A Writer Afoot

New Passport

My passport is going to expire in a couple of months, and I have to mail it away to get a new one. It's been feeling a little like retiring my battered hiking boots.  So many adventures we had together!

When I first applied for this passport, I had never been anywhere out of the country.  I had traveled a fair amount around the US, which is a very big and varied land, but never even as far as Canada.   It seems impossible that was only ten years ago, and slightly astonishing to realize that once I got that passport in my hand, baby, I was gone, gone, gone!   

As a young girl, my only desires were to write books, see the world, and be happy.  It's hard to grasp now how impossible it seemed to say those things--write books! See the world (the world?!) because we're a much more sophisticated population these days.  At the time, at 14 or 15, I didn't know anyone who wrote anything, and the only person I knew who had traveled anywhere was my uncle, who had lived in Spain when I was a child. 

By the time I finally got the passport, I'd sold a lot of books, and was fairly on fire to start travel, but I still had young teens in my house.   So when I won a literary prize and knew I was going to spend it on travel, I took the boys with me.  Ian was 15, I think, and Miles a couple of years younger.  My mother went with us, too, also her first trip abroad, and we traipsed around England and Ireland for two weeks, a trip I planned entirely on my own with the nascent Internet, emailing with the owner of the flat we rented in Ealing, not far from the train which took us into London proper.  We visited Bath and Ightham Mote, site of my beloved Green Darkness, and crossed the Irish sea to visit Cork and Dingle.  Miles, a very picky eater, practically starved to death and lived on pastries, but his innate sense of direction kept us from getting lost countless times.  Ian charmed the old men in Ireland, who spoke to him in Gaelic, and he kissed the Blarney Stone, which might have had something to do with all those debate wins, but maybe he was just born a clever Irish talker.

From there, it was a leap to hike in France with my buddy Sonia, right before 9/11.  A trip that changed my life in profound ways, ways that I'm still uncovering, years later.  It was the trip that turned me into my fully hiking self and shook me loose of my old life and dumped me, unceremoniously, into the new one. 

Which has actually turned out to be quite fine, and full of wanderings.  Scotland and New Zealand one year (the lochs and mists and Wallace's sword, his very, very sword that he held once in his own hand; the Bay of Islands and that long, empty, spectacular beach in NZ, where a gang of wild horses trotted up to a ridge and scornfully looked down upon us, their wild manes blowing in the breeze).  Canada, Vancouver and Victoria.  And then England again, and Scotland, and Normandy's beaches and Paris.   And then, the last one on this passport, Naples and Matera and Bari and Kent again last year.   

So much! Such a blessing to have the freedom to travel. 

What new stamps do I want to see in the new one?  Australia will be there, and New Zealand.   But also, I want to see those India stamps and perhaps Morrocco and Ireland again.  Spain would be very nice, and Mexico. No doubt there will be plenty of England, to see CR's mother.   And...I'll leave some surprises up to the Universe.  It seems to sometimes have the most delightful things up its sleeves!

What stamps do you want to add to your passport?

The vanishing frontier

The New York Times Books section posted a list of six travel books for holiday gift giving ideas.  All six are by guys, and most of them are in the gonzo realm of bad boys going really far away places doing pretty extreme things.  There's a nod to traveling women in the opening paragraph, but not a single book.

Travel writing sometimes seems to be all about rough and tumble tough guys going to out of the way places (the more inaccessible the better) and having extremely grimy adventures.   While I have nothing against a good adventure, or even against bad boys eating snake innards and bugs, it really isn't about travel as much as the Young Man Testing Himself in Extreme Ways.   Which is fine, too.  It's just not really travel for the masses.  There is one on the list about a quest:  MISHIMA’S SWORD: Travels in Search of a Samurai Legend (Da Capo, paper, $15.95), which looks a bit different, but it's still about a man's view of the world.   

The other craze in travel writing is the "I moved to Tuscany/Provence for a year and this is what I learned," and there is one of those books on this list, too.  The best one was Frances Mayes's Under The Tuscan Sun, and all the rest are doomed to fall short, I'm afraid.

There are some travel books by women, but often, they're doing the literary equivalent of women wearing power suits in the 80's--women doing male things in the travel world to prove that they can.  Adventure rafting on the amazon or running 100 miles in the Grand Canyon.  (Why?)

And maybe I'm just a bourgeois thing, wanting to read a different sort of adventure, but maybe I'm just more interested in the internal journey.  A trip doesn't have to take me far away or into an exotic realm to be fascinating--it is the journey itself that fascinates.  It is the observation of the traveler, her connection to what she sees and how that shifts her internal landscape.  What do you learn when you stand on a beach in Florida where the signs are all missing, and there are no traffic lights because there have been three hurricanes this season?  What do you see when you walk on a busy street in an ordinary Midwestern city on a Saturday in September?

