The Soul of Seoul

Our second day in Seoul began much the same as the first day did, with a giant feast at the breakfast buffet. But not before everyone woke at 4:00 in the morning. I rolled out of bed and fed them all cold leftover pizza from the mini at fridge; everyone was starving from having missed dinner the night before.

After breakfast, we headed out in search of another temple to poke around and another neighborhood to weave through. We found both.

The kids enjoyed seeing the sights and sounds of the Far East, such as this tank full of squid situated just outside a local restaurant.

We decided to visit the Buddhist temple at Jogyesa. 

We entered the temple grounds through an ancient gate and over a wooden bridge. Over the bridge was an arch of folded paper, multicolored hearts arranged in rows like a rainbow. On the other side of the bride were giant lotus flowers. 

The temple was filled with not only Western tourists snapping selfies, but also worshippers, elderly Koreans happy to see young people visiting their temple and willing to reward them for it with rock candy and chocolate bars. 

It's become nearly impossible to take a photo of the three of them together without one of them being disgruntled.

By the time we were done exploring the temple, it was already lunch time. We had just enough time to grab a lunch of traditional bulgogi and Korean short ribs before we needed to be back to our hotel and check out. 

Our flight to Sri Lanka didn't take off until almost midnight, but if last night was any indication we fully expected the kids to all be fast asleep. For that reason we decided to go ahead and grab the bus to Incheon. Of the kids were going to fall asleep, they may as well fall asleep in the airport at the gate; it would be that much easier to get them on the plane. 

And that's exactly what happened.

Sunrise over Seoul

We landed in Seoul, Korea, bleary-eyed, after a very long 14 1/2 hour flight from D.C. We took off at 1:30 p.m. on a Friday and landed at 4:30 in the afternoon the following day after crossing the international date line and flying over the Arctic Circle. Confusing, I know. We had either gone forward or back in time. I'm not sure which.

We sprung for the chartered limo bus from Incheon to our hotel downtown on which all three kids fell promptly asleep. We roused them long enough to check-in then run across the street for very decent hamburgers and fries (and a beer) at a tiny burger place on the corner with tiny ceramic Marvel Avengers action figuyon the shelf which were just enough to capture the kids' attention and keep them from dropping their foreheads in their fries. 

We woke several hours before the breakfast buffet opened at 6:00 a.m. 

The view from our hotel overlooking Namsan Park.

The breakfast buffet at a fancy hotel is one of our family's guilty pleasures. We have no qualms forking over $40 a head. The kids pile their plates high with mounds of bacon and sausage, because often we have gone months -- if not a year or more -- without pork or red meat. The kids revert to their carnivorous state and make several trips for pancakes slathered in Nutella, scrambled eggs, omelet bar, junk cereals, croissants, danishes, doughnuts, and scones. The breakfast buffet at the Millennium Hilton had a noodle bar, bulgogi, and a candy bar. By the end of an hour-long gorgefest, they are fighting from falling into a food coma, slouched in their chairs, hands crossed on their slightly distended bellies. 

After breakfast, we set out on foot to explore the city. Our first stop was Gyeongbokgong Palace, the main royal palace of the Joseon dynasty which ruled Korea for five centuries from 1392 to 1897. The palace served as the home of the kings of the Joseon dynasty, as well as the center of government. 

Geunjeongjeon Hall (above) was the throne room where the king formally granted audiences to his officials, gave declarations of national importance, and greeted foreign envoys and ambassadors during the Joseon dynasty.

It would be a long day with a lot of walking, but we were able to keep Peter and Clem going by lending them Elise and my running watches so they could count their steps.

Gyeonghoeru Pavilion (above) was a hall used to hold important and special state banquets during the Joseon Dynasty. The first Gyeonghoeru was constructed in 1412, the 12th year of the reign of King Taejong, but was burned down during the Japanese invasions of Korea in 1592. The present building was constructed in 1867.

After exploring the palace grounds, we headed to Bukchon Hanok village. But not before Peter discovered this rather...interesting...statue.

Since it was Sunday morning, the neighborhood was quiet; doors to shops and bakeries were only just starting to open, but we found a Starbucks to cool our heels and enjoy an iced coffee before setting out in search of lunch. 

