Travel – Nastasya Parker

Weighing Ideas

This Week’s Bit of String: Notre Dame towers and a dog called Unity

Last weekend, we were in Paris. It was a wild idea, the trip planned in less than a fortnight. From 3:00 Saturday morning, when we woke up to shower and catch a flight from Bristol to Paris CDG, until 10:15 Sunday night when we fell into bed back in our own home, we walked 54,000 steps. We stayed Saturday night in a tiny hotel room in the 14th Arondissement, but the bed was comfortable, we had climate control, and there was a full Parisian breakfast included.

We had a bittersweet reason for this enjoyable adventure. When my aunt Laurel died a couple weeks ago, one of my cousins already had a trip booked to Paris. Laurel and my cousin were great Francophiles, so the family was inspired to send some of her ashes over and scatter them in the Seine. I couldn’t be at the full funeral in Vermont–busy though the weekend in Paris was, it didn’t shatter me the way a whirlwind cross-Atlantic trip with a minimum of 16 hours travel each way would have done–I could be part of this goodbye without missing work.

My cousin chose a spot across from Notre Dame’s dome, where we could walk down a cobbled ramp to the river. We found as we approached that as well as a cathedral view, we would be leaving my aunt alongside a weathered wooden statue of a turtle bracketed onto the stone wall, quite fitting as she’d had a beloved pet turtle for decades.

She loved dogs too, and soon after we’d poured her ashes into the river, a dog came bounding in, bucking jubilantly, snapping at her own splashes. Her French owner told us the dog’s name was Unity, and we did feel a strange synthesis at the resting place.

I was happy with this sendoff for Laurel, but my heart aches that all the life erupting around her in this location will never know her or her story. I wonder what other remnants of lives we step over all the time, and what unimaginable events will unfold later.

Interlocking Stories

Paris is particularly suited to such wonderings, with its many plaques honouring students and others who were killed in the Resistance against Nazi occupiers, and other signs memorialising Jewish families that were deported. Behind Notre Dame, there’s the Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation, which I researched for part of a story I wrote in January. The main character spent time in Paris and met his fiance, changing his life.

I certainly didn’t imagine I’d be visiting Paris later, and scattering my aunt’s ashes across the Seine from the same Memorial. Once again, there’s a strange unity of past and present, fiction and nonfiction. As Julia Ormond says in the 1990s remake of Sabrina, one of my aunt’s “Chicken Soup Movies” which she believed had restorative powers: “Paris is always a good idea.”

*Back to the writing work, here’s a picture of the incredible Our Lady of the Workers church in the 14th Arondissement*

I’d actually forgotten about the story I wrote in January, with its Paris turning point, until my cousin told me where we’d take our aunt’s ashes. The story needs a lot of work. I wrote it during my January short story binge, when I slapped whatever idea I had onto paper: new ones, old and previously rejected ones, half-dreamed ones.

Since then, I’ve had a couple short stories I’ve worked hard at polishing, and I’ve started a new novel while still working on the final edits to my book about Eve and Creation. These projects are still keeping me pretty busy alongside my day job and everything else, so the fictional Paris encounter will probably wait a long while.

Ideas to Remember

It’s not possible to remember every idea or story, good or bad. So just because one thing has to wait doesn’t mean it will never get its time. When it comes to assessing our creative choices–and our life choices, really–there are so many possibilities that it seems unfair to judge one as entirely bad or good.

While I’m making up a new novel, I haven’t decided yet whose voice to lead with out of my new characters, and I keep switching. Would 5 points-of-view be too many? Yes, I know. But I decided while making myself write just four days after Laurel’s death, my work-in-progress wasn’t fun enough. So I pried its bars loose, and went back to page 2 to introduce an entirely new character, outside the pages of development I’d explored and planned in the pre-drafting stages.

Have you ever felt the need to do such a thing? Did it work?

My middle-class protagonists who take themselves somewhat seriously needed a foil, or maybe that was just me. Either way, I’ll see what comes of having someone else in the mix. A story undergoes so much evolution and so many rewrites, most ideas turn out to contribute something worthwhile.

I wouldn’t usually slide in an extra character, but it’s earlyish still, and who’s to stop me? In real life, there are people who appear out of nowhere and brighten everything.

I wouldn’t usually spend a middle-of-the-term weekend gallivanting around Paris, either. I don’t know if Paris, is, in fact, always a good idea, but it worked for us this time. And there’s a lot more we’d like to see. Strange to think I now have a bit of my aunt on this side of the ocean, over the Channel. Wondrous to imagine the places and people we have yet to be part of.

Taking a Moment

This Week’s Bit of String: Fairies of all sorts

Last week my entire family stayed together in a lakeside house in Maine. This included my 5-year-old niece, who moved expertly from one of us to the next, with wide-eyed invitations for our attention and imaginative assignations for us.

“Want to pretend you’re my mommy and I’m a toddler?” she asked me one morning. I was hardly about to turn that down.

*Our view as Lily Pad and the Moment Fairy*

Later on, she had my brother-in-law at her command in the role of big brother, while her own big brother (actual age 6) was her little brother. She’d gone from being a toddler to being 13 and a half, and her name was Lily Pad. My kiddo’s fiancee was now her mommy, and I was briefly a co-worker. My niece’s job was testing beds, which after various hikes and kayak-paddles and swims, I was more than willing to help with.

