1 The Hitchhiker

Maya — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 11:54:58 -0400

The Cuban Doctor

Maya — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 11:51:01 -0400

I met the Cuban Doctor on the train, the overnight train from Bangkok to the southern coastal town of Surat Thani. We had both decided to leave the city ants behind.

Taking Off

Maya — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 11:33:11 -0400

A lot of taking off is leaving what you know and who you know behind; finding new streets, new toys and new people. Sometimes the new street is a river―a treacherous portage trail under fallen trees, through muskeg, down steep banks swarming with mosquitoes, a canoe on your head. Our toys were rocks to build fire places, new ones every night, and a green tent to put up on half-even ground.

Untitled

Maya — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 11:31:49 -0400

she stumbled through a wooden chest...played hop-scotch near the band stand and spilled a top hat on her shirt sleeve...with a licorice tattoo and a home in east berlin, she's got a dozen hungry flower beds, filled up with gumboot straws, and a nickel-sheet bed sits beside a stranger’s dog...she's got three pairs of passports from places i've never heard of, she's got ropes hanging from her ceiling and a drum of rain by the windowsill, breathing...arch your back and bite yer lip, take my blood and make it stir...her hair spilled out like root beer, her eyes looked like lemonade.

Private Collection, 1917

Maya — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 11:28:28 -0400

Private Collection, 1917

Seated Woman in Violet
Stockings you stare at
me unastoundedly in
the eyes as I
survey you touching
your privates, striking
in your still-kept pose,
reposed, leaning into
layers,
Shielding your search
with outlined bundles,
of glassy gray, black-blue,
your lips pursed, awaiting
red to flower through.

You are silent,
I am the lonely one.
Your hair is autumn leaves,
I’ll leave you fall into your
story’s colour.

A Night in a Nunnery

Maya — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 11:26:58 -0400

Salil jokes that in Ladakh there are two choices for treks: the Raj-style trek, with a guide and cook and twenty peons to prepare your choice of Indian, Chinese, or Continental breakfast, or the do-it-all-yourself style with no guide and no peon. There is no budget-travel choice.We opt for the second alternative, out of necessity more than fancy.We are newcomers to trekking, and decide on what the locals call the "sham" trek. We tag along with a British man more skilled at this business than us.On the first day we get lost. A Ladakhi woman directs us across an invisible path in the mountains.

Memoirs of a Gaijin

Maya — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 11:14:29 -0400

Motofumi chuckled to himself when we asked about the girl in the kimono.

Is she a real maiko ? We had wondered as her scarlet lips curled in a demure smile, offset by the eggshell white of her perfectly made-up face. She was surrounded by a crowd of camera-wielding tourists.

Location: California

Maya — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 11:11:14 -0400

Jessie Frances

Location: California

These are a few thoughts on hitchhiking experiences that I have had.

Epic Becoming Notes

Maya — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 11:09:55 -0400

be•come
Pronunciation: bi-'k&m
Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): be•came /-'kAm/; -come; -com•ing
intransitive senses
1 a : to come into existence b : to come to be
2 : to undergo change or development
transitive senses : to suit or be suitable to
- become of : to happen to

Book I: Prelude/Invocation

Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of she with many faces: stranger to familiar eyes,
stranger to the mirror. A woman of guise,
disguised on a quest across an unknown horizon,

Untitled

Maya — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 11:08:34 -0400

Taking off, for me, means hitchhiking. And in a way it's sacred. i mean, everything is sacred, but really, there’s something special about hitching. i’ve always felt it’s a direct interaction with the universe. i’ve often screamed my needs to the open road and watched as he, she, or they would pull over to pick me up soon after. There’s magic at play in those open spaces. i’ve found it there so often.

The Crossing

Maya — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 11:05:34 -0400

The Crossing

Last December we took the ferry
from Halifax to Dartmouth
to find a store that sells rain boots.
We boarded the ferry in the late afternoon.
You told me about the ship that exploded
in the harbour in 1917, and about the girl you kissed
some weeks ago. The one in your sculpting class
who wears hand-knit sweaters.

My hands slid on the ferry rail.
You had started smoking since I’d last seen you.
You said, “The ship was carrying a thousand crates
of guncotton, napkins soaked in Benzyl acid…”
I watched you lean over the water.

