Emotional Architect

Her face looked doubtful, eyes crinkled in confusion, lips turned downwards at the corners. I couldn’t go on without her and there was no way around it, she would have to jump.

“Are you sure it’s safe?” she called down, tugging again on the thick rope I had braided like a mother tenderly tying her child’s tangled tendrils. Was I? No. I’m never sure anything’s safe in this forest but the rope, it was safe for sure. I nodded. I placed my hand against the trunk of the great tree where it grew down through the rock wall. The air was tangible and full of the faded antique lilac blossoms. I closed my eyes for a moment, pressing my forehead against the cool surface. The hum of energy beneath my fingers was audible and then gone. Such a shame she was immune to my ability. I could have imbibed her with the strength to take the leap before she had registered her initial fear.

When I opened my eyes her face had straightened resolutely and I tugged on my end, taking in a grand breath of air as she leapt and swung down. I imagined a brick wall, placing the sturdiness into myself like so many stones and then she swung into my chest, both of us crumpling to the ground. The air slithered out of my chest and I felt her heart beating like music tattooed inside my skin, a steady pulsing drumbeat.

She stood and brushed the leaves from her locks and the dirt from her jeans. A futile attempt to maintain cleanliness I thought to myself, and raised a hand momentarily to touch my dreadlocks knowing that long ago my skin had become earthy and smudged with dirt, a perfect camouflage.

“Will we have to do that again?” she asked, her voice trembling. Her self-doubt rang loudly in my ears like symbols clanging together and the thin wavering pink began worming its way around the outside of my vision. I didn’t have to burrow into her mind to hear her unhappiness and see her fear. I momentarily evaluated the option of lying. Gritting my teeth I considered the possibility that after all her upset today she may not even make it through the grueling night terrors. I screwed up my will and decided on honesty. Katya would not be dying on my watch.

“Yes… The whole path here is full of these tree’s and we won’t get past them quick enough without swinging down the walls.” I wanted to comfort her now but we didn’t have time for this. If we didn’t get to the den by nine the ropes would be the least of our problems. I took her hand and felt her hesitation, felt her pull and look back but I couldn’t help her. I couldn’t tap into her mind and unleash her strength which I knew was begging to be unleashed so I did the only thing I could. Hung my head and begged her to understand.

“You can’t look back. The Graysuits will be able to smell your hesitation from a mile away. Your emotion are your weakness. It will summon them like flies to rotting flesh and then they will need to do nothing but feed from afar. I can’t help you through this like I can with Boris and Sasha. They can feel and I can put their feelings in boxes that only they have the key too… But your emotions are too slippery for me to protect and your mind is too complex for me to decrypt. It will be harder for the Graysuits to begin feeding too but damage is simpler to inflict than deflect.” When she nodded her affirmation of understanding we moved on silently, her feet loud on the ground and mind as silent as the twilight that was creeping into the woods.

With her lack of abilities and strong spirit, she was like a death sentence to all of us. None of us could let her fall though- even if it meant cushioning her demise with our own lives. Closing my eyes and sniffing the air I could detect both our path and our window of time closing.

When we reached the den only moments before nine the relief on her now dirty face was evident. She was tugged into the cave and I examined my surroundings in the descending night. Never before has any of the Light Ones been immune to my abilities. It doesn’t make sense. Her fear was so tangible, pink and pulsating like an exposed heartbeat. It still hung around in the air and bile filled my throat before I could stop it. Retching and stumbling away from the warmth of the den I realized that I had developed a weakness that could be the end for all of us.

Sitting down on a rock I breathed slowly and carefully, preparing myself to do my nightsweep before going inside. A bundle of colors, like tangled yarn, was above their hideout and with my minds fingers I detangled and separated them into warm and cold colors and then began to weave my darkness around them.

When I finished the darkness had become complete, and inky black that didn’t simply cover the light it extinguished it. See if the Graysuits can unravel that, I thought triumphantly. Even Katya’s stubborn emotions were tangled in the others, trying unsuccessfully to worm through my protector waves like an infectious disease. When I go inside I’m aware of a heavy silence falling over the room as I remove my shoes at the door and relieve myself of my bow. The silence makes me uneasy, it’s a respect given to soldiers going into deadly combat or elderly’s close to making the Passing. Not to young Guards to have almost blown their cover.

