tales from the 'dry bridge'

memories are like hearing in colour. its strange how they take you back to places we've been as if our dreams are frozen and available to us to thaw whenever we feel that taste for something from the past. even more curious is how some memories both new and old seem to be connected albeit in very obscure ways. i woke up this morning feeling awake and alive. my eyes opened slowly and i knew it was still early. this was a good time to go for a long walk along the riverside of tbilisi before the day becomes too hot to wander. i made my way back to the dry bridge market where i had found myself a few days before. in such a strange way i realized something i've noticed a long time ago; smell can be the most potent trigger of memory. it was something in the smell of the old army shirts and rusty soviet knives that took me back to a day i had met a long long time ago in the company of the stranger who most people believe was a ghost. i remember the smell of old military thrift and soft forest leaves somehow mixing together in that hot summer day. we hid in the forest for a few days. nobody in the entire world knew we were there. i like when nobody knows where i am. i like days of silence and contemplation and wandering. these are three things that will meet together again in my future travels coming up very soon.

the ocean is like the desert in many ways. some times in samoa on bad days when i wanted to forget about the world i would put on a mask and snorkel and sit on the rocks completely submerged in the water, inches from the surface above. i'd watch the endless blue and marvel in the curiosity of how directly in front of me is an endless blue with absolutely nothing for thousands of kilometers. nothing. this is something that you feel in the desert, that endlessness of void and colour. you can hear your own thoughts muffled by your doubts and suddenly you realize why those strangers crossed your path.. and of course although your path is desert and theirs is ocean, somehow you are both the same.