In my meditation app thoughts are shown as cars on a highway. The road is noisy, jammed and drivers fume, and the mind, a blue happy cloud, is sittingin the grass away from the traffic, undisturbed.

The first time I arrived in Hanoi was at Long Bien bus stop. Waiting outside a shop by the side of that busy big road I saw an old lady balancing a bamboo stick on her shoulders.

Plates full of fruit swung by her sides as she walked calmly through the stream of motocycles.

She reminded me of a calligrapher I met at the Art Academy. The lines he showed us to draw were steady from beginning to end, always the same width.

“Keep the strength in”, he said, ending the line before the ink ran out.

Hanoi, 2018