Author: Marianne Maili

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Dear Marianne,*

I am very pleased to hear that you have found a home of whatever sort you choose, in the south of France and also an academic community at that–if you had planned it, it possibly never would have happened. As a wonderer wanderer and experience junkie, I applaud.

Given the array of options you have geographically, I cannot help but think about wanderers in the most positive way. I have been privileged late in life to explore and to journey in ways I never could have before. I have thought about your growing work for a long time from that perspective and the extraordinary search for home that you have. The structure of your work as a short essay–or singular diary–like notes – lends itself to self-description.

My traveling days are over except in the alternate reality of sharing how talented women lead independent lives, this is of enormous interest. It is an art form.

There are many elements in your writing that are interesting to me–a speaker, editor, and writer who does all that in order to avoid writing itself. Your work strikes me for its structure, it is stream-of-consciousness, and it’s very in the moment in present or past.

It is never clear to a wandering spirit why we wander, but it certainly feels good to share with someone who understands the pluses and minuses of being a risk-taker. I have just had a fantasy of putting together the handful of wonderful women I would love to meet with laughter, joy, and acceptance, and a very inappropriate life. It seems to me that you have done a remarkable job of getting to this point where not just the actions of your wanderlust are elegant, as the wanderer’s diary permits. Shared laughter is an art and a gift.

*I recently re-entered correspondence with this generous reader in her 93rd year. I feel fortunate as our correspondence is opening places in me, doors I realize I closed, or wells I have forgotten to tap. Anyone who knows me knows I love letters, a rare art these days, and this correspondence is happening through FB messenger as the writer of this letter has dealt with some health issues recently so she is speaking into the computer and FB is transcribing her words. I am unsure if FB transcribes it all as it was said sometimes and I am so grateful and moved when I receive words at home in Aix-en-Provence at any time of day on a screen, from a fan across the continent and the ocean, sitting in her Connecticut home talking into her computer.

One last note – another film recommendation–Coutures. It’s beautifully sewn together and a story about wounds, relationships, risk-takers, and women helping each other set in the world of film and fashion. (I thought about dear Lucy Pilgrim a lot while I watched and it made me want to see Lucy, go see. on screen.) See it when you can. I was fortunate to attend a pre-screening here in Aix, with the inspiring screenwriter and director Alice Winocour and the fascinating actress Anyier Anei (who made her debut with this movie) answering questions afterward and sharing the making-of. Truly marvelous.

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Living, aging; what are you doing?

I am tired of seeing and hearing the word aging.

Living, people, that is what we are here to do.

I am living in France since late August after 875 fabulous days of living in Spain.

I came here to represent the Office of the President at The American College of the Mediterranean and I am glad I did.

Some days ago, I began reading the notebooks in which I wrote and drew during the Barcelona days. It’s wonderful to be inspired by that Marianne who dared to return to Spain without knowing how it would all work out.

Aix is inspiring me, too.

I popped in to say HI – (my new abbreviation for Human Intelligence).

Since I began working at ACM-IAU aka The American College of the Mediterranean-Institute d’Universités Americains, life has been filled with newness and learning. Less posting, too.

I love to put together images to share with you, and that takes time, and today I will post with less images than I would like, because I want to post something.

Still writing.

Still heartened to see Lucy, go see. and I am home. moving in the world, being read, talked about. Still dreaming about translations and films.

Repeating the phrase Je veux encore jouer daily.

Sketching, snapshotting, looking at it all.

Also working on the delicious project of tasting and ranking French desserts.

Doors, stone heads, shafts and splashes of light. Virgin vines (les vignes vierges have a different translation, but I like this one). I enjoy these things and so much more in Aix.

It’s a curlicue place. Water running everywhere under the surface, making man-made structures lopsided, floors curvy. Immense plane trees, pines, cypress, walnuts, chestnuts. Ochre stone, a city chock-full of centuries of stories. Heads were chopped off here in a beautiful plaza in front of a church and stone heads adorn intricately carved wooden majestic doors. Places fit for royalty, archbishops.

Strange note to end on but there it is, thought about constantly as I walk through the city-center’s labrynth of wonder.

