Thimphu, Bhutan 🇧🇹
24apr25
THIMPHU, BHUTAN STREETART: FREEDOM MID-AIR
Thimphu, Bhutan 🇧🇹
24apr25
Tag: Bhutan
Thimphu, Bhutan 🇧🇹
24apr25
THIMPHU, BHUTAN: STILLNESS
Caught this quiet moment in Thimphu—one man, one dog, and the kind of stillness that says more than words ever could.
“The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven, not man’s.” —Mark Twain
19april2025
THIMPHU, BHUTAN: FLOORBOARDS AND FIRST DREAMS
I must have been eight, maybe nine. That in-between age where the world still feels enormous but begins to take shape in small, sudden ways. My mom took me along on a visit to a friend’s apartment in Hanover, Pennsylvania. She was a college professor, though I didn’t really know what that meant yet. I just remember that her apartment didn’t look like anyone else’s. It was cluttered and colorful and filled with books. A kind of beautiful mess. The air smelled like coffee and incense, and every surface—tables, shelves, even some parts of the floor—was stacked with papers, journals, and mysterious little artifacts from what I assumed were faraway places.
I sat on the floor while they chatted. I remember that clearly—me cross-legged on floorboards, my eyes tracing the edges of a pile of paper next to me. They were student assignments, I realized, marked with red pen. Pages filled with sentences and crossed-out words, suggestions in the margins, underlined passages. It felt like a treasure map, like I’d found something important. Something private and full of potential. I don’t remember the conversation the adults were having. What I remember was the feeling in my chest: This is what I want to do when I grow up.
I wanted to be around writing. I wanted to live in a world where stories were taken seriously, where words mattered, where people shared ideas and someone—like this professor in the bohemian apartment—helped shape them. It was the first time I saw that such a life was possible. That you could have a home filled with books, that you could spend your days reading and helping others find their voices. I didn’t know how or when or even where—but I knew I wanted in.
Now, years later, I’m living that dream. Not in Pennsylvania, but in Bhutan, on a quiet hillside campus overlooking Thimphu. I teach writing to students who are just beginning to find their footing in prose, in argument, in voice. And yes—my weekends are often spent with a cup of coffee and a stack of essays, just like the ones I saw that day in Hanover. Figurative red pen in hand. (Sometimes it’s purple, sometimes green.) Words in progress. Lives opening up on the page.
It’s not always easy. There are deadlines and distractions. But then there are moments—small, bright ones—when a sentence lands with surprising grace. When a student writes something that startles me. I remember that girl on the floor, eyes wide, sensing something sacred in the work.
Thank you, universe. For the long, winding road. For the papers to mark. For the life I once only imagined.
Thimphu, Bhutan, April 2025
THIMPHU, BHUTAN: I COULD FALL IN LOVE WITH “ANYWHERE”
There’s something about a city before it wakes up—the hush in the air, the slow yawn of the streets. I’ve always found my deepest connection with places in these quiet, early morning hours. The roads still carrying the previous night’s heartbeat, the pigeons beginning their rituals, a lone wheelbarrow patiently waiting, ready to carry what’s necessary for the day.
Cities have a way of revealing themselves in these moments. No pretense, no noise—just the bare bones of who they are, and who I am in them. I walk these streets like I’ve known them forever, and in some ways, I have. The cracked tiles, the faded shopfronts, the brush of chill against my face—they speak a language that doesn’t need translation. I have been trying to explain this to people. The flashbacks of intimate relations with Brussels, Tallinn, New York City, Tokyo, Frankfurt, Dublin, Beirut, Lahore, fortunately the list goes on…At times I’m closer to cities than I am to people.
In these still hours, I feel most alive. I’m not just passing through the city—I’m a part of it. And it, somehow, becomes part of me. These walks don’t just ground me—they nourish my soul. They remind me that belonging isn’t always loud or crowded. Sometimes, it’s just the sound of your own footsteps echoing through an empty street.
Currently in Thimphu, Bhutan, but I could fall in love with “anywhere.”
April 2025
THIMPHU, BHUTAN 🇧🇹: DANCE REHEARSAL
April 2025
THIMPHU, BHUTAN 🇧🇹: MANI SEEDS from THE DALAI LAMA
The seeds that the Dalai Lama gives out are called “Mani Seeds,” which are technically from the Zanthoxylum armatum tree, also known as Toothache Tree or Winged Prickly Ash. These seeds are sacred in Tibetan Buddhism and are used for making prayer beads (mala) as well as for planting.
How to Imbibe Mani Seeds:
1. Spiritual Practice: Many people carry or wear the seeds as a reminder of compassion and mindfulness, similar to a prayer mala.
2. Planting: Some recipients plant the seeds as a symbolic act of cultivating inner peace and kindness.
3. Meditation: Holding or rubbing the seeds during meditation can serve as a grounding practice.
Why People Suck on Mani Seeds:
1. Symbolic Connection: The act of keeping the seeds in the mouth represents imbibing compassion, wisdom, and the blessings of the Dalai Lama.