We headed south to the busy neighborhood Myeong-dong. We stumbled into a three-story building for lunch where we were hurriedly instructed to go to the third floor. There, we found a room packed with Koreans slurping noodles from bowls. We were shown a table and given menus, though there were only two items on the menu, noodle bowls and dumplings. We ordered dumplings and three noodle bowls to share five ways. All the food came out not a minute later. 

The rest of the afternoon was spent in search of the elusive cat cafe, a coffee shop where you can pet cats while you drink coffee. The kids were dying to go, especially Peter. 

We didn't actually go to the cat cafe after determining it would cost $60 for all five of us to go. Plus, to be honest with you, it kind of really creeped me out. 

We made it back to the hotel around 3:00, changed into our swim stuff, and went to check out the hotel pool which was an experience in and of itself of for no other reason than everyone had to wear swim caps to swim in the pool. 

We ended up ordering room service pizza, but not before everyone fell asleep watching Formula 1. 

The Grasshopper that Leaped a 10-Story Building

I stepped out of our bedroom in Ballston and saw the three kids standing at the bay window which overlooked the park ten stories below. They were silhouetted against the indigo-hued morning sky, but I could still tell their collective attention was captured by the same thing.

A grasshopper had landed on the window outside.

"How did it get up here?" one of them wondered.

"It jumped," answered one.

"It flew," answered another. 

Sam opened the window. I didn't know what he intended to do. I didn't know if he meant to try and capture the grasshopper or let it into the apartment, but when he opened the window, he let in the sounds of a busy Friday morning, the dull roar of traffic in the streets below, an ambulance siren, a motorcycle revving, then backfiring.

He reached his arm out the window to his elbow and cupped his palm. As he approached the grasshopper, it jumped, extended its membraneous and fan-shaped wings, and flew away.

All three kids let out an audible grumble of disappointment as they watched the grasshopper fly through the sky, ten stories above the park square, towards the building across the square, before they lost sight of it. 

It would be one of the last memories in our apartment in Ballston, our home for six short -- yet interminable -- weeks. We would board a plane at Dulles a few hours later bound for Seoul, Korea. 

A few days before, I was standing in Best Buy, arms crossed, staring at my reflection in a 55" flat-screen TV, the biggest TV I've ever seen in my life. 

We bought a bike trainer, kind of like a stationary bike, kind of like a treadmill for cycling. The idea is you put the bike on the trainer and through a web app that connects to Bluetooth through a iPhone or laptop to a TV, you can virtually join a peloton on any one of thousands of famous rides...the Tour de France, by way of example. But we didn't have a TV to hook it up to. 

Moreover, much to the kids' chagrin, we hadn't bought a new TV in about 15 years. Our current TV, while wholly adequate, had also been rendered terribly obsolete by exponential advancements in technology. 

For years, I had resisted the kids' entrities for a bigger, brighter, clearer, sharper, louder TV, perhaps only convincing myself there was nothing wrong with our current TV, the one Elise and I had bought from Brand Smart when we had just begun to date, a $2,000 Aquos, the nicest, most expensive, flattest TV you could by at the time which I most likely sprung for just to impress Elise.

Now, here I stood in Best Buy. A half hour later, I would purchase not one, but two new TVs. 

The night before we flew from the U.S., Elise and the kids picked me up from work at the training center. We dropped the rental car off about a mile from our apartment and began the walk home just as the sky opened up. Somehow, unaffected, nonplussed, we walked, blearily happy in the rain, immune to thunderstorms for all that we had been through and all that was to come. Soaked to the bone, we hung our clothes to dry when we got home, hoping they would dry in time to pack by the next morning, but knowing we would really have no choice if they didn't; they would get balled up into a soggy, mossy, mildewy mess regardless. We had to bring them with us to Korea come hell or high water, dry or not. So, while we hoped they would be dry in time, there really wasn't anything we could do about it if they weren't anyway and we knew that and were content in that knowledge, resigned, happy, perhaps, even.

The last three months have been the longest of our lives. When Elise and I think back on the summer, it is impossible to comprehend how much we fit into such a short amount of time.

But the summer is now over. The kids are in school. Fall will soon begin.

A lot happened this summer. We moved from Jordan. Swimming at the hotel pool with Joyce and Robert. Elise's birthday dinner at Canlis. The camper van trip along the Oregon Coast. Seattle Sounders game. Fishing with Jidu. My trip withy brothers to Dunnellon to spread my mom's ashes. 