“Are we too late for supper?” I asked jokingly, my mind working to prioritize the warmer emotions, spinning them to the surface like a funnel but my fingers are far from deft enough to fool the group of people who know my abilities as well as their own. Some still haven’t noticed before Mayforr growls at me, his teeth bared in warning.

“You use your words Clover, not those snaky fingers of yours.” His fist dropped onto the table and the room, even the gentle buzzing of thoughts, fell into immediate silence. Mayforr’s effect on a room was inconsistent. He was terrifying at times, but also had the ability to be a calm and collected mentor. He was in the highest position of respect as the Head Guard, and he got a wide berth of understanding wherever his journeys took him. One only rose to such a rank and position through watching a great many good friends and companions make the Passing before their time. Only Mayforr knew and understood everyone’s abilities, sometimes better then the able themselves.

We would have sung the spirit song

We would have flown to Paris,
but the wind beneath our wings couldn't hold you up
so we fell, like feathers into the water.
But you can't swim so we would have floated,
the salt water like pillows beneath our spines.
The currents would have guided us to an island
where our lips would have dripped with guava juice,
and our teeth would tear the flesh of fish coaxed to land by the sound
of your serpent-tongued song.
The ash in our hair would have glittered like two thousand miles of
stars and our eyes like glass marbles in the sand
rolling and playing until they
drifted back out to sea and sunk to the shell-cushioned ocean floor.
The natives would have found us in a century our so,
and wondered what tragic sea burial we witnessed, what souls were sacrificed
for what worldly treasure did we pay the price.
And your bones would have been played like xylophones and mine like hollow flutes
or hung to clatter against each other in the wind,
our banging friction could be music once again,
and our marble eyes and chipped teeth would adorn women's
collarbones and men's ankles,
and we would have been laughing all along with our hearts afloat under other's wings,
singing the seabreeze spirit song.

But She Wasn't a Working Girl (Addie Snippet)

(a note from the shutter muse: My apologies for the vagueness of connection from the story to the photograph. My mind works in mysterious ways and the only actual connection from this to the story is the stolen flower in the last line. However all things ephemeral- such as a flower bloom that lasts a mere day or two- reminds me of Addie's fleeting but powerful beauty.)

Addie loved her art the way sailors love the sea. She revered it, respected it, feared it, and ultimately would have died for it. She lived her life covered in toxins from oil paint, seeping into her pores from where she used the side of her palm to blend the perfect line on a discarded milk carton and the backs of her bare thighs where she wiped it afterwards. Maybe in the end, it was the fumes from everything that crept inside her mind like snake smoke tendrils, wrapping around her vital nerves and squeezing them until they became something else: new, grotesque, and utterly misshapen.

She had a delicate constitution though—like the softest leather. So useful and elegant, but unsuitable for practical work. Because of this she couldn’t keep a job, not that she hadn’t tried. There was not a realistic or practical bone in Addie’s body but with me at a editing firm making barely minimum wage to edit intern generated garbage, it was no secret that (even in only her tiny loft) we couldn’t afford to live this way. I learned quickly just how durable I was in contrast to Addie’s hollow bones. In the span of three months Addie held three different jobs, none of which she enjoyed and only one of which she quit. The first, and overall most promising, was a substitute art teacher at the local church for a brief summer program.

“Paid to watch them paint?” Addie had laughed the day she’d gotten the job, as if the idea was ludicrous. I was happy for her—thinking maybe her innocent spirit, pure like newly seeded flowers or a bubble hovering at the tip of a child’s wand, might be kindred to artistically inclined children. I, as usual, drastically misjudged Addie’s excitement and returned home to find her sobbing on the floor, paint covering her hands and streaming down her cheeks, which were already wet with tears.

“None of them cared,” she shrieked when I dropped to my knees beside her, paint staining my last clean pair of jeans, while vaguely I wondered how much paint and water was soaked into these floorboards. When Adeline cried, she became a Greek goddess, crying rivers and streams enough to almost free the world from drought, if only they weren’t made of her salty tears. A deathly practical joke for those with dry swollen tongues and chapped lips who praised the heavens and believed themselves saved.

I couldn’t get her to explain for another hour, until she had cried herself dry and eaten the sandwich I’d made for her. Then she began to woefully recount, with the flair of a well-seasoned actress (although Addie never acted, only felt feelings stronger than others like an intravenous drug) her experiences of the day.

