I often sit and stare at the map on the wall above my computer, looking not at the large land masses but at the tiny dots scattered throughout the huge oceans. The tiny dots are, of course, islands and as such, offer up images of sunshine, palm trees, coconuts, and easy living.

In reality, the majority of these tiny dots represent small remote islands with fascinating names that intrigue and entice you to come and visit. Their extreme climatic and geological conditions, however, often make access to them difficult, if not down right impossible.

But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to go.

And reading a recent review of the Atlas of Remote Islands it’s pretty clear I’m not the only one who stares at tiny dots on the map.

Written by acclaimed novelist and award-winning graphic designer Judith Schalansky, the Atlas of Remote Islands is the result of a lifelong fascination with maps. Growing up in East Germany, Judith’s only opportunity to travel was through the pages of old atlases.

Years later, her continual love affair with atlases shines through with her own imaginative atlas to fifty  of the world’s loneliest islands.

With hand drawn detailed topographic maps and intricate local histories, each of the islands comes alive through stories about marooned slaves, lonely scientists, lost explorers, mutinous sailors, confused lighthouse keepers, and forgotten castaways.

North Uist is a small island in the Western Isles of Scotland. The Atlantic Ocean crashes to the west and the waters of the Minch, which lies between the Hebrides and mainland Scotland, defines the other. The land between is one of loch, moor, hill, and sense of connection to the past. It is also connected to the present. “We knew all the music on the charts,” Julie Fowlis says, pointing out that her upbringing was anything but quaint, “but we heard all the old songs, too, right beside them, as a matter of course.” That’s how she learned many of the songs she sings now, and where she began to develop her taste for songs of handed down through history.

Fowlis sings in Scottish Gaelic. That is still a day to day language in the Western Isles. People in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland speak it, as do those in places where they settled, such as Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, but even in Scotland itself fewer than one percent of people know it well. It is the language of home for Fowlis, though, and one she has carried across the world. Her third solo album is called Uam,which means from me in Scottish Gaelic.

On it, you can hear the sounds of the sea, both in story songs connected with people who make their living from the sea, and in the rhythm of work songs and tales told at home by those who waited for them to come home across sometimes uncertain waters. For this project, music that Fowlis has heard on her travels made its way in, too. There’s a song from the Breton tradition of France with a title anyone from the Isles would understand: its title translates as I was born in the midst of the sea. Top Scottish singer Eddi Reader, known for her work in pop and in folk music, comes along to sing English verses while Fowlis does the Gaelic for a version of the Appalachian folk song from America, Wind and Rain. An Irish influence comes in when a song from Barra in the Hebrides is paired with a tune called Trip to Galway, composed by Fowlis’s husband Eamon Doorley, who is from Ireland. There are stories of love gone right and love gone wrong, tunes both lively and reflective, and through it all a a flavour of the Western Isles and western oceans, of history, of family, and of connection to the present.

Creating that connection is something Fowlis does well. So well, in fact, that she was named the first recipient of the Scottish Government’s Gaelic Ambassador of the Year award (Tosgaire Gàidhlig na Bliadhna), established several years ago to recognize a person who has done the most to raise the status and profile of Gaelic in Scotland and and abroad. “I asked them, what are my responsibilities?” Fowlis said. “They told me, just keep doing what you’re doing.”

Uam is a fine chance to hear just that. Fowlis is well supported by her usual band mates Doorley, who plays bouzouki, Tony Byrne on guitar, Martin O’Neill on bodhran, and Duncan Chisholm on fiddle, along with guests including Reader, Mary Smith, and Jerry Douglas. Don’t understand Scottish Gaelic? No worries. There are English lyrics and comments from Fowlis on the music, in both English and Gaelic, in the liner notes. Listen first, though, and hear the sounds of the Western Isles.

“Hello USA!”

Our new friend Lal recognized me as soon as we stepped out of the tuk-tuk and made our way to the platform to catch the 10:55 express train from Galle to Colombo. We’d met and spoken with him two days prior, here at the train station, while waiting for an afternoon downpour to subside in overcast Galle.

He’d talked about the tour groups he’s led (without, thankfully, pitching his services too), and about the state of Sri Lankan politics, the toll of the country’s 30-year civil war, the lingering threat of a LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) resurgence, and about the ways in which he hoped his countrymen would move forward. Sri Lanka still doesn’t get many visitors from the States, and he was eager–as so many Sri Lankans were–to tell us his story, share his views, and hear what an American thought about it; if given the audience, Lal could have talked all day.

Before we pressed on, he was adamant about legitimizing himself and produced his official South Ceylon Tourist Board badge from his worn, black-leather wallet, which also contained his official cricket referee card, amongst others. Today, on a mid-Sunday morning, he was standing in the same spot at the station, wearing the same clothes, sporting the same big smile that stretched across his face during our conversation.

After a quick hello we purchased our second-class tickets (180 rupees) for the three-hour journey north up the southwestern coast, and as Lal promised had no trouble grabbing seats in the first-come, first-served carriage. It did fill up quite fast, though: with perilously overstuffed bags dragging behind them, the tardy stragglers who pushed their way on right before departure were as noneffectual about the “no assigned seats” policy as we were. Indeed, with a few stops along this express route, by the time we pulled into the old, crumbling, wonderful Colombo station, it was standing-room only.

The ride to Colombo, though less geographically dramatic than the journey two weeks earlier from Colombo to Kandy, was glorious. At certain points, we coasted so close to the ocean shoreline that it felt like we were breathlessly skimming across the water at 35 – 40 miles per hour, a sensation Paul Theroux also experienced and chronicled in The Great Railway Bazaar. In the chapter entitled “The 16.25 from Galle,” in which he memorably meets Mr. Wong, a Chinese dentist specializing in “tooth mechanics,” Theroux describes his rain-drenched voyage in third-class seating on this very same line:

The train from Galle winds along the coast north towards Colombo, so close to the shoreline that the spray flung by the heavy rollers from Africa reaches the broken windows of the battered wooden carriages.

