On Traveling Alone

#1: 1/31/25Sit spot: Blue Lagoon cliff, Nusa Lembogan, Bali, Indonesia11:05am Today I challenged myself to do something scary alone. I took my rental scooter, the preferred method of travel on this small Indonesian island, and drove to where I’m sitting now: the Blue Lagoon. The cliff I’m on seems to be made of volcanic rock […]

Roots

I’ve never felt physically rooted anywhere. I’ve moved several times throughout my life and having been raised by immigrant parents, our notion of “home” was always oceans away. My experience of un-rootedness makes me particularly interested in understanding the world underground. Plants are perpetually connected to one another. Even when a plant is ripped up […]

Prompt 1

I completed this before going to the UK for my program. I was sitting in the backyard at home in northern Rwanda an I was intrigued by how the environment interacts with each other. I am an avocado tree , My neighbor is sugarcane Unlike me her leaves are longer and hairly Her stem is […]

Moss

In the cemetery, moss peeks through the flagstones under my feet. Instead of being anchored by roots, moss has rhizoids that enable it to attach to soil. When walking through the city center of Copenhagen, you can go blocks without seeing a tree, but there will undoubtedly be a smattering of moss between the cobblestones […]

An insight in an avocado tree’s mind

I did this poem when I was sitting in the backyard at home in northern Rwanda before I leave for the program in London. My dad is a naturalist so he has a collection of so many plants including fruits, flowers, herbal medicine,… The avocado tree is the biggest but not the tallest however, still […]

#8: Activism (and Romania)

For my final prompt, I was writing my notes from my grandma’s house in rural Romania. It was so beautiful, and we were picking cherries. I smelled warm dirt and grass, saw green leaves, and felt hot, humid air. I heard birds and my great-aunt’s dog. I wrote this sitting on the porch, and I […]

Adaptation

Right now it’s late evening, but despite that, as always in Singapore, it is hot. Though it’s started to finally cool off a bit, cooling off only means it’s now 85 and humid instead of 95 and humid. I’ve gotten adjusted to it now, but it’s made me think of the way natural life has […]