Cultural Melding

​Traveling is its own reward.  For the obvious reasons such as experiencing new cultures, new foods, and new ways of thinking, but also for the not so obvious.  The small, subtle shifts and changes in how we interact with other people, the feeling of being immersed in a different language, the way that our internal clock acclimates to a different time zone.  All of these experiences and more ranging from experiencing constant and heavy snow for the first time, to the first haggling experience in a foreign market, to enjoying an afternoon in a carefully cultivated bamboo forest add up to something sublime and somewhat paradoxical in both its abstract nature and its tangibility to those who’ve lived there far longer than we have.  The following poem is an attempt to capture a single fond moment of many from one of my trips.

​Salmon and orange slices, who knew?
Off to the market, with my gaze askew
 
Still in doubt, but curious too
Onions and garlic, the familiar fixings
 
As the ingredients gather and meld, so do we
The cooking three
 
Strangers before
But now, brothers from far shores