This essay about Henry Miller in Paris is included in my new book The Modern Salonnière, which is available on Amazon in print and on Kindle. The 34 other essays in the book feature similar literary adventures and essays about traveling with intention. Henry Miller: Hungry, Homeless, Happy There’s only one historical figure I’ve ever come…Continue reading Henry Miller the Paris Years
Category: Creative Writing
Entries filed under the Creative Writing category are pieces that are less reportage and more essayistic pieces I’ve composed. Though varied in their subject matter, each of them is a deeper exploration that many of the pieces I produce from my travels or as a way to explore literary design encounters. There is a building variety of them featured below, such as an exploration of New Journalism through the lens of one May Day when I was having a mani/pedi in New York City while the throngs of marching workers passed by the salon.
Another found me in a spot on a high bald in the Appalachians feeling the grief of nature’s decline while feeling the beauty of her surroundings. I explore my fascination with Django Reinhardt in “Hail Django, Gypsy of Jazz,” and I share my response to one of the most syncopated beach masses I’ve ever celebrated! I feel echoes back in time when combing through Edith Wharton’s papers at Yale, and I record my feelings about an experience I had on the Sioux reservations in South Dakota. I hope you enjoy these pieces, as they are closest to my heart!
Shadowing Petrarch in Parma
This essay is included in my new book The Modern Salonnière, which recently debuted on Amazon in print and on Kindle. The 34 other essays in the book feature similar literary adventures and traveling with intention. Shadowing Petrarch in Parma The haunting strains of a bandoneon were wafting through the drizzly air, compelling me to follow…Continue reading Shadowing Petrarch in Parma
Medieval Calamities in Paris
It was winter in Paris and the Père Lachaise Cemetery was awash in grays. The sky, the bare limbs of the trees, the pavers and the stone cladding the tombs coalesced into one monochromatic composition as I climbed the hill. I walked along a path made knotty by the roots of trees as they attempted…Continue reading Medieval Calamities in Paris
Libraries Are My Temples
Libraries are my temples, the places I go to worship my tribe. The desire to record, to put words down as a way to cement thought, to unfurl storytelling are the liturgical acts that compose a writing life when it simply cannot be resisted, and many of them begin when a book is slid from…Continue reading Libraries Are My Temples
The Emperor’s Displeasure
Proof that the sword is often mightier than the pen litters history with tales of displeasure. A fairly famous case is the duel between Germaine de Staël and Napoléon, whose war of words cost the author her most fervent desire—to stay in Paris and hobnob with the literary set. She might have been able to…Continue reading The Emperor’s Displeasure
The Personality of Place
So, this is how it feels to experience a medieval Tuscan village that has existed on a hillside in some form for almost 1000 years! My view from the courtyard of Castel Monastero encompasses a string of buildings that meander along the edge of a quaint piazza. The bricked courtyard is paved in a herringbone…Continue reading The Personality of Place
Eudora Welty Finds Her Voice
When a writer begins to grapple with how to mine the outside world for inspiration, the process can be challenging. In her memoir, One Writer’s Beginnings, Eudora Welty describes how travel helped her awaken to what it means to embrace a broader reality, writing about a train ride she took with her father when she…Continue reading Eudora Welty Finds Her Voice
The Architecture of Tango
I envy the pencil being held carefully between her fingers, the rasping sound the sharpener makes as a thin layer of wood peels away from the instrument’s body. I am fascinated by her hesitation, the dark point poised above the supple blank pages so pristine the sight sends ripples of resistance through the synapses of…Continue reading The Architecture of Tango
Touching Literary History
I will once again be touching literary history soon, as the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University reopened yesterday following a 16-month renovation to upgrade the 50-year-old building’s climate-control system, expand its classroom space, and restore the landmark to its original luster. The building’s architectural features—an exterior grid of granite and Vermont…Continue reading Touching Literary History