Writing

Time Being: Essays, Narratives, and Vignettes

by Chad R. Miller

What does it mean to travel? Is it just a temporary swap of time zones, continents, climates, foods, ecosystems, or cultures? Or can travel be a method of escape, of disappearance, of self punishment, of understanding, of transcendence?

In Time Being, a collection of essays, narratives, and vignettes, Chad R. Miller examines these questions as he:

• Grapples with midlife crisis during a dying hurricane in the Labrador Straits

• Reckons with wealth and freedom while stranded on a Caribbean island off the coast of Nicaragua

• Searches for the heart of Saturday night in Dubrovnik’s Old Town

• Wrestles with isolation, purity, consciousness and memory during a solo backpacking trip across part of the largest lava flow on earth

• Struggles to internalize old and new customs in the motorbike-choked streets of Mandalay

• Travels 8,000 miles back to his hometown of Des Moines to face the impending death of his mother

• Chases elusive dreams and semantics 13,000 feet up in the highlands of Ethiopia

• Is hounded by water warriors and over-amplified sound in the suffocating heat of Luang Prabang

• Sleepwalks through an existential nightmare in the midst of a birding trip in Friesland

• Queries the relationship between representation and reality in Hiroshima and Ohio

In Time Being, Chad R. Miller, with a signature mix of humor and reverence, details his personal interactions with these and other places across five continents and a span of decades — near and far, here and gone.