I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, The Trail Back Out, and The Taste of Your Name. My most recent book The Taste of Your Name was a finalist for the 2025 Compass Press Book Award.
The south of Africa’s exotic landscapes and incredible wildlife have provided me with an endless source of inspiration. The more I write, the more I recall about what we saw and experienced.
I fell in love with the traditional baskets and – something I never, ever do – I sought them out and purchased some to bring home. It’s a rare desire for me. My rule of thumb when we’re traveling is to keep reminding myself: “Jadi, you own an apartment, not a big house! Where are you going to store anything you bring home?” So, I limit myself to one beautiful item, and try to make it an object that’s useful.
But, the baskets. I bought the first one at a Living Village, excusing the purchase by telling Uwe I wanted to support local arts and artists of the Kavango.
I picked up and held at least half those baskets one by one, trying to decide. There was no one else there so I could take my time.
Later, when I was seeking out small stands with traditional baskets, I told each shop keeper, “I’m sorry, but I’m a slow shopper…. I’m waiting to hear which of your baskets speaks to me.” They all smiled when I said this. I think they liked the idea of a tourist who was willing to wait until a piece of handmade work reached out to her with something to say.
I’d connected with the history and artistry and continuity and passing on of tradition – and love – that each basket contains. At some point very early in our trip, Uwe and I fell in love with these countries and this part of the world and its people. Most places and people are wonderful, of course; but this area of southern Africa touched us in a deep immediate way.
The Living Villages in Namibia are staffed by local San people who want to keep the old traditions from fading from memory. A joint Namibia/German project, the Living Villages promoted community-based tourism.
boys practice with hewing small boats; as adults, they’ll know how to make the real onesclay for cooking vessels and toysprepping reeds
Sometimes traveling we feel like we bear witness to a culture that’s changing so fast it will soon be gone. The Mbunza Living Museum got me interested in the region’s basketry – a tradition that’s still very much alive.
I bought my first basket here. 5 more followed.
My first basket on the left, from the Mbunza Living Museum. Pattern: Tears of the giraffe
I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, The Trail Back Out, and The Taste of Your Name. My most recent book The Taste of Your Name was a finalist for the 2025 Compass Press Book Award.
Anaïs Nin was born on February 21, 1903 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. She wrote essays, diaries, short stories, novels, and erotica. She befriended and promoted fellow author Henry Miller. Her work is strong, feminine, and unapologetically sexual. In her honor I am reprinting the post I wrote after we visited an amazing temple complex in India: Khajuraho. – Jadi
When we visited, Khajuraho could only be reached via a long trek on bad roads. Since we’re talking about India, this means the roads are bad indeed.
Where’d the road go?Down here maybe?
The driver we’d hired was there to meet us at our hotel in Agra, and off we went. Five bone-jolting hours later we reached our destination.
Along with its inaccessibility, Khajuraho is notorious for 1,000 year old, perfectly preserved, UNESCO World Heritage erotic carvings.
Somehow this site survived a millennia (millennia, people!), in a spot that had no fortresses or fortifications to speak of. The temple complex existed simply for the purpose of worship.
And what worship. Every single inch of the temple buildings are carved in high relief, depicting gods, tender lovers, voluptuous attendants, monkeys, elephants, assistants for the sexual act….
Hundreds of skilled stonemasons were hired to build the site. The Khajuraho region has excellent sandstone, and the sandstone temples were built with granite foundations. All were constructed without mortar! Instead, gravity holds the stones together with mortise and tenon joints.
Some of these stones are megaliths weighing up to 20 tons.
The glory of sandstone is that it loans itself to delicate carving. Even viewing the temple walls from the ground we could see the wrinkles in Ganesh’s trunk; the fingernails of the apsaras and the beads in their strands of jewelry; the sheer layers of veils over their thighs and buttocks.
Uwe vanished almost immediately with his camera, leaving me alone with the young male guide. I could feel my face go red, and it wasn’t a hot flash or sunburn. I was terribly afraid of how embarrassed I was going to be. But the guide pointed out the various depictions of the act of love and spoke in a clear calm voice, explaining the significance (pull your minds of out the gutter, dear readers) in terms of energy, religion, and esoteric philosophy.
