Oranges, Everywhere
There is something about oranges that feels both ancient and alive. During my travels, they have shown up in the frescoes of Pompeii at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, the open-air markets of Sur Mer, in a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice in Mexico City and an orange eaten roadside in Havana, in the orange-infused water I returned to again and again during one of the harder health seasons of my life in Charleston. Oranges have followed me — through travel and through wellness — and I have come to think of them as more than fruit and also as a thread connecting the earth to the body, the past to the present, and the places we visit to the people we become.
Roots & Wings
Life is a series of highways and backroads and alleys and subways, at least for those willing and brave to show up. The interstate or "vanilla way of living" will certainly get you to some sort of destination, and maybe faster, but one will miss so much of what shapes us, such as adventure and surprise, newly found sites and sweet pictorial moments. In travel, we learn that wrong turns, missed flights and delayed trains teach us a lot about ourselves and often how to find our way back to ourselves, more than any self help book or good therapy session could conquer.