In the evening, we all gathered in lawn chairs to watch the sun set over the lake. Then my niece invited me to sit on the dock with her, dangling our feet in “Waterworld.”

She told me, “Sometimes if I need a moment, and I tell my mom I want to go to Waterworld, then I come here and you’re the fairy who meets me. You’re the fairy for people who need to take a moment, so they can talk to you and not be lonely, and you won’t tell anyone.”

I couldn’t have been prouder than when she led me back to the rest of our family, now doggedly roasting marshmallows around a campfire despite the 30 C/ 90 F heat, and she introduced me as The Moment Fairy.

Ongoing Stories

When I was in second grade, our teacher read us the 1953 chapter book Little Witch by Anna Elizabeth Bennett, about a witch’s daughter who would prefer to be a fairy. This book had me convinced I, too, was a secret fairy, and I eagerly assigned the role of captor witch to whichever family member incurred my unspoken wrath.

*Fairy house at my hometown’s lakeside park*

It might be my mother for making me drink my orange juice even though I said it tasted sour, or my little brother for faking naps and then being allowed to stay up later than me. If you think these reasons are far-fetched, wait till you hear my solution.

I was certain that if I woke up at the right time, and went into my closet with the correct numbers on my little calculator, then the fairies would rescue me. I tried it once and it didn’t work, but I figured I needed a different moment of the night.

Nothing really dissuaded me from that story. It dissolved into new fantasies I nursed in my imagination. Similarly, in my niece’s game, she was constantly accommodating new roles for us. While most were outside making s’mores, she led my husband by the hand through the holiday house.

“He’s the Show-You-Something Fairy,” she explained when I went in for extra ingredients.

Sure enough, she was picking up various objects and explaining them to her engineer uncle as if he’d just materialised from a fantastical dimension (it probably seems as if we do, appearing once a year from the UK). The Something she was Showing him as I went back outside was a flyswatter.

Moments to Remember

I was inspired by my niece’s imaginative efforts, and moved by her confidence that at any given time, at least one of us would want to duck into her world. As she gets older, she will desperately need a variety of people she can slip away and have a moment with. She’ll have so many things to show and explain to us.

Sometimes, as I wrote a couple weeks ago, I worry about my stories getting stuck in my head and progressing no further. But while I value being a writer and long for success, my roles as mother, wife, daughter, sister, aunt are more important. It’s nice to remember that I serve some purpose there, and it’s truly a privilege to do so.

For now, the fairies have flown. Back in the UK, I’m the Moment Fairy for myself. I have to keep going, finding ways to be present from afar for my family while remaining present in the life I sought elsewhere. It means choosing which of the dozens of times I think of them each day are the most valuable to pass on. That’s the challenge, when we’re not rubbing up against each other regularly and experiencing life together.

Sometimes, separation hurts too much. Maybe it’s a pleasant evening with no extra family to share it with, when I have no one to bake for but my husband and me, when it’s warm but there’s no place to swim. I miss the feel of a little hand in mine so much. It’s tempting to dig myself into chores or into writing assignments, but maybe I should surrender to those moments, too, to keep my caring fully kindled.

Which moments matter most to you? How do you make the best of them?

Objects in the Rearview Mirror

This Week’s Bit of String: A library visit and hometown changes

On the first day of my summer visit from old England to New, I went to the library with my mother. It’s recently been refurbished in my hometown. The children’s area boasts a full play kitchen, and a teen reading room features a whiteboard table for doodling. On top of the bookshelves in the grown-up section, a community craft exhibit includes three-dimensional scrapbooked cards, patchwork quilts, carvings of birds, embroidered landscapes, and a whole felted ark full of animals.

What a lovely place. I did wonder, though, as Mom and I left, “What happened to that mysterious cabinet of dolls that used to be at the back of the library when I was a kid?”

She responded, “I keep wondering what happened to the collection of international creches at the Catholic shrine after it was bought out.”

Another good question. The lakeside Catholic retreat in town ran out of funds and was bought out by the Shaker Museum across the street, an ironic reversal of fortunes which I may revisit in a later post because there’s an intriguing story at the heart of it.

For our purposes this week, suffice to say that the Catholic site had a Christmas specialty. They ranged an immense collection of lights along their hillside. Coming home on a December night, we’d see them reflected in the lake from a couple miles away. They also took donations of nativity sets from all around the world, many of them beautifully crafted.

It’s funny how objects that may not have tangibly impacted us can anchor in our minds and resurface later. As writers, we’re often character-driven and particularly fascinated with people. But lately, I’ve noticed inanimate objects asserting importance in my short stories. What does it mean?

Living in a Material World

For me, writing a short story has generally included a central image, which may well be a natural or material object. Mudpies, a book of mazes, lipstick. Usually these are sort of thematic, whereas lately they’re practically plot points.

In the past year, I wrote a story about a fairground tragedy involving a ferris wheel, and the wheel additionally functions as a wider symbol. Another story currently on submission is about a family, each child represented by a colour from the gumballs in a vintage candy machine. Two decades of mid-twentieth century history are magnified through the machine’s glass sphere.

In real life, I’ve tended to wax sentimental over objects. After moving house when I was 8, I carried a little box of favourite things with me everywhere. A stone from the lake where we used to live, a broken necklace charm from a long-distance relative, I can’t even remember what else. When called upon to correct a sentence on the blackboard, I didn’t leave my seat without my box. I dropped it once and scrambled on the floor in front of my new classmates to gather my treasured crumbs.