When we got to the end of the trail, a young couple came up behind us, holding hands, crunching down the wood chips path. Josh has started to take the box out of his backpack and stalled when he heard them, covering the box with his t-shirt in his backpack. They paused, realizing the path had ended and turned around. When they were safely out of sight, Josh pulled the box from his backpack. 

Carlton stood guard on the bank. We had found a small divet in the river and the springs. Carlton made his way to the end of a narrow point, put his arm around the beach of a tree to look upriver. It was a Saturday; boat traffic was heavy. A couple paddled stand-up paddle boards upriver. Snorkelers orbiting a flatbottomed boat cw downriver. We waited several minutes in the humid hear, mosquitoes swarming around us, for a break in the river traffic. 

When a opening finally did come, we acted quickly. We had decided earlier on the trail, we would each take a turn. I would go first, then Josh, then Carlton. I order. Josh gavee the plastic bag. I'd never done this before or seen anything like it. I was surprised by how much of it there was. How heavy it was. 

I tipped the clear plastic bag over the crystal clear azure spring water. They didn't sprinkle, rather poured like cement or dirt. The grey cloud hit the water and mushroomed, a white inverted atomic bomb. It was far from subtle. You think ashes, you imagine something light and airy like snow, something that would be sprinkled over sifted like powerded sugar, not mixing concrete. 

I handed the bag to Josh who passed it to Carlton, and the cloud grew but sat in the idle water. 

We didn't wait for it to disperse. Josh out the bag back in the box and the box back in his backpack. I hugged Carlton, then Josh. The back of Carlton's shirt was sticky with sweat. And we retraced our steps back up the trail. Silent at first, though as we traveled further from the spot, conversation grew proportionately. And we chatted that way until we reached the entrance to the state park and the gift shop where Carlton bought a t-shirt for Franchesca. 

We parted ways in the parking lot. Josh and Carlton drove back to Jupiter and I drove back to Orlando where I would eat dinner by myself in a Carrabba's Italian Grill next to the airport before catching a flight back to D.C., my family, and home in Ballston, such as it was, full of grasshoppers willing to fulfill death-defying flights high, high above the city's streets.

American Ninja Warrior Junior

One of the kids' guilty pleasures when they come back to the States is to watch American Ninja Warrior, a show -- similar to American Gladiators -- pits individuals against each on a bright, loud, and colorful obstacle course.  Rather than battle each other, the two racers must navigate climbing walls and water traps to run up the warped wall and win the race.

While I was in Dunnellon, Elise took the kids to a honest-to-goodness American Ninja Warrior gym where competitors on the show hone their skills and practice the courses.

While Clementine and Peter ran circles around each other on the ground, Sam navigated an elevated ropes course above.

Peter was the living, breathing definition of strength-to-weight ratio!

It was Sam, however, who conquered the warped wall! 

Rainbow Springs

If I ever fell asleep, I woke at 2:30 unable to go back to sleep. I had moved my backpack and change of clothes to the dining room table. I moved carefully from bed and slipped from our bedroom, taking clgrear care to make sure the door to our bedroom didn't close too loudly.

I changed in the kids bathroom, brushed my teeth and slipped my contacts into my eyes. I quietly left the apartment and went downstairs and summoned an Uber. From the nethers of darkness a RAV4 appeared, the only car on the road. It was a little after 4:00 a.m. Ironically, my Uber driver's name was Orlando, the same place I was flying to.

The flight was completely full with families and a bazillion kids utterly beside themselves to be going to Disney. A father whose t-shirt read "I No Want To" held his infant son and whispered in his ear as they watched together airplanes taxi on tarmacs. The little boy kicked a tiny Adidas from his foot, but the father didn't notice and I scooted across the terminal to return the shoe to him. He never would have found that shoe otherwise.

I sat next to a stoic African-American woman who looked like Cleopatra. I didn't feel like talking, and, thankfully, she didn't seem to feel like talking, either. She sat completely still for most of the flight, statuesque in her regalness, as though moving or showing emotion may have been a weakness. When I ordered a coffee, she ordered a coffee, too. When I asked for a glass of water no ice, she asked for a glass of water no ice, too. 

