A Writer Afoot

A book for dog lovers, and one for foodies

Books I read on my (long!) plane journeys:

Woman's Best Friend, women writers on the dogs in their lives, edited by Megan McMorris, forward by Pam Houston.   I stumbled over this looking for another Pam Houston book.  Obviously written just for me (woman, check. Dog lover, check. Writer, check) and I love reading essays on journeys since you can stop and start.  There are many beauties in this collection, including a piece from Susan Cheever on a Dachshund named Cutie, and one about a stray named Hyena.  A favorite line, from "Seven Reasons Not To Get a Dog," by Marion Winik: "Your aesthetic standards will collapse.  At the beginning of every creative writing class I teach, I forbid students to write about their pets."   And of course, there she is, writing about pets.   Which is really the whole goal of dogs, in my opinion, to turn everything you think upside down.   Very good reading for my fellow dog fanatics.

And one for the foodies, who have probably already read this one:  Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, by Thomas McNamee.  This one kept me company through three hours of delay on the Dallas tarmac.  I knew a little bit about Alice Waters, but was not aware that she was so central to the local and organic foods movement in America. The story is a great one for anyone who loves food and the restaurant industry, and the writing makes it that much better.   

A rainy day in Harlem

Thanks to some fortuitous circumstances, I found myself yesterday morning walking through a pouring rain on famous streets in Harlem. We--son, girlfriend, and I--were there to hear Hillary Clinton give a stump speech at the Abyssinian Baptist Church (you would know it if you saw it, from thousands of clips and photos). Thanks to those circumstances, we had a great seat, only a few rows from the front.

But what I loved was walking on Lennox Avenue, looking at the brownstones, thinking about the depth and weight and breadth of history on that neighborhood. I wondered where James Baldwin had grown up. Where the theaters were where so much music was made. We passed the mother church for the AME.

Afterward, we took the subway down to 14th street and found brunch in a little cafe. Eggs florentine and unlimited mimosas and young woman serving briskly and efficiently wearing a stunning yellow scarf over her head and chest and a strong Brooklyn accent.

I'm headed home this afternoon. It's been a lovely series of trips, but I haven't been in the same place for two weeks since the end of August, and I need to go home and download all this mental material and plunge into the new novel, which has strong characters but an elusive secret at the moment.

Meanwhile....I had a blast exploring new neighborhoods in NYC this time. Park Slope and the upper westside and the little sojourn into Harlem. Cool.

Another notebook leaps to freedom in a NYC taxi

Typing this from a cozy Brooklyn apartment. A cat paw keeps reaching beneath the screen to help me type.
(I was going to snap a shot of the paw reaching for my typing fingers, but ever so like a cat, he refuses documentation.)

Landed here late morning, after two days in Manhattan. Some business meetings, then I spent yesterday walking the upper west side. A few hours, nothing much. My agent said I'd like Zabar's the famous deli/grocery, so I headed up Broadway to check it out. Bought a bagel next door, too, and walked over to the park and south. Enjoyable and unremarkable. I am really ready to be home for awhile.

But first a visit with Boy #1 and his girlfriend and their menagerie of cats (who are still sticking paws out to catch my typing fingers) because I've missed them madly. On the way here, I took a taxi and had to look up my son's address in the back-up notebook I carried through Italy (I know, I know--why did I bring it with me??) and LEFT IT IN THE CAB.

I shrugged it off the first time, but this one has left a big hole in the middle of my chest. I seriously, seriously hate that I've lost two notebooks in a month. Important notebooks, packed with observations and sketches and details of my travels.

I do have to ask what I am meant to learn from these two, back-to-back losses. Am I meant to live more in the moment? To rely on memory (sensation, a mood, a taste, a sense of things) instead of documents when thinking about my travels? Is the universe trying to tell me to stay home and just write? Or am I just scattered and need a better system?

Again, my address is inside the notebook, along with two others. Perhaps the notebook will show up at one of them. I fervently hope so. I'm visualizing the BOTH showing up.

And if the God is trying to tell me something, perhaps she will write in down and tuck it inside the notebook.

Do any of you lose things? Or have you gone through stages when you lost important things?

