Notebook
Shorter and rawer than the essays — the notes I take before I know what they're for.
Most of what ends up on the writing page starts here, months earlier, as three lines scrawled at a market stall or on a bus. Some of these never grow into anything longer; they just sit here as they were written, which is its own kind of honest.
A border, a queue, a bowl of soup
Four hours at a crossing, and a soup stall that had clearly been feeding the same queue for years. Nobody complained about the wait once they smelled it.
The stall with no sign
Found by following a line of people at eight in the morning. No menu, one dish, gone by nine. Never found it again on a later trip — possibly the point.
Overheard, market, dawn
Two vendors arguing about whether a third generation could still tell good fruit by smell alone. Neither backed down. I believed them both.
A kitchen with one pot
An entire household's cooking done in a single pot, in sequence, by necessity rather than minimalism. Worth a longer piece; see how that thinking plays out on cuisines.
New notebook entries usually go out first to newsletter readers, and the places behind them are gathered on destinations.