“They weren’t artists…” She began, with a face that looked strained. When Addie had arrived to her work, more or less punctually considering she abhorred timepieces and therefore told her time by emotions, the desires of her stomach, and (out of mere necessity) from the position of the sun, she had been handed a list of activities. That was the first bad omen, she told me somberly, because on the list were petty activities including but not exclusively: making color wheels, drawing stories through pictures, and worst and most insulting of all, Pictionary. The woman in charge had told her in a tone that was wrung of all enthusiasm like the crunchy hollow chrysalis of a butterfly, that the most important thing was that the children had fun, considering most of them were rich church member’s children who were here for the summer and donating substantially. Addie had nodded but disdainfully crossed many things off the list with her peacock feather pen she kept tucked in her fedora.

When the children arrived they came penless, inspirationless, and with listless stares and gum which they snapped loudly and stuck under their seats. A heard of spoiled brats, Addie had realized, and she hadn’t been expecting them to only want to play Pictionary. She was able to begin though, steeling her mind for the onslaught of angry auras that seemed to be plummeting her with massless bullets, exploding in her cerebral cortex and spreading a feeling of doubt and discouragement. The color wheel went over poorly and they refused to tell stories so Addie resorted to an assignment of her own.

“Paint your thoughts. Anything you perhaps have been thinking of. You may use any object in the room as your canvas, providing you don’t harm others or yourself.” With that Addie had dropped into her chair and begun her intricate finger-painting on the syllabus. This she had pulled out of her pocket while she told me her story. It was a crumpled mess of paint and colors, but Addie never left her art behind. She created art like mothers shape their children, and she couldn’t abandon even the smallest doodle, the tiniest painting on a diner napkin drawn with the color rubbed from old flowers, condiment stains, and carefully manipulated coffee rings.

The children had, she admitted, complied loudly and chattily, smashing vases and painting terrible words on the shards, drawing crude stick figures between the pages of thesauruses and atlases. Addie knew then that they weren’t artists but at least they weren’t yelling at her anymore. Before she knew it though, the director had burst in and declared the class over, shouting at Addie until her voice had grown hoarse from the strain. Addie had told her that art was expression and that they had begun, today, to try to express their feelings visually. At least that was a start.

“She fired me on the spot, and kept my paycheck to cover the damage.” Addie finished, exhausted, and I smiled. I knew she could not have been expected to entertain people who mocked the very roots from which she grew, the expressionist art that indeed ruined many of our household items that were not, she explained, meant to be in that shape. But things were simply things, I always said, and if they needed to be crushed and ground into glass dust to sprinkle on top of painted hubcaps and manhole coverings, then let them be.

Her second job had been as a waitress. A small diner down the street was desperate for help and Addie was desperate for new tubes of paint. She started on a Tuesday and had the job for a little less than a week. She didn’t mind the long hours and the fact that she earned hardly any money besides the tips suited her just fine. She came home with pocketfuls of change and spare buttons (which were soon incorporated into art) with which we bought groceries, small bottles of vodka, but mostly just tubes of oil paint. I required very little to be content. Addie’s smiles filled my heart to the brim and her kisses filled my stomach. We ate fresh fruit in the morning and leftover pastries in the evening, which Addie bought behind the café after closing for a fraction of the price. When Addie “dove” for new canvases, somewhere even I would not follow, she would bring back canned fruit and vegetables and soups that had barely passed their sell-by dates.

The waitressing was vigorous and a cutthroat profession though, Addie confessed to me, returning home from work late on her fifth day, pockets full of change that jingled like bells on the ankles and hips of Arabian belly dancers when she walked down the street. She felt as if her creative energy had been drained from her and she lost the will to talk to the butterflies on the fire escape, or paint on our paper plates with leftover condiments stolen from restaurants and squeezed from their packages with sticky fingers. Her artist was incarcerated in a jail scented with fried food and the derogatory words from customers, their angry auras, coiled around her ankles like shackles and rose on her like copper scented quicksand, the pressure building in handfuls.

As she spoke, I could tell—feel with the tips of my eyelashes and the scabs on my knees—that she could not go on like this. At my request she quit the next day, coming home with armfuls of ingredients given to her by Gerald (the chef) who had taken a liking to her. Thus ended her second short-lived career, and renewed her spirit. For when I returned from work the next day she was paint-smudged and laughing on the fire escape, speaking in hushed tones to a butterfly perched on a stolen flower.

