I have been spending time lately with Iris Brosch, the photographer and artist who worked closely with Shere Hite for more than a decade. Together we are exploring how to bring more of that work — the photographs, the intimacy, the whole charged world of it — back into public view. I knew about Shere […]
I have to admit, I am a huge fan of Michael Pollan. His latest book, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness, brings together scientific, philosophical, literary, and psychedelic perspectives to ask what consciousness is, who has it, and why. Pollan argues that consciousness is under siege — and ends with the idea that learning […]
This morning I watched a conversation on the war in Iran. What Vali Nasr describes about the countra and its people feels precise and grounded. But what stayed with me was something else — the way his words touched something in me that I hadn’t expected. It connects to much of what I am grappling […]
A lecture hall at the University of Pavia. First-year political science students. Italy. Eastern Europe. Africa. The Middle East. When I started speaking about the United Nations, the room became very quiet. So quiet you could hear a pin drop.I did not celebrate the UN. I reflected on it.Not as a perfect institution. But as a political arena — […]
Yesterday I returned to “my” island, Armona. It welcomed me with its light. Clear. Wide. Quiet. So different from the cities I moved through over the past seventeen days. Milan — a small independent publishing house. Pavia — political science students, thoughtful, restless, searching for orientation. Berlin — conversations about the soul of cities, about meaning beyond data. A […]
There are moments when I catch myself wondering: What if it isn’t ideology that unites people — but disgust? Not left.Not right.Not North.Not South. But a shared realization that those who call themselves “powerful” have been protecting something far smaller than power. The Jeffrey Epstein files sit like a stone in the collective stomach. They […]
To apply for a Schengen visa with an ECR stamp in your passport — a mark used for Indian citizens whose international travel is officially classified as requiring protection and supervision — is not a single act. It is an accumulation.The fact that such a classification is physically stamped into a passport, visible at every […]
I had just landed from Germany.Unusually heavy rains and storms for this region — the kind they say hasn’t happened like this for decades. From Olhão to Armona, the ferry crosses the Ria Formosa Natural Park.There are usually four ferries a day.That day, only one was running — and I arrived just in time for […]
Reading about overtourism and degrowth didn’t feel like encountering a new idea.It felt like recognizing a language for something I had been circling for a long time. The word arrived late.The sensitivity came early. Long before I became a nomad, I learned — without naming it — that places behave like ecosystems.They don’t thrive through […]
Western Australia, 2024–2025. I came here intending to be alone.Not accidentally — deliberately. South Fremantle first.Then Yanchep. Two places, very different, both quiet in their own way. In Fremantle, there were conversations, ease, a sense of shared rhythm.In Yanchep, there was mostly wind, ocean, and time. I noticed how quickly external structure fell away. No […]