I thought I was doing well. Bonjour. Au revoir. Comment allez vous? Ou est la rue Saint Jacques? You know the drill. Sylviane has been
in the states for 35 years, and has lived in the south much of that time, but
it has not slowed her Parisian accent one millisecond. I could barely manage to
understand her English, and certainly if I had tried my French, she may have doubled
over laughing. I simply smiled a lot as I listened to her rapid history of the
special orchids grown in China, three strains from which a hybrid was
developed... for the delicious-smelling, exquisite-looking, too-pricey face and
throat cream called Orchide Imperial.
This morning, I was still thinking Paris, but I was cutting
zinnias for my son’s family from my garden. The bed surrounds a cedar tree
transplanted from the woods of my oldest sister, the same one who gave me seeds
for the old timey multi-colored zinnias. A certain panic set in: my son is just
out of the hospital and needs special care; each day I go by Whole Foods and
pick up something nutritious to prepare for his lunch. I haven’t practiced my
polite French phrases; but most of all, I haven’t given much thought to the
reading I’m supposed to do in preparation for the writing residency I’ll be
attending with Spalding University, my alma mater for the MFA in Writing.
As if to intensify my alarm as my husband can sometimes do
with his morning pronouncements, he said entering the kitchen for coffee, “Know
how many days it is until we leave for Paris?”
Ah, did I ever know. Three weeks, two days until flight
time.
Panic and packing will wait. Here’s what I’d like to know.
I’ve decided to blog for WELD from Paris if I can determine what readers might
like to hear about: architecture; art museums; my workshop in Creative
Nonfiction; food; my ekphrastic poetry project with my eighteen year-old
grandson, Nicholas, who will be taking this trip before heading off to study
architecture at Syracuse this fall, or simply the weather??
That last topic sounds facetious but I’m serious. One of the
mentors at Spalding, Ellie Bryant, who incidentally will be leading my CNF
workshop, has an exercise for her students much like a diary entry for the day.
She calls it the Weather Journal project. One of my good friends Edie Hemingway
allowed me to read the journal entries which she kept during a crisis in her
family. I was very touched by the simplicity and profundity of her
manuscript—all of which emanated from faithfully recording her “weather journal.”
Another avenue of discussion might be books. Preparatory and
requisite reading for my workshop includes THE GREATER JOURNEY Americans in Paris by David McCullough.
McCullough contends that not all explorers went west. He writes of the earliest
American “explorers” to visit Paris in the 1830s. Another required reading is A
MOVEABLE FEAST (the Restored Version) by Hemingway.
Perhaps some readers know these books and have thoughts to
share. I’d like to hear if you have a particular interest in what news I send
back home during those three weeks.
À bientôt.
