Tag Archives: europe

A Postcard from Lastovo

Posted on May 30, 2010 by Ryan Murdock

lastovo.jpg


Lastovo: isolated Adriatic island of jagged hills clad in holm oak and aleppo pine, where the sea laps sunbleached stones with tongue translucent blue. 


Settled by Illyrians and later controlled by Rome, over the centuries it was destroyed by Venice for harboring pirates, joined the Dubrovnik Republic, and passed through the hands of Napoleonic France, Austria, Italy, Yugoslavia, to finally become a part of independent Croatia. 


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Jostled By The Motion

Posted on May 18, 2010 by Ryan Murdock

I’m alone in my compartment as the train leaves Slovenia and enters the broad rolling fields of Hungary. The dark blue seat upholstery smells of dust, and the nautical gloss of the walls have faded to matte.

I see “Magyar” go past on a rusted sign, and I’m reminded of a stamp collecting album someone gave me as a child. It was filled with names like “GDR” and “Magyar Republic”, names I couldn’t find on a map. Names that sounded so strange. Now here it is outside my window. Did I ever imagine I would see such places? Or did I ever doubt that I wouldn’t?

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London in Images

Posted on August 27, 2009 by Ryan Murdock

 

 

 

 

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Images of London

Posted on August 27, 2009 by Ryan Murdock

We’ll get to North Korea soon, I promise. I’m in London at the moment and wanted to share something with you.

Spent some time searching for the tomb of one of my heroes. He’s buried in a marble replica of a Bedouin tent in a little cemetery in Mortlake…

 

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Sommières Daze

Posted on July 2, 2009 by Ryan Murdock

 

 
sommieres.jpg

 

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 wail
and a clack of ivory teeth on day-old bread.

the ghost of Durrell wafts through on a telltale scent of wine
possessing those he touches
pulling them into his
hedonist
booze-soaked
aphrodisiac
world
with the magic of the grape and the lure of lost inhibitions.

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Island Siren Song

Posted on May 6, 2009 by Ryan Murdock

islands1.jpgThe Landscape: Stony Adriatic islands scattered along the length of Croatia’s coast. Coarse green shrubs and olive trees whose thin leaves flash silver undersides to the breeze. Translucent blue: a breath would cloud that water of glass.

Light has a clarity there that is like no place else, and it provokes a clarity of thought. Priorities and needs slip so easily into place. You realize the hollowness of the rat race, of consumerism, of chasing anything at all. Life is distilled down, and you understand contentment:  a bottle, a gentle breeze, a pretty girl to cuddle. What need for anything else?

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A Postcard from Sarajevo

Posted on April 21, 2009 by Ryan Murdock

 

sarajevo.jpgStrong syrupy coffee in the cobbled streets of Sarajevo’s Turkish quarter. The Muslim call to prayer reverberates through narrow alleyways, the echoes compounding as it bounces back upon itself. Just around the corner is a synagogue and an Orthodox church. East meets West to the metallic tap of tinsmith’s tiny hammers.

The centre is rebuilt, but further out bullets and shell bursts have pitted the stone facades. Bombed out buildings stand hollow and abandoned. Staccato jackhammer roar as the city slowly puts itself back together.

Old men in shabby coats and dark berets sip rakija at early morning café tables, starting the day with a long slow burn.

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