Traveller Returning.

August 15, 2018 Reading time: ~1 minute

Alexandria.  Alhaerie.  Atlantis.
Byzantium.
Ctesiphon.  Chang'an.
Damascus.
El Dorado.  Ecbatana.
Firenze.  Ferghana.
Gehenna.  Garternay.  Golconda.
Heliopolis.  Hy Bresail.  Hiigara.  Hyperborea.
Illyria.  Ilos.  Ithaca.  Irian Jaya.
Jerusalem.  Jindabyne.
Khartoum.  Khatovar.  Karakorum.
Lhasa.
Manzikert.  Marrakech.  Meridian.  Massassauga.
Narayan. Neverwinter.
Obernewtyn.
Persepolis.
Qumran.
Roma.  Riga.
Samarkand.  Sarnath.  Saqqara.
Tashkent.  Tripoli.  Timbuktu.
Urumqi.  Undrentide.
Varanasi.
Wichita.  Whampoa.
Xanadu.
Ys. Yerevan.
Zerzura.  Zion.  Ziguinchor.


May 23, 2018 Reading time: ~1 minute

The Great North Road, Philip Straub


anywhere is

March 21, 2018 Reading time: ~1 minute

The land of the summer stars… the winter garden…that way…the land of paradoxes…the city of angels…aigle… anywhere is…roma…the island of ebony….

persia…the island of the four precious walls…the willows on the water… the land of three winters…ole inigo…thoraigh… wood of dreams…the plain of the winds…

anywhere is…gaothdobhair…this way… a whispering world…orinoco… lothlorien….the palace of solitude…. the garden of the singing-ringing tree…

the land of illusion…cuyahoga… the painted ball…the crystal sea… lake disappointment….aldebaran…life… my way home…anywhere is…

—Roma Ryan, on “Anywhere Is”;
performed by Enya in The Memory of Trees (1995)
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April 19, 2015 Reading time: ~1 minute
Sometimes driven aground by the photon storms, by the swirling of the galaxies, clockwise and counterclockwise, ticking with light down the dark sea-corridors lined with our silver sails, our demon-haunted mirror sails, our hundred-league masts as fine as threads, as fine as silver needles sewing the threads of starlight, embroidering the stars on black velvet, wet with the winds of Time that goes racing by. The bone in her teeth! The spume, the flying spume of Time, cast up on these beaches where old sailors can no longer keep their bones from the restless, the unwearied universe. Where has she gone? My lady, the mate of my soul? Gone across the running tides of Aquarius, of Pisces, of Aries. Gone. Gone in her little boat, her nipples pressed against the black velvet lid, gone, sailing away forever from the star-washed shores, the dry shoals of the habitable worlds. She is her own ship, she is the figurehead of her own ship, and the captain. Bosun, Bosun, put out the launch! Sailmaker, make a sail! She has left us behind. We have left her behind. She is in the past we never knew and the future we will not see. Put out more sail, Captain, for the universe is leaving us behind…

—Hethor, in Severian’s fever dream;
The Citadel of the Autarch, chapter IV,
Gene Wolfe


A fire is burning in Bird Spirit Land,

August 13, 2013 Reading time: ~1 minute

In Bird Spirit Land lies my young love.
A storm is raging in Bird Spirit Land,
I will scatter the black carrion birds.
I will watch over the kissing clay of my young love.
I will be with him in Bird Spirit Land.

A fire is burning in Bird Spirit Land.
My bones smoulder.
I must journey there.

Lavondyss, Robert Holdstock


February 23, 2013 Reading time: ~1 minute

Rajasthan, India.
Source unattributed (via Tumblr).


September 26, 2012 Reading time: ~1 minute

Chand Baori step well, Rajasthan. Built in the 9th century.
Photographed by Joe Routon.

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September 25, 2012 Reading time: ~1 minute
…For everyone knew that all islands were worlds unto themselves, that to come to an island was to come to another world…

Tigana, chapter 8,
Guy Gavriel Kay