Yesterday I wandered the neighborhood of my apartment taking pictures of everything and drinking coffee frequently enough to hide from the heat. Cairo is fascinating and I have a lot to say about it when I get the time to. If you want to read about the pyramids I posted those on my substack which is linked on my bio. I’m posting things chaotically, so I’ll go back and do Romania after I get to Tunisia, in a method that makes no sense even to me.
Bucharest has a visceral impact, cracks you in the jaw, but without even a glance. It is both threadbare and overwhelmingly beautiful. Like a supermodel with an eyepatch, her one remaining eye piercing the surroundings with a depth I can’t possibly measure up to. She doesn’t look. dangerous, per se, but you have zero doubts she’s got a knife on her. In any case you’re in her thrall til someone rescues you
en el 83 when I was 7 years old, abuela brought me a random issue of the Hulk from the gas station. It was, as she would say, medio extraño, the Hulk wearing a tie, fighting a bonfire, but I guess it did the trick. What must it be like to be the matriarch of an era, to see your reflection splintering out into the world through generations. To build so many tiny complicated lives. One of the very last times my grandmother opened her eyes, even through pain and through a haze she’d been in for a while, it was to stick out her finger and her tongue to get a laugh. Te quiero tanto. I hope you knew it.
50 years on this peculiar ball of mud that in that time has gone 29 billion miles pulled by a sun that has itself gone 10x as far and managed from that impossible distance to bring and take away life and more importantly to fade the spines on most of my books.
While the last few billion miles have been confounding for almost everyone, I can still move and I can still write and I can still sing and so I’ll try to do as much of all of those as keeps me going til I turn 51. I raise my birthday cake to surviving. La vida es asi.
I translated this from Yoani Sanchez, a Cuban writer and voice I have a massive respect for, who has been commenting on the current crisis from her home in Havana.
Second side is her words, which were very hard to do justice but I tried my best.
Her account doesn’t allow tagging but I encourage you to look her up and follow her.
🟦 DRIFTER: OMNIA is shortlisted in the @creativereview Annual Awards 2026 — part of this year’s celebration of The Brave & The Brilliant. Proud to see @hellomuller_ltd & @hellodeathray recognised alongside some of the industry’s most exciting work.
Found some old film I didn’t hate. Ektachrome and some chromogenic film, probably also kodak? I can’t remember everything all the time what do you think I am
“I see these people dragged away and
I imagine my mother in a camp,
wherever those trains go. Waking up
over and over, afraid, to find
she’s lost.“
@ivanbrandon writing about modern America in a book on ww2
@juuurekkk being Jurek making me cry (happy tears)