Inside the train the passengers were banging the windows shut to keep the rain out. The sunset’s fire was tangled in leaden clouds, and the pillars of rain supporting the toppling thunderheads were very close. [...] People were jammed in the compartments and pressed in the corridors. When the rain increased – and now it was really coming down – they fought their way into the carriages and slammed the doors and stood in the darkness while the rain hit the metal doors like hail.

It was rainy then, and it was rainy on this day. A magnificent pre-monsoon storm, the kind I became all too familiar with during my time living in Bangkok, pounded the carriage like a relentless prizefighter for much of the trip. When it hit, the passengers–Sri Lankans of every class and just a fistful of tourists–quickly pulled the rickety windows down; when it left, the rickety windows were flung back up. Cool breeze, hot, stuffy air. Cool breeze, hot, stuffy air.

We zipped past swampy marshlands and plowed rice paddies, and tired water buffalo kicking back their hooves in shallow ponds of soupy mud. Kalutara’s Gangatilaka Vihara, a massive, blinding white (and hollow) dagoba, came and went on the right side, while volleyball games on otherwise deserted beaches and intense games of cricket in shadeless playing fields flashed by on the left.

The sad slums that lined the tracks, though, dashed any sustained sense of romance. The intense poverty, seen in many parts of the country, felt especially prevalent along this stretch. I cursed myself for not having any small bills to give, for example, to a thin one-legged man on crutches, wife and young son in tow. Vendors walked the aisles selling bags of deviled peanuts, baskets of fried shrimp, chocolate biscuits, short eats, small bottles of water… anything they could get their hands on, and make a few rupees from.

I’ve seen this ruthless face of poverty many times–we all have–but no matter where you’ve been or what you’ve seen, only the most hardened of hearts couldn’t be broken by the harsh realities these people face every day. Scratching and clawing for very little–and sometimes getting nothing–and unlikely to ever experience any degree of financial comfort or stability.

Despite it, our fellow passengers were friendly and quick to return our smiles with a welcoming look of earnest sincerity, just as others did throughout our two weeks traveling the country. The emotions stirred by the people we met and the stories we heard in Sri Lanka run deep. People weary and still recovering from a civil war that battered their spirit and divided them by ethnicity.

Months later, I’m still trying to wrap my head around the narrative they collectively tried to shape about their country in 2010, but one word does stick out: hope. Hope for better days, hope for unity, hope for peace. Sri Lankans are a people to watch in the coming years, and a people to root for.

That was our last full day in Sri Lanka. Other adventures in far-off destinations beckoned, but I found it difficult getting off that 10:55 express to Colombo and leaving this place behind… at least for awhile.

The recently opened Ron Mueck Sculpture Exhibition at the Christchurch Art Gallery is providing a much need escape from the continuing aftershocks (1500 and still counting) that have been rocking Christchurch since the beginning of September.

Instead of talking earthquakes, people are talking about naked bodies. To be exact, they are talking about Ron Mueck’s hyperrealistic human body sculptures which faithfully reflect the most minute physical details of the human body. From head to toe, young to old, nothing is missing. Skin pores, moles, wrinkles, hair – all factors of the human condition are exposed.

Many of the sculptures give new meaning to the ‘larger than life’.

But not all of them. Some are ‘smaller than life’.

But all are so detailed that, if they had been made to human sized, they could almost be mistaken for real people.

But unlike real people, who are able to mask their feelings, these hyerrealistic bodies, unable to hide behind a mask, convey feelings of loneliness, vulnerability, and alienation.

The Ron Mueck Exhibition at the Christchurch Art Gallery from 2 October 2010 to 23 January 2011.

(photo credit: Liz Lewis 2010)

It’s a cloudy and rainy day in Manhattan as I write this, and this is the view out of my window.

The gray outside has invaded my apartment’s interior.  I’m wearing gray pajamas, and an oversized gray wool sweater that I bought at H&M. It’s meant to look handknit although I’m pretty sure it was made by a metal machine.  I know for sure that it looks less like a misshapen sack when it’s worn not over pjs, with a wide belt, say over leggings. But they haven’t turned the heat on in my building yet and I’m cold, and the sweater’s warm. So the color of the day is gray.

So this got me to thinking about gray, a color I actually like a great deal, even though it has more than its share of negative connotations: it’s a color that’s wishy-washy, uncertain, unclear. Even its spelling is unsettled: do you spell it with an “a” or an “e”?

But there are different ways to look at gray, and I have learned them in my travels.

For instance there is this gray:

This gray landscape is the frozen Bering Strait, somewhere near the Alaskan-Russian border.  I was in a tiny plane, which was itself gray, flying from Nome to a spit of land and a community called Shishmaref. The land looks gray in the winter, and that land is rapidly eroding back into the sea, which is gray when the sky is gray.

And there is also the gray of the stones of the sea. This is by the beach at Petit St. Vincent, in the Grenadines.

Of course, gray is often the color of nature’s violence.I saw the tornado that swept through Brooklyn the other day, from a different window in my apartment. It was a wall of gray. What’s left after a fire is charred to gray.  Below, on the Big Island of Hawaii, is the gray lava landscape in what used to be the town of Kalapana:

Which also reminds me of the gray sky I saw on the High Road to Taos in New Mexico:

But sometimes gray isn’t violent at all. It’s downright peaceful, although since it shimmers when it is at peace, we tend to describe this state of gray as  “silver”.  I think many people would describe the gray I saw in this Maui sunset as silvery:

But I wouldn’t.