28aug2025
KATHMANDU, NEPAL STREET ART: BLUE INVADER
28aug2025
Category: NEPAL
KATHMANDU, NEPAL: MAKTUB – THE RETURN TO TOKYO
I’m sitting in Kathmandu, Nepal, where I’ve spent the last three months tangled up in bureaucracy and history—organizing my work visa for Japan while watching a government fall and a revolution unfold. My original flight out with Cathay Pacific was cancelled in the upheaval, and now I’m set to board Air India instead. I’m not as confident about that, but maybe everything does happen for a reason.
It’s hard to sit still. I’m on pins and needles. Because this isn’t just another trip, it’s a return. In 2003, Tokyo was my first leap into living abroad. I landed in Ebisu, and in those sleepless nights I wandered the city lit like a dreamscape in neon, often at 4 a.m., with Jarren, a newfound lost soul. That moment in time was alive with possibility. Since then, I’ve lived in Kobe and Okinawa, and in over 40 other countries, and visited Tokyo a few times. But I haven’t lived there in 22 years.
Now I’m going back—not just to the city, but to teaching EFL again. To walk Tokyo’s streets knowing I once began there and now I’m circling back, older, sharper, carrying every country and classroom in between—it’s going to be mind-blowing.
From Kathmandu’s chaos to Tokyo’s neon, the return feels like destiny looping back on itself.
And maybe it’s simply ‘maktub,’ as Coelho wrote in The Alchemist—“it is written.” That first leap into Tokyo in 2003, the years spent in Kobe and Okinawa, and everywhere else, the detour through Kathmandu in the middle of a revolution, even a cancelled flight—each piece feels like it was always leading me back. Not chance, not coincidence, but a return that was already written into my story long before I could see the shape of it.
16sep2025
KATHMANDU, NEPAL STREET ART: GANESH
Ganesh—also called Ganesha or Ganapati—is one of the most beloved deities in Hinduism. Recognizable by his elephant head, he’s the remover of obstacles, the god of wisdom, learning, and new beginnings. That’s why people often call on him before starting journeys, projects, or important life steps. His big ears symbolize listening, his large head symbolizes wisdom, and his broken tusk represents sacrifice and resilience.
August2025
KATHMANDU, NEPAL: WHEN DEFENSE BECOMES HABIT
I’m usually big on eye contact. It’s my way of grounding myself, of connecting, of saying, I see you. But here in Kathmandu, I notice myself shrinking away from gazes. Out on the streets, it’s become a kind of survival tactic. The sellers, the rickshaw drivers, the guys hissing “marijuana, hashish?”—it’s a constant barrage, an assault of offers, calls, demands. Meeting eyes feels like opening a door I don’t want to open, so I keep my head down, my gaze skimming past faces, past the pull of eyes that might mean conversation, transaction, entanglement.
What’s strange is how the habit lingers. I slip into a café, finally safe from the streets, and realize I’m still avoiding eyes. The waiter who brings my coffee, the stranger at the next table, even the woman who smiles at me when our eyes almost meet—I catch myself looking away. I’ve carried the avoidance inside with me, even when I don’t need it anymore.
And I think about what that means. How easy it is for defense to become habit. How quickly vigilance hardens into withdrawal. I miss the intimacy of looking straight into someone’s eyes. I miss the simple exchange of presence. And yet, here, for now, I keep looking away.
24aug25
KATHMANDU, NEPAL STREET ART: HINDU DEITIES
23aug25
KATHMANDU, NEPAL: LOVE LETTER TO NEPAL
September 13, 2025
KATHMANDU, NEPAL STREET ART: PEACE & LOVE
“Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal law.”
— The Dhammapada
August 2025
KATHMANDU, NEPAL: WITHOUT EXPLANATION
Sometimes, I just need to walk Kathmandu—not as a tourist, not as a consumer. I need to walk simply to feel the city.
And yet, there’s this constant pull—a voice offering a taxi, a hand waving me into a shop, someone trying to sell me what I don’t need. I understand it. It’s survival, it’s how people make their living here. But sometimes it feels like no one sees the person who just wants to be.
I want to walk without explanation, to not have to say no, thank you a hundred times, to not feel like my presence must equal a transaction.
August 2025
KATHMANDU, NEPAL: CHANGE DOESN’T COME THROUGH SILENCE
Kathmandu, September 11, 2025
We are on our third day of lockdown here in Kathmandu. The streets are eerily quiet, yet the walls still speak. I walked past a piece of graffiti sprayed in blue letters:
“Change doesn’t come through silence.”
In three days, everything has shifted. A week ago, protests were announced — peaceful, student-led. Then came the sudden shutdown of 26 social media platforms over the weekend, a digital gag order that left us all wondering what was going on. And then, when people filled the streets on Monday, out came the tear gas, the rubber bullets, the live ammunition. Nineteen people killed, hundreds injured. I saw a new death toll of 22 today.
Now, silence has been imposed through curfew. Roads are blocked, shops shuttered, public life suspended. It is a strange kind of silence — not the peaceful kind, but the heavy kind, enforced by fear and state power. The military is checking foreigners’ IDs for safety of movement.
The graffiti is a phrase for Nepal, but also for anywhere power wants compliance. It’s a reminder that silence isn’t neutral — it protects the status quo. In Chicago, in LA, in Kathmandu — anywhere — silence is what allows those in control to continue unchallenged.
So here, in the stillness of the third day of lockdown, the message feels louder than ever. Even if the streets are emptied and the power is cut, voices are finding their way out. Because history has always shown us: silence never delivers change. People do.
11sep25
KATHMANDU, NEPAL STREET ART: 4TH INVADER…
6aug2025