The Funambulists by Jonathan Rovner
Creative Nonfiction Issue #23 - Mud Season Review
"Roland Barthes in his classic study of photography, Camera Lucida, uses two terms, punctum and studium, to descrube our reactions to photographs.
"The studium can be translated as what the photo represents in aesthetic and intellectual terms, wholly disconnected from our emotional response.
"The punctum can be translated as the wound of the photograph. It's both emotional and individual. The punctum for you might be different from my sense of the punctum in a photograph.
"It's a small detail that wounds us, a bou's crooked teeth in a photograph of smiling boys, a man shading his eyes from the sun in another."
--Robin Hemley, essay Lines that Create Motion, The Far Edges of the Fourth Genre
Camera Lucida : Reflections on Photography used book by Roland Barthes: 9780374532338
#robinhemley, #rolandbarthes, #creativenonfiction #savednotes
I’m back in Melbourne, clear-headed and flowing — fully autonomous now. I call the shots.
#CreativeNonfiction
#MelbourneLife
#SelfMastery
#FlowState
#PersonalGrowth
Laos was hard — isolating, frustrating, and at times deeply uncomfortable. But now that I’ve left, I miss the people more than anything. There’s a warmth there that stays with you, even when everything else is difficult.
https://whothefami.substack.com/p/across-the-border-in-cambodia-missing
#TravelWriting
#CreativeNonfiction
#Laos
#ExpatLife
#HumanConnection
It looks like paradise — cheap beers, big screens, easy company. But every morning you wake up alone, a little more drained, a little more empty. Some places don’t take your money — they take your soul.
https://whothefami.substack.com/p/the-expat-illusion-in-cheap-beer
#CreativeNonfiction
#ExpatLife
#TravelTruths
#SelfAwareness
#LifeLessons
Friday night in Siem Reap and the energy feels dark. Tourists are out having fun, but I’m sitting with something heavier — addiction, tension, and the sense that maybe the path forward is through the shadows, not away from them.
https://whothefami.substack.com/p/friday-night-in-the-shadows-of-siem
#CreativeNonfiction
#AddictionRecovery
#TravelWriting
#ExpatLife
#ShadowWork
Being overseas long enough frees you. You stop trying to fit cultural expectations and start playing with them instead.
#CreativeNonfiction
#StreetPhilosophy
#MelbourneLife
#TravelPerspective
#CulturalObservation
I feel more welcome in Melbourne from the people serving food behind the counter than from the pink-faced man at the metro gate.
#MelbourneLife
#MulticulturalAustralia
#CreativeNonfiction
#StreetObservations
#EverydayKindness
EoisM
James Stegall
Whothefami