Here’s a slide show for you, quickly clicked together. A smattering. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for your attention. Love, Marianne

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A Serendipitous Saturday in Barcelona

  • Screenshot

Some days are like this: You are enjoying the last day of a dear friend’s visit, a friend who is also a fan and supporter of your writing, as you are of hers. You hesitate to walk her by the wonderful bookshop backstory to say, This is where I did that event last fall – your hesitation is because there are so many other things to show her in fabulous Barcelona, but you go anyway. Your son is with you. C’mon, Mom, he says, as your friend says, I can’t believe you would even think I would not want to go, as you all walk in the bookstore and scatter, enjoying it. You look around for your books and can’t find them and you ask the young woman at the desk if there are any books by — and you say your name but don’t tell her it’s your name and she looks it up and she says yes, and takes you to the section and fingers through it like playing spines like a piano and is unable to find it so you assume it is sold out and she says, wait. Then another woman comes from another direction and says, here, yes, we have a copy left, and you thank her and ask where it was and she says up front on the table of writers we highlight, and then she says but you are the author, aren’t you? and you smile and say yes and she tells you that she organized the event, the conversation you had with a fabulous librarian and that she was disappointed that she couldn’t be there. She tells you this while you notice and smile at the company of authors your book is keeping. Your friend sees your book and wants to photograph you in front of it. The woman who handed it to you wants to join in and post it on social media, she says. You offer to sign it, afterwards, and she rushes back with a signed copies sign. A woman you recognized from afar when you entered and have been meaning to say hello to comes from the back of the shop and greets you and says, you wrote a book? and you say, yes, two. You introduce her to your friend as this woman picks up the copy of I am home. and tucks it between arm and chest snugly. You substitute taught at the school where this woman teaches Spanish a year ago and this is the first time you have seen her in almost a year. She was so present and supportive, you tell your friend. How is that she didn’t know about your books? your friend asks and you say, what am I supposed to do? go around telling people about my books when I first meet them?

Your friend rests her palm on your back as you leave, flanked by her and your son. That was the perfect ending to my fantastic stay. It was so exciting and inspiring to see your book in a bookstore. And then to watch you sign it and to watch it fly off the shelf! You might start telling people around here about your books and where they can get them. Just sayin’.

Lucy, go see. I am home. backstory bookshop.

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mi amiga marianne

February 11, 2025. Barcelona, in the evening. A chime on my phone, I saw the link you see below and under it the words mi amiga marianne, then another chime: Hello Marianne. I listened to your rendition of the prelude, and first chapter of Lucy go see. It was a beautiful experience. Your writing is beautiful and powerful. You are a good writer… and a brave one! I shared the podcast with some friends…

I responded: Such good timing you have. I was writing when I heard your message come in. working on writing myself right, as I sometimes call it. Feeling down and writing, too, about writing, and all the time put into it and wondering if it mattered much–and then I saw this. Thank you very much. It means a lot and especially coming from you. Thank you so much too for sharing it. I’d so love to move this story further and wider into the world. A really big hug. I hope you are having a good start to your week.

As did she: The timing is not mine…probably🥰😅 Imagine….I read/listened to it early afternoon… and had to reflect a bit afterwards… powerful words… I shall buy the book. I thought you could try a public reading with your students…you do a superb job reading your novel… you are a good interpreter of “Lucy”… but personally I think they may not be ready for your honesty… and they may misuse the sacredness of it. I am afraid for you, but you know best… Am afraid of the superficial nature of some youth. On the other hand, you could help them tremendously… because of your experience and the healing over the years… you talk about it with great insight and wisdom.

The “it” my friend refers to is a sacred understanding of sexuality.

My friend is a sister of the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word of Houston, Texas, and a pediatrician. We met in a nearby café in Barcelona soon after I moved into this neighborhood in the fall of 2023, and we struck up a conversation. Within it, I learned she had returned to Barcelona after more than two decades in the USA, to care for her mother, who was in her early nineties. It was remarkable to me that I, after returning to Barcelona after my years in Iowa with my mother during her last years of life, was meeting a Barcelona woman who had returned to her hometown to do the same, after living decades in Texas, and who was talking of a future return there. We talked about that and many things including spirituality, sanctuary, sacredness, swimming, and the themes of wound, eros, and voice that are prevalent in my work. (We have continued this conversation ever since.)