The woman at the car rental counter didn't believe my driver's license was valid. I have a paper extension the state of Virginia extends to overseas employees, but she didn't believe it was real because it didn't have my photo or signature on it. "I can sign it now, if it would help?" I offered as politely and patiently as possible. I even showed her my passport. Elise had asked if I planned to skip the country when she saw I was bringing it with me, but I'm glad I did. It has my entry visa to Jordan in it, but her manager still insisted on calling the Virginia DMV before allowing me to drive away in my prepaid Ford Fiesta.

The drive to Dunnellon was longer than I thought it was going to be. I drove through town and stopped at a KFC to go to the bathroom and buy a bottled water. 

I met Josh and Carlton at Swampys Bar & Grille. The river was filled with floats and airboats. Under a tent a pitmaster worked his magic and there was music, but I couldn't tell if it was a DJ or a band. The usual Florida playlist: Zach Brown Band, Jimmy Buffet, and some Bob Marley. I texted Elise a photo of the river. 

"Well played Celeste," she responded.

"Finishing up lunch," I texted back.

"She's unbelievable.

"How could she have known? But she did!"

"She knew everything"

After lunch, I followed Josh and Carlton to Rainbow Springs. In the parking lot an Indian family, nine or 10 strong, ate biryani on styrofoam plates out of the back of a custom van. It was a welcome sight. 

Before we walked up to the ticket window, we momentarily panicked, thinking they were going to search Josh's backpack. He took his short off and stuffed it into his backpack on top of the box. "You just couldn't wait to take your shirt off," I said to him jokingly.

Large oak trees hung heavy with grey-green moss. The waters were aquamarine and sparkling clear. We walked past artificial waterfalls, a "remnant from the park's attraction era." Or so the sign read. We went to the end of a pier; a family in front of us wondered at a millipede crawling on the rail. 

We decided to walk deeper into the park -- past the apocryphal ruins of a vine encrusted petting zoo; it made me picture the small foxes once cages there -- and took the blue trail which led to a small cut-out in the river. 

At some point, we realized we didn't know how to do this. I told Josh we should take turns, so that's what we did. I went first, then Josh, then Carlton. We hugged each other after and hiked back out the way we came in. 

Cheeto-Dusted Everything

Coming back to the country of your birth after having spent a long time outside it can give you a new perspective. I remember when we first came back to the States from Jordan, both Elise and I marvelled at how many people had dogs. 

Having a dog, it seems, is a very American thing. Of course, other countries have dogs, but they are not family members like they are in the U.S. in Brazil, most of the dogs I saw rove in wild packs eager to take down a recreational jogger.  In India, dogs had been beaten into submission so they cowered in sewer gutters. In Jordan, dogs were entirely utilitarian; they were shephards, herding flocks of sheep. In America, it seems as though people are having pets instead of having kids.

The kids are dying for a dog. I'm not against getting a dog, but I'm just getting the hang of this living overseas things and mastering the logistics of moving every two years with three small children. I don't know if I'm ready to add another layer of complexity by putting a dog into the mix. 

We've found ourselves back in the country at a particularly interesting moment in our nation's history. Whereas overseas we are largely removed from conversations that dominate and divide Americans: politics, Lil Nas X, religion, guns, climate change, Stranger Things, and Game of Thrones, we are now fully thrust into a dialogue with little understanding of what we're supposed or not supposed to say. 

For example, I'm enthralled with our country's preoccupation with war. The United States was born from war. The most seminal moments of its past have come during times of war. We are now embroiled in an 18 year neverending war against an adversary most Americans couldn't even identify if asked. They may answer the 'terrorists' when most Americans are more likely to be killed by their neighbor's crazy kid than a 'terrorist'. 

But I don't understand why we keep fighting the way we do when it goes against almost everything every parent teaches their child. It's as though we wage war for lack of anything better to do or spend our hard-earned taxpayer dollars on, like going to see the new superhero movie you're not all that into just because everyone else has seen it and it's raining outside. It's become increasingly difficult for me to draw a line from the war to the policy goal the war is supposed to support, because the thread the war is in the name of national defense seems tenuous at best.

Every football game, school assembly, and NASCAR race starts out with homeage to war. It is intrinsically woven into everything we see and do. It is right to honor, respect, and appreciate this country's veterans. There just shouldn't be so many of them. Especially not so many in their 20's. 

