We the People

It's the Fourth of July and raining like the dickens. I don't know how all the city-sponsored festivities fared today, but most of them must have been rained out. The weather, to me at least, seems to match the mood of the country. Our spirits are a bit dampened by all the news about spying, IRS scandals, budget woes, etc.

It's disheartening to hear a constant litany of accusations, counter-accusations, and denials. The government tells us it has done us a world of good by invading our privacy but hasn't told us exactly how. People are continuing to lose their jobs. Things have become rather Orwellian, and you wonder which of our elected leaders are truly there to serve the country. That's what government's for, right? To serve the people?

The United States has certain guiding myths that we hold dear, although we've often failed to live up to them. I say "myths" in the sense of the foundational stories we tell about ourselves, the ones that tell us who we are. The portraits of the Founding Fathers reflect the seriousness with which the young country viewed its odyssey from wilderness to emerging nation, a land of freedom and opportunity based on principles of equality. There's a mythic grandeur in those faces and in the scenes of courage and struggle they participated in.

Despite the many ways in which these men failed to extend their ideals -- to women, slaves, and Native Americans -- the principles themselves were sound. The fact that they were applied so imperfectly is disappointing but not surprising. Over 235 years later, we still haven't got it right.

America is growing more diverse and is projected to attain a "majority-minority" status by 2043, meaning no single group will represent a majority of the population. It's uncertain whether this will also mean a re-distribution of opportunities and resources or whether those with advantages will try to hang on to them. The future isn't clear.

All the competing subcultures and groups that make up the United States represent the possibility of friction but also an opportunity to benefit from multiple points of view. There's no longer a predominant religious or cultural background, and as the country continues to grow, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves will also change. One thing that doesn't have to change is the story of freedom and equality we told ourselves at the beginning, an idea that I think most of us still like.

I'm hoping the feeling I sometimes have that we're getting farther away from our story is just an illusion, that in reality we're moving closer to it all the time. Maybe it was such a big story that we just had to grow into it, and are still growing into it now.

Handsome Is As Handsome Does

I'm hard to please when it comes to literary characters. Specifically, I'm thinking now of romantic heroes. I seem to have gotten on a track of reading novels with romantic plot lines this summer, so several leading men are jostling against one another in my mind's eye. I was reading a book last week about a woman who had a summer affair with a man she met in Europe. The book was insightful about many things, but the main character, a relatively young woman, related the story as if all good things in life were behind her, all because the guy she tooled around with wouldn't leave his loveless marriage for her.

This guy actually asked her, at the end of their affair, if she expected him to ruin his life for her. Ding-ding-ding! Fire! Disaster! Help! Shouldn't that have told her what she needed to know? Would you believe that someone who'd say such a thing was the best thing that ever happened to you? She didn't seem to see it the same way I did, though, and at story's end was in deep mourning over the one who got away. I don't get it.

She did say he was good-looking, easy-going, companionable, and funny, but isn't that beside the point? To me, nothing kills the credibility of a hero like unreliability.

Well, Mary, you might say, what heroes do you find credible? Of course, you probably think I'm going to put Rochester from Jane Eyre at the top of my list because I was once an English major and he's in my dissertation. Actually, though, I have a problem with his lack of truthfulness about the madwoman in the attic. He should have told Jane the truth. That would have been a different book, but after all, a preexisting wife is not a small thing.

Some of Jane Austen's men stand up pretty well, although some are a bit milquetoast, even if you otherwise like them (Edward Ferrars, I'm talking to you). I blame some of this on the mores of the world Austen was depicting. You really don't expect a sturdy character like Aragorn son of Arathorn to wander into the genteel precints of Emma or Pride and Prejudice, even though it's fun to imagine it. I think Emma's Mr. Knightley comes off well, since he always gives Emma good advice and remains steadfast in his concern for her welfare. He's intelligent, kind, and consistent, though of course he can afford to be. He doesn't have someone breathing down his neck about making an unsuitable match.

I've already mentioned Tolkien's Aragorn, a rough-and-ready character who cleans up well, is brave and honorable, and doesn't scare easily. He turns out to be a king, but I don't know that I don't like him better as Strider, the wandering Ranger who doesn't look like anyone special, but is. One of my other favorite heroes is Mary Stewart's Simon Lester, who appears in the novel My Brother Michael. The heroine runs into some truly hard-nosed villains in this story of murky dealings in and around Delphi some years after World War II, and Simon, a Classics teacher investigating his brother's wartime death, is a true rock.

I read this book as a teenager and barely registered Simon, who is not a flashy character, but when I re-read it several years ago, he seemed to leap out of the page with his courage, resourcefulness, and good sense, like a quieter version of MacGyver. I guess you need a few decades before you can appreciate a staunch, trustworthy character over the moody, tortured types that make such an impression on a teenager, but there you have it.

It all goes back to something my grandmother used to say when I was growing up: "Handsome is as handsome does." It used to irritate me, because I thought she was saying you couldn't trust good-looking men, which seemed like a sweeping statement (and not one I wanted to hear). Now that I understand what she meant, I've been known to say it myself.

I'm reading yet another book about a divorcée who is swept off her feet by a good-looking, sophisticated man and was ready to throw the book across the room last night when he showed up in a well-tailored jacket and crisp shirt that set off his tan but seemed too insecure to weather his date's nervousness. I'm deferring judgment for the moment, though, because the heroine is just as annoying, and I haven't gotten to the end of the story yet. I'm trying to be open-minded here and not a snob. Even a wealthy, good-looking man may have redeeming qualities, and I'll be the first to admit it.

A Path, a Compass, a Map

I guess it isn't surprising how often I end up writing about walking, since I do a lot of walking. It's even sort of a professional interest, because of labyrinths. But I read a book this week that doesn't seem to be about either labyrinths or walking, in the everyday sense of walking. I meant to read Cheryl Strayed's Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail last year, when it came out, but I got sidetracked. It's probably just as well, since it means more to me now than it would have a year ago.

Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, and the events of an actual life a thousand times more compelling than the best-crafted novel ever written. Such is Wild, a memoir of a woman's solo hike along the Pacific Crest Trail, undertaken in sort of a desperate, intuitive belief that something good would come out of it. As Miss Strayed tells it, she was in a Midwestern outdoor store buying a shovel when she picked up a guidebook for walkers of the PCT. She glanced at the book, then put it back, but something about the cover image of mountains and sky spoke to her mysteriously, and while driving to her home in Minneapolis, she was captured by the idea of hiking the trail herself.

It was a somewhat unexpected decision for someone who had never gone backpacking. But at the age of 26, battered by the loss of her mother to cancer, the breakup of her family, a marriage that had come unglued, an unexpected pregnancy, and a mounting sense of turmoil and emptiness, Strayed undertook the journey in a bid to find answers or least have a chance to think things through. As frequently happens, the reality was very different than what she had imagined.

As a novice hiker, Strayed had little idea of how to properly pack and ended up carrying a load that felt like "a Volkswagen Beetle" on her back. Men she met on the trail had trouble even picking up her pack, much less understanding how she managed to walk with it. Her hiking boots blistered her feet and rubbed them raw, a problem that persisted throughout the trip. She had little money, and despite the carefully chosen protein bars and dehydrated food, was always hungry. She learned to use a compass along the way, crossed rockslides and ice fields, edged around rattlesnakes, encountered bears, mastered the intricacies of a wayward water purifier, slept alone in a tent, worried about mountain lions, and occasionally sang to herself.

She had imagined walking along in soothing solitude, breathing in deeply and letting the beauty of the passing scenery heal the broken places. What actually happened was that pushing through the difficulties -- the skin lacerations, the pain, the hunger and thirst, the fears, the dangers, and the mistakes -- healed her. She discovered that she could stand on her own two feet by continuing to put one in front of the other, and the beauty of the wilderness, experienced at unexpected moments in bursts of clarity, was that much sweeter for being attained so dearly.

There are many ways to interpret the story. In one way, it's a tale about learning to mother (and father) oneself. It's also a hero's journey, one that ends with the book itself, the author's "boon" to the rest of us. While it might not be apparent, the PCT, though linear on a map, is experienced as a maze in which choices must often be made. No two hikers ever experience the trail the same way. As Miss Strayed herself seems to invoke Dante early on when she speaks of feeling lost in the woods of her life, I have to tell you that I thought of The Divine Comedy often while reading this story. Like Dante the pilgrim, Miss Strayed found that, paradoxically, the only way out of the woods was the long way, the via dolorosa, through the Inferno.

The author is candid about her struggles and shortcomings and the naivete with which she began her journey. It's borne in upon the reader that it was sheer determination (and luck) that saw her through. There was every possibility for things to end in disaster. Still, events demonstrate that her intuition to undertake a difficult task to find her measure was a good one. I'm tempted to report that, like Ginger Rogers, Miss Strayed did everything a man could do, except backwards and in heels, but that's not really true, except that it is, sort of. Unlike Dante, she didn't have a Virgil constantly beside her in the tough bits, unless you count the guidebooks she carried. She found mentors along the way, but it was up to her to separate the wheat from the chaff and decide for herself what kind of trip it would be.

