The feed of updates to inhab.it
Neck deep in the hot tub I contemplate people. A man washing himself slowly puts on soap with a sound like his skin is on fire, a light hiss for every movement. An old man shaves with great care and then puts his stool back against the wall with equal reverence. A father teaches his son how to scrub, demonstrating each action with gestures larger than usual. Another father and son enter quietly,…
In Colorado after another set of long loops we relax. Like my home town , Fort Collins is quiet in the summer. Our first day passes in back yards and playgrounds, with low thunder and the occasional shower breaking up the hot afternoon. Unlike the east coast the evenings are still chilly, and the lack of humidity makes everything easier to bear. After the sweat of Hong Kong we are grateful for the…
In the spring the upcoming milestone dawns on me, and I pause to consider this site, twenty years old as of June. Out the window the flower sale for the new year is in full swing. The concrete soccer courts of Victoria Park are covered with tents, with stalls, with bins and pots of flowers. They are covered with people, a throng in from all over the territory, from the mainland, hunting flowers…
In Paris I sit on a balcony and watch the sun rise. It’s the kind of cliche wonderful that one would expect, the whole city bathed in the first bright light of a summer day, with low puffy clouds and the metal roofs looking like nowhere else I’ve ever been. For a week it’s a great view, brought to me by our nanny and jet lag. In the daytime we go to climbing gyms that would feel good as our local,…
In my home town I have a new haunt . It’s the strangest of places, save of course that it isn’t. Collegetown bagels in East Hill Plaza has become my quiet space. I stare out at the parking lot and write. It is early June, and everything is beautiful and green. In the early mornings, or really just the mornings, I ease the rental car up the hill from my folks house and have coffee while they sleep.…
Between bursts of rain, with the humidity at ninety eight percent, we live. We play ultimate in Tai Wai in the evenings, emerging under the lights dressed mostly in cleats and sweat to run. We sit outdoors at coffee shops in Kennedy Town after dropping Fives at school, doing work calls and feeling the weather. The air is sticky, is wet. It is a physical presence in every room, in every coffee…
In the spring of twenty six we embrace complexity. The very idea is a big change for two people - now three - who have forever sought to minimize. Approaches like ours, when repeated long enough, become ingrained below every decision. We leave the house daily with less than we expect to need. We bring a smaller bag than we probably should, or one fewer garment, or no umbrella, or no water, or no…
On a Delta flight from Los Angeles to Philadelphia I wear my new band t-shirt. Black with a photo, it’s a special possession. The album cover it displays, Everything but the Girl’s Walking Wounded, came out in 1996. I chose it for this cross country flight specifically for the audience, for a group of Americans. I’ve worn it around Tokyo twice, and Hong Kong once, without comment. Halfway through…
In a taxi on Henan south road I feel it all coming back. People. Words. Places. I’m watching a woman slow pedal her yellow bike share bike across the intersection with Zhaojiabang Lu and think of all the times I crossed that stretch, on scooters gas and electric powered. On a BMX that was a present. On a yellow folding bike stolen months later somewhere just south. In taxis across three decades. I…
In Higashi Ojima I sit in a camp chair beneath some cherry blossoms. In front of me the best playground we know of is absolutely overwhelmed. Everyone, it seems, is in the park. The children swarm the zip lines, roller slide, climbing structures. For years now we’ve been lucky to spend these few weeks in Japan, in Tokyo, wandering beneath cherry blossoms, sitting in parks, and surrendering to the…
We are building new traditions , I have said. We are building ourselves, and the kind of family we hope to be . Most of these traditions are built in the small moments between things, in the off hours and off days. They are built in the ways we choose to do the things we want. Thus this morning between bands of rain we went on a runbike. I start on foot, trying to maintain pace as we head south…
“ This is on my list,” I say. She nods, chewing. Both of our eyes are elsewhere, on the ocean. We are watching the palms sway in the wind. We are watching the waves push across the world’s finest sand . We are watching the boats drift or motor past. In another way, we are remembering rather than seeing. The list in question, of my favorite restaurants, is slightly absurd. It contains a dozen or so…
On the 高铁 from Yunyang to Chongqing I share six seats around a table. By the window a man watches tv on his phone while eating snacks. He is well prepared, two different snacks, a battery pack, a Bluetooth earpiece, and a stand to put his phone at the most proper height and angle. Next to him his wife sleeps, and next to her another woman likewise, head on the table. Underneath, between us, a full…
In a forest in Lithuania I watch the sun shift through the trees. In the morning the light is thin shafts, pushing through in odd places. Then, near mid day, the snow is warm and wet and the light broad and full. Towards evening it will grow beautiful, the trees and frozen lake low and side-lit in high relief. Days pass. Eventually I have seen the cycle enough to write. It’s rare, in the happening…
These are the good years , I’ve written. These are the years we have with our health, with our children, with our friends even in short bursts . We are grown, we are working on being the people we meant to be, and we have, still, some time. It’s a beautiful phase, and it reminds me that things do not last. Living abroad is a constant reminder. Much of our lives exists at the edges of systems, in…