Objects stand in for people in my mind. One of the many details I plan regarding my summer trip is coordinating my contact lenses. I wear monthly ones, and I always time the changing of them so that I put new ones in on the last day with my family. That way, I can linger for longer back in the UK with lenses that have “seen” my loved ones. It’s silly, but I’ve not been able to shake that symbolism.

Object Permanence

*Please look after this bear thank you.*

Maybe I am holding back a bit from attaching deeply to characters in a short story, placing a central object between us for distance. Will that impede the reader’s experience? We’ll have to see. It’s a new angle from which to look at characters—how they handle objects in their lives can tell us a lot.

It’s not as if this is wholly without literary precedent. Objects are important in children’s literature. A glass slipper, a golden ticket…A wardrobe becomes a new world, a boxcar becomes a home, dolls come to life. I remember a book in our church library about a penny. Each chapter focused on a new owner of that penny, from a child abducted by native Americans to an enslaved boy running toward freedom.

What could objects say about us, if they could speak? We did an assignment like that in our Journal As Literature college class. A friend wrote from the point of view of the socks she always wore to bed. I wrote about the teddy bear I’d bought my baby from London, to connect them to their then-estranged father. If I’m remembering correctly, I think the bear assessed me as guilty of some misplaced sentimentality, but he felt compassion for me too. Of course he was compassionate; he’s a teddy bear.

What would you write about? If your main character had to flee with a handful of possessions, what would they take?

Strange Journeys

This Week’s Bit of String: A pink overnight bus to Russia

When I was nineteen, I had a couple weeks after summer work and before my term abroad in the UK. Somewhat to my mother’s chagrin, I opted to visit Russia during that time while traveling among friends. From visiting Taru in Helsinki, I would go to Yulia in Moscow, then Zuzana in Bratislava.

After obtaining my “entry clearance” at Finland’s intimidating Russian Embassy, which reduced me to tears and impoverished me by $300 while charging the German guy in front of me only $60, I remained determined to visit Russia. I expected further bumps in the road.

*Some building I passed in my St. Petersburg daze. Almost the same pink as the bus.*

I did not expect the rickety overnight bus carrying me across the Finnish-Russian border to be pink. I boarded with dozens of sombre Russian passengers, and secured a window seat. The old woman next to me rested her head on my shoulder and went to sleep.

Throughout the night I peered into the darkness, passing vast swathes of evergreen trees and seemingly abandoned, massive industrial or nuclear plants. We disembarked to have our passports stamped out of Finland, then disembarked again for the Russian entry stamp.

“First time in Russia?” asked the Finnish border guard. At my assent, he slammed down his stamp. “Good luck.”

In a way, I did have good luck. But not in a conventional sense.

After the sleepless night with a stranger leaning on me, I left the bus as soon as it stopped. The sun was just rising, a distant golden glow that could equally have been a smouldering chemical inferno. Only one other person left the bus with me, a guy in his twenties.

As I watched the bus drive away, glad to be rid of it, I heard him say in accented English, “You know we are still outside St. Petersburg?”

I shrugged. “That’s fine.”

“Didn’t you have more luggage?”

I had my day bag over my shoulder, but he was right. My even-more stuffed rucksack, with three months’ worth of belongings, was still in the hold under the bus.

Getting in Trouble

I suppose it’s a classic tale: I caused my own problems. I was frustrated with myself for making such a stupid mistake, in so significant a matter, so early on.

The man on the street with me rolled his eyes as if equally annoyed at my folly. “Look,” he said, “Come home with me while I get ready for work. I’ll help you find your way into the city and perhaps locate your bag.”

Now, this will sound like more stupid decision-making. I was aware I shouldn’t go to an unknown man’s house in a foreign, semi-hostile nation. But if he had truly bad intent, I reasoned, then he would pretend to be more welcoming instead of exasperated. So I followed him.

I experienced my first Russian apartment. Toilet and shower in separated tiny chambers, a mug of bitter black tea. Dmitri, who’d been visiting his fiancee in Finland over the weekend and had returned just in time for work, gave me a St. Petersburg map with Finnish location names, wrote down the bus company’s phone number and address, and saw me off on the correct metro train.

I spent a few hours wandering the city. I only remember fragments, almost 25 years later. Deciphering a couple more Russian letters by noticing a cinema poster for the recent film, The Patriot. Glimpsing the Hermitage, the Tsar’s Summer Palace, from across a busy street, my view criss-crossed by tramlines. Ascertaining directions from an ice cream seller because we could both speak intermediate French. I was miraculously reunited with my rucksack at the coach company’s office, where no one had been the least bit interested in its contents.

Travel Stories

I’ve been thinking about this somewhat misadventurous episode since I’ve just finished a truly inspiring novel with a lot of travel in it: Sarah Winman’s Still Life.

This book has me longing to visit Florence, Italy, wander and look at art and eat amazing food. It’s also been a luxurious read because while the plot has war and flood mixed in, mostly it’s about people being super nice to each other. I might not be making it sound very exciting. But the characters’ love for each other, their tolerance for, even appreciation of, each other’s quirks is a balm as the real world seems to become more bitter and stressful.