I believe we thank our veterans for their service on patriotic holidays and share viral videos of deployed parents surprising their kids at basketball practices out of some weird muscle memory. We know we're supposed to do it because it's the right thing to do but we never think about the alternative. What if the baseball game didn't start with what has become a rote memory tribute. Do we even know to whom we are paying tribute anymore? What if the baseball game didn't start with a flyover of F-15s.

Most people don't have the benefit of being able to neatly compartmentalize their life into clearly delineated segments. Moving from one country to another every two or three years offers a lot of opportunities. Of course, there is a downside, too, but we're glass-is-half-full types and prefer to focus on the positives. The ability to write chapters, open a chapter and close it, helps to define progress in one's life. Likely, those who don't move as frequently as we do have found different ways to demarcate the various phases of their lives, such as the births and deaths of loved ones, moving into new houses, and starting new jobs.

I sometimes wonder what our lives would be like if we had stayed in Florida or what anyone's life is like when they don't have to constantly close one chapter in order to start the next. I believe we would be more vulnerable to a cycle of consumerism. Both Elise and I are astounded by the amount of crap there is to buy. I think if we lived in one house and never had to worry about staying under a predetermined weight limit so we could move our stuff from one country to the next, we, too, would fall into a trap where we were buying reams of seram wrap as though we were going to seal our entire house in see-thru plastic. 

Not to mention how food continues to evolve. It's cool when kale or portabello mushrooms become popular -- fad food. But Cheeto-dusted fried chicken sandwiches? Really? I'm talkin' to you, KFC. I'm equally astounded and repulsed. Yet I'm sure they're delicious.

People are no more or less absorbed by their cell phones than they were the last time we were in the States, but they do seem to talk on them more. Elise and I have noticed a progression from a time when all you were able to do was talk on a cell phone, to text, back to talking on the phone, but instead of holding the phone to your ear and talking into the mouthpiece, people hold the phone in front of their face and FaceTime as though they were using a communicator from Star Trek.

When we were walking back from the store the other day, the kids and I literally watched a woman walk into the side of a building. A building! Because she was talking with her phone in front of her face. How do you miss an entire building?! I actually think it was a Macy's, come to think of it.

Just this morning, I watched a woman waiting for her coffee at Starbucks place her phone on the counter and talk to it while she turned her back, continuing to hold a conversation with whomever was on the other end of the line, and add milk and sugar to her coffee. She kept walking around Starbucks like that, as though she were in her own kitchen, until she finished her conversation, then picked her phone up off the counter and left.

I hope I don't come across as crabby or a grouch. I'm not complaining. Merely observing. 

Elise and I have also both noticed how grey everyone in our neighborhood seems. Ballston is a young neighborhood. It's inhabitants may have once been dubbed 'yuppies'. Everyone keeps their head down. Elise has been getting up early in the mornings and going to Orange Theory before I have to get in the shower and go to work. She comes back from the gym not only sweaty, but also with tales about how no one talks to anyone else. 

Now, were I to give them the benefit of the doubt, it is early and I probably wouldn't be anymore inclined to talk to anyone at 5:00 in the morning, either. But it's not just there. No one talks to anyone anywhere. Elise says she feels like some crazy, hippy woman because she's going around saying good morning to everyone. Maybe all cities are like that. Maybe it's just urban living we're not used to.

I believe it is symptom of self-absorption the likes of which we haven't experienced before. It's easy to blame it on Millennials, but then I'd really come across as an old man bemoaning the younger generation. Though I have no other way to explain it. Elise may have said it best: Young people, like the young people who live in our building and in our neighborhood, are so beholden to their own life path -- or, at least -- their perception of what their life path should look like, they can't allow for anything to disturb that trajectory, even if it means not being able to deviate from it long enough to say good morning. When you plan that carefully, you extract the very joy from life. There's no color left. Only grey. 

It's been an interesting two months in the United States. As I write this, 30 people (at last count) were gunned down in two separate incidents of gun violence within 24 hours of each other. There's a lot very right with America, but it is currently overshadowed but what is wrong with America. I hope it changes soon, but, sadly, I don't think it will happen before we leave. 

The Wild Blue Yonder

There’s something about airports. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s all those people I’ll never meet, taking off for all those cities I’ll never go to that I find fascinating. Even Des Moines or Wichita sound attainable from an airport terminal.