You probably guessed I am a nun, she said.

No, I said. Why would I?

My collar, she said, lifting her shawl. To me a lace collar, nothing more. My cross, she said, holding the pendant around her neck.

It’s pretty, I said.

You probably already have many friends, she said.

I’d love to yours, I said.

A few weeks later, she sent me an article she had written about vulnerability, wounds, and wisdom that I’d like to share with you:

https://issuu.com/joanofbark/docs/e_news_-nov_21_n_n_2

Our friendship continues to flourish, enrich, and reveal what can easily be seen as divine timing and connection.

I was grateful this week to be reminded through her that what means so much to me is worth doing, and it will continue to be surprising in its revelations. This is one of the stories of how it has moved and moves in the world.

Thanks for reading. May you marvel at your life, and this world.

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What does it mean to be American?

Umar Timol is a Mauritian poet, writer, and photographer. He has published four collections of poetry, two novels, and various articles in national and international journals. He has contributed to numerous anthologies in Mauritius and beyond.

I met Umar in the fall of 2018 in Iowa City at the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He was working on a book about US citizens and how they felt about their country and asked if he could interview and photograph me. At that time I had been back in the US for six years after nearly twenty-five abroad, and I would stay almost five years more, moving on to Los Angeles after Iowa City. In Barcelona now, and staying indefinitely, this post came to mind again and I feel like sharing it here.

Thank you, Umar, for all the beautiful things you do.

October 6, 2018  · Iowa City, IA, United States  · 

Marianne Mali ( Writer).

‘I have no idea anymore about what it means to be American. I am; I know that much. I also have French nationality. But I don’t really know what that means, either, though I imagine there it is possible to use “we” more easily. Here in this vast and complex country, I can only speak for myself. About what I value. Perhaps that is what being American is.

I value kindness, sincerity, unity, bravery, helpfulness, usefulness, resourcefulness, creativity, thoughtfulness, playfulness, curiosity, cleanliness, clarity, health, education, hospitality, justice, humor, civility, wilderness; is this American?

As I talked, you saw what you call my skeptical love for my country. A country I like to think of as open, spontaneous, direct, and willing to love. Yet, there is a good deal of evidence contradicting this.

I feel most connected to the pioneering spirit of my ancestors. I love the national parks and forests and traveling the county highways through this continent’s marvelous landscape.

And I recall the Pledge of Allegiance I recited daily in grade school, especially these words about the flag – “to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”– and I ask, where is the evidence of this today?

“Photography is like writing poetry with light” – Umar Timol, Iowa City, October 2018

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Moving On, Anew

This slideshow is a fraction of the snapshots from a fraction of my journeys during 2020 – 2023. The first shot is of my feet up in the garden of a Silver Lake sanctuary in Los Angeles while I was musing on where to go next, in between–amid other ordinarily extraordinary things–getting two books out into the world. One could say I was in a foxy den there, licking wounds in a beautiful spot. I was also writing, editing, teaching online, and occasionally acting. Most of my adventures were driving explorations through grief–of losses and disasters, some willed, most not. They also were celebrations of freedom, and often after a completed draft. While writing about these journeys recently, I realized though I was alone in the car, there were many other folks in there with me, perhaps listening to the conversations I was having with them and myself about love and home.

And now, I enter a new era of my life. This week I joined the Barcelona team of the American College of the Mediterranean as a full-time Faculty Advisor. After years of working on my own from wherever I was, and searching for a place I would love to land and work with others, it is happening, and I am really happy about that. I am also deeply grateful for the pleasures and gifts of the solitude, wandering, and wondering of the last eight years. What a wonderful time I had exploring the country I was born in, then making my way back here, to this Barcelona home, to this city and sea I love.