In my travels as a student (who probably comes across as naive here), I gained independence but also learned it’s not the end of the world when that independence goes wrong. I don’t often put my travels into story form, although a couple times I’ve been inspired by places I’ve visited.

However, I notice in recounting this that travel puts us in a unique position to understand and utilise story structure. We embark on a journey with certain expectations, but what we want may differ from what we need. Being outside our familiar borders forces us to reflect on who we really are, as we notice we are stuck with ourselves here, there, and everywhere. And even when we bring problems upon ourselves, it can turn out okay.

Amazingly, once I reached Moscow the next day, I had a good time. My Russian friend was passionate about showing me around, and her stories about local history and how the city ran fascinated me. There’s another little twist in the tale for you.

Have you encountered surprising kindnesses while away? How does travel fuel your self-reflection and creativity?

Dreaming Spires

This Week’s Bite of String: Noise in an Oxford museum

While I was admiring Japanese cloisonné vases in the Ashmolean this half-term week, a family came along. They had a couple of primary school-aged girls shining cheap little laser torches everywhere. The slightly older of the two girls was quietly singing to herself, but the other was shouting and running around.

“Beatrice!” her parents kept saying in upper middle class tones, ever surprised at unconventional behaviour. “Beatrice, you’re getting silly… Beatrice, we’re in a museum. It can be quiet and peaceful…”

“It CAN be quiet and peaceful,” retorted Beatrice, without slowing down a bit.

Gotta love a girl no more than 6 who’s already dismantling arguments on semantic grounds.

The brief clamour enhanced my experience. I was on a solo overnight trip, and spending the afternoon in the massive Ashmolean with only myself to set the pace was a treat. I’d browse a couple of galleries, then sit and scribble about my finds, then repeat. Favourites were the ancient Assyrian and Babylonian exhibits, complementing the several Nimrud temple panels at Dartmouth’s Hood Museum in my home region of New Hampshire, and examples of Islamic and Indian geometric patterns and art.

There are exhibits predating those civilisations, and it inspires me to see how early humans, too, were compelled to preserve and create beauty. Feeding my brain on such exhibits felt rejuvenating, certainly unlike revising for standardised GCSE exams. But feasting on snippets of real life conversations thrills me, too.

Rest and Change

People like to say, “Change is as good as a rest.” It’s not strictly true; I think change enables us to push ourselves further without rest which we may need. Long-term, it’s possibly not of equal restorative value.

*A little bit of reading time, Worcester Shrub Hill station*

That said, it felt as if changing up my brain’s intake for a day or two rejuvenated me. In addition to visiting the museum, I read Mslexia magazine on the train rides, wandered along the canal in Worcester during a stopover, explored both the busy streets and the tranquil parks of Oxford totalling 43,000 steps in less than 36 hours, and enjoyed a theatre production of Little Women.

Seeing the literary classic on stage was the main purpose of my journey, which I learned about thanks to well-targeted Facebook ads. It was a terrific show, with energy and heart. They made use of birch trees as set pieces, and seeing those made me feel connected to New England from afar.

After the play, I went hunting for ice cream, as is my late-night, post-show wont, and I didn’t go to bed till midnight. But I didn’t leave my hotel for the next day’s explore until 10:30, and that is pretty luxurious for me.

Spending Time Well

So I took a bit of the morning to recuperate, and keep up with my daily scribbles. I have some novel-planning to work on, but I didn’t get to it; didn’t even read much. As usual when I travel, making the most of the experience involves a lot of walking and a fair bit of writing down what I want to remember.

Before visiting Oxford, I’d made an effort to put all my new novel work into a Plotting Table, with columns for each character and rows for each chapter. The Plotting Table is super helpful for seeing where stakes may need to be raised for some characters, and so forth. I wanted to print this out and pore over it on paper while out of the house, undistracted by chores.

But our printer is at least 10 years old and is suffering memory loss. It no longer recognises paper. I’ll be poking pages into it and it insists said pages do not exist. Or it will pick up a sheet of paper (or heck, two or three at once), load it an inch, then suffer a fresh bout of amnesia and say it’s out of paper anyway.

I had to give up on printing my Plotting Table. I had nearly 2 miles to walk to the train station, with my rucksack of overnight necessities, and I couldn’t risk missing the train. Turns out I was a bit busy, anyway.

Like Beatrice at the Museum, I would say vacations CAN be quiet and peaceful—but they certainly don’t have to be. Just this once, I think I struck a decent balance.

Have you given your mind any change lately?

Cracking the Code

This Week’s Bit of String: Letters on on ancient platform

As someone who reads everything around me practically without thinking, I instinctively attempted deciphering signs on our recent trip to Athens. My knowledge of this lettering comes from Russian more than anything else. In 2000, I visited Russia and wandered around staring at buildings and signs.

I identified the letter pi from a movie poster for The Patriot. While out for a meal, my Moscow friend said to me, “The waitress has a name like yours: Natasha.” And I could then spot the symbol for the “sh” sound.

One of my problems was confusing P, D, L, and G. They’re all sort of mountainous little shapes. In Greece, I spent time noting the differences. Other letters came clear through signs for pharmacies, using the phi and the mu. There were inscriptions, such as the mural behind the ionic pillars of the University building. Above marble steps strewn with empty cans and KFC rubbish, the mural portrays the academic subjects as robed women approaching a throned man. Physics, Mathematics, History, with Rhetoric and Poetics gossiping in the rear. Each figure had her subject name stencilled above, presenting me an opportunity to work on understanding the Greek letters.