I doubt that I would ever hike the PCT on my own, but I recognize the impulse that led the author to do it, and I admire it. There are some things you just have to figure out for yourself. I started the book with tears at the descriptions of Miss Strayed's early sorrows and losses and ended it with tears of a different kind, and that's never a bad way to end a story.

Portrait of a Summer Night

Walking tonight in the Arboretum, I was thinking about summers past. It was a lovely June evening, and the hilltop views of the big orange sun going down were almost panoramic: I felt I was on top of a mountain and could see for miles. There was a grandeur about the sunset, with dramatic rays of sunlight streaming out from behind gorgeous clouds in a clean blue sky. But I was thinking back to my childhood, when the archetypal summer night was contained within the modest yard of my grandparents' frame house in a small Kentucky town.

I wonder if most people don't have a similar image that conjures up everything a summer night consists of. For me, it goes like this: a backyard of green grass, tilted slightly uphill, big enough for croquet wickets near the top and a gathering of lawn chairs under a big maple at the bottom. Under the tree was where the grownups sat. The kids didn't sit anywhere for long, but there were several options: a picnic table, a swing-set, and a glider on the back porch. If you sat on the glider, you'd share it with my grandfather, who favored it, and who always had his tobacco can and cane nearby.

The house itself smelled like pipe tobacco, the soap my grandmother used in her bathroom, biscuits, and fried chicken. It had a smell all its own, somehow old-fashioned and Southern, and it will never be duplicated. I remember also the damp, musty smell of the basement with its gravel floor and rough-hewn posts, usually visited when Mason jars were needed for fireflies. It was full of Daddy-long-legs, was lit by a bare bulb, and was somewhat of a novelty in my eyes. In Florida, where I lived with my parents and siblings, I hadn't seen many houses with basements.

There was always something to eat at the house, since family gatherings inevitably involved food: my grandmother's fried chicken, salty and tender, especially the little piece with the wishbone that I liked; her rib-sticking biscuits (I later imagined Tolkien's lembas as being a bit like those savory morsels of shortening, flour, and salt); potato salad; corn on the cob, baked beans with onions, ambrosia salad, green beans with ham; cucumbers in vinegar; cornbread (salty, not sweet); sliced cantaloupe; watermelon; and brownies. Sometimes, we'd make ice cream, and the kids would all take turns with the crank. That ice cream was both sweet and salty, due to the rock salt we used.

There were only four rooms in the small square house besides the bathroom. The kitchen, which opened onto the back porch, was the heart of the enterprise, the repository of all the food, and the place where as many as ten people were sometimes crowded around the table if it was raining. (Typically, everybody picked a spot outside, picnic-style, paper plates full and balanced precariously.) There were African violets in the kitchen window, countertops full of food-containing Tupperware, and (always) a plate of biscuits on top of the stove.

There were also two bedrooms and a living room. When we visited our grandparents from Florida, my brother and sister and I would sleep on fold-out cots in the living room. Otherwise, that room was mainly known as the way out to the front porch.

I remember the front porch as being the domain of kids; there was another glider there, the perfect spot for drinking sweet iced tea and rocking slowly. There was a maple tree in the front yard that we liked to climb, and there would sometimes be as many as six or seven cousins perched on various branches. When we weren't doing that, we'd watch people from the neighborhood, either on foot or in cars, go up and down the street. It wasn't a busy street, and there was just enough activity to be interesting. Three doors down was a tiny plaza with a laundromat, where my mother would do our vacation laundry and we'd buy Ale-8-Ones (a local soft drink with a gingery bite) out of the machine.

What did we do on those long summer nights? Nothing special, but that's what was so great about them. To me, the choices seemed infinite: first of all, you would eat. Afterwards, you could sit on the glider, listening to it squeak as you rocked back and forth, climb the tree, play croquet, goof around on the swing-set, make ice cream, listen to the grownups talk, catch fireflies, watch Amos (our Grandpa's big collie) chase his tail, view home movies on a screen in the back yard, play with sparklers (if it was near the Fourth of July), have another biscuit, and look forward to the next day's outing to Natural Bridge or Boonesborough State Park.

I realize now that things were not as perfect as they seemed, but I'm glad I didn't know, because I have those warm, carefree nights, somehow both aimless and full, to go back to in my mind. They're still my yardstick for what a summer night is supposed to be. I remember the feeling of being surrounded by people, of belonging, and of never being bored. I remember the green-yellow light of the fireflies, blinking on and off in the yard, and how they became a living nightlight, small Mason jar beacons to drift off to sleep by in the living room. The next morning we'd let them go, and they'd all disappear in the bright light of day, a bit dazed by their experience, if you ask me. It didn't matter: they'd be back, all out again in force when twilight fell, at the end of another full and infinitely long summer day.

Orpheus Told Mnemosyne: Stories of Memory and Loss

I picked out two novels from the new book shelf at the library this past week with similar themes. The first one, The Last Summer (by Judith Kinghorn), is an English romance set before, during, and after the first World War. This territory has been notably trod by Downton Abbey, Atonement, and other works of fiction and offers ripe ground for meditation on love, endurance, privation, courage, the horrors of war, and the loss of innocence, among other subjects.

The second book, The Obituary Writer (by Ann Hood), tells two stories, one of a love affair interrupted by the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and the other of a suburban housewife and mother who experiences an unexpected awakening after the disappearance of a neighborhood boy in 1961. In this book, the two stories are linked not only by themes of memory and loss but also by a character who appears in both.

Having recently seen the film The Great Gatsby (another period drama dealing with some of the same concerns), I think I was curious to see how other writers might treat the vast theme of love and disaster. With Gatsby's tragedy fresh in my mind, I'm pretty sure I was hoping for a happier ending. Did I get one? Well, yes and no.

The Last Summer tells a coming of age story as a loss of paradise, and this sense of looking back and longing for what once was permeates the novel. Clarissa has grown up in an idyllic country home with very little to trouble her until, on the eve of World War I, she falls in love with the housekeeper's son. The novel unfolds over a period of some years as Clarissa and Tom pledge their devotion, are separated by war and the disapproval of Clarissa's mother, come back together for brief intervals, and drift apart.

In tandem with the loss of her young man is the loss of Clarissa's home, which is sold due to the family's change of fortunes during the war. Deyning is pictured as an Edenic place of gardens, roses, and expansive lawns, and although, as a reverse snob, I shouldn't have had much sympathy for Clarissa's fall from grace (she's still well off), the image of that paradise lost resonated so mythically that I felt it, too. It was less clear to me why it took Clarissa and Tom so long to get back together when they were obviously so unhappy apart, but that's the way the story developed.

The novel dwells a great deal on privations that can't be undone, but after many troubles, the two lovers reunite, and even Deyning is not as lost as it appeared to be. The story seems linear until the end, when the author circles back to the world that was lost, and we're told that "Moments can and do come back to us." I was more struck by that line than any other in the book, as it implied a sort of mythic eternal return that, while a bit out of line with the plot up to that point, was a relief after all the hardship preceding it.

The Obituary Writer takes a different approach to loss. Vivien Lowe, unable to discover the fate of her lover after the devastation of the 1906 earthquake, has left San Francisco but never accepted her loss. She's a sort of female Orpheus, always looking back, and hope kept alive acts for her as a kind of barrier to living in the present (although I was unable to see that she was missing anything, quite frankly). When she does move on, it's not in a way that's satisfying for her, and decades later she's a cautionary tale for her daughter-in-law, who is paralyzed in a stifling marriage.

Vivien's suffering is understandable because the fate of her lover was never clear. To me, it seems reasonable that she would continue to look for him and try to learn his fate. Her thirteen years of searching are presented as if they are a lifetime wasted. And yet her friend Lotte, who follows a sensible path of marriage and motherhood and constantly urges Vivien to move on, sees her own life fall apart in an instant. In such an unpredictable world, who's to say which path is better?

So, one novel has a happy ending that seems a little contrived, and another has a somber message about loss. In The Obituary Writer, the only hope for happiness lies with Claire, the daughter-in-law, whose future at the end is still unknown. But what about Vivien? Should she, when young, have tried to swallow her grief and gone back to San Francisco to pick up her life? Would finding out the truth sooner have mattered? That was the only solution I could see. Should Clarissa and Tom, in The Last Summer, have stopped dithering a little sooner? Maybe so, though it still wouldn't have made up for the loss of their friends and loved ones.

I keep going back to Jay Gatsby, whose intransigence started this whole train of thought, I now realize. I keep envisioning a happier ending for him in my version of "dreaming the myth onwards." (Oddly enough, I find that this quote comes from Jung's The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, which I spent several hours reading this very afternoon.)