My suggestions for travel books that will thrill the women on your list (and a good many of the men), are three:  EAT PRAY LOVE, by Elizabeth Gilbert is so madly, intensely, wildly successful because it is a travel book about the internal spiritual journey of a single woman who recounts her journey with honesty and insight.  UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN, Mayes's book, is slightly different, but also evocative and quietly observed.   Another of my favorites is Rosemary Mahoney's A SINGULAR PILGRIM. (And I know I've talked about all of those books before, but I'm offering a counter to bad boys eating bugs. )

What travel memoirs or essays or books would you recommend?

(PS  Someday, I'd would sincerely love to write a book that was so beloved that it gathered 731 reviews on Amazon. That is truly a book touched by grace.)

Sexy food collection

Travel to Australia with a jazzy little cookbook gathered by writers in Australia and New Zealand, Sizzle, Seduce & Simmer , a recipe collection that took on a life of its own. 

Read more about it on Anne Gracie's website.

Doesn't this look like fun?  It might make a different sort of Christmas gift.

WWW roundup

Really in love with the new material, which is seducing me back to the other computer, so just a little bit of fun for you this morning.

An excellent writer blog:

Tess Gerritsen keeps an insightful and honest blog about the writing life, and a post this week was particularly honest in a way you don't often see from writers, many of whom are always worried about keeping up appearances.   A snippet:

Over the past twenty years, I’ve had twenty books published.  My career has been a see-saw ride, and there’ve been times when I thought my career was, if not dead, then headed for oblivion.  My first nine books were paperback romantic thrillers, eight published by Harlequin, one by Harper.  None of them earned out more than $12,000 in their first printings.  Since I’m a slow writer, and couldn’t turn out a book any faster than every eight months, I knew I’d never get rich as a writer.

And then a little later....

By the time GRAVITY was released, it was clear that my sales were in a downward spiral.  Despite publisher enthusiasm and rave reviews, GRAVITY could not find an audience among women readers.  That doomed it in the marketplace.  And once your sales start to slip, the pre-orders for your next book, and your next, begin to plummet.  Just as depressing were my foreign sales, which had been so bad that I was having trouble finding anyone to publish me in the UK. I took off a year to re-group.  I wrote my next book entirely on spec, without a contract.  This time, I was writing just for myself.  Read the whole piece.

I have written whole books several times for various reasons, most often because I was frustrated by the external market and needed to connect back to myself and my own body of work.  It has always been a Very Good Thing.  One was In the Midnight Rain, which has become one of the most beloved of my romances.  Another was Heart of a Knight, a medieval romance that won the RITA.  The most recent is Elena's story, working title Cooking for the Dead.  (We're all batting around title ideas still.)

It's also something I highly recommend to my students. Often. Published even more than unpublished, and especially if they've hit a wall--internal burn out or publisher disinterest or a need to change direction.  Have you ever done it?

Cooking and travel

I've been thinking it might be fun to go on a cooking holiday, and what popped up in my email this morning? A link to a travel-cooking site that has some lovely, lovely trips.  Wouldn't it be cool to go to Morocco and cook?   Of course, the coming year is already packed with travel, so it will have to go on the back burner, but I really think I'd have a blast.....

Vegetarian week

I 'm sure I've mentioned that my eldest son, his girlfriend, and virtually all of their entire circle of close friends, are vegetarians.  This happened one week when Ian and his former debate partner did research for a case and read about the meat industry in the US.  The both became vegetarians overnight.  I kept thinking they'd go back, but it's been years now, so I think the change is complete. 

And while none of them proselytize, their commitment intrigues and impresses me.  I'm also working on deepening my yoga practice, and often vegetarian eating is a part of that.   

So I've been keeping a vegetarian kitchen this week.  Experimented yesterday with a lower fat, healthier version of that wintertime comfort food fav, macaroni and cheese.  Turned out spectacularly well, enough that Christopher Robin gave it the British stamp of approval. I'll post the recipe Friday.  If I can read all my notes. 

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.

"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>

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?   

Matera...the sweet yearnings of travel

Matera, last morning.  In the moment.....

In the moment, I am sitting in the sassi Hotel Sant'Angelo (which I chose because my grandmother used to spend much time in San Angelo, Texas).  Christopher Robin has had a relapse of the cold we both brought home from Indianapolis, and is half-sprawled on the leather couch opposite me, his eyes dull and red as he listens to a book on tape on his Ipod.  We are awaiting out ride to the Bari train station, one day early, because we decided to see about spending a day in Rome.  So, that is where we will go tonight and tomorrow, then fly to England on Tuesday afternoon.  No idea if I can access a computer from there. 

In the moment, there are two young women cleaning up the breakfast dishes, chatting in a low, musical river of Italian.  The bells are ringing again, urgently and energetically--ring ring, ring ring, ring ring, ring ring, ring ring.  Sometimes they ring for hours, but not at every hour.  It seems more to mark medieval day, the names of which I have forgotten, but Matins and Noon and Evening.   I kept worrying that I had no alarm without my cell phone, but the bells woke me at seven each morning. 