What really struck me, though, was a votive from 400 BCE displayed under the Acropolis. It was dedicated to Hermes and Aphrodite, with their names carved into the stone in ancient lettering. EPMOY, said the stone. The day before, we’d walked up and down Ermou Street, and I hadn’t realised it was named for the Messenger God. It’s one thing for pillars to stand over a couple thousand years, and really something else for letters to do the same.

Countdown

Translating Greek letters bit by bit is like building a story from “pieces of string” gathered from daily life. It was nice to have a little extra time to contemplate the pieces, being on holiday. At work, we’re running out of time. My year 11s, regardless of special needs, will sit exams starting in just over a week.

For some, reading and processing the questions will be most difficult. I think of the times I’d look at a sign in Greece, work out what the letters meant–and still not know the word because it was too far removed from the English equivalent. Our students with severe dyslexia expend their energy decoding letters, but still have to understand the question, and write essay answers.

For other students, a main challenge is mining the deeper meaning of a text. It’s particularly difficult with poetry. One student on the autism spectrum was upset with a recent mark for poetry analysis. He had worked hard thinking what to write about the poem, and had interpreted it literally.

I told him poets often speak in code. They use symbols to represent bigger ideas. Blake’s “blood running down palace walls” in “London” represents cruel rulers, and Hughes’s terrified hare in “Bayonet Charge,” which I thought was metaphorical until just a month or so ago, a way of describing the hopping, chaotic sparks–this represents innocence harmed in war.

“We’ve got to crack the code,” I told my hardworking, frustrated student. “We have to tell the examiners what the writer might have really meant.”

Beneath the Surface

*Perhaps a bit less left to interpretation here, or perhaps not. Street art in Athens*

The word code comes from caudex, “tree trunk,” early books made of wooden tablets. These would be used to establish rules in writing. So books are essentially code, and whether wittingly or not, some translation will be involved. From the trunk of any volume we read, the meaning might branch out and strike different people in different ways.

Books are a code to the writer’s intent and context. At least, for the purposes of English exams they are. Heavens forbid anyone read or write anything for fun. Another student on the autism spectrum lamented having to revise Jacobean history for Macbeth, and Victorian for A Christmas Carol. It’s a lot to remember, none of which today’s students find clearly relevant.

“We have to know the circumstances around the writer in order to understand why they wrote and what they wanted to teach readers.” I explained, “It’s a good skill because everything we see people post online, they might have a purpose that isn’t obvious.”

“I never do that,” she said. “I just tell it like it is.”

I’m not sure any of us are so upfront all the time though. I’ve certainly seen her excuse herself from class claiming she needs the toilet, while sweeping away with phone in hand. Deciphering the code of an individual person is never fully possible, because our circumstances change and we constantly evolve.

It’s still worth trying, though. An open mind and willingness to take a little time puzzling out another human being is maybe the best reason to hone our interpretation skills. How do you keep yours sharp?

Mythology and Me

This Week’s Bit of String: Candles on a motorbike

At nearly 11 pm on Easter Saturday, the taxi driver from Athens airport told me about the seasonal traditions in Greece.

“From the execution Friday until midnight when it turns to Sunday, many people will not hammer, or cut, eat meat, or do anything with violence. It’s out of respect because of the crucifixion.”

*Inside the Byzantine Panagia Kapnikarea on Easter Sunday*

Then, at midnight, there are fireworks and prayers, before family feasts on Easter Sunday. Freshly arrived in Athens for a city break, my husband and I wandered out at midnight. Down a narrow street we saw the bobbing lights of a candlelit crowd, and we heard the prayers chanted in a nearby Greek Orthodox church. People poured from its marble steps carrying lit tapers—all manner of people: goths, senior citizens… One middle-aged woman came out with a bouquet of 5 lit candles, and climbed behind a man on a motorbike and they rode off.

Not everyone participates, I’m sure. As Iakovos said, “It depends what you desire.”

And of course there’s the other side of the coin, be it Euro or drachma. He told me how much he loves being a driver, especially for tours when he takes people to further ancient sites, such as Delphi or Mount Olympus.

He has particular praise for Mount Olympus. According to him, there’s a spot up there known as the Throne of Zeus, where no wind or snow or rain ever strike, as if it’s divinely protected.

“It makes you think they really knew something,” he says of the ancient Greeks.

Building a Religion

How we interpret such things and act upon them does, as he said earlier, depend on our desire. How often do we believe something we really don’t want to?

When we first learned about Greek myths in school, I was in 8th grade. That’s a lot older than British students learn about them, and maybe for that reason, I did not enjoy the subject. To me, the gods seemed selfish, not to mention cruel and misogynistic. My opinion hasn’t changed much on that, to be honest. I had to read lots of ancient Greek play in high school and college, and I like the genre of modern retellings, but the original stories don’t appeal much to me apart from being cultural references.

*Gorgeous weathering on these pillars from Hadrian’s Library*

I do think myths have huge value in what they might tell us about the people who believed, maybe even created them. What does it say about people that they would make sacrifices from their own, struggling lives to such seemingly callous deities?

