Tag Archives: travel

Black Pork Cheeks, Fries, Political Football

We were winding around the margins of a small village in the margins of Portugal, looking for a late Sunday night dinner.  Earlier there had been sun-drenchedempty alleys…now a traditional room, wooden sideboards with wine glass on crocheted lace. White tablecloths layered … Continue reading

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Lightness Lost and Found

Lightness of spirit! I had been chasing my joie de vivre, wondering where it could be hiding. I had been on the front lines of culture wars, in the trenches, laboring to talk to all sides. I was looking for … Continue reading

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The Guest

For three weeks, I was a guest: to different showersAnd toilet flushes in the West, to coffee houses, to apps,to rosemary as box shrub.  A guest to my suitcase.  To hot tubs and skin in the garden of my tiny cottage. Guest to … Continue reading

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Bastille to Puritan Village: Strange Magic

Each time, after countless trips, still strange magic.Hours ago, we were eating croissants in the sun, looking at the soft green column of the Bastille, the genie de la Liberté, golden wings aloft, still leaping.Today I wake up to crisp carpeting … Continue reading

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What Asked to Come Back from the Trip

One charming cliche pops up when you are going on a trip — people ask, can you pack me in your suitcase?  When you’re returning, it’s a moot point.  Or is it?    I wouldn’t have known it when I … Continue reading

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Place, No Passport Needed

The house of my recurring dreams so real yet nowhere I’ve ever beena place to put up my imaginary feeteach night a new set of contextsrelations to be worked out in my lucid jetlagged stateI ask little of this curious placea … Continue reading

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It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane…Travel Again

Stop doing something, then start again to incur wonder. I.e., travel! You give your suitcase to strangers and pick it up on a Mediterranean island? You fly in the belly of a mechanical bird? Suddenly you’re above the clouds where … Continue reading

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Santa Fe on Thinner Oxygen

How rare to travel as an amateur or emigrant, so ignorant of a well-trod place that you let the place’s magic play with your “free gaze.”   I, Rhode Islander, arrive with little knowledge of New Mexico.  D.H. Lawrence, Georgia … Continue reading

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Petersburg’s Fresh Waters

Standing by the river Neva, wanting to compose poetry in St Petersburg, I couldn’t hear beyond the lines of great poets – Akhmatova, Blok, Tsvetaeva, Mandelstam. History dominates voice, especially in Russia. The Revolution, Stalin’s terrors, the siege, all produced … Continue reading

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Shape-Shifting in Thessaloniki

The Thessaloniki experience has to include both ghosts and crowds.  Walking through the old souks on a mid-August holiday, its corridors are full of shadows, smells but no people, plastic bags flapping on the skeletal rafters.  This is a good … Continue reading

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