Summer Postcards 2012
Bon Appetit et Bon Voyage
They really weren’t lying when they said that there is practically no bad food in Paris.
Biking through Change
As I prepare to return home again this weekend, I know I will find myself biking through the streets one last time, memorizing the face the city wears at this moment.
The Lone Skyscraper
“Have you seen the new Devon building?” the man beside me on the airplane questions. I notice the pride in his voice as he points out of the window and into the approaching metro.
Smoke at Three Rivers
We thought we were lost. This lonely, muddy road didn't look like the way to Hanuman Ghat, a cremation site sacred to Buddhists and Hindus in this ancient city.
Toward Land
I picture a Silk Road of plastic light-up toys stretching from Rome to the Pacific, miles and miles of dusty traders handing them off one by one.
Strange Duet
It’s just shy of seven o’clock, and the concert doesn’t start until eight, so Brandon and I take our time along the 72nd Street transverse in Central Park. We follow the same route we took all last summer to our shared office in the basement of the Frick Collection.
Cucumbers, packed in whirlpool configurations for maximum protection, sit ready to be sold in Azadpur's giant produce market.
The Major-League Market
They use a cloth to cover their hands and wiggle their fingers to negotiate prices and execute secret trades.
Goodbyes
When you're studying at a language school like the one I’m at in Bordeaux, you get used to people coming in and out of your life with the coming and going of each week.
Sobrevivientes
It was what I’d imagined a classroom of sixty- and seventy-year-olds to be like. There was the mean kid, Guillermo, sitting in a corner.
A triumphant novillero, or novice bullfighter, raises his sword at the Plaza de Toros Oriente in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Spectators wave handkerchiefs to implore the judges to grant the young man, Hector de Avila of Tenancingo, a severed bull’s ear as a trophy.
Francisco Martinez salutes the crowd as he rides out of the bullring on the shoulders of another man. Judges award a bullfighter a salida en hombros (literally “exit on shoulders”) if he performs exceptionally well.
Blood and Sand
According to legend, El Cordobés once told his sister before a crucial fight, “Tonight, either I’ll buy you a house or I’ll dress you in mourning.
Francisco Martinez of San Miguel de Allende faces a young bull, or novillo, during the tercio de muerte (“death third”) of a fight.
Rodrigo Sebastián of Mexico City makes a pass at a bull. Sebastián later received two bull’s ears as trofeos (trophies) in recognition of his valor and grace in the ring.
Homecoming
“Is this your first time going to Alaska?” asked the girl sitting next to me, beaming while she fastened her seatbelt.
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