-
-
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
Tags
Alexandria antigua asia book review burma central america china croatia darien DMZ DPRK DPRK travel Egypt embera europe guatemala japan Kim Il-Sung Kim Jong-Il Laos Mongolia music nicaragua North Korea North Korea travel on the road panama panama city Paul Theroux postcard Pyongyang review road trip road wisdom Ryan Murdock south dakota the church tom sheppard trains travel travel philosophy travel stories travel writing vagabond vagabond dreamsArchives
Categories
- Africa
- Asia
- Caribbean
- Central America
- Classic Cocktails
- Europe
- Great travel writers
- Imaginary Places
- Japan
- Middle East
- North America
- North Korea
- On Travel Writing
- Postcards from the Edge
- Reader Questions
- Reviews
- South Pacific
- Travel philosophy
- Travel stories
- Uncategorized
- Update
- Vagabond Dreams Outtakes
- Video Blogs
Tag Archives: postcard
A Postcard from Lastovo
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.
Posted in Europe, Postcards from the Edge
Tagged croatia, europe, lastovo, postcard, road wisdom, Ryan Murdock, vagabond
2 Comments
Days Between Mirages
Certain skies have the power to sharpen eyesight.
It is the map maker who actually creates the world, and in a landscape devoid of features, cartography turns inward.
Far below the walls of Dier Mar Moussa, the sands stretched out like a hazy veil beyond the perpetual present; beyond even remembering.
Such a landscape brought to mind the Temptations of St. Anthony. Exiled voices. Delirious days baked mad by the cruelty of the sun. Crisp nights of solitude beneath a coffee stain moon. I wanted to know that landscape shaken by storm, its vast spaces rent by lightning and wind–beset by an utterly theological sky.
Posted in Middle East, Postcards from the Edge
Tagged deir mar moussa, desert fathers, middle east, postcard, road wisdom, Ryan Murdock, syria, vagabond
5 Comments
Venus Set Me Free
Islands are places where different destinies can meet in the fullness of isolation, and in their own time. Island time doesn’t match the time of other places. The ideal island is a whole world, and even a tiny island may contain multitudes.
Posted in Central America, Postcards from the Edge
Tagged central america, corn island, islands, nicaragua, postcard, road wisdom, Ryan Murdock, travel, travel writing, vagabond
Leave a comment
Sommières Daze
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.
Posted in Europe, Postcards from the Edge
Tagged europe, france, lawrence durrell, postcard, road wisdom, Ryan Murdock, travel, vagabond
Leave a comment
A Postcard from Armageddon
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–but only one of them matters.
I’ve got my hand on the key. And I have to admit, I’m tempted.
Posted in Postcards from the Edge
Tagged missile silo, postcard, road wisdom, Ryan Murdock, south dakota, travel, travel writing, vagabond
1 Comment
A Postcard from Alexandria
To me, a library has always been a sacred place. I went there as a child in search of silence and reflection, just as others seek the dim solace of a church. I went there to find answers to my questions, just as others might seek a priest in times of distress. Sometimes I went there simply for the atmosphere–the smell of the books, the soft tread of shoes on worn green carpet, the weight of the silence. The smell of old books takes me back there with the same immediacy that the smell of incense and candle wax has for the Catholic.
Posted in Africa, Postcards from the Edge
Tagged Africa, Alexandria, Egypt, library, postcard, road wisdom, Ryan Murdock, travel, vagabond
1 Comment
A Postcard from the Taklamakan (2)
Desert travel blurs all time sense. I don’t know if it’s the hypnotic motion of the camel or the endless monotony of the scenery. The mind works on two levels simultaneously. The automatic level is watching the route, choosing a path, adjusting for balance. The other level is flowing along rivers of memory, through labyrinths of thought, reliving past events and acting out future possibilities.
Posted in Asia, Postcards from the Edge
Tagged asia, china, postcard, Ryan Murdock, taklamakan desert, travel, travel writing, vagabond
Leave a comment
A Postcard from the Shan Highlands
A thin mist broke over pale green rice fields in a wet hill-wrapped bowl in the Shan Highlands of northern Burma. An ox chewed its cud. Smoke rose from bamboo huts on the fringes, and longyi-clad men swung slow-motion sickles in garden plots. From over the next hill came the plaintive cry of the train from Mandalay, winding laboriously from village to village, overloaded with produce, creaking under the weight of the country’s isolation for lack of spare parts.
As we squelched along the muddy track I turned to my companion, a Shan man in his late thirties. His arms were tattooed with symbols in the Burmese script.
Posted in Asia, Postcards from the Edge
Tagged asia, burma, postcard, Ryan Murdock, shan, shan highlands, travel, travel stories, vagabond
Leave a comment
A Postcard from The Spanish Main
The trade wind blows moist on the Caribbean side of Panama, stirring the palms of the tiny coastal fishing village of Portobelo, but it isn’t enough to put more than a ripple on the plate glass sea.
Posted in Central America, Postcards from the Edge
Tagged central america, panama, portobelo, postcard, road wisdom, Ryan Murdock, spanish main, travel, travel writing
1 Comment
Two Postcards from Laos
Laos is a jungle country of rural villages with wooden stilt houses and smoky cooking fires. Karst hills obstruct the journey, jutting up like horribly broken teeth, unbrushed and moss-covered. Distances are not great, but winding roads make journeys into marathons. The highway between Vientiane and Luang Prabang is like a footpath that–over time and purely by default–became a highway. Modernization goes no further than the edges of the pavement.