Night of Fire

In honor of the Italian sojourn, a couple of books that came up during conversations there.  The first is one of my favorites of my own books, NIGHT OF FIRE.  This is the review it was given by Romantic Times magazine:

Though widowed Cassandra St. Ives has vowed never to love again. She has been involved in a spirited correspondence with an Italian, Count Basilio Montevarchi.

Both believe the other to be middle-aged and therefore safe. So when Basilio invites Cassandra to visit his home in Tuscany she gladly accepts.

Though both are astonished to discover the other is far from old, the real surprise, however, is their immediate and heated attraction. Theyre just what each other needed, bringing out the best in one another and rekindling a joy in life they had both forgotten.

But Basilio is engaged and honor-bound to go through with the marriage to an unhappy Analise while a distraught Cassandra returns home. Basilio and Analise come to England where Analise confides to Cassandra that her desire to become a nun has kept her chaste.

How they all extricate themselves from this tangled triangle is what makes NIGHT OF FIRE such a fascinating read. Intelligent, sophisticated and with a high degree of always smoldering sensuality, where youre just waiting for their passion to erupt, this is the take me away book of the season. VERY SENSUAL (Dec., 380 pp., $5.99)

Kathe Robin

This is the absolutely abysmal cover it came out with:

This is the sort of cover it should have had:

You can only order out of print copies of it (though I have plans afoot on this front), but you can find some here.

I'll talk about the other one, NO PLACE LIKE HOME, another day.  Also Italian, but modern and American-Italian, though I swear places in Pueblo could just be transported right to Naples. I swear it.

Intellectual and spiritual ancestors

On this first snowy day of the year in Colorado Springs, I managed to get to church for the first time in nearly two months.  The year's theme is Wisdom, and today's topic was the wisdom of your intellectual ancestors.  Rev. Lawrence used Isaac Asimov as one of his most influential intellectual ancestors and told us why. He encouraged all of us to think about our own.   I'm passing that along to you.

And thinking aloud about my own, thinking of the influences on my world view, but also those who have influenced me as a writer.  Obviously, Ray Bradbury.  Shakespeare.  James Daphne Du Maurier, Victoria Holt, Anya Seton, all those who collected fairy tales and legends and folk songs, which form such a thick web of my ideas about living and books.  In college, I fell in love with James Baldwin and studied everything he wrote. 

But also the bible, which my grandmother read with such dedication. And Edgar Cayce, who told his amazing story in a dozen paperback books on her shelves.   I very much believe that the world we see is only a tiny tip of what really IS, and that's reflected in all of the writings and thinkings of the above "ancestors."

I'm sure more will bubble up over the week.  Certainly, I've more recently been inspired and coached along by the writings and teachings and ideas of Julia Cameron.  Also,  Vita Sackville West, and Annie Lammott (quite disparate people, those two.  Amusing to imagine them sitting down together, Annie with her wild hair, Vita with her cigarettes and crisp blouses--but who knows, maybe they would have found much to talk about). 

Who are some of yours?

"Hippie Mayberry" Manitou Springs

The setting of Madame Mirabou's School of Love is Manitou Springs, a small town bubbling with mineral waters and the base of Barr Trail, which ascends Pikes Peak.  Cute article on it in the New York Times:

http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/10/19/travel/escapes/19american.html?8dpc

Hotel reviews, Naples, Bari, Matera, Rome

For once, I kept notes of our experiences in hotels.

Naples: Hotel Miramare.   A great experience, if a bit on the pricey side.  I could have gone with less expensive accommodations, but when arranging a room on the Internet in a city I don't know and has a reputation for being--er--something of an adventure for tourists,  I wanted to go with something very reliable.  It was worth the price.  The hotel arranged for our ride from the airport (45 Euros and for the driver/guide to Pompeii (around $175 Euros, which did not include the actual guide at Pompeii (another $100 Euros, which is standard),  which I thought was fairly painful until I realized all we got for that--a ride in a comfortable car with a knowledgeable and intelligent guide who knew everything about Naples and Pompeii).  Everyone in the hotel earnestly listened to our bad Italian without judgment, most spoke at least basic English, and the room was clean, well appointed, and attractive.  The best part was the breakfast, however, server on a rooftop garden overlooking the Bay of Naples and Mt Vesuvius, with fresh pastries and excellent coffee and agreeable attendants. 

