Ryan Frawley
Towers, Temples, Palaces: Essays From Europe out now!
Novelist, entomologist and cat owner. Ryan Frawley is the author of many articles and stories and one novel, Scar, available from online bookstores everywhere.
The Old Man, the Haircut, and the Four Days of Naples
I held my phone ready in my hand. A trick I learned. When you live in a country whose language you don’t speak, even the simplest tasks become exponentially more difficult. But at one point, after a haircut I was particularly pleased with, I had the foresight to take a selfie and store it in my phone. I didn’t have to rely on my nonexistent Italian to tell the barber what I wanted. I only needed to show him a picture.
Ryan FrawleyPublished 3 months ago in Wander
The Price of Love in the City of the Dead
It was as hot as they told me it would be. The sun sat directly overhead, a golden ball that made the air heavy and drew convict’s sweat from under my arms.
Ryan FrawleyPublished 3 months ago in Wander
Ostia Antica: The Other Pompeii
The hand that used to hold the knife is gone. But the same sunlight still comes streaming down from the trapdoor above, illuminating the cold and changeless features of a forgotten god. The bull is still there too, its head pulled back, throat exposed for the vanished blade. Damp ferns grow around the edges of the skylight above the marble statue.
Ryan FrawleyPublished 3 months ago in Wander
Budapest and the Fine Art of Missing Everything
“Where are you guys from?” The young man’s face was pockmarked with acne. His sandy blonde hair was swept back and held in place with a generous amount of some pungent product. On his chest, a bullet dangled from a long silver chain.
Ryan FrawleyPublished 3 months ago in Wander
Tired Of London
It was two o’clock in the morning. No good ideas come to you at two o’clock in the morning. Lying there wide awake in the darkness of a too-small, too-expensive hotel room, my circadian rhythm torn to shreds by a long flight and a fugitive sun, I found myself wondering if I even enjoy travel any more. Who would, when it looks like this?
Ryan FrawleyPublished 3 months ago in Wander
Diesel Fumes, Dictatorship, and the Most Beautiful City You’ve Never Been To
The fumes of Havana filled the street. The diesel stink contaminates everything. The famous cars, meticulously maintained since the 1950s, look gorgeous in photographs but suck the oxygen out of the breathless air.
Ryan FrawleyPublished 3 months ago in Wander
Tourists, Bears, and Not a Poet in Sight
From the weather-swollen planks of the picnic table, I watch them come up from the lake. Sometimes alone. More usually in groups. Young couples give way to young families, followed by squawking teenagers. At the back, old people cling to one another, taking their time on the slow rise to the car park.
Ryan FrawleyPublished 3 months ago in Wander
Beginner’s Mind and the Reclaiming of Awe
Up here, sound travels strangely. Human voices echo and waver, bouncing off sun-striped sea and granite cliffs. You can hear the voices of passengers in boats a kilometre away, every word carried to shore by the action of tiny indestructible waves.
Ryan FrawleyPublished 3 months ago in Earth
