Memoir Writing - The Weight Of Air

Painting on the island of Kauaʻi, Hawaii, 2001

For four decades, my workdays were mostly spent with paint and brush, shaping canvases into worlds of light and form. Lately, that has shifted. My hours are given to words, to chiseling memory into narrative. A little guilt has crept in—I haven’t been producing much artwork. But writing, I’ve discovered, is equally creative. It is painting with sentences instead of brushstrokes, summoning images from the palette of experience.

The project at hand is my travel memoir, The Weight of Air. Its backbone is the year 2008, when for twelve months I circled the globe, living in 25 countries. Every moment seemed to demand documentation. I carried cameras, sketchbooks, and at first, even an easel and art supplies. I painted, photographed, and wrote—laying down a trail of evidence that life had shifted irrevocably. Those blog posts from the road became seeds, waiting until now to be pressed into the soil of a fuller story.

Route across the globe, Jan. 2008 -  Jan. 2009

The journey was transformative. Early along the way I stumbled into a mental and spiritual state I came to call The Dream. It was more than just heightened awareness; it was a trust, a surrender, an embrace of mystery. In that current, I felt carried, as though the world itself were the author and I merely a willing participant.

This perception—more than perception really, more like a state of being—opened me to deeper engagement with the world around me. Barriers fell, just as in real life dreaming. It is said that to understand mysterious, indecipherable happenings in dreams, one must become what it is that must be understood. For instance if being trampled by an elephant, to become the elephant as well as the one trampled. So I was unafraid, because I was everything happening all at once.

Section from the current chapter, called Northward to Hanoi. Part 1

"Within a day, a cabin had been booked on a Chinese junk, a flat-bottomed sailing vessel now outfitted as a floating hotel, yet still bearing the elegant lines and fan-shaped sails of another age.

What happens to time and space in dreams? It seems youthfulness exists in dreaming because events occur that are not bound by physical law. All sorts of fantastic actions and experiences occur in dreams, and the occurrences are effortlessly woven together into a symphony of events. 

So it was in Hanoi: guided by THE DREAM itself, within two days of arrival I was carried out upon a Chinese junk with eight fellow travelers and five crew, moving almost without sound across the mirrored waters of Halong Bay—a UNESCO World Heritage Site."

Old ladies, near Hoi An, Vietnam

Now, nearing the end of the memoir, I find myself in Vietnam once again—at least in memory, shaping it into words. Soon the path bends toward Malaysia, then Australia and New Zealand. Within three weeks, the odyssey will be complete on the page, though its reverberations still echo daily. At last I will hold the memoir as a complete volume.

I have been an artist all my life, but this work reminds me that creativity wears many guises. Whether on canvas or in prose, it is the same impulse: to bear witness, to shape experience into something that can be shared, something that endures.

The Foreigner with an Old Key

 

Amy and I are about to trade the bougainvillea and brass bands of Oaxaca for the buzzing highways and family hearths of the United States. It’s our annual migration northward—equal parts reunion, obligation, and rediscovery.

We leave our beloved home and two dogs in the care of a capable house sitter—also a friend. Amy will fly first, bound for the green embrace of Minneapolis, where her children and sister await. Then, as she does each summer, she’ll travel to Omaha to teach at a special conference for Native American college students who are themselves becoming teachers. It’s a beautiful tradition—two concentrated days of creativity, mentorship, and cultural exchange. From there, she’ll curve back westward to Santa Fe.

I, meanwhile, will head out at almost the same hour—but in a different direction. Nine days in Mexico City call me like a raucous poem. It’s one of my favorite places to lose myself. I plan to wander with camera in hand, letting the streets speak—finding texture, light, and surprise in the swirl of life. Then north to Santa Fe, where Amy and I will reunite.

With our friend Dorsey (on left) from last years visit.

Santa Fe… always a mixture of memory and mystery. So many chapters of my life unfolded there—children born, a home built, decades of painting, friendships, love, and loss. Now, we mostly return to tend the past. Our storage unit, once packed like an overstuffed closet of old ambitions, has been pared down several times. What remains are mostly artworks—paintings and drawings from across forty years. Some whisper. Others still shout.

Old church at Trampas, north of Santa Fe.

This time, we’ve planned at least one excursion northward—to Taos. I can already see the long New Mexico sky stretched taut over sagebrush and silence. It will be good to be there again, if only for a moment.

And yet, returning to the U.S. feels stranger each year. America, viewed from afar, seems like a place in costume—trying on identities, discarding norms, reinventing itself anew with each news cycle. From the outside, it can feel surreal. From the inside, I expect it will feel even more so, given my earliest memories of my home country. This time, I arrive not quite as a citizen, but something closer to a visitor. A foreigner with an old key.

Meanwhile, The Weight of Air, my travel memoir, continues to unfold. I’ve reached the halfway point—both in writing and in the journey it chronicles. At this moment in the manuscript, I’m on the cusp of a great leap—from Europe to Africa. From Rome to Nairobi. From the ordered splendor of cathedrals and museums to the raw pulse of red earth, elephants, and the unknown.

Here’s a passage from the upcoming chapter, The Dark Continent:

Before leaving the United States, my mother pleaded, “Please don’t go to Africa—they’ll kill you for your shoes.” Her fear rang with maternal dread, fed by newsreels and phobias. But how could the journey bypass the very cradle of life?

The so-called Dark Continent called out like a siren, and something deep inside answered. It wasn’t a choice, not really. Fate had stirred, and the path opened.

Tucked in my bag was the yellow booklet—stamped with dates and signatures, proof that my body had been armed against yellow fever, typhoid, and whatever else the unknown might deliver. The vast savannas, the promise of wild beasts and red-dust roads, stirred something restless.

To once again be a white pebble on a black sand beach.

Africa promised danger, yes—but also the thrill of raw existence. And I was already leaning forward.

 

Writing this book is a journey in itself—one that runs parallel to these annual migrations of ours. Like any good traveler, I’m packing more than luggage these days. I’m carrying decades, images, voices, and dreams. 

Off we go.

Read more from the memoir: The Weight Of Air