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  • A Modern Mirror to the Sky

    by erinwrote

    We have inherited these principles of connection, as we navigate friction and unity in our homes, as we try to do right by one another, as we talk over coffee or via messages sent in nanoseconds over oceans. Our families are bound to us in a patterning rendered by the fidelity and devotion of generations in the spirit of Hipparchus of Greece, lover of...

    January 1, 2019
    Comments 6
    Learnings, Travel
  • on the ursidae

    by erinwrote

    They say the brown bear has the strength of nine men and I say, in that case, he's more like a woman. The closest ancestor to the short-nosed brown bear made his way southward from North America, freed by the formation of the isthmus of Panama during the Miocene epoch, in what I imagine was Gabriel Garcia Marquez's own deft, creative hand at spinning...

    July 15, 2018
    Comments 2
    Learnings
  • on starting over, again

    by erinwrote

    It’s 3:00 a.m. in Hargeisa, and I’m caught between a (literal) nightmare that woke me, and suhoor, the pre-dawn meal before Ramadan fasting begins, which makes it useless to go back to sleep now. So, let’s do this… I’ve long been a fan of the start-over, the blank page which holds promise, tabula rasa. I made “art” prolifically as a child, but one errant mark...

    May 31, 2018
    Comments 0
    Learnings, Somaliland
  • 2017 Lessons in humility

    by erinwrote

    The year also brought a whittling of the self, especially a recognition of my limits. Time expands beyond the moment to the far reaches of age where, if I'm lucky, I'll look back fondly on slow walks down the stairs, on the lines of schoolgirls in long, bright yellow hijabs like flocks of canaries, on the hot stacks of loxoox in the kitchen each...

    January 28, 2018
    Comments 4
    Expat Living, Learnings
  • on that life I always wanted

    by erinwrote

    Over the last five or six years, my constellation has expanded, the points of light farther flung, moving ever outward. But the weight, the gravity of the galaxy remains. There is no escaping yourself. Recent chapters of my life have seen travel like I hadn't expected, but that I embraced with the zeal of a child offered an unexpected dessert--that's for me?!--probably undeserving but...

    August 4, 2017
    Comments 145
    Expat Living, Learnings, Travel
  • on travel favorites: long hauls

    by erinwrote

    After 4 years abroad, and enough inter-continental travel to warrant a few opinions, I thought I'd put together a quick list of travel favorites for long-haul trips (8+ hours, in economy class). My first goal is to share, but my second is to hear suggestions; there are always more efficient, more pleasant, and less harried ways to reach your destination. 

    June 25, 2017
    Comments 7
    Expat Living, Link Love, Travel
  • on an upswing

    by erinwrote

    Somewhere in there I lost myself, I tipped into the darkness that comes around every now and again, pays a visit without invitation, overstays its welcome. The darkness of old would shock me into submission, steamroll me to the point of immobility. And, looking for something to blame, I'd get lost in arguments with myself about the origins of my own depression - circumstance,...

    April 8, 2017
    Comments 3
    Learnings, Somaliland
  • on a trip to Berbera

    by erinwrote

    Time passes, and there you are doing things you didn’t know were possible: harvesting tomatoes; meeting ministers; winning the trust of neighbors; chatting with cargo ship crew from New Jersey at the Berbera port; stripping down to bathing suits on a Somali beach, guarded by baby camels and soldiers with AK-47s. You made it, and the story no longer writes itself; you’ll have to put...

    May 12, 2016
    Comments 3
    Expat Living, Somaliland, Travel
  • to market, to market

    by erinwrote

    An advantage of visiting a place more than once is that you're no longer hostage to its sensations, or to its beauty. The second, third, tenth times around you might avoid being bowled over by the aromas and flavors, tingly with the aura of the landscape; you're likely have your wits about you, and that means you can make reasonable decisions about where to go, how...

    April 22, 2015
    Comments 2
    Eats & Drinks, Travel, Tunisia
  • what’s to eat #28

    by erinwrote

    Sure, this is about the sweets: the chewy, the crispy, the honey-soaked, the ones you buy from your guy, the one to whom you trust your most saccharine indulgences. But this is also an ode to them: The Sweetsmen.

    April 15, 2015
    Comments 4
    Eats & Drinks, Travel, Tunisia

THE LATEST NOTES

what’s to eat #53

Published by erinwrote

Since something like 88% of Dubai's population comes from somewhere else, well, nearly everything at the grocery store comes from somewhere else, too.

September 11, 2022
Comments 0
Dubai, Eats & Drinks

On Pepper

Published by erinwrote

I've started imagining that Pepper has many lives and many homes, that we are a silent community of caretakers, filling bowls with cat food and fresh water with an...

August 12, 2022
Comment 1
Dubai, Expat Living

What’s to Eat #52

Published by erinwrote

If you're salivating, you've got it right.

June 12, 2022
Comments 0
Dubai, Eats & Drinks

on an absence

Published by erinwrote

There are holes where there should be people, holes where there should be plans and dreams manifested, and holes where there once was hope. Yet, that bodily clarity, coupled...

October 10, 2021
Comment 1
Dubai, Learnings

Series: Eats & Drinks

Dubai, Eats & Drinks

what’s to eat #53

Since something like 88% of Dubai's population comes from somewhere else, well, nearly everything at the grocery store comes from somewhere else, too.

September 11, 2022
Comments 0

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"Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another circle can be drawn...under every deep a lower deep opens."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

LEARNINGS: Lessons from along the way

on an absence

by erinwrote

There are holes where there should be people, holes where there should be plans and dreams manifested, and holes where there once was hope. Yet, that bodily clarity, coupled with gratitude at the forces of healing, is the nearest experience I can imagine to feeling--and loving--absence.

October 10, 2021
Comment 1
Dubai, Learnings

on the give up

by erinwrote

At a juncture when we've been asked, or forced, to give up so much, I take time this year's end---out of obstinacy, or emotional fatigue, or perhaps yearning for some sense of control---to consider what I willingly choose to give up. So much has been taken already, but I'll make the list a bit longer, out of (a very mature, measured variety of) spite. At the end of 2020, I hereby give up...

December 28, 2020
Comments 0
Dubai, Learnings

Travel

July 6, 2019

on the work

January 1, 2019

A Modern Mirror to the Sky

December 20, 2017

Travel Update: Long-haul tips and comfort foods

Expat Living

August 12, 2022

On Pepper

I've started imagining that Pepper has many lives and many homes, that we are a silent community of caretakers,...

by erinwrote
Comment 1
May 26, 2019

on a sigh

Disoriented and unsure what to write, but feeling the urge anyway, I'll settle for theft: a smattering of lines...

by erinwrote
Comments 9
April 8, 2019

on an unraveling

It occurs to me in my first moment of stillness in months, over a hot cup of drip coffee...

by erinwrote
Comments 36
March 27, 2019

Caffeine Ballet

Bent of posture, upright snoring, barely living, dawn’s ballet. Cups and saucers trooping forward, toward the kettle, grande entrĂ©e....

by erinwrote
Comments 5

FEATURED IN

Global living magazine erin

The Who

Erin

Erin is erinwrote!

After six years overseas, I write from a fortunate vantage point: plenty of lessons to learn, new eats on the regular, and travel as modus operandus for living out the days. Thanks for reading! Find out more at The Why.

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