From our new apartment , seven stories up, I can hear the cheers of rugby players. For most of Sunday they echo off the windows of the tall buildings in Tai Hang. Yells, celebrations, calls for teammates, coaches whistles. The tones vary with the player’s ages, younger and then older as the day progresses. Sitting with our windows open to Hong Kong’s good weather their enthusiasm is a far better…
We take off over the lake. A long turn under cloud cover gives me a view of Myers, of my high school, and of most of my childhood spots. Just before the clouds obscure everything I get the kind of perfect isometric view of Cornell that marketing would love, the quad paths clearly defined in the snow, the classical buildings throwing jagged shadows on the white backdrop in the low afternoon sun.…
One evening, on the ferry from Hung Hom to North Point as the sun sets, I realize how often we are on a ferry. It’s a great feeling for a child of the Finger Lakes, to be so frequently on the water . It’s wonderful to have boats be a routine part of transit, be something both mundane and, like the view of Hong Kong and the harbor in the sunset, totally spectacular. Clara takes ferries a lot more…
Fast. I know immediately, before I look at the list below, that twenty twenty five was a fast year, a blur of commitments and growth, of travel, work, pain, sacrifice, and patience. I know it will be a hard year to recall much of from a few years out. It makes sense, then, that I had to double check the below list, which looked suspiciously short. The numbers are correct, or they match my limited…
Biking around Otsuka in the chill of late December everything clicks. Finally, after months and months of uncertainty, we are at the end of the year. So many of the changes we forsaw from the top of Primrose hill at the end of August have come true. I’ve been once again startup unemployed, though in a far better fashion than ever before. We have permanent residency in Hong Kong, a dream underway…
Written on election day, November 4, 2025. Posted later. Sitting outside in Causeway Bay in early November I remember things, and contemplate the future. It is the first temperate week of the end of twenty twenty five. For the first time since April I wear jeans and a long sleeve out of the house and am happy for both garments. For the first time in months I do not contemplate my flip flops at the…
In December of twenty twenty five we move on from the most convenient apartment we’ve ever rented. The location, a compromise initially, has become an astonishing home, lying so close to so many things. We are two hundred meters from a huge 24 hour grocery, and less than 800 meters from three others with even more of an “ import” quality. There’s a wet market 400 meters away, and the MTR about…
In the second half of twenty twenty five we see Europe three times. It’s a gift each time, some ten years since my last exploration. These are our years of adventure, of odd excursions with and without the youth of tomorrow today, as we’ve long referred to her cohort. In London we ride bicycles. In Budapest the tram, and miles of shoulder carry, or “ up up”. In Luxembourg, just the two of us for a…
I sit in the hospital chair and watch Clara’s O2 numbers on the screen while she sleeps. It’s not my favorite place. Nothing against the hospital, it’s is fine, I’ve had surgery in it myself. It’s the general situation not the specifics I dislike. We are comfortable in hospitals now. As I’ve written before it’s not something we meant to be, and in re-reading that post I realize how long ago it…
We land in a season we did not leave. I am grateful, immediately, for the chill in the air on the jet bridge. Fall has been a long time coming to our home and I am tired of sweat. The airport is simple, a series of pathways after a short bus ride. We mingle among languages we do not speak and yet can lightly read, a refreshing change. We do not look out of place, save perhaps for being too…
There are a million reasons to be grateful for our life in Hong Kong. On this Monday in September, as a typhoon leaves the vicinity and another gathers force en route, I think of a few on the bus home. First, I am grateful for my route home from the bouldering gym, which is to walk out of the building and get on the first bus that arrives at the stop directly in front of the door. About 12 busses…
For two nights we walk into the Moth Club and out of our own lives. We are there to see Everything but the Girl, performing as Tracey Thorn / Ben Watt. We are there with a crowd older than myself to remember some tunes, to live out some dreams. We are there to celebrate people, to appreciate these humans who have given so much to the soundtrack of our lives. It’s beautiful to see people face to…
Change like the sky Like the leaves, like a butterfly In moments of uncertainty, I try to remember our goal: to be comfortable anywhere. When I first wrote that down, some twenty years back, I meant places. I wanted to understand immigration and trains, taxis and busses in every country. I wanted to feel at home in any cluster of humans, to know how to get food with locals. I still do, though I’ve…
In the air between Pune and Delhi I think about our communities. We are, in many ways, who we spend our years with. For much of our lives those are choices determined by our parents, by the town they settled in, by the people they sent us to school with. Later, they are our choices, of friend groups and then universities, of majors, of sports teams, and of commitment to each. I have few friends…
We are chasing a dream. Everyone, I think, is chasing a dream. “ We are all in some way or another going to Reseda,” as the man says. The dream in most cases bears an eerie similarity to the world of our teenage years, of our youth. For me this explains the sudden feeling of familiarity when driving the New Jersey Turnpike with the windows down. My youth is there, on the roads of the eastern…
As the sun goes down and the water features are turned off I apply bug spray to myself and the youth. In a slow procession we move from one park to another; from the running water and streams we head to the castle, dirt, and playgrounds of Asukayama koen. Our group gathers bikes, changes wet clothes for dry, buys snacks, orders pizza, and settles onto a picnic table for the evening. It is a Sunday…