an itinerant observer

I recently revisited One Hundred Years of Solitude —this time through Netflix’s lush adaptation. The series swept me into García Márquez's Macondo with its breathtaking cinematography and meticulous attention to detail. Though decades had passed since I first read the novel, its spirit of magical realism, woven into Colombia's historical fabric, felt familiar. The cycles of time, the endless loop of beginnings and endings, reminded me of Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence, the whirling dance of Sufi mystics, and Taoism's tranquil acceptance of life's flow. But the truth is, like the insomnia plague in Márquez's Macondo, the story had faded from my memory over the years. I don’t know if my first reading of One Hundred Years of Solitude in high school truly shaped me. Perhaps it was that novel, alongside The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende and even The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien, that collectively left their mark. It wasn’t until last week, while watching th...

The sun was rising just beyond the cliffs along the sea coast. I was out for my early morning jog; nothing unusual about that. I was making my way along the harbor towards the docked sailboat Sofya. Although the man on deck had his back to me, I could tell from the ponytail and the cigarette smoke that it was him.   It was intriguing that I was able to smell something as specific as Turkish tobacco amongst all other olfactory stimuli at the harbor.   Without turning around Mehmet greeted me. "Salaam-aliekum my friend”. "Waaliekum-assalam. What are you up to?” "I’m fixing her sails”. He said in a rather matter of fact manner. “How long have you been sailing Mehmet?” “As long as I can remember. At times, I think I might have been born on a ship .” “ Why do you think so?”   “ That's the narrative I prefer. I was  born an orphan. I don't know anything about my biological parents. I was found abandoned outside a small orphanage in Ko...