Last night, we walked home from the gala and I felt as if it was the last day of camp. I tried to press th e sights and smells and soft crisp air into my memory--the worn slick granite streets beneath our feet which made anything but walking sandals impossible, though I carried nicer shoes to events, the little pack of pale, tan dogs guarding one turn on the road; the beacons of light shining on the hill of sassi.  The creepy cold quiet that spills from the abandoned, empty rooms still quite prevalent alongside the shops and apartments that have been redone.   I will post a little more history of the town when I bring my pictures, but for now, these are simply impressions.

As we walked last night, though the very busy Saturday night streets, I felt that sweet wistfulness of yearning equally for the powerful hug of my big son, and the fluffy feel of my dog's neck and the quiet of my garden, but also that seductive idea of abandoning the career and the life and becoming that earnest ex-pat who stumbles into learning the language and figuring out the new hours and the possibilities that might present for work, for creativity.....

Of course, I am very rooted where I am.  It is just that pleasurable fantasy, the sweet longing of imagination.  I have felt I could live in Scotland and the west of Ireland and now the south of Italy in this small and ancient city with its blue, blue sky and agreeable population and fantastical sassi.

Tomorrow, Rome!

Ambling to Bari and Matera

Ambling because that is what one does here, at least on foot.  Amble through the streets, through meals, through tiny cups of impossibly strong coffee, through lazy glasses of wine.   Not much time, since there is an American man waiting rather pointedly for this computer (and funny how much pressure his tidy shoes makes me feel) , but a few notes to keep you current....

---Bari is a small city on the east coast, decidedly un-touristy, though it appears there is a large port from which ferries and cruise ships sail.  We arrived by train (Eurostar, not the locals, which would have meant changing three times).  I felt quite cheered by navigating the purchase of tickets and accomplishing our transfer and the comfortable ease of the train itself, a chance to read and rest and observe the endless miles of valley through which we traveled, mountains to the north and to the south, and between, vast vineyards and olive orchards, with hilltop towns in the hazy distance like watercolors of wine labels.   

--we spent Tuesday meandering around Bari's old town in the gentle rain.  We had good umbrellas and decent shoes and the clerk at the hotel said there had been no rain for 150 days, to it was hard to mind it.  In truth, it lent the day a certain moody grace.  We ambled around the warren of medieval streets in the walled old city (which was notorious for pick pockets and petty crime until recently, when it has been cleaned up). There is an enormous old castle, remarkably well preserved, which delighted me for the dual wall construction (curtain wall and inner courtyard) plus the Norman keep.  It was not possible to see a lot of the inside, nor climb the tower, but it is remarkable nonetheless, with a now grassy and enormous moat.   

--Tuesday night (the man has left, exasperated that his sighs did not make me type any faster), we went to the book event at Feltrinelli, and that was quite an adventure.   A crowd gathered for the discussion of Il profumo delle Oro (Madame Mirabouàs School of Love here), where I met several gracious and interesting readers.  One in particular, a beautiful woman with a cloud of silvery hair and the elegance of a model, asked most intriguing questions.  An interpreter translated for us.  I signed some books and we drank some coffee, then a driver picked us up in the now pouring rain, and drove us south in the dark and we to Matera.   My first glimpse of the sassi will stay with me, as we rounded a narrow, twisting road and suddenly, there were the tumbles of pale yellow stone studded with lights, as fantastical as something from a half-remembered dream or a book read long ago, and across the ravine, a black darkness, vast and impenetrable. T We lugged our suitcases up a series of steps and across a cobblestone courtyard, getting soaked, and tumbled into bed in our long, churchlike cave....

---In the morning, emerging like children from ensorcellment, we came into the bright blue morning, and the ruined and renewing tumbles of the town of sassis, stairs trailing hither and yon, climbing into dark passages, emerging into dazzling sunlight, and churches upon churche upon churches.   A cathedral whose roof fell down last summer, cave curches carved into the mountains, and across the river rushing through the valley far below, an austere bluff with tiny ant figures on the top, staring back at us. 

I have eaten amazing food.  Orchiette (sp) with spinach and butter and tomatoes.  Rabiit (rabbit! me!) roasted to such savory tenderness it melted on my tongue, served with potatoes cooked to buttery perfection.  CR had lamb and sausages today, while I feasted on mashed fava beans and roasted cheese and drank a big hearty glass of red wine (which we shared) and came back to nap in the hot of the afternoon.

Oh, and one final note: last night, the cocktail party was held at a small cafe on minor piazza, facing a larger piazza (that backs up to another piazza).  Handsome waiters served white wine and proscuitto and two beautiful young creatures enacted the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet in Italian, she curving over the edge of the balcony above, he earnestly looking up to her from the square.  Old men leaned on the walls to watch, and the evening shoppers paused to smile tenderly, and it was piercingly, wildly beautiful, so much so that I had to look away and recite the words under my breath, for I memorized it entirely at the age of thirteen and still can whisper every word....But soft? What light from yonder window breaks?

Ciao!