I have spent much more time than I planned on selecting images and have to stop and go out for a walk up on the mountain overlooking the city before the light goes. I would love to show you the beauty I saw throughout California (there are only a couple of shots in this video of the splendid Sonoma Coast). And there are so many Midwestern travels I’d like to share, including the Upper Mississippi Valley I love so and wrote about in I am home. All these journeys could each be a book and movie on their own. So could other amazing travels during those American years–alone, and with my son–across the US, within Mexico, and finally back in Europe. It’s been a traveling life.

But this little picture show is already eight-and-a-half-minutes long. A good accompaniment to coffee in the morning. I selected the shots with the intention of putting you in the driver’s seat.

Traveling far and long alone, I saw the diversity of the United States and witnessed the behavior of some of its inhabitants. There is outrageous wealth and gutwrenching misery. Opulence and abandon. Cruelty and kindness. Violence and generosity. There are also folks living simple and beautiful lives.

Ah, the open roads! The vast landscapes. The freedom. The beauty. I highly recommend that everyone solo travel for a while.

When I see myself in some of these shots it makes me feel happy. I loved hanging out with Marianne.

Life is a precious opportunity. I am looking forward to sharing my love for it with curious students from across the United States who come to Barcelona to do their own exploring.

Thanks for your time. I hope you find this imperfect offering inspiring.

DRIVING: An American Flâneuse on Wheels

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The body of Saint Teresa of Avila-did they all want a part of her ecstasy?

The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa by Bernini, Basilica of Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome

Thinking on the woman and her body parts. Our bodies being our own kind of thing. Maybe you know this already. I was set back just now reading about Teresa de Avila’s body parts being cut off and out, and held by different people and in different places–this after her death, and during exhumations, and including thefts of her body. Human beings can be so weird. Did they all want a part of her ecstasy?

The body is now back in Alba de Tormes, Spain, except for the following parts:

  • Rome – right foot and part of the upper jaw
  • Lisbon – right hand
  • Ronda, Spain – left eye and left hand (the latter was kept by Francisco Franco until his death, after Francoist troops captured it from Republican troops during the Spanish Civil War)
  • Museum of the Church of the Annunciation, Alba de Tormes – left arm and heart
  • Church of Our Lady of Loreto, Paris, France – one finger
  • Sanlúcar de Barrameda – one finger

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WRITE YOURSELF HOME

Do you have a story inside you? One you would like to tell but are unsure how? 

Let your voice be the guide.

Come home to yourself through writing. 

Learn how to create a map to discover your hidden treasures as you trace the ways life has taken you.

Begin a new journey.

Come join us for this ninety-minute createshop. Leave inspired with all you need to complete a first draft. You’ll have a map, tried & tested writing tools for the road, and an exhilarating sense of the freedom discipline can bring.

Register via e-mail by October 10.  Space is limited to 9 participants.

Online via ZOOM. Thursday, October 17, 2024, 19h–20h30, CET.

35 Euros.  Scholarships available.

Register via e-mail

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Talking about home in Barcelona!

Friday, September 27th, 6:30 pm at Backstory Bookshop–C/ de Mallorca, 330

Please join Kristi Hovington and me for a lively and fun discussion about the choices we make, roads we take, and the ways our hearts can shake when we make homes outside the culture we were born into. Insiders and outsiders and being both, how do we go about making the world our home? And in what ways do we understand home? Both of my books explore what home can mean, so there will be mention (and a pile) of them I’ll be happy to sign. Or bring your copy with you. Let’s chat!

As travelers and ex-pats know, leaving home forces the question of where home really is. Join author and professor, Marianne Maili, and editor and librarian, Kristi Hovington, for a lively conversation, a Q&A, and an inspiring writing prompt about what we mean when we talk about home.

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Shining Solitude

A response to Krista Tippett and On Being’s call for submissions about solitude. August 1, 2017. Gold Coast Studio Chicago. Came upon this the other day and was entranced by this Marianne. Have you ever seen former versions of yourself and thought, wow, I missed that? I mean, I was in there yet I was looking out. I thought about cutting this as I watched it yet stopped myself as I like the imperfection of it, the naturalness, the vulnerability, and the shining.