the invasion first started, two things come to mind. First, humans are...
Night Farmers
The grand old train station, Hua Lamphong, in central Bangkok, has no cafe per se. Instead there is a food court. The food court offers...
What Did You Expect
You check out at midnight, from a palm-shaped lobby necklaced by lights. The air has a tang of diesel and sweat. You walk toward the...
Breaching the Invisible Border
The playground is a frenetic menagerie. Small, high-pitched voices pierce the air like the static of a TV channel that has signed off. Running feet...
Between Red and Green
I often walk around my neighbourhood. Each time, it’s like crossing a new frontier that has restitched the seams of my local landscape — Old...
A Blade of Grass, A Piece of Camel, A Grain of Sand
The quietest place I love in America is just about anywhere in the Nebraska Sandhills. The western horizon lingers along Highway 20 beyond Newport, as...
Osprey
Every spring, Ospreys migrate to the northeastern coast of the United States. In this essay, a chronically-ill woman living in a suburb of New York...
The Sound of Chattering Greek Ladies
Hills, sea, tzatziki, ouzo, Guinness, monasteries and woods, this lyric essay is a collage of journeys in Greece, Ireland and home town Amsterdam. Throughout this...
Cruise Line Chronicles
On the port of Haifa, in a stale boardroom, a young American with a forced smile representing the Rhapsody of the Sea, a cruise ship...
Staring Down the Language Barrier
The first language I heard was Arabic. I am sure of it although I don’t actually remember. I do know the endearments toward babies, ill...
Bloody Mary
Before I was old enough to drink, I would sometimes sneak a bite of infused celery from an abandoned cup at family parties. Eating the...
Redefining Icarus
On a stale and dusty morning, we gathered in a village in northwest Burkina Faso. At just past six o’clock, the sky was pale ochre,...
Breaking In
I’ve spoiled countless hours searching for mislaid keys, and when I have to call the front desk/security/husband for help I’m always stricken with guilt, but...
The Language of Belonging
In my first days as an expat, there was only one person in the country of Denmark, on the entire continent of Europe, who knew...
Pain & Joy, Loss & Recovery
Imagine visiting home after three years with a new perception of, and feeling for, your homeland. I’ll take you on a tour of Vietnam to...
An Acquaintance with Geumjeong Mountain
From the outside, all cities seem opposed to nature. They are, in effect, concrete and glass monstrosities that inhibit the growth of forests, supplant animal...
Zeno's Paradox on Dig Dug
I stroll through the back alleyways of Hollywood with the poet Maggie Nelson because I believe she will teach me something about how to love...
Sauntering Through The Holy Land
High above the sun pulses in the haze of an ash-grey sky. It’s a Thursday in late August 1998, nearing one o’clock in the afternoon,...
Hail Mary
When my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, the untreatable kind, she began falling asleep. At odd times. Anywhere she sat, she’d doze off without warning....
The Jokester
The nice lady serving coffee at the market detects a slight twang of an accent when I say, “Thank you.” “That’s a lovely accent, where...
Through the Gates of My Ancestral Island
Approaching the Azores from the air seems unnatural, for descending upon them in such a way, a bird’s eye view, if you will, removes the...
Sunsets in Canggu
An expat friend of mine in Canggu would always tell any visitors he had heard that the forecast said there would be a beautiful sunset...
Soldiers of the Rain
The coming of the rainy season is marked by more than just a pressurised building of heat trapped in thickening layers of humidity. This time...
The Quest of the Kelapa Muda
The perfect cure comes in green. Have a hangover? Recovering from food poisoning? Feeling disembodied? Hungry? Not hungry? Dehydrated? Tired? Sad? Order a kelapa muda—a...
Trail Lesson
I had seen them before. Twice in the past year. Both times they saw me first. Silently peering at me from the edge of the...
A Rose Hill Bench
My favourite spot to clear my mind has to be Rose Hill Cemetery. The cemetery is atop a small hill surrounded by an old familiar...
The Road from Dajabón
Carlos insisted that, in order to get to Cap-Haïtien by the afternoon, he and I had to leave at 4:30 the following morning. On the...
Per Castra Ad Astra
Early pandemic, 2020. The sun rises in Santa Fe around six in July. I wake up to seventy-degree air, which feels merciful after having spent...
Issue 9: Borders
In this issue we have work from India, Nigeria, Philippines, Israel, Netherlands, UK, USA, Brazil, South Korea, Thailand, Germany, Italy, and more. In many ways...
Flight Free Fès
During a recent flight-free trip from Berlin (Germany) to Fès (Morocco), I crossed the borders between Germany, France, Spain, the strait of Gibraltar and Morocco....