2. Health Benefits: In Tibetan medicine, Zanthoxylum armatum is thought to aid digestion, freshen breath, and have antimicrobial properties.
3. Mindfulness Practice: Sucking on the seeds can be a meditative act, reminding practitioners to stay present and cultivate inner peace.
2april25
THIMPHU, BHUTAN: MEDITATE AND WRITE
When I first decided to move to Bhutan for at least a year, I made a deal with myself, that I would finally focus on my writing more. I knew there wasn’t going to be much street art, like what I had been documenting extensively for over a decade. And I knew I was going to be teaching writing, and I knew in general, life was going to move slower here. “Meditate and write,” I told myself.
And so I feel like I’m here, but not here. Present, but slipping. The past two weeks have been a strange kind of limbo—somewhere between dream and articulation, between the pull to write and the weight of existing outside of it. Words spill out, but they don’t quite land. Thoughts stretch, dissolve, reappear in fragments. Is it the altitude? But, how can it be? I’ve been good with it since last Fall.
I feel myself disappearing into the abyss of it—the writing, the feeling, the attempt to pin something down that refuses to be named. A breath caught mid-chest, not quite reaching its end. The edges of reality blur like ink bleeding into water. Some moments, I’m electrified, the words coming too fast to catch. Others, I’m staring at the page, knowing there’s something there but unable to pull it through.
Is it inspiration or exhaustion? Dreaming or unraveling? I can’t tell. But I keep writing. Keep sinking into the haze, hoping that somewhere in the mess of words and breath and blurred edges, something true will take shape.
Adding to this precarious state has to be the fact that I’m reading the new Haruki Murakami and his books are just one long dream, aren’t they?
23march2025
THIMPHU, BHUTAN 🇧🇹: I ❤️ THIMPHU ~ LIFE IN MOMENTS
The screen lights up with a bold declaration—I ❤️ Thimphu. It’s one of those familiar signs, the kind that travelers photograph, but for those of us who have spent time here, it means something more. This is not just a place; it’s a rhythm, a way of life, a set of small, interwoven moments that make up the everyday magic of Bhutan’s capital.
From that opening image, the video unfolds like a quiet walk through the city, a collage of life in motion. Narrow walkways wind between buildings, where vendors arrange their sales items in tidy, colorful stacks.
There’s a different kind of pace here. Thimphu may be Bhutan’s capital, but it never loses its intimacy. This montage captures those subtle, fleeting interactions—a shopkeeper sharing a laugh with a regular customer, two monks walking side by side, away from the ‘bright lights.’
The city exhales.
Watching the video, I feel the pull of this place, the way it seeps into you. It’s not just the grandeur of the mountains that surround it or the traditions woven into its fabric—it’s the ordinary moments, the warmth of connection, the stillness found in the midst of movement.
Thimphu isn’t just a city. It’s a feeling. And sometimes, all it takes is a simple video collage to remind me of that.
March 2025
THIMPHU, BHUTAN: RAW & UNFINISHED
Thimphu in Transit
There’s something about the way a city wears its construction sites—like open wounds, raw and unfinished, waiting for the world to stitch them into place. Thimphu is no different. Wrapped in green mesh, steel bones exposed, scaffolding bending with the weight of time, the city stands both in progress and in pause.
This morning, I walked past a sheet of corrugated metal, graffiti scrawled across it in uneven strokes: “One man’s meat is another man’s poison.” A proverb? A warning? A joke? Above it, the words “Table Tennis” stand alone, absurdly, as if the whole thing is a riddle I’ve been invited to solve.
And then, in the frame—him. A monk in deep red, hands clasped behind his back, walking slow but steady along the pavement. An old-world presence against this half-built, half-forgotten modernity. He doesn’t look at the words. He doesn’t need to. He already understands something I don’t.
Thimphu exists like this, in these small, unspoken moments. The stillness of a monk against the movement of a city. The permanence of wisdom against the impermanence of buildings. The things we choose to notice and the things we walk past without a second glance.
I snap a photo. The date stamp in the corner marks this day, this second. A reminder that for now, at least, I am here. But like all places, Thimphu is just another stop on the road—one man’s home, another man’s horizon.
13march2025
THIMPHU, BHUTAN: NOWHERE, SOMEWHERE, EVERYWHERE
Nowhere, Somewhere, Everywhere
The air is thin in Thimphu. Thin like the veil between past and present, like the space between knowing and not knowing.
Last night, I got lost in old photos, each one a postcard from another life—Kyiv’s cold blue mornings, Saigon’s ‘Bread and Butter Pub’ nights, Bogotá’s thundercloud afternoons, Paris in art, Miami burning bright. I let them wash over me, these ghosts of past selves, all those cities where I was briefly someone, then no one, then gone.
I sip my coffee at a nameless café, watching the morning unfold. A monk strides past, beads clicking, wrapped in his ochre cocoon, carrying the kind of certainty I can’t seem to hold onto. The traffic cop stands straight-backed, radio in hand, a fixed point in a world that shifts beneath my feet.
I don’t know where I’m going next. I never have. But the road—she always finds me.
March 2025