So to Gatsby I say, with all the conviction I can muster, forget about that green light. It's a siren, a phantasm, that will lure you to the rocks. You've been to college (even if it was only one semester, it was still Oxford), so you should know the light is only a metaphor for Daisy, a lovely girl but an altogether flighty one. Just because she's a famous literary character doesn't mean she has street cred.

Take your fortune and reinvest in something safer. Move away from godforsaken West Egg and all those snobs and their old money. Why not try . . . California? Go west, young man. This could work. Who needs a castle, anyway?

Don't Panic! It's That Fake Synchronicity Again

I cannot explain everything that happens around me, but I can vouch for an uptick in strange occurences and odd synchronicities going back several years now. As a Jungian, I shouldn't be bothered by this, since synchronicity is the stock-in-trade of Jung's philosophy -- except that I don't believe most of it is genuine.

I wrote recently about the car accident I was in back in April. The next week, my cousin sent an email saying that my brother, who lives in another state, had been hit by an SUV driven by someone who was upset with him (my brother isn't saying anything, and neither is anyone else in the family). We haven't been able to verify what happened, which in itself is odd. Did it happen, or didn't it? You wouldn't think establishing the simple truth would be so difficult, but it is.

I've long been accustomed to noticing people hanging about who seem out of place. The first time it happened, I was in an upscale sandwich shop having lunch and reading the life of Buddha for a class. I was so engrossed in the book that I didn't look up for a long time, and when I did, there was a rather thuggish young man sitting directly across from  me, engaged in . . . not much of anything, except sitting there looking thuggish. The thought instantly came into my head that there was something unwholesome in his manner and that he just looked wrong. I left a few minutes later, and he didn't bother me, but the incident stuck in my mind. Many odd things were happening at my workplace then, and this item seemed bracketed with them somehow.

He was only the first of many others . . . the man who stared so persistently as I had lunch at yet another sandwich shop and then followed me outside, talking animatedly on his cell phone and staring; the weird guy with the ferret face who tried to engage me in a conversation about pie as I was leaving Gumbo Ya Ya; the slickly handsome but vaguely demonic stranger who arrived at the elevator in the parking garage of my hotel at the same time I did; the oddly abrasive chick who crashed the Jane Austen Book Club and then skulked around the entrance as I was leaving the store; the low-rent Michael Fassbender look-alike who showed up at Starbucks the day after I watched Jane Eyre on video.

That's just life in the city, you say -- you're bound to meet with all kinds of characters. Well, maybe. If it happened once in a while, I'd agree with you, but all the time?

Speaking of look-alikes, I've also noticed, more than once, people who looked remarkably like other people I know. One of the most striking incidents occurred a couple of years ago as I was waiting for a train with two friends in San Francisco. I had been to a performance by Dave Alvin at Slim's a night or two before. When the next train pulled up, a man who looked incredibly similar to Dave, down to his height and facial hair and cowboy hat, got off right in front of us. It was not Dave, but it's hard to believe anyone could look (and dress) that much like him without doing it on purpose (unless it was Dave Alvin night in San Francisco and no one told me). Why would someone do such a thing, you inquire? Don't ask me. It was freaking weird, though.

And then there's the classmate of mine (or her twin), who has popped up in the oddest of places. I might think I was imagining that, since the hair was always different, except for that time in New Mexico at the all-night gas station when the fellow with her looked like the boyfriend she'd introduced me to one time. Well, if it was her, why didn't she acknowledge you, you ask? Why did she speak to you like you were a stranger? I don't know. You might as well ask why her hair was that strange shade of pink.

Then there's my "haunted" apartment. I know it's not really haunted, but there are enough unexplained cracking and pinging noises, sometimes emanating from innocent objects, to make you wonder about poltergeists. The lights blink mysteriously, although they never used to. And strangest of all are the popping and trilling noises in my ears. I've had ringing in my ears for a long time, and I always put it down to congestion or something mechanical like that, but the chirps and trills I hear nowadays are different, like electronic pulses. It's like something out of James Bond, only less fun.

I've lost count of the number of times perfect strangers spoke to me almost as if they knew me. I used to wonder if some of them were trying to tell me something, but I no longer bother. If someone has something to tell me, they'd better just straight up say it.

In Tibetan Buddhism, there is the tradition of the bardo, a liminal state reached by a person who is in between two earthly lives. In this state, the person encounters all kinds of gods and demons, some of them benign in appearance and some of them hideous, but they are in fact all deceptive. Before death (and while dying), the person is given instructions on how to handle them and is reminded above all of their illusory nature. Some of the people I've encountered remind me of these bardo beings. I'm thinking also of Dante's Inferno, where things get progressively freakier the further Dante and Virgil descend. Before they know it, they've even reversed directions, so that instead of climbing down they're climbing up, emerging into the cave in Purgatory head first. It's all very matrixy, as life in general seems to be these days.

If anything like this has happened to you and you want my advice, the only thing I can say, in the immortal words of Douglas Adams, is "Don't Panic!" It's just the bardo, and we assume it will pass. Rest assured there is a logical explanation, and accept no substitutes. I have no idea what's up with all the derring-do, just as I have no idea why the young women in the downtown grocer's seemed to think it was uproarious when the Hall and Oates song "Private Eyes" was playing (at an earsplitting volume) while I was in the store this morning. But store clerks are not the boss of me, just so you know.

I don't remember signing up for a spy caper, although that's what I feel like I'm in. A family member told me the other day that she's scared and doesn't feel safe either at home or in public. I say this so you know I'm not treating this as a joke, even though it sometimes feels like one. Bardo-spy caper-matrix-inferno-whatever -- all things must pass. I may not know the answers, but I know when someone's acting the fool.

Beyond the Green Light

Last week I went to see Baz Luhrmann's version of The Great Gatsby. Some of the criticisms I've heard of the movie are about things that didn't bother me. I didn't think the hip-hop music in the soundtrack was out of place considering the theme and emotional tone of the movie. Likewise, the over-the-top spectacles of Gatsby's parties: wasn't that what he did, throw lavish, out-sized affairs in an attempt to draw Daisy to him? (And wasn't the Jazz Age about excess, to begin with?)

What I noticed was the way I felt at the end of the movie -- kind of stirred up and let-down and empty. Some reviewers might say this was the fault of the movie, a result of its emphasis on style over substance, but I don't think so. I think that's what the movie is about, being let down.

It must be hard to play characters like Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan. They are beloved characters, star-crossed lovers, and literary icons, but there is such a haze of romance around them that the tragedy at the bottom of their story is almost lost in a glow of champagne and pearls. I don't know if the story is as much about the failure of the American Dream as it is about a failure of vision on the part of Jay Gatsby.

To be inspired by love to great accomplishments is wonderful, but that is not what drives Gatsby. He has built a staggering fortune based on bootlegging and shady dealings in an attempt to become the important man he always wanted to be. This does not make him inferior to those who happen to have had money longer than he has, even if they (and he, secretly) think so. His motivations, though, seem hollow. It's himself and his humble origins that he's unhappy with, and no mansion of any size can change that.

Oh, but wasn't it Daisy who inspired him? Yes, but that's just the problem. Reviewers unhappy with Carey Mulligan's luminous but vacuous Daisy (and Mia Farrow's, before her) seem to think there is something finer about Daisy than the actresses are able to convey. There must be, or Gatsby wouldn't have fallen for her, right? I think Gatsby's idealism is wasted on Daisy: he has hitched his wagon to the wrong star. He perceives, correctly, that Daisy could never be happy with anyone outside her own social class. She didn't wait for him and married someone else. Maybe that should have been a sign? Yet he won't let go of his vision of her and in the end loses everything because of it.

Mr. Luhrmann's extravagant party scenes and glittering sets convey the emptiness of not only Gatsby's but also the Buchanans' wealth. One of the saddest scenes in the movie is the aftermath of the party in which Gatsby confides to Nick that he'll never be happy until Daisy leaves Tom for him. With servants picking up debris left by heedless guests in a house that seems not just empty but deserted, Nick tries to tell Gatsby that he can't relive the past, but Gatsby doesn't agree. If Gatsby were wise enough to give up his own illusions, he would be a better man. But then, of course, it would be a different story.

Mythically, the story is about Titans -- in this case, Titans of wealth who maneuver and brawl to establish precedence. It shows the dangers of hubris, although Gatsby is unfortunately the main one who seems to pay the price. You have to infer what might happen to the others. (I like to imagine Tom Buchanan losing his smugness in the stock market crash a few years later.)

I think this film captured the evanescent beauty of Gatsby's dreams quite well; there was something magical about Luhrmann's depiction of the bay and the green light on the other side. If Gatsby's imagination and yearnings had been directed toward a more worthy goal, who knows what he would have accomplished. But that would have to be a different movie.

