Lamenting and documenting.

Welcome to the brain behind the lens. Here are some inside thoughts and a more in-depth glance into my travels and my life during these periods out and about.

Love, Mandi

Thoughts from Laos,

Words from a slow boat on the Mekong…..

i came searching

with a backpack full of questions

and skin that never had to learn

how to be afraid.

my face foreign, but not in danger

only curious, only stared at,

only reminded gently:

i do not carry the weight others carry

every day.

what an odd sort of grace it is,

to feel out of place

and know that feeling will pass.

what a strange kind of truth,

to meet beauty in difference

and realize

i was never the center

of the story.

i am not special.

not braver or better or wiser.

i am simply a woman born elsewhere,

where street corners do not raise children

and storms don’t steal homes.

my strength,

if i have any at all,

is borrowed from luck,

and the hands of strangers

offering patience

as i fumble through their world

in awe.

there is wisdom here

not mine, but present.

held in the silence between river ripples,

in the quiet pride of a vendor’s eyes,

in the rhythm of tradition

that i could never improve upon.

i am just passing through,

watching it all unfold

like incense smoke in morning air.

ego softens here.

i am a grain of sand

drifting gently

on a great green current.

and that’s enough.

the world is enormous

and i am lucky

to be small.

What a priveledge it is,

To experience sonder.