What we found breathtaking in Athens were the monuments made by people. The stunning Propylaea, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, the Porch of the Maidens alongside the Erechtheion. How incredible that parts of the Pantheon still stand after almost 2500 years of invasions and natural disasters. And the beautiful little Byzantine church the Panagia Kapnikarea, nearly a millennium old. These are marvelous places, designed and built by humans with much toil and cooperation. Yet they make me wonder about a presence even more powerful.

I guess that’s what art can do, inspire you to believe in something greater, even if it’s just a previously unimagined hope for the future.

Likeability Vs Relatability

Looking down at the city of Athens through the Propylaea above, or through the Roman arches behind the Odeon, we had a stunning view over the chaotic crush of buildings, the worn, aged mountains, and the sea beyond. I imagined ancient people coming up here to sacrifice, worship, or be entertained, and wondered what their view was like. Maybe that was enough to keep them worshipping.

Raised in a Christian family myself, we were always deeply attuned to the suffering that Easter springs from, and I like the Greek orthodox idea of acting on that seriousness by refraining from aggressive activities for a couple of days. Maybe my upbringing contributed to my complete horror and aversion of anything execution-related. I am still mystified how Christians sit with the belief that an innocent deity suffered and died for their sins personally, and don’t constantly agonise over that.

*Getting the right balance… Porch of the Maidens, Erechtheion, Athens*

I once wrote a novel scene between American educators preparing for the 7th grade mythology unit. The Christian teacher describes the Greek gods as “petty and selfish—no better than people.”

On the other hand, he says, “Jesus actually became human, and that’s as accessible as it gets.”

But He never sinned, thinks the teaching assistant. Being human would be a cinch without guilt.

Could it be that ancient Greeks appreciated having dieties with lusts and impulses that reflected their own?

Conveying a religion must be like the constant political tussle over how to best message people. Meet people where they are, or urge them to strive for better? And as writers and creatives, we work to establish that same balance: creating characters who are likeable and also relatable, events that are dramatic and also recognisably everyday. It’s getting that juxtaposition between majestic ancient ruins and the settlements below; the prayers on loudspeaker and the candles on motorbikes. Our ability and taste for this will vary, one might say depending on our desire.

What do you think of the classical myths? Do you find the supernatural accessible?

Seven Wanders of 2024

Welcome to a new year, fellow adventurers and creatives. Here are my favourite, most inspiring walks from the last journey round the sun. Sometimes the timing of a walk matters almost as much as the place.

Hetty Pegler’s Tump and Bluebell Woods, Gloucestershire

We started a spring Saturday by traipsing through woods near Coaley viewpoint, where fiddleheads unfurled into ferns. Emerged opposite bright yellow rapeseed crops and traversed a clearing to a neolithic burial mound, Hetty Pegler’s Tump (below, centre). You can peek inside the narrow passage leading to chambers of ancient bones. On our way home after lunch in the Cotswold market town of Nailsworth, we lingered in more woodlands with carpets of bluebells in an electric shade of purple.

Oxford

We’ve never spent much time in Oxford—and this is despite me spending a uni term at Oxford Brookes. I remedied that with a sunny June day trip, motivated by an exhibit at the Ashmolean Museum. After viewing sketches by Flemish masters, and finding our way through the ancient statuary to the toilets, we left the enormous museum to explore outside a while.

We walked through the Christ Church College grounds to The Meadow, wandered streets and glimpsed a pub where Tolkien and C.S. Lewis liked to drink before coming back to the main avenues to view the Bodleian Library and then the Sheldonian Theatre, with rainbow Pride flags in its tower windows and the iconic Emperor Head statues guarding it. A few months later, when I read R.F. Kuang’s Babel, Oxford’s imagery remained fresh in my mind.

Warren, New Hampshire

The population of this small town near the White Mountains peaked in 1860, but we enjoyed our family visit. The Baker River runs behind the houses on one side of the main street, and the Ore Hill Brook behind the houses on the other. A recreational trail shoots through the town as well, directing snowmobilers and bikers and pedestrians straight to the Congregational Church and the massive ballistic missile rocket standing beside it. There’s also an excellent ice cream eatery, complete with friendly porch cat. I enjoyed my early morning walks and met a retired French teacher who comes out every dawn to pick up litter.

Cerne Abbas then Durdle Door, Dorset

We celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary near the Jurassic coast in the South of England, and on one of our day trips trekked around Trendle Hill to view the Rude Giant. The path led us below the chalked soles of the180-foot long figure, dug into the slope since the late 17th century at least. We walked up and over the hill, down into the lovely town of Cerne Abbas. Its streets are lined with little streams and footbridges take townsfolk from the roads to their pretty old homes and gardens.

After our stroll there, we drove further to the coast and joined hundreds of tourists, from all nations and races it seemed, to walk down the cliffs to see the magnificent stone arch of Durdle Door. The sight was also enjoyed by a big, blissed-out seal sunning himself on the beach.

Uley, Gloucestershire
This is one of my local walks, a long circuit that comes to about 7 miles. Hilly views, horse pastures, manor estates like gingerbread houses, and old Cotswold buildings in the village of Uley. The walk has been momentous in my writing life in the past, and I reclaimed it for that purpose somewhat this year.

At the end of the summer holidays I hiked to the Prema Gallery and Cafe to start a new short story there, now complete and submitted to competitions. In November I walked through beautiful autumn sunshine to the craft fair to buy a few cards and gifts, and just before Christmas I hiked to the village and sat scribbling new novel ideas in St. Giles church while a few local ladies set up an assembly line of oranges, dolly mixtures, and candles to prepare for the Christingle service.

