Tag: writing

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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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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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Sometimes

there is a resistance to write at the same time there is a drawing toward the page. deep inside, new understandings are bubbling up from a deeply stirred well, pocking in the heretofore unseen sediment resting at the bottom for god knows how long. the understandings feel icky thus the resistance to touching them, to looking at them, to owning them. and maybe they are just passers-by. which leads to the consideration that these understandings and feelings could be common, and the pocks perhaps a way to get the poison and sickness out. human, human, human, you are, they whisper. not god. but yes, god, too, connected to god, an angelic voice chimes in. the whole mess seems like a connecting agent, like muddy mortar that could adhere the tiles we each are in the mosaic of humanity. does it ever happen in your life that when a situation you have been long concerned about seems to be resolving itself, new concerns–or concerns you have turned your attention away from because they seemed less important than the newly resolving concern–insist upon your attention? it feels hard to see beauty in the mud of shame, humiliation, regret, envy, disappointment, fear, longing–and some call these negative emotions–yet how to move through and grow from them without becoming self-indulgent in a mud bath of self-regard? they are all about the past and here we are in the present. and how to grow without them, and thus, how can they be negative? how to look at these discomforts without indulging in self-consciousness? how to swim through them and emerge fresher and cleaner? To remind ourselves that we all have worth, regardless of our behavior. Our behavior is another story. This all the more stirred by listening to Dignity by Donna Hicks, PhD, which is recommendable. “Safety lies in connection with others […] we develop the awareness of our worth in relationship with others.” And her questions what does dignity feel like and does it perhaps feel like love?

Yet something written: This feeling of nothing and no one to hold onto–connect to–right here at home–yet, here we are, at home. Yet, yes, relationship with others. This feeling of things to write about which are difficult to approach–more changes, more growth & depth & opening & a trembling, too–and to put it all on paper overwhelms–yet here is jotting & noting things on IG that arouse envy, repel, & make sad and then a pushing to feel happy for the poster– A poster. Interesting. Look. How many of us have become posters? Human posters.

And this is with little mention of the news, which is terrifying.

“What is love if not the act of honoring dignity?” Again, Donna Hicks’s question.

Dignity even when in a cualdron of mud. Privileged to have the time to think about it all. Afraid to post because it may all sound trite. Looking for humor, lost somewhere in the mud, next appears the image of a naked muddy woman. A funny reflection with a frog in her hand waving hello.

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I am home forgetting.

Another from KK’s list of Scintillating Sentences.

It’s true, I write to remember and to forget. Versatile, useful writing that does so much for the writer, and often and eventually, the reader. And what makes a writer? Writing. It can be a way of remembering, forgetting, playing, imagining, wondering, searching, asking, answering, corresponding, reading, soothing, and more. Write, I say, write. You can do whatever you want with it during and after.

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I am home. in beauty. “Is Iowa really that pretty?”

A view over the Mississippi at Dubuque, Iowa.

The Mines of Spain, Dubuque, Iowa

A lovely place to begin a new book. The backyard patio. July 2016. Rush Street, Dubuque, Iowa

Freshly picked snacks.

Inspiration from Norah Ephron the day before I began writing I am home.

I have gorgeous winter photos, too, but they are currently in storage in Iowa and I am in Barcelona.

A reader hosting her book club in Kansas next week with I am home. has known me since she was a toddler. When she sent me the club’s questions, she wrote, “You’re getting rave reviews. Someone in the book club asked me how you’re so positive after everything you’ve been through. She asked if Iowa is really that pretty.  I told her it’s prettier than anyone gives it credit for. And I told her you have always seen beauty in everything and you make others appreciate things more, you have a gift. You have always been so good about living in the present and enjoying life.”

Available everywhere books are sold.

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I am home. in Barcelona.

One reader wrote to say, “The sentence I most relate to is: ‘I initially chose Barcelona for how I feel when in it: free and connected to something I cannot name or understand.'”

Have you ever had that feeling about a place? Barcelona is important in I am home. and in Lucy, go see. I am working on a short piece about our love affair, Barcelona’s and mine, and will share it with you soon.

“You write about it beautifully,” I was happy to hear.

Have you been to Barcelona? Come travel with me, and make yourself at home.

Available everywhere books are sold.

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