(To Be Continued...)

Addie Snippet

We were lying in the grass, eyes closed, only the tips of our fingers and toes touching. It was Addie’s belief that this brought our energy full circle, that our auras begin to unite like yin and yang. She could feel it, she said, her eyes glowing like broken glass under a full moon. I bet she could feel it. I never felt anything out of the ordinary, but I didn’t ever mind lying in the grass with her brushing her fingertips lightly against mine. The friction between even the most innocent patches of bare skin could warm the darkest areas of my heart.

She always used to take me to the bird area of the zoo, a large outdoor cage that you pay a small fee and get to be trapped in for as long as you like. When Addie told me that’s what we were going to the zoo for, I could feel my throat closing up like a giant fist was squeezing it, wringing it like a dishwasher wrings out a wet towel. But for Addie? Birds it was. I paid my fee, but instead of paying her fee, Addie threw her arms around the neck of the older man selling tickets and kissed him on the cheek. He laughed and nodded at her, handing her some bags of birdseed and waving her inside.

“Wait, let me guess,” I said, watching her blonde waves glinting in the sunlight and mentally measuring how much I wanted to know. “You bought a season pass to the bird cage?”

Addie’s laugh was loud and clear, like someone tapping a knife against a pure crystal glass to draw attention for a toast. She shook her head and leaned over the edge of the railing to drop some of her birdseed.

“No that’s Royce… I used to collect his recycling and he told me that he was on bird cage and… well he’s just a nice guy that I know I guess.” Addie shrugged and kept walking, pulling me forward by the arm like an impatient child. She didn’t specify but I knew she meant that she was collecting his recycling for art. She had been painting bottles and broken glass for a few years now, several of her favorite pieces had been hanging on the walls of my apartment before it sold.

“What’s your favorite bird?” She asked, and I shrugged, not knowing what to say.

“A parrot I suppose.” I said, thinking of the only birds I wasn’t afraid of as a child. “Oh, or a peacock.” By favorite bird I meant that at the age of nine I’d owned a bedspread embroidered with peacock feathers. Addie took it literally and nodded meaningfully.

“I like pigeons, but peacocks are my favorite here. They’re haughty and beautiful, like supermodels that strut down runways with their heads head high. The only reason a peacock would turn its head is for something spectacular.” Addie smiled and strutted down the small boardwalk, a supermodel just for me with her tangled birds nest of curls and her ripped jeans and loose tank.

I walked behind her, always a step behind Addie, and wrapped my arms around her waist, looking over the side of the fence just in time to see a peacock turning its neck in an arch that looked unnatural, a glance over the shoulder that sent blue and green glints flying everywhere like confetti flavored sunbeams. Addie gasped and I smiled, not surprised. Addie at her best, and yes even at her worst, was something spectacular. Enough to make even the most extravagant peacock take a peek over their shiny shoulder.

Kitten Apartment Adjustment

My kitten, Golom, is making the adjustment quite well to her new home. I managed to find an animal who loves shoes as much as I do. Unlike my previous pets, she shows no desire to chew, poop on, or otherwise defile my beautiful boots in any way other than to snuggle with them.

She is quite vicious, and manages to keep all of the pest problems (of which there are none) at bay with her jungle-like displays of dominance.

She has several interesting sleeping spots besides my boots, one of them being in my pants shelf of the closet on top of my black pair of pants. I didn't realize this until I wore them out and someone pointed out to me that I had a distinct circle of kitten hair on the back of my thigh. I'll take it as a symbol of her love.
Another spot is the dust pan.

Or perhaps she was just proving a point that Ben doesn't pay enough attention to her because he can't tell the difference between her and a pile of fur.


Either way, no more pictures were taken because she hates the flash on my camera, and now sleeps with her paws covering her eyes so that it won't wake her up.

She's very loved (and loving), and makes the apartment feel more like home.

-The Shutter Muse

Butterfly Tongue Trees

The butterfly trees are rolling out their
spiraled tongues made full with winter's slumbering secrets
releasing their tiny umbrella seeds to fly.
A cotton tree somewhere is shedding it's coat,
like dandruff raining down across the cityscape.
I put my tongue out, inner seasons askew,
the tiny balls look like crystals, snowflakes from the Southern hemisphere.
But no, the cotton trees have merely spun their chrysalises overnight
and at midnight they explode into dehydrated snow, fluff you can grab in your fists
and rub against your cheek like milkweed or kitten's fur.