Magic Flash Mobs in the Month of May

Last autumn I wrote a blog about the end of summer and the myth of Demeter and Persephone. I was thinking about the two of them today when I was out and about, on a day of just about perfect weather. Yesterday was beautiful but a little cool; today was just right. There was a bright blue sky, angelic white clouds, a warm (but not hot) sun, trees in full leaf, irises in bloom. To repeat an observation I made a few weeks ago, it was like stepping into an illustration in a children's picture book, one showing a perfect neighborhood with a smiling sun, children waving, and everyone from the mailman to the baker going cheerfully about their business.

So -- Persephone comes back in the spring. The melodramatic part of the myth concerns her leaving and Demeter mourning her loss in autumn. The story goes on to say, though, that a compromise is reached whereby Persephone is returned from the Underworld in the spring, to the general rejoicing of Demeter and everybody else. Persephone is spring personified, with violets entwined in her hair and daisies springing up where she walks. I think of the delicate beauty of April as characteristic of her youth. A day like today, when the promise of early spring has blossomed into something closer to summer, makes me think of her mother, Demeter, whose care greens the earth.

The nurturing and feminine aspects of May are reflected in several traditions. The name of the month probably comes from either Maia, a Greek nymph beloved of Zeus, or the Roman goddess Maiesta, who was associated with veneration and honor. In the Roman Catholic tradition, May is the month of Mary, the mother of God. Of course, May is also the month when we celebrate Mother's Day in the United States. Here in Kentucky, we run the horses on the first Saturday in May. I'm not sure what they think about it, but for the people, it's an occasion marked by showy hats, spring finery, mint juleps, and elaborately planned parties.

The birthstone for May is the emerald, whose stunning green seems like the perfect color for such a lush and opulent month. The flower for May is the Lily of the Valley. That seems quite right too, because if I were to assign a fragrance to the month, it would be the old-fashioned but unforgettable (to me, anyway) Muguet des Bois, which contains an essence of this delicate but lingering floral. If you took everything bright and beautiful about the month -- from the luxuriant grass to the shy flowers in the woods -- and distilled it into a bottle, it would smell like this perfume.

I live in an area with a lot of large trees that create an avenue of green this time of year. I have a fantasy about a "Dancing in the Moonlight" sort of reverie that I would like to make into a film someday. This vision came to me out of nowhere not long after I moved here and involves an empty street in the middle of the night. To the tune of either "Dancing in the Moonlight," "Looking Out My Backdoor," or "Moonlight Sonata," a group of people in formal attire appear casually from under the trees, assembling in the middle of the street. They all waltz together. As the music picks up, they start to dance faster, and then you begin to notice the presence of fauns, nymphs, naiads, and other minor gods and goddesses in the crowd (it's an ecumenical group). After a few minutes of kicking up their heels in fine mythic fashion, they all disappear into the trees again, leaving a silent street.

I don't know what it is about the neighborhood that gave rise to this fantasy, but I think now that if I were to film it, it would have to be in May. I've pictured it in autumn to the tune of "Moondance," and I think that would work. But May is really the time for this type of extravaganza. If I ever do commit this to film, look carefully at the faces in the crowd. Demeter and Persephone will certainly be there, as well as Maia and Maiesta and Hermes and Artemis and whoever else is up for a frolic. There might be a few jockeys in the crowd, some emeralds, silk, and boas, fancy buttoned shoes, and some really fine hats.

When the sun comes up the next morning on another beautiful day, it will be as if nothing ever happened -- but that's the way it is with these midnight flash mobs in the merry month of May.

Lessons on Walking in Rain

A rainy spell has set in after several days of beautiful weather. I stayed in on Saturday, but yesterday I decided that even if it was raining, I wanted to get out of the apartment, so I put on my rain gear and walked to Starbucks, a distance of about two miles. I was wearing my stylish Red Riding Hood raincoat and had my polka dot umbrella, but this was one of those cold, steady rains with occasional gusts that eventually gets every inch of you wet. I had to stop and arrange my purse underneath my coat and try to keep my book tote underneath the umbrella.

I was only halfway there when I realized how soaked my sneakers were and realized I'd have to put up with wet feet once I arrived. Wet shoes or not, I thought, it was worth it to spend a couple of hours away from the apartment on this rainy weekend, so I pushed on. I wouldn't have given much thought to a trip to Starbucks if I'd had my car, but on the other hand, I wouldn't have been getting all this lovely walking in, right? I'm all for walking in all kinds of weather but admit I would have been happier with dry feet. Nonetheless, I did take time to notice a pretty dogwood tree in someone's yard and how green the grass was over by the campus library.

Once I got to Starbucks, I discovered that everyone else had had the same idea. There were no tables open, although there were a few extra chairs, so I took one of those and waited for someone to leave. After a while, someone did, so I spread out my things to dry off a little and settled down to read.

On the way home, the sky was beginning to clear a little, and I caught some gleams of light from the sun sinking in the west. I was glad to be out then, because the light was really beautiful, reflecting off all those wet surfaces with a sort of subdued dazzle, and everything seemed very clean and fresh with that just-washed feeling. And I knew it would feel great to get home, pull off my wet shoes, and get dinner ready.

Today started out partly cloudy, and by the time I realized I needed to go to the post office this afternoon, there were actual patches of blue sky on display, with big, puffy, summery-looking clouds playing hide and seek with the sun. In a burst of optimism, I set out without an umbrella, looking forward to a walk unencumbered by purse, coat, or any other paraphernalia. 

After I'd been walking for a few minutes, I noticed that the dark clouds I thought were heading in the other direction were actually starting to mass overhead. I have had pretty good luck with judging whether I'm going to get rained on or not in the past; I thought today I might get some sprinkles but just wanted to get my letter in the box before it got wet. I figured the rest didn't matter so much. I made it to the mailbox and had started back home when I felt the first drop on my hand. At first I thought it might have been a stray one, but a block later, walking out from under the trees, I could see a light rain descending in straight lines.

It felt strange to be walking in the rain without an umbrella. On the other hand, my sweater didn't seem to be getting that wet. My hair was still damp from my shower when I started out, so it couldn't be much worse off now. The rain slackened a little, but as I crossed the stadium parking lot and headed for home, it started coming down harder. My sunglasses, donned in that spirit of optimism at the beginning of the trip, were covered with rain, and my backup sneakers, called into duty because my other shoes were still drying out, were now starting to get soaked, too. I thought about making a run for it, wondered if it's really true that you get wetter when you run, and considered how feasible it would be to sprint while trying to see through rivulets of rain on my glasses.

Once on my street, I was basically at the drowned rat stage. I knew I would be out of my wet things in a couple of minutes and cozy enough once I put on my slippers and a dry sweater. There wasn't much to be gained by making a dash for it at that point -- but you know what? I decided to, anyway. I'd had the impulse to run a few minutes earlier, partly for the sheer exhilaration of running in the rain, and I'd quashed it. I sprinted the last half block just for the fun of it and to feel like a kid again, unencumbered by a purse or a shopping bag or any other detritus of adult life. And actually, it was kind of wonderful.

So here, take that, you rainy day. Maybe I left my umbrella behind for a reason, after all.

The Adventure of the Bubble Smoothie

Getting my car fixed has turned out to be much more of an adventure than I've ever had with this kind of thing before. The other driver's insurance company, Kentucky Farm Bureau, was willing to put me in a rental car but not to proceed with my car repair until their insured gave a statement (to my knowledge, he has yet to do so). I took the rental car, but that ended up being another sideshow since I forgot I needed to have a temporary parking tag for it. It ended up getting towed, and I had to spend $90 to get it back.

After that, I decided to forgo the rental car altogether and have been walking everywhere -- to the store, to Starbucks, to the library, and today, to my insurance company to get the settlement form notarized. Farm Bureau wanted to total my car, but the shop had a lower estimate, and since they had worked on my car before, I trusted their judgment and came to an agreement with the insurance company. I decided then to pay something down so the body shop could start on the repairs. After a bus ride downtown, I walked a mile to the shop under a gray sky that threatened rain but didn't deliver any.

It was a bit cumbersome having to take care of all that business on foot, but the upside was that on the way to the body shop, I walked along a stretch of beautiful historical houses that I had only seen before while driving. The walk gave me a chance to savor the architecture without having to keep my eyes on the road. The next part of it was a bit more wild and woolly, as I had to cross a wide viaduct with both traffic above and a train rumbling below. There was a sidewalk, so I was pretty safe, but the sensation reminded me of the time I was in Minneapolis and had to cross a bridge over a heavily traveled, multi-lane interstate to reach a park I wanted to visit. It was a bit like crossing a pit full of alligators all standing at the bottom shaking the support posts for all they're worth. They probably can't hurt you, but the vibration is rather unnerving.

The viaduct was curved, kind of like one of those wooden bridges in a Japanese garden (though not nearly as picturesque), and the body shop was just on the other side. I went in, took advantage of the candy jar in the reception area while waiting, wrote my check, and came back out to face the walk home. I crossed over the viaduct, which seemed less daunting on the way back, got a second look at the historic houses, and headed home, thinking of dinner.