I don't necessarily want to live in a flight path again. We did that in Brazil. I don't remember if there was noise. I'm sure there was. What I remember are the lights. You could see them if you stood at the front door. They lit up the house at night with white eviscerating, interrogating brightness before then disappearing as the plane soared low over the tile roof, the red lights twinkling on the tips of the wings vanishing over the mango  and palm trees in the backyard.

Many nights I held an infant Clementine. I would sleep on the couch with her next to me in the bassinet or bouncy seat. When she woke, I would warm up a bottle from the fridge and feed her until she zonked back out on my chest, me holding her like a running back carrying a football, cradled so I wouldn't fumble her.

I wouldn't necessarily want to live in a flight path again, but I don't think I would mind living near one either. I stand in the bay window of our 10th floor temp apartment in the Ballston neighborhood of Arlington and can see the airliners queued up over the Potomac, waiting to land at Reagan National, seemingly suspended in air like toys on a mobile, though I'm sure they're hurtling at hundreds of miles per hour through the thick summer soup. 

I watch them pass by, wink out momentarily as they pass behind the building directly across the square from us, an office building which -- for reasons unknown -- keeps all the office lights on all night, so if you wake in the middle of the night, the entire apartment is flooded in excoriating, florescent tube light, much like the light that filled our home in Brazil. The airliners reappear, fly, disappear again behind a hotel, before presumably landing, only to be replaced by another and another and another. The line of planes could go on forever. On clear nights, you can see three or four of them in a row, the furthest like distance stars, floating over West Virginian woods. The queue never empties, no matter how late the airport stays open. The planes land all night long.

I sleep restlessly when I don't run, trying to make up for it -- I suppose -- by running in my sleep, Elise tells me. Sometimes, I get up early, before the sun comes up, and move to the couch, so as not to wake Elise with my hamstrings' and calves' twitching, dreaming of running, being put into service again. Peter is always the first to rise. When he does get up, he sometimes finds me on the couch. I lift the blanket at the corner and he crawls under, next to me, and we lie together until the sun comes up and it is time to make coffee and breakfast and get ready for work. I've noticed he has started to take after me in many ways. It's not always flattering to see yourself reflected in your children where all of you -- the good and the bad -- is shown. When I belch too loudly by accident, Peter or Clem belch too loudly, as well, as though they have been given a free pass or some subtle indication it is okay to belch a little too loudly sometimes. The same holds true for the use of profanity. 

A few mornings this week, I've come out into the small family room of our apartment and found Peter on the couch under the same blanket I use when I move to the couch. He, like me, has brought his pillow from bed. 

When he's awake, Peter tells me he's been thinking about living under the sea. When they build the first underwater city, he wants to live there. He expresses the same related to colonies on the moon or Mars. I don't know where he got the idea, but I may have been responsible -- at least, in part -- for his imagination. I always used to wonder who would win in a fight between Aquaman and the Sub-Mariner. Maybe I watched too many Super Friends cartoons as a little kid. The question wouldn’t make much sense unless you read as many comic books as I did. 

Sam, like a puppy dog, will nip at mine and Elise's heels, describing in detail devices he wants to invent. He doesn't forget the marketability of his inventions, always remembering to ask me how much I'd be willing to pay for a jet pack....by way of example....to ensure the math works. His imagination seems more grounded in a reality that can be engineered. 

Peter, meanwhile, is Transforming, conjuring fireballs, stomping through miniature metropolises as a pint-sized Godzilla, and flying Tie Fighters over the desert hills of Jakuu. He paces the room, making exploding sounds with his mouth, flicking his blondish hair getting longer from his eyes with a quick flick of his wrist, but I can see it all. I know, because I did the same thing at this age, only, maybe, a little quieter and with a little less flying spittle. 

When I see a cloudbank, my first instinct still is to fly off into them, to see what is beyond where you can't see anymore. They have the same allure as airports where you can go anywhere in the world just by walking through a door and down a ramp and seeing that which is too far away to see from here. When I stand on the seashore, the waves tugging at my toes slowly sinking into the sand, my first thought still is to jump into the waves and swim without stopping, to find the part of the blue ocean that has no bottom and no top and float there without knowing which way is up or down or how to get back to shore. 

In two weeks, we will go to the airport and walk through a door and down a ramp and we will go see what is where we can't see from here and, likely, hang in the middle of a place without knowing which way is up and which way is down or how to get back to shore  for some time. Until we do. 

Portraits

By Elise.