侘 寂 · ABOUT THE KEEPER OF THIS PLACE
who's writing & from where
If you're curious about my story,
you are in the right spot.
This isn't a guide. It's a record— a long letter, kept in public — about moving countries without overthinking, and trying to make something honestwhile still figuring it out.
A letter, opened
Hi, I'm Inga.
— that's me.
no longer exists"
BIRTHPLACE · NO LONGER ON MAPS
And this — for better and for messier — is my blog.
I was born in a country that no longer exists, shaped by the literature of borrowed worlds, and now writing from somewhere in between all of it.
There's a Japanese idea I keep returning to: wabi-sabi — the quiet beauty of things that are imperfect, impermanent, incomplete. It asks only that you look closely. That you stay present. That you resist the urge to smooth every rough edge into something easier to look at.
This blog is my practice of that looking.
Sometimes it's a country.
Sometimes it's a chipped cup.
Sometimes it's a sentence I can't quite finish.
warmly, Inga
The long story, in stamps
A passport, full and still running out of pages.
a borrowed world, in translation
english lit — for the sentences, not the career
doors opened. extraordinary people walked through.
a deliberate choice. not someday — now.
a city older than memory; quieter than expected.
still figuring out where the road bends.
six countries · three languages · one slowly-learned lesson:
nowhere is the same as here, if you stay long enough to notice.
A deliberate choice
We chose this life on purpose — and on purpose, slowly.
Four years ago, Randy and I made a deliberate choice: we would build a life in Mexico. Not someday — now, slowly, intentionally. We navigated the paperwork, the bureaucracy, the moments of doubt — and came out the other side with Mexican temporary residency, which is soon to become permanent.
For now, life unfolds between two worlds. Seattle, where my work keeps me grounded, and Mexico, where something quieter is taking root. I find I need both. The grey Pacific Northwest light. The warmth and colour and unhurried pace on the other side. The contrast makes each place more itself.
This in-between life — not quite settled, never quite restless — feels very wabi-sabi to me.
The fellow travellers · four-legged division
The ones who travel with me.
Our corgi Rudy has been with us through all of it. The long walks, the moves, the new windows to look out of. He has trained us well and shows no signs of relinquishing control.
More recently, he was joined by Mollie, our newest corgi, and — by her own assessment — the true center of the household. The two of them have opinions about everything and are, with embarrassing regularity, correct.
For the record
A few things, briefly.
× Things I could do without
- × onions, in any form
- × shopping malls
- × long-haul flights (a flying carpet, perhaps?)
- × small talk about the weather
- × tomatoes pretending to be tomatoes in winter
- × arguments about which city is best
✦ Things that bring me joy
- ✦ my daughters & Randy
- ✦ the smell of the sea before you see it
- ✦ a well-worn book
- ✦ a double espresso, made correctly
- ✦ learning something that changes how I see
- ✦ the first hour of a new city, getting it wrong
The list shifts. That's the point. What I love and what I'm done with will both look different next year, and that strikes me as a kind of grace.
The dispatch · once a month · never twice
A letter, a postcard, a recipe, a small argument with myself.