It was mid-January, past the usual Christmas tourist season. It was also a two-week period when northern and central India get swathed in fogs – something smarter tourists than we knew. As a result we had the pleasure of being two of the few Westerners at the site.
Most of the others were Indians on holiday, and I was touched to see that at Khajuraho, this meant young married couples. They walked around the compound, standing in front of particularly erotic carved panels, heads together in discussion.
How about the next panel?Is that a new yoga position?
While only 10% of the carvings depict sexual acts, you can guess which panels elicited the most commentary. These were the love-making couples known as maithunas. Other carvings depict everyday activities: playing musicians, potters, farmers, soldiers on horseback, etc.
Musicians
The temples were probably built in the one hundred year period between 950 and 1050 AD, during the Rajput Chandella dynasty. According to historical records, by 1100 Khajuraho contained 85 temples covering 20 square kilometers. Roughly 20 temples still stand. They were located 60 kilometers from Mahoba, the medieval capital of the Chandela kingdom.
Khajuraho was mentioned by the Arabic historian Abu Rihan-al-Biruni, in 1022 AD, and by Ibn Battuta, the Moroccan traveler, in 1335 AD.
When Muslim rulers took control, heathen places of worship were systematically destroyed. Ironically, even centuries ago the remoteness of these temples helped secure their survival. Nature did the rest as vegetation and forest reclaimed the site. For years the temples were covered by dense date palm trees which gave the city its name: in Hindi, Khajur = date. (The more ancient name was Vatsa.)
The scenes explain Hinduism’s four goals for life: dharma (right way of living), kama (aesthetic enjoyment), artha (prosperity) and moksha (liberation). The complexity of the geometric layout and the grid pattern of the temples with their circles, squares and triangles, the importance of geographic orientation and bodies of water and the carvings’ iconography is beyond my very weak grasp. Instead, here is an excerpt from the UNESCO website:
Greatly influenced by the Tantric school of thought, the Chandela kings promoted various Tantric doctrines through royal monuments, including temples. Sculptors of Khajuraho depicted all aspects of life. The society of the time believed in dealing frankly and openly with all aspects of life, including sex. Sex is important because Tantric cosmos is divided into the male and female principle. Male principle has the form and potential, female has the energy. According to Hindu and Tantric philosophy, one cannot achieve anything without the other, as they manifest themselves in all aspects of the universe. Nothing can exist without their cooperation and coexistence. In accordance with ancient treaties on architecture, erotic depictions were reserved for specific parts of the temples only. The rest of the temple was profusely covered with other aspects of life, secular and spiritual. Source: UNESCO/CLT/WHC
Khajuraho remained forgotten by the outside world until 1838 when a British army engineer, Captain T.S. Burt, was carried in via palanquin. I laughed so hard when I read that the Victorian officer was shocked by what he found….
Khajuraho!
In memory of Anaïs Nin, February 21, 1903 – January 14, 1977
I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, The Trail Back Out, and The Taste of Your Name. My most recent book The Taste of Your Name was a finalist for the 2025 Compass Press Book Award.
The Merchant of Venice, Act V scene I: “…There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st But in his motion like an angel sings….”
my cherished Complete Works of William Shakespeare Illustrated by Rockwell Kent
According to the Royal Shakespeare Company, ‘[t]he title page of the first edition of the play, printed in 1600, states that it has been ‘divers times acted by the Lord Chamberlaine his Servants’. The first recorded performance was at court on Shrove Sunday, 10 February, 1605. King James and his courtiers must have enjoyed it because it was performed again two days later.’ [1]
Here, in honor of The Merchant of Veniceand the Immortal Bard, is my original post about the music of the heavenly spheres.
Schwedagon Pagoda, Rangon
In 2009 we spent 4 weeks in Burma, the maximum time permitted on a visa. For years we’d debated back and forth about whether to go. Does one travel to a repressive regime? Just the year before, monks were shot for demonstrating peacefully in the streets. In the end we decided to go and bear witness. A country closed tight and ruled with iron fists, the poverty and corruption are unbelievable… as are the loving kindness of the Burmese and the beauty and magic of their land. I have been pondering what to post about our trip to Burma and how to write it, because Burma is unlike anyplace on earth.