London: National Theatre to Holborn and Lincoln’s Inn

I love London and its juxtapositions of old and new, native and diverse. Visiting in October half-term to see the excellent West End theatrical production of Dr. Strangelove, we spent the next afternoon on a HiddenCity James Bond-themed quest leading us around west central London.

We crossed Waterloo Bridge from the National Theatre, discovered an art park on a rooftop, and the little green houses, now dwarfed by skyscrapers, that used to be refuges for cabbies. Our clues guided us behind the Courts of Justice and around the London School of Economics campus and Lincoln’s Inn. It included stops at different pubs, welcoming even while stunningly ornate, such as The Princess Louise with its mosaic floors and intricately carved wooden booths, and the majestic Last Judgment, which makes an excellent amaretto sour and has bathroom stalls like confessionals.

The Pinnacle and Post Pond, Lyme, New Hampshire

A New England lake and/ or mountain inevitably makes my annual top wanders. But this one’s special because it’s the lake I grew up on, the summit I grew up under. For years I believed the sun couldn’t truly set unless it was between two hills and reflected over a pond, because that’s how I saw it every day of my childhood.

Post Pond is smallish, but deep enough to be considered a lake; deep enough to house snapping turtles with shells over a foot in diameter. We stayed in a cabin at Loch Lyme Lodge, the rustic resort where I used to work for the summers, and I watched the sunset from a picnic table up the hill while scribbling in my notebook. My husband and I climbed around on the Pinnacle, the hill behind our cabin, and found fairy castle tree stumps, and milkweed cradles, and fantastic views. I completed the day by swimming the whole length of the lake and back.

This year, I hope to work on a new novel set in a similar location, because really, there’s just no place like home.

Where did your wanders take you this year?

Learning Abroad

This Week’s Bit of String: On the way to somewhere else

I’d never have got into this whole immigrant fix, splitting myself between two countries, if I hadn’t done a term abroad while in college. My major was English/ Education in New Hampshire, where contributing to class discussion was key.

In the UK, on the other hand, professors seemed flummoxed when people turned up. They didn’t even expect us to read the assigned literature: “If you didn’t do the reading for this week, I hope you do at some point in your life. It’s a great book…”

*Twin American spires: church steeple and rocket*

I had read each book, as it happened, and was unimpressed having it summarised in a murmur for 3 hours. Screw it, I decided. I’ll do the reading while on the train to somewhere more interesting.

And off I went, to friends in Glasgow, Bangor, Wolverhampton, and especially London. I read, and listened to new-to-me British music (Texas, Robbie Williams, Steps), survived on Kingsmill rolls and Edam cheese and Smirnoff Ice, and fell for three different guys in quick succession, the final one being my now-husband.

I also wrote a wacky but fantastic story about a girl whose heart, in the form of a cookie, is eaten for breakfast. I got an A for that class, after only attending 1.3 lessons. I did the reading!

What I Wrote This Summer

*New England idyll: Billings Farm Museum, Vermont*

It’s always interesting to see other writers post about their vacations in the summer. Some catch up on reading, and many are busy with their children during the holidays anyway. For me, I spend 4 weeks out of the 6-week break going to see my family in New England. There are definite vacation aspects to this—the lakes and rivers, the mountains, the ice cream.

It’s also very busy as I condense a year’s worth of interactions into 1/12 of the time. Half my family are too busy to keep in touch when I’m not there, so I run around trying to help people out and make memories. They are all I have, and they are precarious without me recording them. When not Doing Things, I’m scribbling about them.

This leaves little reading time. I have writing commitments—promised critiques, etc, and also students I check in with even in the summer, so I squeeze those in. What I do find, though, is that the travel, the hiking and driving and swimming and reflecting, open me up to learning a lot of random things. Without the more rigid structure of work and long-term writing projects, my brain relaxes just enough to sponge up new information.

What I Learned This Summer

There were my discoveries while hiking, which I researched later:
The rather formidable Argiope aurantia (ok, yellow garden spider) keeping watch from her web in the lake bridge. It’s also known as a zigzag spider because of that uniquely thick central line. The purpose of this unique pattern is still unknown to us.

The Warren Rocket: My family got together in Warren, NH, near the White Mountains. While other towns have Civil War cannons on their greens or in front of their schools, Warren (population peaked in 1860 at 1100-something) has a great big Redstone missile rocket. (Pictured at the top.) It was funded and transported by a local veteran hoping to encourage interest in space travel.

Signs around the rocket tell visitors about SS Officer Wernher von Braun, who supervised concentration camp workers to manufacture missiles that killed 1400 Londoners. After the war, Americans smuggled von Braun out of Germany to design even deadlier rockets over here, but also realise his childhood dream of sending rockets to space. I wonder what the childhood dreams of his captive labourers were, or those civilians killed in airstrikes.

*You can see why the Morse Museum caught my eye…*

The Morse Museum: Another early morning Warren hike discovery, a building with granite plaques advertising Curios of India and China, and African Game Trophies. Now-vacant, it was dedicated in 1928 to house the collections of Ira H Morse, a local shoe store mogul and game hunter. There’s a colourful bio online of IH and others, written by affectionate family members. They include his adventures but also quirks like how he would “ream out” uncooperative salt shakers, at home or in public.