What are those trees called that make this? I asked a young woman with old eyes
a gypsy with beautiful long hair
and skirts patched together with memories and stolen thread.
It comes on the wind, was all she said.
When the cotton fills the air of Santiago, it comes on the wind.

Chainsmoking with Pigeons

Sometimes there’s a point in your life where you dip your toe into the river between sanity and insanity. There may even be a point where you choose to immerse yourself in those dangerous rapids. But a few of us, some of us not able to now tell which side we used to live on, get swept along in the current and dragged under, and when we re-surface, the side with the people eating cigarette butts and wasing their hair with jars of peanut butter seems more like home.

I used to be a normal girl, I just liked to hang out under the bridge where the bums spend the long cold Chicago winters. They say if you drop a bucket of water in the midst of winter, it turns to ice before it hits the ground. I don’t know if I believe it though, those bums always seem to make it through the winter with nothing but fingerless gloves and cold canned soup. They might be a different breed of human, a superhuman of sorts that can withstand conditions of all sorts, like the dogs that live on the streets of islands and live off the remnants of fish corpses and the liquid they lick out of broken beer bottles. They may be hungry but they’re very much alive.

I used to smoke packs of Basics under the bridge and dip my toes into the water when it was warm enough. I didn’t have any money to buy food, only cigarettes. So I’d smoke a pack like I’d eat a meal, then I’d go home and change all my clothes in my closet and reemerge fresh and smokeless to eat dinner with my family, which by then I’d already begun to outgrow.

The first time anything ever seemed off was in July, when the shade of the bridge seemed like a refuge, a cool tongue lapping over the pavement again and again, cooling it with saliva that evaporated except for in the sweat beads forming under my hairline, in the curve of my upper lip, and in the crease between my breasts. I still had curves then, I remember leaning over the water and looking at my reflection, the large healthy curve of my cheeks and hips, and I even remember poking the roll of fat where the underwire of my bra pinched the skin with disdain. The small rolls of skin that makes us women we are taught to hate, to starve and mold our bodies until they’re lithe like the smooth muscles of a cat. Gliding without ever taking an unattractive angle. The first thing that happened when I lost touch with the saner side of myself is that I dropped these curves that made me a women, those last pounds that for years I’d been trying to diet and exercise away. Within weeks they were nothing more than the ashes under the bridge from my Basics. I can now take two hands and cup the space between my ribs, where my stomach has become concave. Grasp the bones of hips that are bigger than I remember. Gone is the body I had as a woman, the weight and influence that made me that much more human.

Under the bridge I heard the echoes of a girl’s voice. It was whispering and the only way it was distinctly female is that it had a soft, caressing feel, like lips the have been glossed with lipstick and puckered seductively. It was a low steady whisper, and it chased my thoughts around my head like lyrics to a song I knew but couldn’t remember the name of. I paced back and forth, trying to determine where it was the loudest, where this woman could be trapped, where it was coming from. Finally I bent, gravel digging into my knees, my left ear dipped as close to the water as it could get without submerging half my face in the water. There it was, it was louder. Come into the water, it whispered, let me out. Come into the water, the voice whispered. Then I saw the ripples. The ripples of the water where there shouldn’t be, where the air was the stillest the water seemed to ripple, as if someone from beneath, a mirror image of myself was running her fingers across the water, seeing if she could break the surface from the bottom up. The breath caught in the back of my throat and I stood abruptly, the blood rushing to my head from the change and everything blurred together for a moment before righting itself. I dropped my cigarette to the ground and ran. I ran and ran and somehow ended up on my doorstep. I couldn’t breath, the air too thick, and so I got up the stairs and into the shower and stayed there until the cold water shocked the ability to breath back into my lungs. That night I dreamt about the other me, the one trapped beneath the river’s surface and wondered if she would ever find a way out.

Spring Without You

Spring comes suddenly and sweetly,
like a smile thrown over your shoulder.
Spring is the clementine peels under your fingernails
the sticky kisses pressed against my cheek from popsicle lips
the tan lines I got from naps in the sun.
Spring is tangled hair that isn't worth brushing,
sand in the creases in my elbows, behind my knees, beneath my breasts.
Spring is shivering in shorts and tank tops
brought out in haste, to be squelched by Mother Nature's stormy countenance.
How can I describe spring without you?
Spring sans chocolate lipstick and somersaults in the grass,
Spring sans skinned knees and salty tears on going to sleep when the sun still shines.
Spring sans you is just warm weather and flowers in bloom.
Spring without you is just a season.