But these are only words.
Let me begin again, this time with a story:
Sacred Pali script
On our very last day in-country, in Yangon we stopped at a café on a busy street with outdoor tables. All of the tables were filled with other tourists. The locals did not have the money for anything so extravagant. A beer, a pineapple juice, and hot green tea arrived; I wrote out some last post cards. Hovering in the street were the post card seller, a hawker for newspapers (used and days old), and a skinny boy with an endless “Hello? hello! Hello? hello!” When a tourist looked his way he said “Eat,” and mimed someone putting food in his mouth. He hovered looking over the wall dividing the café from the street, persistent with hunger.
I became aware of an ethereal music swimming its way up from the background of my consciousness. I thought someone down the street a ways with access to a power generator was playing a recording of a beautiful, haunting voice. Then the sound came nearer, and it was a young Burmese person. At first I thought it was a man slowly making his way down the road. It was a woman: she had her hair up under a cap and thanaka paste on her cheeks to protect her skin from the sun.
A voice from the Heavenly Spheres
She halted and stood very still as she sang, or chanted verses, or recited a Buddhist prayer. It wasn’t clear if she was singing or speaking and didn’t matter. The purity of that voice pierced all barriers and reached all hearts. Every so often the little metal cymbals in her fingers went ching! in a perfect counterpoint.
When she stopped, the entire café burst into spontaneous applause. People kept getting out of their seats to put bills in the can on a string around her neck. I checked my wallet. I knew my last offering in Burma was going to this young woman with the voice that sang with the music of the spheres. This music usually can’t be heard. The Greek mathematician Pythagoras of Samos believed the movement of planets (heavenly spheres) creates ethereal and earthly harmonies; Shakespeare wrote often about how these harmonies affect events. All I know for sure is that on that afternoon, in a dusty street in Burma, a young woman was channeling that music for us to hear.
I walked out with a 1,000 kyat note, stepped around the restaurant’s retaining wall to donate – and saw my singer had just one leg. She was propping herself up with a rough plank of wood.
This is my final image of the country sometimes called Myanmar. This is my avatar for Burma: a transcendent voice beyond language, standing with only one leg, singing gloriously, regardless. [3]
I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, The Trail Back Out, and The Taste of Your Name. My most recent book The Taste of Your Name was a finalist for the 2025 Compass Press Book Award.
I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, The Trail Back Out, and The Taste of Your Name. My most recent book The Taste of Your Name was a finalist for the 2025 Compass Press Book Award.
The ostrich is as about as smart as a box of rocks.
RUN! Etosha National Park, NamibiaHey! Where’d the lion go? Etosha National Park, Namibia
This bird is ridiculous! Oh, how the ostrich makes me laugh… just the sight of something so big, and awkward, and silly-looking cracks me up.
Maybe we’ll be safer here. Etosha National Park, Namibia
And stupid: the brain of an ostrich is roughly the size of a human eyeball.
The ostrich does make a pretty sculpture, though. Oudtshoorn, South Africa
And healthy, as well as tasty: ostrich meat has zero cholesterol. *
And striking, with all those feathers and angular limbs. When you see an ostrich running, their limbs go all akimbo.
Basket on the right: traditional Botswana basket pattern Running Ostrich
And lethal. Those spurs on the ostrich’s legs can be deadly. The spurs are found on males, who uses them in mating competitions or to defend territory. The ostrich needs them, because he can’t rely on superior brain power. Remember the comment about brains? An ostrich’s brain is the size of a human eyeball. And that’s a fact worth repeating, because it makes me start laughing all over again.
Garden Route, South Africa
God was in a great mood the day She invented this bird.
I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, The Trail Back Out, and The Taste of Your Name. My most recent book The Taste of Your Name was a finalist for the 2025 Compass Press Book Award.
Today is the anniversary of the creation of The Endangered Species Act.
President Nixon signed The Endangered Species Act into law on December 28, 1973. The Endangered Species Act requires the federal government to protect threatened and endangered species and their critical habitat areas. According to the WWF website, “[t]he US Endangered Species Act (ESA) is our nation’s most effective law to protect at-risk species from extinction, with a stellar success rate: 99% of species listed on it have avoided extinction.”
