# 37 Looking for Flamingos and other Strange Pursuits
A living fragment of what might one day become my next book
On the first day of the year, I began a new project. I wanted to think through my nomadic way of living and understand how the past six years had changed me—mentally, emotionally, physically.
In late December, while on the phone with a close friend, I’d had troubling expressing how profoundly my experiences had reorientated my thoughts about the world, and this was a clear sign to me that I had to spend time alone writing about it. I do my best thinking on the page.
I started out by listing the highs and lows of my nomadic life. The moment when Daniel and I dove into Galápagos waters and found ourselves surrounded by harmless reef sharks. The night when we raced up a Vietnamese mountain without headlights or seatbelts. My life had become a lot more exciting compared to the mostly sedentary decades I’d spent in Paris, and I assumed I would find the insights I was looking for by collecting our adventures.
Adventures—generally—make good stories. But adventures also require a heroine to whom the events occur and I didn’t want to make myself the center of attention.
Although my new project is still vague—untitled—there’s one thing I know for sure: Traveling longterm has decentered me. The years of roaming have made me feel less like a single self and more like a part of a whole. And because it’s this process of reverse individuation that I seek to explore, it seems counterproductive to make myself the center of attention.
Then again, I cannot escape writing about myself. A clear protagonist or narrative persona is key to any good story, be it fiction or nonfiction. Vivian Gornick taught me that.
“Every work of literature has both a situation and a story. The situation is the context or circumstance, sometimes the plot; the story is the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer: the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say.”
Vivian Gornick, The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002)
I must be fully present and take up space in the world if I want to comment on how my relationship to that world has changed.
My new project is thus a bit paradoxical. It will be a challenge to write a deeply personal story about losing some of my individuality, to invite readers to follow me on a path that is slowly dissolving.
But I happen to like challenges and it’s certainly not impossible. When I recently came across the following words from Jorie Graham, I felt understood and reassured.
I had thought to ignore it but what
a strange thing how we expanded,
spread ourselves in smaller and smaller bits
across the natural world
until we were so thin with participation we
fell away.Jorie Graham, To 2040, Copper Canyon Press, 2023
Here on substack, Beth Kephart reminded me in her excellent newsletter The Hush and the Howl that the process of writing is at least a part of the story. So I will show you my meandering and be honest with how I create.
The text below and the texts I’ll share in the months to come are part of a work in progress that might become a book one day. They’re not finished chapters. They’re living fragments open to change. Your reflections and questions (in the comment section or sent as private messages) will filter into these texts and hopefully help them grow.
If you’d like to witness this intimate project coming into being and contribute to its creation, please consider upgrading your subscription. I could use more patrons for my creative work.
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Looking for Flamingos
Towering cacti stand guard at the entrance as though in charge of drawing borders. I’m late, an hour after dawn, and alone.
I enter the mangrove on a man-made path of black lava rocks. Flies buzz in the branches above and birds sing the morning into life. Death is present, too, of course, most notably in the scattered green fruits of the poison apple tree.
I’ve come looking for flamingos, their krill-pink feathers and question-mark necks. I’ve come for the peculiar solitude of being with birds that look like dreams. Motivating me is an existential doubt I cannot yet express.
What do birds know?
Gnarled roots grow out of the brackish water and obstruct the path. I welcome the challenge of climbing over them like I welcome the equatorial heat. As though my effort to arrive at a place equals my right to be there. Touristed as the Galápagos are, I cannot believe I’m in this spooky mangrove all alone.
There are three white-cheeked ducks at the saline pond, two sandpipers, and in the distance, one pink butt sticking up in the air as though in mockery. The water is yellow, murky, and as still as the pond that it is. Days ago, when I was feeling inexplicably sad on one of the most beautiful beaches on Earth, a lonely flamingo passed overhead, its body one elegant arrow from its stretched feet to its long neck, pointing nowhere, anywhere, here.
What do birds know of the world before humans?
At the pond, I’m disappointed for not finding what I came to see, and even more disappointed for wanting the world to be different than it is. I deserve the flamingo’s mockery. The water surrounded by skeleton branches holds more than I can name.
I become very still as the birds magically multiply in shadows and reflections. The flamingo does not lift its head, yet one of the ducks sees her existence mirrored in me. It’s like when the owl landed on the balustrade at dusk and lent me its wings. For a moment we exist outside of time.
Why did I ever think I was in this mangrove alone?
There are three ducks at the saline pond, two sandpipers, one far-flung flamingo, and one disoriented human dreaming of flight. Together, we live in a wild strange expansive place. On my way back into town, the gravel grinds beneath my feet, and it becomes more difficult to imagine all humans gone.
(The Galápagos Islands, February 2025)
The Flamingo photos were taken by
in April 2025 when we visited a bird sanctuary near Cartagena, Colombia. We don’t always find what we seek at the moment we seek it, but sometimes we get lucky in the end. I’ll write about what happened when I finally met my flamingos some other time.The Story Above in Pictures
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Time to Say Goodbye
I’m loving San Miguel de Allende. The colorful houses, the vintage Beetles, the excellent Mexican food. But above all: the light. It’s no wonder why artists have thrived in this town. The light, especially in the two hours before dark, makes anyone want to create.
All my best,
Claire
P.S. Thank you for being here. What experiences do you have with decentering yourself?
I'm excited to read more of your meanderings, Claire! Your posts are always insightful.
Its the next book I will read, it sounds fascinating