-The Shutter Muse (who misses her baby sister terribly)

Heart of the Forest

When you're at the heart of the forest, after it rains
a misty tongue licks across the trees.
Everything sparkles like spilt oil and fog hangs around the tree limbs

like cigarette smoke lingers about a beautiful woman.
Clinging to the aura of the storm,
reluctant to take in a breath of fresh air,
unwilling to release the heady sensation of holding your breath
until you're half way between this world
and the next.

Contained

your finger was extended
lengthening the line of your body's intention,
one eye cinched shut tight like the ribbon on top of a present.
your lips quirked into a pucker of concentration.
fingertips tracing the lines of the mountain range like the cheek of a lover
"the knuckles of the earth" you whispered
"how dare it be contained"

Update: Villa O'higgins Pictures

So for a long time now I've been contemplating my first post. Should it be an explanation of my idea for my blog? A picture post? A longer piece of short fiction or the beginning of a series?
Should it be my favorite piece of work or least favorite at the moment...

So finally I set out yesterday to "write" my first piece of fiction as The Shutter Muse. I sat down, full of intention, put my pen on the paper and... Nothing.
I have all these ideas but none of them corresponded to the pictures that I wanted to use. I did write something (which will immediately follow this post today or tomorrow- a pressure relieved "second post"... no big deal).

Now I'm going to post pictures of my adventures in Patagonia (the Southern part of Chile) where I flew on my first day in Chile. In fact... I flew within my first hour of coming through customs, I packed a travel bag in the airport, stuff strewn all over the floor, people stepping on my toiletries and tripping over my socks.
This is the "airport" in Villa O'higgins where the tiny (slightly unsafe) 8-seat plane landed on a quite windy landing strip.





This house is going to feature in one of the later fictional stories- but as of yet the character is not presenting herself easily. Maybe for NaNoWriMo.


The trees there are full of lichen... But its furrier than any lichen I've ever seen.
They look as if they've grown small beards.




It gives the entire forest a mythical "underwater" feeling. If you do any scubadiving or snorkeling (or google image surfing may do) you might be familiar with the seaweed on the bottom of the ocean that floats about like fingers and sways in an imaginary wind.
It's very similar to that.





The water is fresh water (in the mountains) and deliciously drinkable.

It's also incredibly clear and when the sun was shining a million different colors shone through the water.
If its not showing up as vividly on your computer screen try kicking up the contrast and brightness...

This is in the front of the property.


The reason that Benjamin's family was in Patagonia is because September 18 is Fiestas Patrias (the Chilean independence day) and so on Saturday we went into the town and watched several ceremonies.

This independence day was particularly special and celebratory because its the 200 year anniversary of Chile's independence.



Most of the dogs in the Patagonia are small Chilean terriers (very cute but jumpy and yappy), this was a puppy that captured my heart while we were sitting outside where the ceremony was being held.

Most of the homeless puppies in Chile (Santiago as well) are equally cute to this one, but also equally as dirty.
It's hard to resist petting them. In fact, I find it impossible. I'm never immune to the charms of cute small fluffy animals.

On fiestas patrias there's a ceremony that most people attend (singing the national anthem, dancing, drinking and empanadas)... All of the children (and many of the adults) dress up in their countries native attire.


This little girl reminds me of my stubborn little sister. While all of the other children were holding hands and singing the national anthem, she was insistently seated, stubbornly staring at me and the other people sitting in the back row of the bleachers.


Most of the little girls wore beautiful dresses with layers and flowers and bright colors with ribbons and clips dangling in their hair.


This girl is the daughter of an officer in the Chilean army and her costume was a little less flashy, but incredibly endearing. She was the only child (girl or boy) who dressed up in army attire in Villa O'higgins.









Yeah okay, this ones just cute.


Villa O'higgins and Patagonia were amazing places to visit and I hope to go back and visit soon.

Also: most posts here on will be fictional accounts having little or nothing to do with my travels. So if you're checking my blog to keep up on me check for posts titled "Update". Other ones are my creative mind at work.
Thanks for reading!

-The Shutter Muse