Loss of habitat and genetic variation are the top reasons why a species becomes extinct.
The ICUN (the World Conservation Union) advises governments, scientists, academics, and conservation groups on when to designate a species as endangered. They maintain a Red List of Threatened Species with 9 levels of concern: not evaluated, data deficient, least concern, near threatened, vulnerable, endangered, critically endangered, extinct in the wild, and extinct.
Why protect species? The National Wildlife Federation’s explanation is worth repeating verbatim. Once gone, they’re gone forever, and there’s no going back. Losing even a single species can have disastrous impacts on the rest of the ecosystem, because the effects will be felt throughout the food chain. From providing cures to deadly diseases to maintaining natural ecosystems and improving overall quality of life, the benefits of preserving threatened and endangered species are invaluable.
Last year Uwe and I took a trip in Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. We got to view animals in their natural habitats. Many of them are listed as endangered.
Among the species on the endangered list: The African elephant.
Loxodonta africana. Moremi Game Reserve, Bostwana
Both black and white rhinos.
Rhinoceros. Endangered. Etosha National Park, Namibia
The African wild dog.
Lycaon pictus. Endangered. Moremi Game Reserve, Botswana
The Southern right whale.
Eubalaena australis. Endangered. Walvis Bay, Namibia
The cheetah.
Acinonyx jubatus. Endangered. Etosha National Park, Namibia
I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, The Trail Back Out, and The Taste of Your Name. My most recent book The Taste of Your Name was a finalist for the 2025 Compass Press Book Award.
Francisco Gustavo Sánchez Gómez was born on December 21, 1947 in Algeciras, Spain. He became famous as Paco de Lucía, the guitarist and composer. De Lucía was one of the world’s greatest flamenco artists, a musician who expandeded jazz and classical guitar as well. In his honor here is the post I wrote after Uwe and I visited Sevilla and listened to flamenco on the streets. – Jadi
Uwe and I spent a holiday in southern Spain. My first trip to Andalusia took place when I was barely 17, and the memories that flooded me so many years later are all from deep recesses in my senses.
We traveled by bus between Granada and Córdoba, and later to Sevilla. I didn’t remember a thing about what Sevilla looks like. Memories came back anyway. In Granada they involved spatial proportions; in Córdoba, infinity and water. In Sevilla, my recollections arrived with sound.
Parque María Luisa
We strolled through the lovely Parque de María Luisa to the Plaza de España.
Plaza de España
The Plaza was constructed in 1929 when the city of Sevilla hosted the Ibero-American Exposition World’s Fair. A building façade curves, with lovely tilework depicting each Spanish state. Uwe took photos while I admired the details.
I heard an insistent, rhythmic clacking: a young man with castanets stood in the plaza. Near him a guitarist played as a dancer’s heels pounded out a hypnotic dance.
She was astonishingly poised, with the self-confident grace required of flamenco dancers. Her skirts swirled as she dipped and turned. Her dance in the square the pluck of guitar strings the click clack click clack clack clack clack of castanets…. I was thrust back in a relived moment so deeply entrenched that I cannot tell you when or where it first occurred.
For as long as I recall, flamenco always moves me to the edge of tears. I never understood why until my mother told me that she’d developed a short-lived taste for flamenco guitar music when she was pregnant with me. After I was born the craving promptly disappeared. So do these relived audio memories come from the womb? From that first trip abroad so long ago?
I had my coins out and ready when the dancer came around with a hat. I was surprised to see how young she was under her make-up. She might have been 17… just the age I was when I first visited this beautiful region.
Perfect. She and my faulty memory were perfect.
In memory of Paco de Lucía, 21 December 1947 – 25 February 2014
I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded, The Trail Back Out, and The Taste of Your Name. Books make great gifts!
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
I am a Best American Essays-nominated writer. My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.
Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories).
The Trail Back Out was the 2023 San Francisco Book Festival Winner for General Fiction, American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.
Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories).
The Trail Back Out was the 2023 San Francisco Book Festival Winner for General Fiction, American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.
Click here for my author page to learn more about me and purchase my books.
I picked up and held at least half those baskets one by one, trying to decide. There was no one else there so I could take my time.
