Wind rustles treetops.
Above, against hard blue sky,
Osprey sliding past.
Sparrows in privet,
Shaking branches, rattling leaves,
Chirping, but unseen.
Big blue dragonfly
Slipping into juniper,
Escaping swallows.
Archive for Blog
Travel anxiety, Part II
(If you missed Part I, it’s yesterday’s post.)
Well, I’m packed. If I don’t have it it’s not coming. Since I’m not leaving for Mongolia until Monday this may seem extraordinarily early, and for me, believe me, it is. Though my mother always packed days before she was ready to go, in case something she’d been planning to take was found to need washing or mending. Me, I usually pack the night before, or, in the case of an afternoon departure, the morning of. But tomorrow morning I’m going to the Rancho for the weekend, and I’m leaving Monday morning for the airport. So effectively this is the day before, and since I’ll be at a book club gig tonight (folks who read GHOST HERO and were kind enough to invite me to the discussion) this is about as late as I can push it.
Also unusually for me, I’m checking a suitcase and taking a backpack plus a small bag. I never check, always manage with a backpack and a 19″. Guilty with an explanation: I’m taking some kid’s picture books as a gift for the guide’s little girl, and they were just one toke over the line for the suitcase. Also, I intend to leave my travelin’ clothes behind in Ulaan Bataar so, three weeks later when we get back there and I need to rush to make my plane for the loooong trip home, I’ll have something clean to wear. Now I have a bag to leave them in.
I also defrosted the freezer this morning. Because it just COULDN’T WAIT until I got back, could it?
He who starts on a ride
Packing for Mongolia, for which I leave on Monday. Travel anxiety has begun to set in. Am I taking too much, am I not taking enough, am I taking all the wrong things, I don’t have enough clothes for hot/cold/rainy/dry situations, do I have enough shampoo/vitamins/dramamine…
And of course what it’s really all about is, I’m going to the OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD FOR PETE’S SAKE! And it’s not even really about that, either. We’ve talked about this before on this blog and some of you were good enough to share your own travel anxieties. It’s about, I’m stepping so far outside my comfort zone I can’t even see it from here. The packing madness, the one more shirt, the summer socks and winter socks, the extra moisturizer just in case — it’s all about taking my comfort zone with me.
I don’t do this any more when I go to Europe, though I used to, or when I travel in the US. I’m famous for how lightly I pack. Objectively, what I’m packing for Mongolia is pretty light, too, for, um, Mongolia. But even going to Boston, I get this same exiled feeling, which is at the heart of the matter. What do you MEAN I can’t stay here? Right smack 100% in the middle of my comfort zone? Where I know how things happen, how they work. I have to LEAVE? Whose idea was this?
Oh.
More on this later — excuse me now, I have to go make another list.
(I’ll finish the quote in the title in my Sunday night post before I leave.)
Thirty-first Saturday, from Rancho Obsesso
Hatchlings fledged and flown.
Early summer’s bird riot
Calmed to indolence.
White slash of sailboat
Rocking over wrinkled sea
Under rounded clouds.
Orange trumpet vine
Tangled in green foliage
Against brown shingles.
More Italy photos for you
I’m back, supremely jetlagged, and have managed to stagger out to the Rancho. Bella, because I know you want to know, had a marvelous time with her cat sitter while I was gone. He was doing research much of the time he was at the apartment and therefore was sitting still. This created a number of perfect opportunities to pet the cat, of which he apparently took advantage. Bella says he can come back anytime.
I have about ten thousand photos from Assisi and environs, which I’ll be posting over the next week. To start, here are a bunch of them.
field below town
basilica reflected in vine-covered cafe window
new roof tiles among the old (you didn’t think you were going to escape the roof tiles, did you?)
sunflower
with art workshop international staff visiting an artist friend at civitella ranieri
new section at assisi cemetery
perugia
lunch in perugia
courting couple with chaperone
a gaggle of nuns
Julia the farmer
I’ve written from Assisi before about the Nigerian woman and her Italian husband who cleared the earthquake debris out of the San Pietro churchyard four years ago and started a farm. The farm is one of the first stops I make when I arrive here every year and I’m pleased to report they’re doing well.
Julia
plums
more plums
giant zucchini
onions
plums again
Sculpture, tiles, and frescoes
Assisi is full of frescoes, mostly old, and tiles and sculptures, many newer (but most by no means new) mounted outdoors on the stone buildings. Some, especially the frescoes, were damaged in the 1997 earthquake or over the past, you know, eight centuries. I’ve been photographing them as I walk around town. Thought you might like to see a few. (I have photos from some interiors, too; will post them later.)
Twenty-ninth Saturday, from Assisi
Tile roofs’ corduroy
Soft with spots of olive moss,
Spiky with dried grass.
Sun slides above hill.
In valley, sudden shadows
On newly bright fields.
On pine tree’s bent tip
Mourning dove lights, balances,
Calls, waits, calls again.
Hot days, long walks
Huge heat wave in this part of Italy, a good 10-15 degrees F higher than usual. Meaning, 90-100 instead of 75-90. Ah, well. Does it stop me?
I write in the morning and teach in the early afternoon. In the early early morning, when it’s cool; in the mid-to-late afternoon, when it’s ridiculously hot; and in the late evening, when it’s thinking about cooling down again, I’ve been taking long walks. Sometimes alone, sometimes with my buddy Barb. The ones in the evening are classic post-dinner strolls and are usually with a group of about half-a-dozen people.
These are photos from the first three days’ worth of walks.
evening from the hotel terrace during the blackout
flowers in town
gold tiles on the Basilica rose window
convent at San Damiano
grate on convent door
Assisi, Day One
No sooner had we arrived than, in the middle of a pizza lunch in a basement place a few streets away, the lights went out. Blew their transformer, thought I. They brought candles and we continued devouring our pizza (mine was arugula and shrimp) because we were starving because the food on the plane was awwwwwful. We finished up and went back to the Hotel Giotto, where we found I was right but I was wrong. It was the transformer, but not the restaurant’s. The entire towns of Assisi and Santa Maria degli Angeli were without power.
The reason and the problem are the same: this is a major-league heat wave, 99F-102F every day. More and more homes and businesses are getting a/c, which no one around here used to have. So the draw on the power grid is more and more enormous on days like this. And of course, it’s on days like this when you care whether or not you have power.
Everywhere was out for a few hours. Then the power slowly started coming back, first in Santa Maria degli Angeli, then up at the top of Assisi, then creeping uphill and creeping downhill toward us. Creep, creep. No power meant no water, either, because the Giotto uses pumps. The hotel staff did a monumental job making and serving dinner by candlelight. We ate on the terrace and watched the lights come back on in this street and that street and the other street… Ours was the last, the very last, and our segment of it was the last segment. Around 11:30 the hotel manager and a lovely young man from the maintenance staff were suddenly knocking on room doors to come in and throw breakers and bring the rooms back on line. The a/c in my room still doesn’t work; I may have to move tomorrow. But water! We have water!
Still, the churches are here, and the streets, and the Umbrian plain. Now that there’s cappuccino in the cafés again, I can deal.
