Have a Think
Rain, torrential and sudden, lashes the streets of the city built in the desert, built on sin. Rivers of residue stream into the storm drains. A white-red-orange streak froths the sidewalks. The pollen of what stayed in Vegas, washed out, splashing around the sneakers, the sandals, the high heels of today’s curiosity, adventure, greed, lust, and confusion. And the gutter slurps it all up. Rain is…
The smell of Christmas in Eastern Europe is the cold and smoky bite of wet in your nose. The chill of river mist mixed with the low-hanging smoke of a thousand town chimneys. Winters are not what they used to be. I remember rime and snow, and temperatures falling to -10 degrees Celsius (14 Fahrenheit). Scratching frost off the windshields of the family car turned into a daily routine for months,…
There are still places in the world where people live a normal life. Away from the hyper-optimized capitalism of the west, where every cafe, teashop, concept book-store, or an unusual localeof any kind needs to face the same kind of economic pressures as a branch of a bank. Riga is a breath of fresh air, feels like a place out of time, on the Eastern outskirts of Europe. Somehow, a capital that…
Spaces in between. The flashes of technical lights and outlines of unused tunnels between stations, a lonely technician working on god knows what underground. The lights of other people’s homes seen from street level, each a window into a different life. The people you meet and their passions, each a glimpse into a world you can only see from afar, from behind a thick glass pane. A droplet of…
Continue reading 2024.08 Neither Here Nor There at Sebastian Hetman.