No video today, but what now seems like an ‘old fashioned’ blog post. I was reading a lovely article last week (see link below*) in the Guardian newspaper, entitled ‘Postcard From the Future’; the author of the article, Katherine Rundell, is imagining what she will do when this Coronavirus lockdown is eased. She fantasises returning to the souks of Marrakech, and it set me to thinking ‘where are the places to which *I* long to return?' the special places, in which I have had special experiences. This may be an entertaining and revealing pursuit to carry out in your journals during this enclosed and restricted time, and in a way, it doesn't even matter if you don't get there again; just the pleasure of revisiting in your mind the places and experiences you have loved and reflecting on why you did and do so maybe enough.
Here are my favourite 5 places (the first five of many!) - do tell me some of yours.
As always top of the list (I am so predictable!) has to be Venice, where I've had some of the most delicious, beautiful and interesting experiences of my life. When I was teaching a Travel Journal writing course some years ago, I used an example of ‘50 things I remember about my visit to Venice’ – just one or two word ‘captures’, to illustrate the value of making lists when travelling. I'll share those in another post, but just five of the special things about Venice to me were…the experience of savouring texture in all its forms - from the ancient, decaying, crumbling surfaces all around, on buildings, doors, windows, canal sides, to the hard, transparent, brilliant colours and sheen of glassware (from the mass manufactured, cheap Oriental imports to be sold to us gullible tourists, to the exquisite and oh, so expensive chandeliers that we watched being made on the ‘glass island’ of Murano.
The luscious, tempting, again also extremely expensive fabrics – both antique and modern, on display in enticing little boutique shops such as Bevilaqua . Even now, 14 years after I last visited Venice, I pull out swatches and lengths of fabric that I brought back with me then. I miss the seafood, bought fresh from the market 2 minutes from our door in Cannaregio and cooked up on a tiny little stove in our apartment.
I miss the unutterable beauty of the paintings in the Accademia Gallery - the exquisite, jewel-like images of the medieval Madonnas and the huge canvases showing the magnificent sumptuousness of the grand religious and civic ceremonial processions. I miss the water lapping outside our window, and the bargees, unloading sand and other materials for the mosaic factory across the canal, who didn't just whistla, but sang full operatic arias while they worked. (Now that’s the way to wake up from a water-lapped, good night’s sleep!) I miss the incomparable light… I miss the sunsets… I miss the mystery. (There you are - I told you it was to be ‘5 memories’, but Venice always encourages excess!)
I long to return to the Highlands of Scotland, to stand on the banks of Loch Sunart, off Ardnamurchan, with Dolphins swimming before me, Red Deer at the boundary fence to the cottage in which I stayed, and a Golden Eagle soaring above me. Not the imaginary fantasy scene of a film script writer, but a moment in time that I actually experienced; a time when I felt so insignificant amongst the Majesty and wildness of the scenery. I was a mere Ant on the surface of the planet. But I was also at one with the other Beings and part of the scenery, not in Dominion over it - and all was well with that.
I miss visiting the charming little town of Llandeilo in Carmarthenshire, where faces are always friendly and the voices and accents familiar. I miss poking around in the rambling, rabbit warren of an Antiques Emporium there; I miss wandering around the beautiful restored gardens of Aberglasney, nearby and reading the poetry of Gillian Clark out loud to the yew trees!
I miss sultry afternoons around the pool in my dear friend’s house in France. In my fantasy future visit, it would be as it was in the past - extremely hot - far too hot to do anything other than paint in my sketchbook, muse in my journal, dabble my feet in the water or wander back into the cool, cool house with bare feet on refreshingly cold tiles, throw myself onto the day-bed, browse through a book (perhaps a guide to the old churches of the area?), drift off to sleep for an hour, then wake to prepare some wonderful food bought at a local market and wash it down with one of an endless choice of rather good wines, of which said friend is very much a connoisseur.
In the most recent of my adventures and one I would so love to repeat, I would return to my daughter in law’s Homeland of Romania - another place full of enchantment and mystery - a land where (as I believe I said in an earlier post!), you can still believe in fairy tale, or at least most certainly appreciate the environment from which those stories grew. I was personally entranced by the visits I made to the Romanian Orthodox churches, both in the capital Bucharest, and in the town of Brasov. Spiritually nourished by the music to which was set Orthodox chant, the richness of the frescoes, the intensity of the icons and the unabashed theatricality of it all. It very much spoke to my own spiritually ever-hungry (and theatrical?!) personality.
And most of all, I long to spend another night or two deep in the forest of Transylvania, where we barbecued on the balcony of a family member’s house, gazed out into the sooty blackness of the forest, and heard the mystical, enervating sound of the roar of a female bear, just tens of yards away, who apparently at the time had two cubs with her, warning off another creature across the valley.
What a privilege that experience was and how much I long to enjoy it again. But for now - which places call you back...and why??
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