I really was ready for home by then, but for some reason, as I was passing a row of shotgun houses I had passed countless times when I worked downtown (usually in a car), I noticed a sign in front of one advertising books/gifts/bubble drinks and smoothies. Something about the flair of the sign and the eclectic mix of offerings was too much for my curiosity. I had been meaning to see what was inside this place for quite a while. Why not now? I pushed open the door and found myself in a cozy shop lined with cases of used books and decorated with craft items of all kinds, complete with a couch and a small cafe in the back where you could buy bubble drinks.

I'm nothing if not flexible: I decided I was due a treat. There were so many intriguing flavors that it would have been hard to go wrong, but I decided on an almond smoothie with vanilla bubbles. If you've never had a bubble drink, it's hard to describe it, but imagine tapioca pearls at the bottom of the drink and a big straw that lets you sip them up from the bottom. I had my drink, which tasted like amaretto, sat on the couch with the palm tree cushions, admired a book-lined room, and regrouped a little.

It's always interesting to me how you can open a single door and find yourself in a place you've never been before, and the fact that this can happen on an ordinary street that you've traveled many thousands of times makes it even more delightful. Popping into the shop was a little like popping into Alice's rabbit hole just in time for the tea party. It also demonstrated that even a tedious day is not without its pleasant surprises. If my car had not been in the garage and I had not been on foot, I might never have discovered this little shop.

Cars are wonderful for covering a lot of distance, but by nature we're walkers, and I'm not sure we're always aware of how much we miss by zooming by things. It's like what Robert Pirsig said in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance about everything looking like TV through the windows of a car. I'll be happy to get my car back, but there's something to be said for slowing down and taking a closer look at the familiar. You never know what you'll find there.

Wabi-Sabi World

According to T.S. Eliot, April is the cruelest month, but I don't believe it. If anything, I would describe it as beautiful, delicate, but slightly wimpy. When I was out walking the other day, there was something about the blue sky, the puffy clouds, and the birds everywhere that reminded me of a children's book illustration: it had a simple innocence almost too beautiful to be real.

April has the tulips and the redbuds and the beginning of the dogwoods but is prone to cool spells. Not all of the trees are fully leafed yet, so there's an unfinished quality to things. May brings in the azaleas, the lush green of summer, and the probability of heat. It's the culmination of spring and the introduction to summer, trailing fireflies, Derby parties, and Memorial Day cookouts in its wake. If early April marks the return of Persephone, May is her coming of age party.

On the other hand, May lacks the spectacular display of color that heralds the first part of spring. It's a bit more monochromatic, with green being the predominant note. The soft pinks, purples, blues, and yellows of April are only visible for an instant, it seems, before they melt away in the sun: you've got to enjoy them (quick!) while you can.

I am thinking of a favorite quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Each moment of the year has its own beauty . . . a picture which was never seen before and which shall never be seen again." While it's natural to have favorite times of the year, a discerning eye finds something worthy in each passing moment. After all, it can't always be summer. Nature, time, and human beings are always in the process of becoming something they were not a moment ago.

Someone loaned me a book on wabi-sabi once, and I was struck by its message of beauty in imperfection. This philosophy holds that things are always either taking on form or dissolving it and that no part of the process is really superior to any other part. Wabi-sabi is an Eastern aesthetic, and I'm not sure that our culture embraces it to the same extent as the Japanese do. We tend to admire the new and the youthful, and that may be because our society itself is relatively young. It's an imbalance, but an understandable one.

I guess true equanimity would find equal amounts of loveliness in every month, every day, and every hour, and there are times when it's possible to know this. However, complete equanimity is itself an impossibility for most if not all of us. Like the seasons, we wax and wane, and I think it's probably best to accept the changing coloration of our moods and thoughts. We are constantly in flux. Who's to say that a flash of anger or a sorrowful mood is any less beautiful or right than a moment of incandescent happiness? We are products of nature and have our own winter storms, Indian summers, and cloudless afternoons. It's the contrast of shadow and light that lends depth to things.

Crash of the Gods

As a student of myth, I've been trained to look at everyday events through an archetypal lens. This is not the only way to understand life, but it's often useful. I've found, though, that it's one thing to gleefully deconstruct a favorite film in terms of mythic themes and another to apply the same lens to difficult events in your own life.

Take the fender-bender I was involved in last week. At the time it was happening, I was calm but very annoyed. What a nuisance, on top of other things I had to deal with! I was on my way to read and drink iced coffee at Starbucks. It was a sunny April afternoon. I was coming up to a busy intersection when I heard an ambulance approaching from the left and stopped. A couple of seconds later, I felt the impact as someone hit me pretty hard from the rear. My first reaction was simply to feel stunned -- what happened? And then I felt aggravated. I put on my caution lights and got out to talk to the other driver.

This driver was in a large Ford pick-up, for which the bumper of my little Toyota was no match. I stated the obvious, which was that he had hit me. He said I had stopped in front of him. I pointed out that I had stopped for an ambulance, to which he had no real reply. Then he asked if I wanted to just exchange insurance information or call the police. I told him I would call the police, to which he replied, "Well, call them then." He didn't ask if I was OK or seem apologetic. He smiled through the entire conversation as if we were on some kind of a lark.

I called the police and waited 45 minutes for an officer to arrive. While we were waiting, the other driver came up to my window and asked if I knew how long it would be until someone came. I told him I didn't know. He asked if I wanted to go ahead and exchange insurance information. I told him I wanted to wait for the police; a little while later, an officer arrived. After we moved our cars out of traffic, the officer took our statements and told me I could get the report online. I told him I had a bit of a headache and would probably get checked out to make sure I was OK.

Since we were in the parking lot of a hospital, I went into the emergency room there. Besides asking a lot of questions and putting me through some range of motion exercises, the staff also recommended an X-ray for my arm, which was by then slightly sore. Figuring it was better to be safe, I had the X-ray, which showed I had no fracture. I was told the headache was due to an adrenaline rush.

OK, so much for the facts. Now, as one professor I know likes to say, which gods were present?

As I got out of my car and faced the other driver, I felt competing emotions. A car crash is a violent event, and the presence of all that adrenaline proves that the body reacts to it as such. I know I was feeling a bit under attack as I got out of my car, but another voice in my head reminded me of the importance of being calm. If you had been been nearby, watching the scene unfold, you would have seen the glinting armor and flashing helmet of warlike Athena emerging from the driver's side of that small Toyota. A goddess of war, yes, but not one who relies on brute strength; she is also known for wisdom and counsel. I'm glad she was there.

What of the other driver? I wasn't in his skin, so I can't answer for his state of mind (as far as I know, he hasn't contacted his adjuster yet, so I still don't know what he was thinking). However, his smile and veneer of joking make me think of no one so much as the trickster, Hermes (minus the charm the latter sometimes exudes). There's an element of the trickster in most accidents, but some hint of gaiety in the man's face, inappropriate under the circumstance, made this impression even stronger. He was clearly at fault, and perhaps acting clownish was his defense.

Then the officer, the representative of law and order, arrived. He was strictly professional and took the reports with a seasoned efficiency that spoke of having repeated the same scene many times. He was Zeus, appearing suddenly to dispense justice, only he came in a squad car instead of descending from on high. (Modern life requires some adjustment in the details.)

Then the emergency room. Apollo is the god most associated with modern medicine, with its scientific ways and means. Apollo is skillful and efficient but perhaps a bit cold; certainly I felt I was surrounded by capable people, but if you've ever spent any time in an emergency room cubicle, you'll probably agree that it's not the warmest, fuzziest place you can imagine. It was sterile and a bit chilly. I wasn't in dire straits, so I was left on my own for most of the time, behind a curtain, with someone coming in occasionally to ask questions, take my vital signs, or perform some other function. That's probably by design, as I'm sure the emergency room staff makes it a policy to keep accident victims under observation, even if they're seemingly intact.

Asklepios, the other Greek god most associated with medicine, had a different approach; patients sought healing at overnight visits to his temple, where it was believed that he visited them in dreams. My understanding is that the rest and attention given to the patient were part of the cure. I don't know the details, but I imagine reclining on a couch, eating grapes, and listening to the dulcet tones of a flute playing softly nearby. Perhaps a massage before dinner, then a bath in the healing waters, and a pleasant night's sleep on a cushioned and draperied bed, followed by a late breakfast and consultation with the resident healer, who looked like Dr. Joe Gannon.

Actually, I did have a curtain, and I did have a chair, although I couldn't get it to recline. It takes more imagination than I can summon to transform those clinical surroundings into an Asklepion temple, and I'm very glad I didn't have to spend the night. I have a feeling there wouldn't have been any flute playing. But as glad as I am to have been able to walk out on my own steam (which is really the main thing), it would have been nice to have a little nurturing. A cup of hot tea, perhaps, or a pat on the arm. Modern medicine recognizes the emotional impact of an event such as mine, as evidenced by the instruction sheet I was given that explained the possibility of feeling depressed or anxious afterwards. But there was little in the way of any therapy for the soul, any milk of human kindness (a bit of chocolate wouldn't have been amiss, either).

