NOMAD JOURNAL
- Meiun Caroline MABY
- Nov 13
- 4 min read
Updated: Nov 18
BHUTAN — AUTUMN 2025
For the first time, I will not use the specular writing* I usually resort to whenever I take notes away from the studio.
This time, I’ll let my scribbles flow in the right direction — with a little more clarity — in the hope of shaping them into a travel journal.
An organic mix of photographs, reflections, and perhaps drawings… I’ll paste everything here thanks to my iPad ~ its awkwardness will mirror its sincerity.
Dear readers who accompany me, do not hesitate to write back spontaneously — to soothe the shiver that comes with the thought of speaking into the void.
If these sensations of wandering can spark a sign, an exchange, or a reflection, it would strike a harmonic chord in my heart.
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* specular writing: gnitirw rorrim
Nov. 13, 2025
On the train from Saint-Malo to Roissy Charles de Gaulle.
I hastily packed my things yesterday. I dislike this exercise, imposed by every leap into a faraway journey.
I always postpone, until the last moment, the injunction to gather myself, to synthesize, to anticipate what lies ahead in a few clothes, essential oils, binoculars, a lamp, and things… And for once, no art supplies: a notebook, a 4-color pen, and an iPad — that’s all.
I am rereading "Instructions to the Cook" by Bernie Glassman — an invitation to cook what Zen Buddhists call the supreme meal — life itself. And to make it nourishing and shared, the improvised recipe uses only the ingredients we have at hand. An ode to simplicity. And a return to the first precept: Not Knowing.*
The fast train speeds toward the airport and I open a notebook I believed was blank.
But a single sentence, suspended in the middle of the first page, suddenly appears — as if waiting all these years for the right moment to resonate.
It had remained there for years, waiting to resonate at the opportune moment — It bursts forth today, perfectly synchronous and fitting:
"I'm thinking of those who must find within themselves something new after disillusionment."**
— Honoré de Balzac
Each of these past decades has been scarred by a radical disenchantment: at 30, the illusion of « Family »; at 40, that of « Love »; at 50, that of a luminous Culmination.
Respectively: a dismemberment, a thunderbolt, and a liberation.
What better introduction to a solitary and initiatory journey to the Land of the Thunder Dragon?
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* "Not knowing " — or abandoning fixed ideas about yourself, others, and the universe — is the first of the Three Tenets of the Zen Peacemakers , the Order founded by Bernie Glassman.
** I believe I drew this quote from Xavier Giannoli's film: « Illusions perdues » in 2021.
Nov. 14, 2025
Deep blue
The humpback whale glides through deep waters.
Robin, eleven years old, drew it quietly while his mother — my friend — and I shared a cup of tea at the studio, two days before my departure.
I’m taking this lovely whale with me. I’m carrying its serenity, its trust. Space has no limits, it swims in a deep blue — wide enough, steady enough, comforting.
It carries within itself all the wisdom of the whales that came before it. It knows that its little calf is already empowered with that knowledge, atavic, cellular, karmic.
Little whale calf… I will discover your meaning when I return. Realization? Vision? Inspiration? The urge to create? I will know who you are.
For now, I’m diving into all the boundless blue that a long-haul flight can be — with the same patience, the same peaceful contentment.
Nov. 15, 2025
Indira Gandhi International Airport
Virgin mojito —
Autumn pops up through my glass
A view of the tarmac
Nov. 16, 2025
Paro