Bari: Hotel Boston.  Great location, nearby the old town and close to lots of shopping and restaurants, only a five minute ride from train station. Good, if unremarkable, breakfast, helpful clerks, and a manned bar/coffee bar where they let us hang out off and on during the rainy afternoon after we checked out.  Very modern.  Internet in the lobby.  Excellent enormous bathtub, which always gets big stars from me.

Matera: Hotel Sant'Angelo, a sassi hotel.  (The sassi are the caves carved into the soft rock of the mountains) the best of the lot, though it is a little quirky.  Our room felt like part of an ancient church, with a big arch and windows letting in light from the front.  On the downside, the caves are soft rock, which means they shed a little bit and I had to brush off my black clothing once in awhile, and I did see a spider or two, but hardly worth mentioning.   The silence at night was deep and restful, the bells a delight in the morning, and the patios are wide and gracefully adorned with plants and sculptures.  One night, the moon was rising over the caves on the other side of the river, and I wrote and wrote and wrote (all of which was, sadly, lost when I lost the journal, but that's life.  I remember the experience and the sketching and the plot points for the novel) on the patio outside my room.  The breakfast was excellent--I especially loved the pear juice and our server, already mentioned elsewhere here.

Rome:   Hotel Principessa Tea.  Supposedly a three star joint, and while it was in a good location, with helpful guides who spoke excellent English and are obviously used to tourists, the breakfast was mediocre, with only coffee from a cafeteria-style machine.  The bathroom was a pretty horrific bright pink, which I could have lived with, but the shower head did not attach to the wall, and electrical tape was wrapped unreassuringly around the cord to the blow dryer.  Also, if you are interested in such things, the bidet had no attached plumbing.  The room was a generous size for a European city hotel room, and there were plenty of windows for cross ventilation (which would be great in the high summer), and the beds were very comfortable.  Not bad, but again, the location was terrific.

Ah, I see on the site that the hotel is undergoing renovations, so perhaps all those niggling inconveniences will be addressed. With that and some real (brewed) coffee for breakfast, I would be quite happy with the
place.

Hawkhurst.  Casa de la Gina.  Cozy.  Excellent breakfast, cooked to order.  Banoffee pudding for Sunday afternoon.  Built in tour guide.  <g>

Assorted sundries

Huh--not much good to man or beast around here.  I kept meaning to have a day off and hadn't done it--there has been so much to do to catch up and get the garden ready for the freezes that are on the way.  I built a little greenhouse for my passion flower, and was quite proud of it.  And painted a little spot that needed it.  And have taken the dogs for lots of walks, so they know they're really loved.

But, not enough rest.  So last night, my back went out.  That's what the body will do if you ignore it long enough--make you rest, whether you want to or not.   

I can read.  I can blog.  I can play on the Internet.  The photo above is a shot of a shed at Sissinghurst.  I could have stood there shooting for a couple of days, but CR was with me and being quite patient (he is so good about these things--he left me to go up the writing tower by myself and insisted I take my time), those reds are so insanely intense!   

So, uploaded photos to Flickr for friends and family viewing.  The one to the right is some amazing flower with a single red leaf that had fallen on it.  (Who can tell me what that flower is?  It looked like a giant crocus.) 

I've been listening to more music (I had an email from the wife of one of the Persuasions, by the way.  Can I say I was just tickled to pieces???), mainly Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol and a Patty Griffin song, maybe called Gonna Let Him Fly, which means the book is bubbling nicely there on the back of the stove.  Always intriguing  to notice what the girls want to hear.  It's always something I'll be sick to death of by the end of the book.

This is a shot of some thyme in the herb garden.  My mother really must see Sissinghurst one of these days, if only for this particular section of the garden.  I am also quite fond of the moat, which is one of the only filled moats I've seen.  There were squirrels in the oaks over it this time, tossing acorns down with little plops.

                                    A few mornings while in Hawkhurst visiting CR's mum, I walked alo ng one of the public footpaths nearby. I'd love to get a good map and go traipsing across the country sometime--the few paths I've seen are staggeringly beautiful.  But then, England is a staggeringly beautiful place.   One morning, it was softly misty and softly sunny and I had the path to myself except for a dog and his master. 

More on the two conferences later.  I have information and photos for anyone who'd like to explore the idea of attending either Matera or the Magazine Conference next year. 
                