Of course, there's one last player in this event, and that's the ambulance whose approach started the chain of events. You may be struck, as I was, at the irony of being put in the emergency room by stopping for an emergency vehicle. I'm sure this isn't the first time it's happened, but since it happened to me, I'm trying to make sense of the scene. Was the ambulance simply a blind agent of Fate? Was it Apollo, carrying some other unfortunate in far worse shape and in dire need of healing? Since it was the sound of the siren that made me stop, it's tempting to compare it to the Sirens who made the sailors crash on the rocks (after all, the result was similar). Possibly, it was some combination of all of these. There are usually multiple stories involved in any situation, not just the one that seems obvious.

If this had been a movie, I would have been able to dissect it with some of the intellectual precision of Apollo, but since it's real life, it's a good deal messier and not as easy to interpret. Is there a theme? Were there heroes? Were there villains? Is there something to be learned? And just where was Asklepios when I needed him? The sum of what I know: An accident happened; it was a hassle. However, I did not lose my temper, despite a trying circumstance. And that's something (thank you, Athena).

The aftermath is that I'm doing a lot of walking for the time being. Good for the soreness, good for the soul, and a bit less stressful than entering the fray of traffic just now. I wrote a book called Solved by Walking, so I guess I'm following my own advice, though I didn't have this circumstance in mind when I called it that. No matter: whatever works.

The Mountain Is High, The Valley Is Low

We've been mourning and remembering a friend we lost this week to cancer. I had known him since the '80s; he was the partner of a long-time friend of mine. I can't remember exactly the first time I met him, but I think it was here in Lexington when my friend was visiting and brought him along. Since that long-ago day, I've had many visits with the two of them, both here and in the various places they've lived together.

We all enjoyed walking, talking, and eating, and spent a lot of hours in those pursuits when we were together. It isn't often you come across people that you feel that in tune with, and our conversations were always wide-ranging -- anything from philosophy to the right way to make an omelet to urban planning (sometimes all in the same chat). It's hard to say goodbye to someone you've hashed over the meaning of life with, especially someone as gentle and kind as Jot was.

On the day of his cremation, I came up with an impromptu memorial service to try to honor him in a manner I thought he would approve of. It started with playing the song "Everett Ruess," which I know he loved, and which could almost have been written about him: he had much in common with that other artist, dreamer, and free spirit. I went to my book shelf and found Thich Nhat Hanh's Old Path White Clouds, a life of Buddha. I decided to open it at random and read the first thing I saw, which turned out to be the Buddha's explanation of the Four Noble Truths. I kept going back and pulling other books from various traditions off the shelf, sometimes seeking out remembered passages and other times just skimming the pages for inspiration. Sacred chants, philosophical passages, poetry, music, readings from the Bible . . . by the time I'd finished, two hours had passed. I think Jot would have liked most of it.

In the midst of all the sorrow, I've been thinking about what a remarkable, irreplaceable thing a human soul is. Life and death are a great mystery to us all, but it seems to me a waste for the world to give rise to such a beautiful thing as a human spirit, only to take it back into a void. I want to believe that the spirit lives on somehow, in a way we don't completely understand, and I hope that is the case.

One of my most vivid memories of Jot is of the day he and I went for a long, long walk in San Francisco's Bernal Heights. I was big on printing out walking tours from the Internet and enlisting my friends to go along with me when I was visiting. On this particular March day, several years ago, it was just Jot and me. It was sunny and warm, almost hot; I had to roll up my sleeves as the day progressed. It was an ambitious walk, up some pretty steep hills, and the directions weren't all that easy to follow, which meant a lot of deciphering and backtracking.

Fueled by pastries and coffee, we had set off to conquer the Heights, not quite realizing how long a walk it was. It was off the beaten track, not involving any famous sights or tourist attractions, just a lot of houses, staircases, hidden paths, public gardens, and confusing streets. It was very maze-like but rather pleasant. We'd get hot and out of breath, rest a little, and then move on. There was no rush and nothing in particular we were trying to achieve other than finishing the walk. I remember seeing a small snake in a garden at the top of the hill, crossing paths with a mailman multiple times as he went on his neighborhood rounds (probably shaking his head at us), stopping often to consult the map, sweating, and, at last, admiring the view from a park at the top.

Jot took my picture up there, with the Golden Gate Bridge visible behind me, way off in the distance. It remains one of my favorite photos of myself and somehow captured what I think of as my best, true self -- smiling, adventurous, and quite present in the moment. On the way down the hill, we came across a small playground, and Jot took another picture as I was coming down the slide. I look sort of silly, but it was that kind of a day.

After a three-hour walk, we were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves. I said jokingly to Jot that since we had been to the top of the mountain, people were going to ask us what wisdom we had gained while we were up there, and we'd better think of something to say. He seemed doubtful at first, then thought about it for a minute and said, "The mountain is high, the valley is low." Then he chuckled.

Well, there's no arguing with that. And that kind of encapsulates Jot, a person who was willing to climb steep hills just for the fun of it, find joy in simple things like a modest wildflower or a meandering conversation, and then poke fun at himself at the end of the day. I didn't realize at the time what an enduring memory that day would become, but when I think back on it, how free and easy it all was, and how bright the sun was shining, I'm grateful for the impulse that led us to climb that hill just for the heck of it. And for a companion who never questioned the value of so much walking with no particular place to go.

Easter Mystique

Easter is usually a fairly quiet holiday for me, and this one was not an exception. It rained during the early part of the day, but I was charmed to see sunlight slanting through the kitchen blinds in the afternoon while I sat at the table. In Kentucky, you can literally see any kind of weather on Easter, from snow to near-summer conditions.

I baked some lemon cookies in the shape of eggs and have been enjoying those, but what I really wanted was an Easter basket. I suppose I could have made one, but it's really not the same thing as believing in the Easter bunny and waking to find he's left one for you on Easter morning. The funny thing is that I never even liked some of the candy in those baskets. It didn't seem to matter, though: the charm was in the belief, the magical appearance of the basket, and all the bright trappings of spring that came with the package.

The baskets we got were almost always the same. They were covered with plastic and filled with shredded plastic grass, among which were nestled one fairly sizable chocolate bunny (hollow), several chocolate-covered marshmallow bunnies, a package of jelly beans, and small chocolate eggs, individually wrapped in pastel foils. There was a mass of stubborn tape attaching the candies to each other and the basket. The chocolate bunny often had a slightly waxy taste and was too much to finish off all at once. I never liked the chocolate-covered marshmallows, but like any self-respecting kid found it hard to bypass them -- or any other kind of candy. Unlike the treasure trove that was a Halloween catch, Easter candy was usually gone in a day or so, ephemeral as the season itself.

Easter candy tended to be almost too sweet, and other than the solid chocolate eggs, wasn't that great, but somehow the whole thing was more fun than it should have been. I can still remember the way the baskets smelled, that combination of chocolate-infused plastic grass and essence of jelly beans, and the innocent joy of believing that there was such a creature as the Easter bunny. Actually, the last time I received an Easter basket, I think I had figured out where it was coming from, and so the wonder was a little less, though I still enjoyed the basket, which consisted of a plastic bucket and included a small shovel perfect for digging in the sand at the beach. (That was the only time I remember getting a Florida-themed Easter basket, on what I think was our last Easter in Florida.)

If I were going to put one together for myself, I would put in some Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs, some Mint Meltaways, a Cadbury egg or two, some gourmet chocolate bars with flavors like orange, sea salt, or raspberry, and maybe some jelly beans just for color. That would be enough sweets to nibble on for several weeks, and the candy would all be superior . . . but I still don't think it would match those Easter baskets of long ago. It's nearly impossible to reproduce certain experiences in which the mystique elevates very simple elements into something that defies explanation -- and beginner's mind has something to do with it, too.

Cogito Ergo Sum, and Then Some

Does a novel about philosophy sound like fun? To me it does, and that's what made me first pick up a copy of Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World years ago. It took me about a month to read it back then. I recently picked it up again and have been reading a little bit of it each day. I was curious to revisit the book in the light of my more recent studies in philosophy to see how it would strike me this time. It's as much fun as I remember, but I still find it's best taken in small doses. Long passages of the book consist of lectures on the great Western philosophers given by a professor to a 15-year-old girl. While entertaining, it's still a lot to digest.

The structure of the story is ingenious. A young woman begins getting mysterious notes from an unknown person asking her questions like "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" The notes are followed by letters expounding on those questions and explaining what the great thinkers of each age have made of them. The notes and letters turn out to be the products of a professor named Alberto Knox, who has unaccountably taken an interest in Sophie's philosophical education.

At the same time, Sophie begins getting cards addressed to another 15-year-old girl named Hilde, whose father, stationed with a UN battalion in Lebanon, has for some strange reason decided to send his communications to his own daughter through Sophie. The philosophical quandaries addressed by everyone from Plato to Freud take on a life of their own as Sophie and Alberto slowly come to grips with the problems of their own existence and the nature of their own reality.