Thailand Tales

Maya — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 10:54:34 -0400

Thailand Tales
By Jessica Klein

When I informed my family of my destination, my grandmother gave me a copy of a video tape put out by a group called “The Discovery Series” that she’d bought twenty years earlier when her second husband took her there on their yearly vacation. She warned me that Bangkok was the most filthy, disgusting place she’d ever been to.

What you should expect when you meet me at the airport:

Maya — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 10:51:59 -0400

What you should expect when you meet me at the airport:

My hair smells of garlic. When I cough,
lemony sumac, cinnamon, slips over my tongue, a spicy residue
clings to my stomach’s walls.
But when you kiss me hello, I am certain
you will taste fresh figs. Their seeds are caught in my gums.

There are aquamarine glints sparkling beneath my fingernails.
Last night, swimming between the distant, rocky cliffs of Rhodes
and the greened mountains of Antalya, swelling into the clouds,
my fingertips shot trails of phosphorescence through the water as I skimmed them

Skin

Maya — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 10:49:48 -0400

SKIN

Your world changes in winter. The snow rolls in from the mountains and the city pretends to sleep. This is the real city, you tell me, away from the monuments and history that draw the tourists like moths in the summer. For me, that winter was when I stopped belonging, if I ever belonged here at all.

Plunder and Pleasure

Maya — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 10:47:39 -0400

Plunder and Pleasure
By Elizabeth Anacleto

Belonging

Maya — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 10:44:25 -0400

Q: What is missing?

A: All of you.

The Beginning

Maya — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 10:41:18 -0400

Untitled

Maya — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 10:39:11 -0400

Paradise One

Maya — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 00:34:05 -0400

Untitled

Maya — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 00:15:31 -0400

Days 1-5

Maya — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 00:12:46 -0400

Mendieta was here

Maya — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 00:06:46 -0400

Untitled

Maya — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 23:59:44 -0400

Girl With Wood

Maya — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 23:54:42 -0400

Covert Camping

Maya — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 15:50:54 -0400

One thing must always be known and remembered about covert camping: just about any spot can be slept on. Some are better than others, true, but there really isn’t any reason to pay thirty dollars a night for a bed in a shitty hostel dorm. None!! So here are a few tricks to consider and things to look out for when finding a place to spend the night, without having to dish out a cent.

Happy Birthday

Maya — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 19:32:34 -0400

Interview with Stephanie Elizondo Griest

Maya — Thu, 31 May 2007 14:57:35 -0400

Stephanie Elizondo Griest has volunteered at children’s shelters in Russia, polished propaganda in China, and belly danced with rumba queens in Cuba. These and other adventures are the subject of her award-winning memoir: Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana (Villard/Random House, 2004). She spent much of 2005 traveling throughout Mexico, interviewing undocumented workers and rallying with Zapatistas, and Atria/Simon & Schuster will publish her memoir about it in the spring of 2008.

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Untitled

Maya — Thu, 31 May 2007 14:55:50 -0400

Last weekend I went to Suwon, a city about two hours from Bucheon. I don't know a great deal about the area, and I'm sure I only saw a tiny portion of it, but compared to Seoul, it's bleak, dirtier and slightly depressing. I'm glad I went and it was definitely interesting to see, but perhaps I wasn't in the best space this week and didn't find as much good as I might potentially have.

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Losing James

Maya — Thu, 31 May 2007 14:52:51 -0400

February 26th

I am sitting on the balcony of the “Radiance of the Seas,” drinking fizzy water while a warm breeze grazes my neck. I am reading Women and Madness by Phyllis Chesler.

I find myself, queer activist and artist, on a cruise.

Dad gathers us together for lunch, our first meal on the ship. He’s thrilled to have his four children with him on a cruise, his favorite way to vacation. I had voiced my concerns in September

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The Greatest of These is Walking

Maya — Thu, 31 May 2007 14:41:29 -0400

"I have found three great times for thinking: in the shower, seated on the john, and while walking. By far the greatest of these is walking." - Colin Fletcher

The idea came to me whole on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. At high noon I look into Mr. Lincoln's kind, grave eyes. "I'm going to take a walk this summer," I tell him.

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