2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
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he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
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@mylifeinmegapixels
The Candle that Burns at Both Ends
It seems unbelievable, but another year has gone by. It’s 2016! And I think, after all I’ve experienced in the last two years, that I can safely say that I have no idea what this year will hold. In any case, it’s time for my yearly tradition of writing myself a letter about the past year and my hopes for the next. For the last two letters, click here and here. You’re still here. No small feat,…
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10 Things a Bookish, Modern Woman Should Never Travel Without
10 Things a Bookish, Modern Woman Should Never Travel Without
I’ve been in South America for well over a year now and I continue to be amazed by the sheer variety of life and the experiences that come with it. It seems I fall in and out of love with people and places constantly and without warning. In some ways, I’m so ready to go home and yet I also strive to hold on to each day as tightly as possible, to remind myself that I am actually, truly living a…
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A Güerita's Take on Cultural Appropriation
A Güerita’s Take on Cultural Appropriation
Cultural appropriation: the act of taking an image, tradition, or aesthetic from its cultural context and repurposing it in a way (generally as a style or decorative item) that has no ties to its original meaning within a cultural tradition. This is a term you may have heard a lot recently, especially in pop culture. Iggy Azalea is constantly under fire for being a white rapper who appropriates…
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Grasping Bills in Sweaty Fists, We March Towards Total Isolation from One Another
Grasping Bills in Sweaty Fists, We March Towards Total Isolation from One Another
A mural depicting the disparities of wealth in Bogota, Colombia The other day I went to cash a check at a bank branch in Cuenca I had never been to before. I stood awkwardly in the doorway for a few heartbeats, confused. Like any other bank, there was the security guard standing in front of the impersonal faces of ATMs, there the counter with its leashed pens for signing checks or filling in any…
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Solitude as Sustenance, or, Singing the Pain
The United States has always boasted a highly individualistic culture. Children generally move out of their parents’ home once they reach 18, people are encouraged more and more to pursue their own goals (men have enjoyed this privilege for ages–women only recently), etc. It is not at all like Ecuador where being single, for example, is regarded as anomalous or where the heteronormative…
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How to Make a Güera: an Origin Story in Prose Poetry
I come from piles and piles of books, from black tea and toast spread thickly with peanut butter, from black bean soup and tamale pie.
I come from windows thrown open and carefully cultivated gardens, from cool tile floors and rope swings, from grudgingly shared bunk beds and community pools.
I come from orange trees, both legendary and remembered, from lavender crushed between fingertips and…
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A Map of Blood and Skin: A Curated Glimpse into the Heart
The Maps That Guide Us
It is nearly impossible to travel without falling haphazardly into the world of maps. You find yourself struggling to make sense of them, to translate them to the necessary scope and scale, even in the current age of technology. A wealth of pertinent information, nevertheless a map shows only what is essentially superficial. Maps are only shades of truth, man-made markings designed to orient you…
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The Discreet Charm of Big Ugly Cities
(more…)
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Hasta La Próxima, Ecu
La Lobería, San Cristóbal, Galápagos
Parque Nacional de Cotopaxi, about an hour outside of Quito
Ingapirca: Incan ruins outside Cuenca
Parque Nacional El Cajas
Waterfalls in Baños.
Isinlivi, the tiny town I ended up in when I fucked up doing the Quilotoa Loop.
Whale watching in Puerto Lopez
Robbie in El Cajas
Volcán Tungurahua
On the Cuyabeno river in the Amazon
I had another big theme planned…
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A Submarine State of Mind
http://wp.me/p4Ia7O-2v
It may look like I’m dancing, but I’m actually practicing removing and replacing my regulator (the thing that lets you breathe) underwater.
Equalizin’.
My instructor José (alias Jimbo), who took all the photos on his GoPro, and a curious sea lion
I was recently…
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Quotidian Galápagos
Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, San Cristóbal
Mornings are quiet and slow, like a full-bodied stretch. More often than not, a fine drizzle covers the island and the early risers walk through it with confidence, knowing it to be temporary. Sea lions blanket the beaches, breaking the silence with all manner of belches and roars and deep-throated coughs. The sky is punctuated with large seabirds keeping an…
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Genocide and Slavery: Pitstops on the Road to El Dorado
Genocide and Slavery: Pitstops on the Road to El Dorado
[To reach El Dorado] they crossed swamps and lands that steamed in the sun. When they reached the banks of the river, not one of the thousands of naked Indians who were brought along to carry the guns and bread and salt remained alive. As there were no longer any slaves to hunt down and catch, they threw the dogs into vats of boiling water… (Eduardo Galeano, Memory of Fire, p. 99)
Of the…
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Walls Speak Volumes in Bogotá
Walls Speak Volumes in Bogotá
What do monochromatic walls have that graffitied walls do not? A sense of coherence, I guess, but that is not what civilization is about. Cities are made up of thousands of voices, the majority of which are never heard. The fact that Bogotá allows and even encourages the illustration of their public spaces provides a platform for the countless voices that might otherwise…
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The Benefits of Travel-Induced Fear
The Benefits of Travel-Induced Fear
What is it about life that defies all expectations? I started this trip thinking I didn’t have any expectations, but now I think it’s absolutely impossible to go into any situation without subconsciously forming an idea of what will happen. Each day that has gone by, each step I have taken, has surprised me. I can already feel my travels hardening and strengthening me, breaking the mold I had…
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Mountaintop Musings
It’s been thirteen days since my feet left American soil and I placed them firmly onto the tarmac in Cartagena, Colombia, but I swear to you, that could have been a lifetime ago. Those same feet have walked further and endured more in less than a fortnight than I ever expected they could. I’m sitting here now on the rooftop terrace of my hostel in Santa Marta, Colombia, my legs a constellation of…
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