MilesAstray

a world, a pen, a camera | a glimpse of what it's like elsewhere · rawness · immersion · authenticity // all content is mine, inspired by a journey around the globe that started in May 2012

[milesastray]

follow me elsewhere, will you?

Hey Tumblers,

Thanks for all your amazing support!

I’ve decided to focus my social media presence on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and would love to welcome you among my followers there:

facebook.com/milesastray

instagram.com/milesastray

twitter.com/milesastray

I’ll retire this Tumblr account soon.

Please also join my fickle newsletter on milesastray.com for irregular updates when you least expect them! 

Thanks a lot and see you elsewhere,

Miles

[milesastray]

COMMUNAL COMMUTE | Day in, day out, day in, day out, day in, day out... Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Monday. Allies aligned in highway lanes, side by side through dawn and dusk. Calendar days and weeks and months flying by like road signs, years and decades going past, until the exit.

[milesastray]

ORCHESTRATED CHAOS | Twisting your feet and senses and grasp until you’re mad with hues and scents and dichotomies, the medina of Fes is an orchestrated chaos, underneath, if you read chaos. You shouldn’t though.

[milesastray]

GRINDED FEELINGS | The tremendousness of this world has grinded my feelings into something so sharp that I cut myself often. But I’m still digging into these feelings long after my mind begins bleeding because it’s just a stream of rose petals.

[milesastray]

WHEN WE ARE | Come graze with us on this silky autumn air, feed off its slowly cooling warmth, sinking late tonight with all the colors making out. Now that the night leaks into the valley, it flushes atomic pulp down our backbones’ marrow and waves of chills ripple through our collective arteries. And we slingshot our dreams into the firmament to never land, as we, too, never land while a flock of feelings soars deep inside our selves. We’re nimble, lean but full, a full filling of passion for passion dripping from our pores. Drowsy drifters slashing their own sails, we wake up to a dream life, the world our living room, an entire universe for a ceiling, our jest fest uninterrupted on this phantom stage. When we are, everything is.

[milesastray]

ICARUS | I’m Icarus. I can't fly at reasonable altitudes, can’t ascend by degrees. I take off and insist on a higher high. I must get my wings scorched before I can descend. And then I fall to another splattering death. And then I’m Phoenix, raising from the ashes I’ve sown, from the hubris debris.

[milesastray]

SUPERSYMMETRY | Just how far is forever?

[milesastray]

MIND-BOUND | Onwards inwards.

[milesastray]

IMPERMADANCE | Beautiful impermanence, I love you; cruel impermanence, why do you hate me?

[milesastray]

BABEL | Higher, taller, the boxes smaller – our vertical faith our horizontal fate.

[milesastray]

MANY REASONS | I’ve seen these guys fight for many silly reasons, but race was never one of them.

[milesastray]

STRUGGLE TO SURRENDER | I've given up and I've given in more times than I care to admit, but I’ve always struggled to surrender to a life where every moment is just a layover to the next and the destination but a tale.

[milesastray]

GALAXY TO ME | Brake light outside, caught in the fly screen, soaked in rain, an infrared heat-ball galaxy to me, nothing less.

[milesastray]

TURN | If I could turn back the hands of time, I wouldn't. Not that I wouldn’t change a thing, redirect a step or two. But the thought of not finding my way back to this here present…

[milesastray]

A BETWEEN | Adiós, I'm a ghost between sheets, a note between keys, a god between prayers, a clown between costumes, a skipped gene between generations, a ripple between moods, a hummingbird between flaps, a temperature between seasons, half a half-life, February 29th, a grain falling through the hourglass, always departed, never landed.

[milesastray]

SETTING MOM ON FIRE | Burn mother, one last time and then another. We won’t learn, we won’t turn, knocking on our self-made urn. And when we’re on your mantelpiece – inside the ruin we’re building a few steps down the road – will you miss us please?

CLIMATE ARSON | How fun it is to set the planet on fire, how convenient and luxurious. You can use just about anything as a match – a car, a bulb, a piece of meat. And you don’t need petrol as an accelerant; just douse the whole thing in laziness, coziness, carelessness and that’ll do. Our efforts to resist this arson are so vague, somebody should sue us in The Hague. But hey! Worry tomorrow! Nobody likes to live down the road. And we can always have another one of these cute little climate conferences where we shake hands – for now we must dance! How else are we gonna put out our burning feet?

[milesastray]

SEA IN ME | And looking down onto the Aegean floor, I saw that the sea I was in, was also the sea in me. Seasaw.