Life from Canada to Latin America, one word at a time.
“So let us look for beauty and grace, for love and friendship, for that which is creative and birth-giving and soul-stretching. Let us dare to laugh at ourselves, healthy, affirmative laughter. Only when we take ourselves lightly can we take ourselves seriously, so that we are given the courage to say, “Yes! I dare disturb
I can’t stop thinking about a story Larisa told me at the end of November. I was about to leave on a work trip and the conflict in the Montes de Maria in the early 2000s was furthest thing from my mind, but I ended up carrying it with me through Central America and back.
One of my first memories from my orientation time in Bogota involved walking towards the MCC office on my first day in the city. As a coworker and I got closer, we ran into another MCCer on the street. She greeted us with a smile and remarked that it was easy to spot newcomers when
The Parkway was glorious this morning. The sun was shining and there were people everywhere. I saw a man carrying a giant bouquet of helium balloon figures, a baby with an enormous hair ribbon eating an oblea, an elderly man pushing an even older man in a wheelchair, a tiny political rally directly across from
“Dear 1037148,” wrote one admirer to a golden elm in May. “You deserve to be known by more than a number. I love you. Always and forever.” (Atlantic Magazine) Airports are my favourite. There is nothing to do but sit, think, eat hamburgers, and spray myself with expensive perfumes. Whatever is left behind is simply
A strong woman is a woman who is straining. A strong woman is a woman standing on tiptoe and lifting a barbell while trying to sing Boris Godunov. A strong woman is a woman at work cleaning out the cesspool of the ages, and while she shovels, she talks about how she doesn’t mind crying,
I celebrated my 30th birthday on Thursday night. Confession: it was not really my birthday, nor am I turning thirty. Rather, for a variety of reasons and crises, my real thirtieth birthday was not the celebration I had hoped it would be. So, we decided to redo it, and in the process, restart the decade.
“That moment, when I saw his arm sticking out from under the sheet covered in goosebumps as he slept, I felt something. And that was just the beginning.” Manuela says, as she regales me with the story of her 35 year long relationship with her husband Narciso. The lighthearted love story became serious quickly, however,
A pair of cat burglars are living in the neighbourhood of my office. When the sun goes down, the lights go out, and everyone has gone home for the day, they emerge to clamber over the roofs and into backyards, making their surefooted way across shingles, over coils of barbed wire and shards of broken
“To see life as a poem and yourself participating in a poem is what myth does for you.” Joseph Campbell One of the first things I noticed when eating out in Colombia was the small plastic packet that always accompanied fried chicken. At first, I assumed it was a wet wipe, to clean up afterwards.
Anna L. Vogt 