A talking dog, storybook characters met in the woods, a magic mirror, and questions about free will, God, parallel existences, and just whose story it is anyway are all mixed up in this adventure. It wouldn't work as well as it does if the author didn't have such a good sense of humor and the ability to carry off a lot of philosophizing with a light and easy touch.

One thing that's always amazed me about philosophy is the way any given philosophical stance can come across as absolutely convincing on its own terms -- until you read the next philosopher, who refutes the argument you just bought and makes just as convincing a case for his own point of view. Gaarder plays with this cumulative nature of philosophy, having Sophie fall in with the arguments of each new thinker Alberto introduces her to until the next one in line neatly overturns his predecessor. Sophie and Alberto's conversations are not unlike Socratic dialogues, although Sophie, a pretty sharp thinker herself, sometimes anticipates the weaknesses in arguments and is always willing to express her own spirited viewpoint.

One good thing about waiting so long to re-read a book like this is that you forget exactly how it ends. I remember the finale has a twist and a flourish, but I don't remember what form that takes, so I'm looking forward to the last chapter. Right now, I've got a little over a hundred pages (a sixth of the book) to go. I don't anticipate ever writing a novel about the history of philosophy, but if I did, I would hope it's as lively as this one.

National Geographic and Me

Yesterday was a nice day in the neighborhood, with spring warmth in the air, buds just about to burst on every tree, and patches of dark grass poking up here and there. There's a flower or two already blooming as well. So it was kind of a shame that I had to spend several hours trying to log into my Genographic 2.0 results (sponsored by National Geographic, folks). Yes, my genealogy research has yielded some fruit.

I wrote a bad review of the Genographic 2.0 product on Friday, and yesterday I got an email that my results were ready. I don't know that there's any cause and effect there, since I'd already been told to expect my results any day. I only wish I'd waited until yesterday to write the review so I could have added that after four months and an unprecedented problem at the lab that required starting over again with my DNA, I had to face a website that just couldn't seem to accommodate a log-in request.

The "Who Am I?" section of my results included the statement, "We are all more than the sum of our parts . . ." I submit that National Geographic, with all its resources, experts, and technology, has been, in this case, somehow less than the sum of its parts, having issues with not only quality control but also customer service and web technology.

I don't care if I turn out to be descended from Zeus: it's hard to feel that it's been worth the trouble, and I don't know if I'll ever change my mind about that. I'm reminded of those psychology experiments I studied as an undergraduate, in which the subjects think the study is about one thing, while unbeknownst to them, the researchers are really after something else. You just think you're here as part of a social interaction experiment. What we're really studying is how much aggravation you'll take before getting up and walking out.

I would have preferred never feeling that I had to do this research to begin with, but when you have questions, it's best to look for answers.

Fortunately, I had the sense not to fight with the Genographic website all day long. I went for a walk and then treated myself to dinner out. When I got home, I struggled with the site for a few hours before getting in and putting the information together bit by bit, in between bouts of getting locked out. So far, there's nothing surprising. I'm in haplogroup H1m1 (same as my cousin), and my profile reads 43 percent Northern European, 36 percent Mediterranean, and 19 percent Southwest Asian. This closely matches the overall population profiles for Britain and Germany. There was no mention of Ireland in this, but they may be lumping Ireland in with Britain.

There's a lot to read on the website about the science of DNA, and I spent last night and today letting it sink in. I haven't studied genetics since high school biology, but it really is fascinating. One of the interesting facts I uncovered is that our family has Neanderthal ancestors (1.4 percent in my DNA), a not uncommon result. I have a slightly lower amount (1 percent) of Denisovan DNA. I don't know much yet about the latter, and apparently that aspect of the science is a bit tentative.

Of course, I know about the double-helix structure of DNA, the twin spirals. Some researchers take issue with attempts to relate the spiral to a labyrinth, but the forms are alike in their inexorable circular movement toward a center. Unlocking the history of my DNA has been a little like moving through a labyrinth. Ultimately, though, it's probably like that for everyone, because the branches and paths of family lines are often surprising. You don't always know what's around the bend with ancestry research.

Now that I have my DNA results, I'm looking forward to tracing more recent connections on the family tree. There are several avenues for doing this, so I'll probably end up trying more than one path. OK, now things are starting to look a bit more like a maze. Fortunately, I have a little experience with those, too.

Is This a Labyrinth I See Before Me?

Last week I got the news that I'll be presenting a paper on the labyrinth later this year. It'll be my first chance to expand on the work I did in my dissertation and show how it's relevant to society. Labyrinths seem like kind of an arcane subject until you start to wonder why you still see so many of them today. When I say "labyrinth," I'm talking about the ones you encounter in churches, parks, community centers, and other places that are variants on the medieval design and look something like this:

There's been a resurgence of interest in labyrinths over the last 20 years, which accounts for the number of new ones that have been installed all across the United States as well as in other countries. I'm interested in the history of labyrinths and mazes, how and why they reappear in different forms over time, and what meaning they have for us today (which is not necessarily the same as what they meant to people in the past).

Labyrinths go back thousands of years and didn't always look like the one pictured above. There are variants on the design even now, and what's really interesting is the fact that such an ancient symbol still fascinates people. And labyrinths are not just for looking at -- they're for walking in. They're often placed in locations associated with contemplation or meditation -- churches, hospitals, gardens, or cemeteries -- and the setting may be secular or non-secular. So what is it about this design that draws people to it?

I think the labyrinth has a double nature that says something about the dilemma we find ourselves in as a society, at least here in the United States. We're a nation that celebrates the rugged individualist, the pioneer, and the self-made man or woman, but we have come together to form a union. Our democratic processes require that we all participate to make things work, from taking turns at jury duty to turning out to vote. So there's a tension between the individual and the greater good that's never fully resolved. We hold the rights of the individual to be sacred, but we also cherish the idea of "E Pluribus Unum" ("out of many, one"). We're different from many countries that have always believed that the communal takes precedence over individual rights. That's not our way.

In thinking about the visual impact of a labyrinth, I'm struck by its resemblance to a mandala, which Jung considered a symbol of wholeness. You might argue that the maze, which represents a variety of paths and alternatives, is a more fitting symbol of the way we live now than the labyrinth, and I agree, up to a point. But when something is out of balance -- perhaps the tendency for individuals or groups to move in separate directions grows too strong -- another symbol, like the labyrinth, rises from the unconscious as an answering archetype. I think that's what's happened over the last two decades, as the country has grown more diverse and, in the case of politics, more highly polarized.

It's not as if we have to choose between the individual and the community; our society is based on the belief that they serve one another. The labyrinth integrates the opposing forces in an elegant, harmonious fashion. It has a single, highly circuitous path representing a common road that's experienced in many idiosyncratic ways. The heroic, individual path is seamless with the shared path so that there's no contradiction between them. In this way, the labyrinth suggests a way out of the conflict between individual rights and participation in a democracy. A person engaged in the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness who remains true to something greater than himself finds he was part of the larger story all along.

There were individuals who helped popularize the labyrinth with their own enthusiasm and explorations into its meaning, but the movement wouldn't have taken hold if the labyrinth hadn't struck a chord with many people. If you're curious, it's easy to find a labyrinth to explore; there are hundreds or thousands of them in North America alone, and unless you live in a remote area, there's probably one nearby. If you're interested, the World-Wide Labyrinth Locator (a joint project of Veriditas and The Labyrinth Society) is a great resource. Just put in your city, state, postal code, or country.

And remember, it's solved by walking.

The New Hysteria

It used to be that going for a walk or spending a couple of hours at Starbucks was a routine undertaking. No more! The best way I know to describe it is to say that there just seem to be a lot more people -- everywhere. It's like the worst-case scenario of how overpopulation might someday force us to live.

Take yesterday, for instance: an ordinary, damp Thursday, the last day of February. I wrapped myself up in coat, hat, scarf, and gloves, and for a change of pace, took a ramble through the neighborhood instead of the park. Since it was mid-afternoon, gray and chilly, I figured I'd have the streets to myself. It's a pleasant neighborhood for walking, bounded on one side by a wooded area and filled with an eclectic group of mid-century homes. There's generally not a lot of traffic, just birds, stately trees, and quiet houses.

But what had gotten into everybody yesterday? As I cut through the hospital's back parking lot and headed up the first hill, there was a whole procession of cars climbing the rise with me. As I turned left onto the next street and descended a gentle knoll, I continued to see traffic, and it only increased the farther I went. I had to look at my watch a couple of times, wondering if I had mistaken the time. Normally, traffic picks up on these back streets at 4:30 or so, and it was well before then. I couldn't imagine what so many people were doing in such a quiet residential area in the middle of the day. It was like a full-fledged passeggiata, but with cars instead of people.