Souvenirs and presents

What do you bring back from your travels?    I always bring too many books (as if such a thing existed).  This time, that includes The Reluctant Tuscan, by Phil Doran (autographed, as he was one of the speakers in Matera; he is a gifted speaker and his book sounds very funny); Villa Serena, Falling in love, Italian Style, a novel from the UK by Domenica De Rosa, The Gift, by Lewis Hyde, a book about creativity which looked really great and didn't capture me when I first tried it, and another book about an expat, Remedy, by Anne Marsella, also purchased in the UK, where fantasies of running away to Spain or Italy or Corisca (notice the sunny theme) are very popular.   I started Villa Serena and it's lots of fun, though I had to put it aside until I finish my column for the month. 

My father reminded me before I left that his birthday is coming soon.  So, I found him something really cool (I can't tell you what it is yet, but trust me, it's good).  For my mother, it's always foodstuffs, which this time includes tomato chutney from a roadside stand in Kent.  For my boys, I planned to bring back Italian shirts, but since Boy #2 is nearly 6'5" and CR (runner man, remember) is an Italian size Large, there was no finding a shirt for Miles.  Ian, however, should go to Italy to buy all of his clothing.  He has a hard time finding shirts that fit him properly, but a good visit to Rome or Milan would do the trick. 

For myself, I bought dry-cured olives in Matera, and saved the notepad from the hotel, and Christmas cards for my friends that show Vita's writing tower.  Also at Sissinghurst, I bought lavender stuffs and the beautiful wooden apple and pear in the photo. 

But by far my favorite souvenir is my teaspoons, the very small spoons you find for stirring tea all over the UK, as ordinary as dirt, but do not seem to be readily available here.   I've been wanting some for ages, and it was great fun to go into a department store in Maidstone and pick out a dozen, all in different patterns, to bring home.  CR's mother Gina, bemused and amused at my delight, dug in her kitchen drawer and found six more, all given away with tea or coffee (she couldn't remember) and I brought those home, too.

I also brought back a very touristy thing, a calender with Rome and cats (so sue me--it's really cute), and we bought a handmade clock with dogs on it for our sitting room.   

And here, to document the many, many, many miles we walked: a photo of my very chipped and demolished pedicure the last day while we were waiting for a ride from Sissinghurst.   I wish I'd had a pedometer.  I've walked a lot of miles on holidays in the past, but this one takes the  #1 spot for now. 

What do you bring back? Earrings? Toys?

All of our delicate and precious little passions

Thinking tonight of enthusiasms.  The woman at Paris Breakfasts is back in Paris, shooting deliriously colorful photos of the shop windows and foods she will paint on some future day.  I love her photos even more than her watercolors (which I keep telling myself I'm going to buy, someday).   I'm attending a conference for magazine writers, because I'm interested in the subject and it is being held in Boulder, so I could attend without much effort, and it's been amazing.   I love being a beginner, listening with this entirely different part of my brain.   I love the learning and the possibilities presented and the stories (always stories, stories), but most of all, I love being in the midst of people who are so passionate.  The photo editor of National Geographic is here, leggy and slim and smart, a woman who has dodged bullets and given birth to daughters and loves photojournalism so much it's like sparks come from her when she speaks of it. She made me want to write about her. Two young women next to me were in thrall, nearly speechless with the idea that it would ever be possible to shoot photos for the venerable National Geographic, and on the other side, a woman spoke of beginning her first novel, and a newspaper reporter yearned to leave the paper and write full-time. A writer of story lines for computer games (how cool is that job??) wants to write articles about history.  I felt quiet and lucky. 

It's also always good to be in a college town, where hope and expectation are basic molecules in the daily air, right alongside oxygen.  There is happiness in hope, in believing in the next thing, whatever it might be.  A friend of mine said that people only need two things to be happy--something to look forward to and a dream to believe in.   Here in this hotel this weekend, the air feels quite thick with those two things. 

So, what little gratitudes can you come up with?  And what little (or big) thing are you looking foward to?

Layering in Lusciousness Worksheet

As promised, here is the worksheet from the 5 Senses workshop

TRAINING YOURSELF TO WRITE A RICHER BOOK, EVERY TIME

Layering in Lusciousness by Barbara Samuel

1. Take time to do things that feed your senses, all of them. Go to beautiful gardens and museums, fabric stores and restaurants. Smell roses, perfumes, other people.

