Writers block, writers block, writers block.

How can I describe the last few days? How can I find the right words to explain how things happened, how people and families have welcomed me into their homes, their lives? How I am feeling my own existence in ways I’ve never felt before?

It’s been two weeks since I arrived in Vietnam. It feels like I have been here forever.

Time is moving differently. As it always does when I am on the road.

The days pass quickly but fully. Rich with experiences seen through eyes that I cannot find while I am at home. Many emotions that I do not accept or notice when I am living the day-to-day life of work, sleep, work, sleep.

Here, I am open to the magic in life.

Here, with the close of each day, remains vignettes of experiences gained, of life lived.

Me sitting cross-legged on a thatch mat with a whole family around me. Eating, laughing, playing with little girls and boys who do not care that we don’t speak the same language.

Feasts of sticky rice dyed red, strange, delicious foods like ostrich sausage and smoked buffalo. Spring rolls that I rolled myself while squatting on my back haunches.

Motorbike rides through busy streets. No helmets. Dangerous maybe. But to feel the wind in my hair, the cold winter’s air, to really feel the city moving around me.

The smell of incense in front of family altars – the smell of remembrance, of respect, of eternality. Memories of my own father coming back to me swiftly, overwhelmingly at times.

Late nights in local bars full of faces staring, smiling, dancing. Talking to strangers who leave as friends.

These are the designs of a world unfolding.

When I travel, I see, I feel, I taste. I learn, I grow, I become.

How can I keep this forever? How can I bottle it up to take in doses when I get back home?

Everyday I practice accepting ambiguity and learning to love it more than the definitive.

The universe is open if we let it be.