I've been playing with some of my images from past trips to Haida Gwaii, Yukon, Japan, and other places, creating whimsical re-rememberings of places that are near to my heart.

a bike ride

I ride my bike along the Rhine to work everyday. The route is like the sea wall except instead of an ocean there is a big, fast flowing river snaking along beside you. The path is leafy green and flat. The river boats fight the current upstream with bellies lying low to the water and heavy with commodity. The Rhine is a thoroughfare for boats and bikers, who can both enjoy about 650km of navigation in and along its watery path from Switzerland to Rotterdam's maze at the mouth of the Rhine and the edge of the North Sea.

I bike against the current in the morning, feeling that endless and massive flow of water working against me, trying to turn me around and take me with it. All that water, every second, every curl and eddy, is constantly leaving that river. Nothing that defines the river is ever contained in it for very long. Every answer a river whispers to you is a question contained in narrow parentheses, scarring the landscape with meandering meanings that slack and slick and disappear. This is different than living on the edge of the Pacific, which will out outlive us all by countless millennia, perched between our knowing and the unreachable horizon, pooling energy into a wordless om.

In the evening I flow with the river, handsfree on my bike and something really good on my ipod. Rain or shine the joggers jog, the river rolls us all along back into downtown Bonn and tips me out near the bridge, back into the limits of blocks and buildings and grocery stores already packing in their wares for the evening. I weave through town on streets seemingly too narrow to hold the traffic they contain. At the central station I duck under train tracks that rattle with the expresses and regionals clanking progress towards tightly timed stops. When I emerge from the underpass the path is a long expanse of green hemmed in with apartment blocks elegantly attired in chiseled garlands and stony cherubs. This is the Poppelsdorfer: a line of green grass stretching from the university to the east all the way to the buttery yellow western palace. Halfway along this long narrow park Baumschulallee cuts through with a sudden expanse of tired pavement. Just off this corner is my apartment building. I can see the entry way where I imagine I will shortly park my bike and climb the flights of stairs to my house. But I have been stuck between the fleeting freedom of this new river and my desire for the heavy permanence of the Pacific all day and I'm having a hard time figuring out where home is. So I keep riding around, letting my bike ride stretch further and further into the evening until I am back beside the Rhine watching it slide past me in dark slicks of curled water.

Loving the infographics...

My new campaign... something really near and dear. Please help!

Help fight homesickness! Send a letter/drawing/poem/favorite joke/etc to:

Angeline Gough
Apt. 9, Baumschulallee 2, Bonn, Germany 53115

All donations graciously accepted. You CAN make a difference.

Music festival fail

I admit to having a nasty case of FOMO that keeps flaring up. It give me itchy feet and fidgety hands. I get anxious and easily irritated. I can't focus and enjoy what is happening in front of me because I'm always wondering what else is going on. FOMO, for the uninitiated, means Fear Of Missing Out.

Imagine you are at some party and everyone is having a good time... except you. YOU said you'd be at another party a half an hour ago and you can't help wondering 1) what that other party is like 2) if, when you leave this party, something great will happen that you will miss 3) why you said you'd go to this party, and that party, and then meet a friend at that other party at 12.

Or maybe...

You are at a show and your friend texts you to go to an party after the show, but you are tired because you've been out too much and work is stressing you out and you really need some sleep. So you decide not to go. Later you either A) lie in bed wondering if the party was good B) get a text saying "where you at????" when you are already in bed and actually think about getting dressed and going downtown again or C) wake up the next day with red-rimmed eyes, deep bags, and stinky hair and wonder why you didn't just go home when you had the chance.

If you are nodding you head to any of the above, you may have FOMO. Don't worry, I think its like a worldwide phenomenon these days. Who can avoid it? We're a dialed in, notified, up-to-date, and to-the-minute culture. I mean, I can get your 50-word blargh about what you ate for breakfast automatically sent to me on my mobile phone seconds after you finish stuffing your face. Is it possible to be too dialed-in? ... to the point that we can't be satisfied with our present situation when the greener grass is always just a tweet away?

Despite the itchiness, anxiety, and occasional sleep deprivation, I think the answer is NO.

Case in point: I decide to chill out for a week. Take it slow. Let my body adjust to my new surroundings in Germany and just forget about trying to see what the world is up to. And what happens? I miss the best frickin' concert I will probably see in Germany this year: http://www.haldern-pop.de/de/festival/programm/
Beach house, Yeasayer, The Tallest Man on Earth, The National, Jose Gonzalez, The Low Anthem, Beirut and more... all at a 7500 person outdoor festival in the middle of the German countryside. erp.

I will never deny my FOMO again. It only gets worse when you find out that what you missed out on was really, really awesome.

Europe's biggest flea market

This weekend! be there or be square...
Antiques, art, deadwood and second-hand articles - spread out over a length of 4 kilometers in the magnificent ambiance of the Rheinaue Park.
YES!

Too legit to quit

Last week I became a bonefide expat again. I finally got my visa and work permit and became a member of the large and diverse expatriate community in Bonn. It is pathetic how satisfying it is to become legitimate in the eyes of a government bureaucracy and yet when I finally jumped through the last hoop, I felt more at home here- like I could simply flash my visa and work permit around at the bar and say, "See?! I'm one of you now!" It is also not lost on me that to bask too long in the light of legitimate employment in a foreign country is to lose sight of a key element of my presence here- If I leave this job, I am out of the country. kaput. My existence here is defined by the rules of my work permit, which gives me a week to get out of the country once my job is over. Legitimate as I am, with one wrong turn I could lose job and legal status here quite quickly. Thus I am, as a wise man once said, "too legit to quit".