2. Make a habit of eavesdropping and buy sunglasses so you can stare more easily.

3. Carry a notebook and make sketches of things. They don’t have to be skilled or even competent, they’ll just help remind you to really SEE things. A good second is to use your cell phone camera, a LOT. If you see something that jolts your senses, take a picture of it. 

4. Travel. Wherever you can. Go to new neighborhoods. Go to faraway places. Pay attention to your surroundings, but also pay attention to how you feel exploring them. Are you excited, standoffish, worried about looking foolish or intruding where you should not go? 

5. Find music you love and play it often. Go to concerts or out to listen to music in whatever venue you can enjoy. Go to the symphony. Go to plays. Watch movies.

6. Develop hobbies that excite your senses. Visual people might enjoy things like making stained glass or quilts or learning to use watercolors. Auditory people might like learning to play an intrustrument or collecting the music of a certain form or era. (I like the blues and baroque.) Texture people might like models or sewing. 

I think a lot of writers are magpies, and that’s good. If you get a yen to learn to cook Indian food, or learn to speak Arabic, or play the cello, go for it. I promise that far from taking away from your writing, it will add to it. 

7. Read poetry. Aloud. This is something we’ve moved away from in our society, but writers are the natural audience for poets. Read it and feel it. There is a poet for everyone out there. Find one you love. 

8. Be alert to the themes and ideas you love to use in your work. How do you use them? What interests you? How can you keep coming up with fresh ways to illustrate them? 

9. Spend the extra two weeks to make a manuscript really sparkle. To layer in those colors, the details of smell and touch and song, to tweak a scarf from blue to orange. 

10. PLAY. ENJOY YOURSELF! Remember, this is about making something beautiful, not a big, impossible challenge. 

Shadows and light and cactus

Matera is visually stunning, and I'll post a more in-depth post about the town in a day or two (I have a conference this weekend--going to study, not teach, for a little change) but here are a few photos to show you what I mean.   (Don't forget, you can click on them to enlarge for best effect.)

Late afternoon. This is my favorite. 

Those walls.  That blue.  Simple.   I wish I could learn to be less baroque in my furnishings sometimes.

This doorway captured me every time we passed it.  So old and so many exquisite details.  The face. The broken spokes, the plant growing at the arch, the fall of light.

Prickly pears.  The hillside below our hotel was filled with them. Giant cactus, as tall as trees, broad as a car.

Come back to hear a tale of pale dogs and another of the English countryside and the ghosts who ambushed me at Dover castle. (I was jittery for two hours afterward.)

Best meals on the tour

---First night in Naples, a margherita pizza.   This is the simplest of things--only dough and tomato sauce, garlic and basil, but I swear to you I have never tasted tomatoes before that, as if all the days of sunlight and a few sea-laden winds and some nights of rising moons were all packed into crushed red sauce.   I am determined to grow tomatoes that taste like that.   It didn't hurt to eat it overlooking the Bay of Naples, buzzing with jet lag, with the moon rising over Mt. Vesuvius and tourists from the cruise ships marching down the promenade in their capri pants and straw hats and motorcycles by the thousands roaring by.

(Photo:  Mt Vesuvius and that show-off moon)

The breakfast at our hotel in Naples, served on a patio four stories above the street.    Jam croissants, coffee with milk ("What is milk in Italian?" I asked CR fuzzily.  Oh, yeah...latte. :)), yogurt and rolls and cheese and butter and a spread of fruits. 

--A fruit at the cocktail party in Matera.  I have no idea what it was, though someone said maybe persimmon.  It was about the size of a Roma Tomato, and it even looked a bit like a skinned tomato, with that red, grainy sort of flesh and lots of little seeds.  The color was a little more purple than most tomatoes, however, and the fruit itself was lightly sweet and enormously refreshing.   Any guesses?

--The breakfasts every morning in Matera, at the Hotel Sant'Angelo, served in the back of the long cave of reception, cool and mysterious and very quiet, lit with lamps and the bold sunlight pouring in through the front door.  Pear juice and more jam croissants, sun-dried tomatoes on little toasts, strong cheese in cubes and fresh cafe, served however you liked--con latte, cappuccino, Americano.  CR drank tea with milk.  I drank the latte, and the girl who served us was part of the great pleasure.  A little dynamo with beautiful eyes and a very pleasant way of speaking English.