Speaking of museums, there are a couple in the area which I like to visit.
Billings Farm, a late 19th century agricultural reenactment site. It’s great for learning about cows and dairy, edible plants and farm life (see above). When we visited this year, they were making pasta in the farmhouse kitchen. I hadn’t realised how long pasta has been a staple in the US (it’s much more recent in the UK), but in fact Thomas Jefferson sampled and loved it in Europe, and by the time of the Civil War macaroni was very popular.

The Hood Museum at Dartmouth College: I always stand in awe before the incredible, ancient Assyrian tablets before moving on to the current exhibits. This summer, a diverse selection of art including Musasama’s elaborate arrangement of textiles and natural objects across the floor, part of the Maple Tree Series, made me aware of the maple tree abolitionist movement. Did you know that in the 1790s, free people of colour, white settlers, and native Americans advocated substituting maple syrup for cane sugar, to starve the economy propping up enslavers?

My family creates a good learning environment, with our eclectic interests. Dinner discussions might be about what’s the oldest continuously-used language in the world (Hebrew, Tamil, Sanskrit… Lithuanian and Icelandic appear in the top 10, too). My dad found an 1884 encyclopaedia in our AirBnB and read passages out loud to us. There was no entry for childbirth, but lots of details on “Brawling in Church” and the various statutes against it.

Even though I didn’t do much writing work over the summer, the feeling of my mind loosening to hold more is not an unwriterly sensation. New stories could develop from here!

Do travel and family time inspire your writing?

Balancing the Dark

This Week’s Bit of String: Planet Buoy

On a rainy Saturday morning in St Ives, I’m shepherding 7 teens on a 2-mile walk with a seasoned photographer. We are nearing the end of our school Art residential; I’ve spent half my half-term supporting 3 very different students with autism.

The youngest one is only 14 and prefers to draw comic stories or animals in pencil, so through most activities, he’s put his headphones on and played games on his phone. That’s what he did through the photographer’s introductory talk.

The photographer has worked here in St Ives for 45 years. He says its popularity with artists comes from the “pure, North light.” Standing on a beach he tells me, “The sand in St Ives has a sheerness, and reflects that light.”

Just then, the youngest fellow patters over murmuring, “Miss, I took pictures of the beach.” With his iPhone, he’s captured the effect the photographer talked about. The reflections of the squished-together buildings across the bay appear over the sand in his photo. I compliment him heartily, and he’s off.

He creeps toward gulls, grinning, asking, “Scuse me, can I take your picture?” He aims his phone camera through holes in stone walls that no one else has noticed, sticks it into pier crevices to capture puddle reflections. One of my older students, herself a photographer with autism, is inspired by what he’s finding and so am I.

He finds a buoy, pulled up and stashed on top of lobster cages. I join him to capture its weathering with my iPhone. It’s like a planet, with rust crops and barnacle mountains. This young artist is showing what I’ve always found, that once we start looking around with a photographer’s eye, we pick up on so much more.

Balance

It’s like that with stories sometimes too. If we get into ideas mode, we find them everywhere. When I’m out and about, I take pictures partly to remind myself of strands of description for my journal later. Waves blooming around boulders, rust-fall streaming down the lighthouse, Planet Buoy.

*Pure light: View toward Chapel of St Nicholas*

The photographer we worked with, Chris Webber, makes me contemplate other similarities or counterpoints between the arts of photography and writing. He tells the students: “Your camera has a lot of dials and buttons, but at its heart, photography is about balancing the light. Don’t be intimidated by the camera. You control it. You decide what to shoot.”

It’s a mixed blessing to remember that amid the vast structures of a story, with so many interplaying elements we’re meant to orchestrate—we are the ones who control the pen (or keyboard). It is, ultimately, up to us.

I also wonder if a story, at its heart, might be as simple as balancing certain elements. Except that a story is balancing the dark. As storytellers we wield light and seek to not obliterate dark (because then a story might be dull or saccharine), but to balance it.

Letting in the Light

I read more about story structure and trajectory before my latest novel edits. John Yorke in Into the Woods frames this as a trajectory of knowledge (which suits my creation story retelling, since Eve allegedly plunged us all into sin by gaining knowledge). A protagonist is awakened to something, they experience doubt, they reluctantly accept, they experiment, it backfires, until ultimately there is a reconciliation of the new knowledge: a reawakening and a total mastery.

*Weaving: lobster nets on Smeatons Pier*

None of this happens without light, and the light would be ineffective if dark didn’t precede it. Presumably, God would never have said, “Let there be light,” if They’d already had all the light They wanted. As creators, we first shine light into a character’s situation so they have to recognise the dark they’re living in. They may react by being overwhelmed; they’re not used to this illumination. Ultimately, we mould the light into hope.

*Wishing you a torrent of creativity this week.*

Depending on the story, we’ll allow a pinpoint or a whole widening arc of light/ hope. Also, depending on the type of writing, we’ll show the whole landscape or do a macro shot. Chris Webber does dawn photo shoots and landscapes but also food shoots, for catering outlets. He showed my students a picture he took of a sorbet scoop: “Sometimes you don’t want your viewer to paddle, you want them to dive in.”

I’ll definitely keep that in mind while editing. Which bits are especially important for readers to plunge into? How do we direct the light while also bringing out the exciting details?