Category Archives: Seminar Portfolio

Burnt and burning chestnuts made their offering at the hands of overworked street vendors, the smoke from their fires sliding away in to the city’s skyline. Christmas markets sung their weary hymns deep into the night with clarity but little … Continue reading →

They slapped and pinched and tried to pull me in with words thick like horse’s tethers.  I kept close to shadowed walls, tried to fade my six feet of Aryan skin into the concrete facades. I studied the lines of … Continue reading →

The first night you kissed me, we lay in the road near my house and looked at the stars and I tried to show you which ones were which. You couldn’t tell the difference between the Big and Little Dippers, … Continue reading →

duende: a relatively untranslatable Spanish word, roughly meaning- the mysterious power that a work of art has to deeply move a person. I felt it in Picasso’s Guernica, their faces ruptured in sadness, hearts broken in the suddenness of loss. … Continue reading →

The guestbook said that the Dane had been there for 42 days; under the space for hometown he had written I forget.  I watched him drink whiskey and count the seconds between lightning and thunder as if to understand how … Continue reading →

She sits just outside the supermercado on my block, shaking a small box made of salvaged cardboard, peering from beneath a faded headscarf, asking for your spare Euros, asking for someone to bother to look back into her eyes. They … Continue reading →

I am squinting eyes open my tiny bedroom, my legs stretching beyond the end of a bed that is only mine for a few months; my feet cold in their freedom. My muscles are still spun tight with last night’s … Continue reading →

She keeps watch on us, her temporary children: a tiny Bolivian who misses her twice-as-old boyfriend, a whip smart Italian who cannot get dreams of romance out of her head, and an American struggling to wake up before 1pm every … Continue reading →

The last time I saw you I was tanned and hardened by the Spanish sun, knee deep in stories of new adventures and a life well lived, in a world apart. I could have told you what the sun looks … Continue reading →

I tried to help make dinner in a country that uses the metric system and with an oven that’s been on fire two or three times. In a hurry to impress, I slipped the knife and it flayed my thumb … Continue reading →