--A happy hour feast on the piazza in Matera.  Dry-cured olives, soft red wine, almonds in a crisp, baked dough, and two beautiful creatures playing the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet.

--Roast rabbit, a swordfish steak, a spinach orchiette with butter that so delicious it made me wish to lick the plate.

--Finally, a Sunday dinner served by Neal's mum.  Mainly the banofee pudding.  I'm still dreaming of it.

Oh, and happy news: after all that pasta and dessert and wine and croissants for breakfast every morning and gelato (oh, gelato! Melon. Peach. Peach and melon), I was terrified to step on the scale, but walking 5000 miles a day must do the trick because I only gained a couple of ounces.  Seriously? I can live with that.

Do you have a favorite holiday meal memory?   

Small journal disaster

Somehow, probably on the train from Bari to Rome, I lost my travel journal.  This is slightly sad because I had many good notes in there about both the trip and the brewing book; it is not a huge disaster because I never carry anything but a fresh notebook on a trip (for just this reason).  Also, I had blogged notes to that point, and (being compulsive) also carry a very small, sturdy notebook in my camera case which is largely the net for my scribbled notes as we wander.

Still, I am hoping someone found it, will read the plea inside the front cover ("This is a private journal and of no use to anyone but the author.  Please return to me at this address and I'll send you $50) and one day I will open my mailbox to find a package from Italy.

Totally jetlagged here today, but home safely and Boy #2 really took great care of cats and dogs and house.

Look for illustrations and more travel notes in the next week.

Twenty-two minutes from a kiosk at Heathrow

In the moment...

I'm typing this from the British Air concourse from Heathrow.  We had a little time to burn and some pound coins that will end up being useless once we board, so here I am, writing a letter home.  It is quite grey outside, and a seagull just went wheeling by the window.  Our terminal is filled with blond Americans with good teeth and short women in vivid saris and plump British men in caps or suit coats over jeans.

A list perhaps, to gather a few thoughts. Our visit to Kent seemed very short.  (I'll leave a post about Rome for later (worth posting about, for my reaction was much what it was elsewhere in southern Italy--I had no idea I would like it so very, very much, though perhaps I should have known it would be my kind of place)). the visit to the UK was very quiet and family oriented, but also, my brain is tired this morning.  I am ready for a quiet stretch of time on the plane, with no one I must speak to (and CR is just as talked out as I am, I think, plus he's still carrying around the cold we both picked up in Indiana).   So, a few notes, scribbled in the boredom of waiting....

Best books read on the trip thus far: Truth and Beauty, Ann Pratchett, a memoir, and the absolutely lovely THE WHOLE WORLD OVER (I think that's the title) by Julia Glass, who wore the gorgeous Three Junes.  Great novel, and that most alluring of things: a page turner of a literary fiction.

Yesterday, we spent the day eating a proper English Sunday dinner.  Roast beef and Yorkshire puddings, gravy and potatoes (roast and mashed), broccoli, carrots, swede (rutabagas), followed by berry crumble smothered in custard and a stunning, unbelievably sweet and amazing thing called banoffee pudding.  Wow. A little break, a walk around the fields, then tea, served with scones and fresh cream and strawberry jam (and my beloved prepared mine for me), follwed by supper (!) which was salmon and salad and yet more puddings and strawberries and cream.   I opted for salad and a teeny bit more of the banofee pudding, feeling as if I might split wide open if I had any more than that.

We visited Sissinghurst on Saturday and had it nearly to ourselves.  I did have the office to myself for a long while, then the walk to the top of the tower.  The weather was crisp, almost cold, the vistas from the top a little hazy and green and the gardens completely different.  I'll post some photos upon my return.  It was a deeply delicious experience and I think I might buy a vase of Bristol glass one of these days (I already have a collection of cobalt glass, but that would be fun, wouldn't it?).   I'd also forgotten that she died on my birthday.  Not my BIRTHday, just the day.

Also visited Dover Castle.  About which I will have to write, since I've just passed the minute mark and must put this up....  Cheers