I can't count the number of times I've been walking in the Arboretum lately and had to stop and wait for someone carrying on a loud conversation to go on past. One of the pleasures of walking in the park is to enjoy the birds singing, listen to the wind in the trees, and hear yourself think -- or so it used to be. It wouldn't be so bad if people didn't seem so aggressively determined to share what they have to say. I was recently on the path behind the garden, strolling toward the bridge over the hollow place, when I heard a young woman coming up behind me yelling breathlessly into her phone, "And then, I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO!" I had to step off the path, contemplate the trees, and count to thirty until she was out of sight. Another day, I had to sit on a bench and pretend to be tying my shoe while another woman, who seemed determined not to pass me no matter how slowly I walked, carried on an energetic conversation about blood thinners. I sat and soaked up the sun until she disappeared.

Then there's the local Starbucks. I've spent many hours there, studying, reading, or writing, and it used to be that you expected it to be busy only on Saturdays and Sundays. The crowd is usually a combination of regulars, students, and people from the neighborhood, which is a fairly mixed demographic. Lately, however, it has taken on more the frenzied atmosphere of a cocktail party at full tilt rather than the cafe feeling of days past, complete with ear-splitting conversation, immoderate laughter, and people who seem desperate to engage your attention. You almost have the impression that Andy Warhol is going to show up any minute. Or Truman Capote. Someone like that.

I'm not dogging myself. For a middle-aged girl, I've held up pretty well. But when I tussle my MacBook, power cord, and iced coffee into the only available seat to find myself nose to nose with a stranger looking like a slightly creepy version of Michael Fassbender in Jane Eyre, who apparently has nothing to do but send come-hither signals . . . well, I just start to wonder, that's all. You just don't meet Mr. Rochester in Starbucks (or in elevators or concert crowds either; he's a fictional character).

The next time I sat in that corner, I kept noticing a young woman in an adjacent chair, playing with her hair and staring at me. In both cases, it was just too, well, weird, and I had to get up and move.

On another occasion, I had to endure the carrying voice of a local radio personality who had apparently decided to call everyone he knew while waiting for a dinner companion. One of the rules of engagement seems to be that if someone is going to have a loud conversation, they'll have it directly across from me and make eye contact as often as possible. I notice that a number of people besides me still come into Starbucks with books and computers, and I can only surmise that they've been working mightily on their powers of concentration.

I'm not sure what's up with all these noisy, aggressive, in-your-face people, or why there seem to be so many of them. Maybe it's a form of temporary insanity. It's rather like being in a crowd of cawing, competing crows with bad manners and no concept of the indoor voice. I'm hoping the flock will suddenly take to the air and fly north for the summer . . . I believe there are plenty of wide open spaces in the Arctic. In the meantime, there are always ear plugs.

What's in a Weekend?

O for a Muse of fire.

I started a new book this week -- this time, it's a novel. It's a story I've tried to write before, without success, but this time, having already written another book, I may be able to bring it in for a landing. I now know that doing something daunting one time can be enough to break up your mental reservations about what you are and aren't capable of for good. Actually, that's one of the themes of the book.

It's not exactly true to say this is my first novel, because I did finish one during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) about seven years ago. That was my first novel, and if it wasn't stellar (or even remotely publishable), it was a fun exercise in creativity. With only a month to work in, your fingers really have to blaze to meet the deadline, and the speed is freeing in and of itself. There's no time to edit, ponder, or second-guess. Whatever comes into your head is what ends up on paper. It's a great way to show yourself that you can produce a story with a beginning, middle, and an end, but it's very unforgiving as far as allowing you an "out" if you start down an unproductive plot line.

I'm intrigued by limitations. Haiku are my favorite kind of poems to write because I like having to get it just so in a few simple words. My new novel has a built-in limitation in that it tells the story of a single weekend. No tortured, extended Proustian remembrances here -- my challenge will be to try to relate how one weekend can change your life, even if it does so in a different way than you imagined it would. That's another of its themes, the disconcerting experience of looking for one thing but finding something else that may in the long run be more valuable.

Patience, ambiguity, the seizing of the moment, the fallibility of the heart, truth, illusion . . . all of these play a part in my story. Actually, it may be more of a fable, something you can read in less time than it takes the described events to unfold. I'll play with it and see where it goes. Unlike some other stories I've started in the past, I already know the ending of this one. I've sometimes thought that not knowing where a story is going can be one of the most exciting inducements to write it, so that you can find out what happens. I think there are times when that's true. This time, though, having the plot sketched out lets me concentrate on how to tell the story, which to me, in this case, is a much more interesting prospect.

Ian McEwan's novel Saturday, which tells the tale of a series of game-changing events occurring in the course of a single day, comes to mind as a literary example of how much life a single day can hold. As I recall, it revealed how a number of seemingly inconsequential events led to completely unforeseen and devastating consequences. A bit of an existential nightmare, that one, but very well told. Mine will be more light-hearted than that and deals with intentionality instead of chance. Rather than leave you shuddering, I hope to leave you smiling.

So far, I've enjoyed the writing. As always, the process of putting things into just the right words is exciting, frustrating, painstaking, difficult, and liberating. I may be at it for a while, but this time there's no rush.

After the Valentines

I like Valentine's Day, but in my opinion, it's more fun when you're a kid. Remember those days when you made Valentines out of paper, glue, and cut-outs for everybody in your class? I do, and in all honesty, it beats any Valentine's Day I've had since then by a wide margin. There was something so innocent about giving and receiving those cheerful red and white handmade cards -- everybody was your Valentine! This was before the boys and girls started to dislike each other as they did from fifth grade until puberty.

In that forgotten time, the battle of the sexes extended mainly to the boys chasing the girls around at recess with giant insects in their hands (in South Florida, where I lived then, big bugs were easy to come by). Nobody seemed to mind it too much, and relations remained civil afterwards. Everybody called each other by his or her first name; that unpleasant habit of last-name address didn't start until later. So what went wrong?

There is something very poignant about the days of hormonal awakening, puppy love, and first crushes, but dang it if things don't start getting complicated then. I don't know how young men see it; I can only speak from my perspective. A host of previously nonexistent problems swim into view in those years, including self-consciousness, insecurity, unrequited love, and acne. How much better it seemed for all to play together freely without being divided by gender lines or competition. And how much better, too, to define yourself in your own terms, to be sufficient unto yourself, rather than mooning over a boy who barely knew you were alive. Or, once you did land a boyfriend, to be worried about keeping him.

I've noticed how much I enjoy stories that feature young heroines in that magical, mythical time in which they remain free and answerable to themselves, battling dragons, solving mysteries, going on fantastical journeys, or just being who they are. I've written a story like that myself. I wish there was a way for girls to hold onto that freedom; it still seems to me that it's easier for boys to retain their independence without defining themselves primarily as someone else's partner, parent, or helpmate.

I'm all in favor of marriage under the right circumstances, but I would never want to give up my ability to enjoy my own company and my own thoughts. I'm good at cooperating but not at being told what to do. And I've seen firsthand how many people still seem to regard an unattached woman as an anomaly, a problem to be solved. That's changing, and it can't change soon enough. An unmarried man with any graces at all is considered a catch; an unmarried woman, even an accomplished one, is often considered wanting.

If you want to see a movie that captures the freedom I'm talking about, see Benh Zeitlin's Beasts of the Southern Wild. The young heroine, six-year-old Hushpuppy, resides with her father in a mythical landscape seemingly outside of space and time, although they live in southern Louisiana. Hushpuppy goes to school, but she, and all of the people around her, live a wild, dreamlike existence anchored in a natural world unconcerned with convention. They live and die by their own choices, and although their lives might not suit everyone, they're rich in imagination, self-determination, and joy.

While watching the film, one is hard-pressed to imagine Hushpuppy growing up to become ordinary. You want her to remain extraordinary, because that's what she is. I think we all start out that way, and for a while, before the pressures to conform set in, we're allowed to be like that. How wonderful it would be, in spite of hormones, careers, the need to grow up and pay taxes, home ownership, and parenthood, not to put a time limit on that independence of spirit . . . for anyone.

Look, Hortensia: A Jogger!

Yesterday, like the day before, was sunny and warm: a day that cried out for strolling in the park and soaking up sun. I put on my walking shoes and headed to the Arboretum, where dozens of like-minded people and dogs were already taking the air. No sympathetic magic was necessary yesterday; the people I saw running in shorts and Ts were dressed more appropriately than I was in my turtleneck and down jacket. The sun smiled down, and the air was nearly balmy.

On such a day, I sometimes enjoy just sitting in the sun, idly watching the clouds float by. That's what I was doing yesterday when Apollo showed up. At least, that's who I think it was. I was ensconced on a bench in the middle of the park, meditating on sunshine, when I heard the noise of an approaching helicopter. We see a lot of medical helicopters coming and going around here because of hospitals, but they normally have little reason to visit the Arboretum. This one flew overhead lazily and landed in the field across the street. Thinking some visiting dignitary might emerge, I watched to see what would happen. Either no one stepped out or I missed it, and after a couple of minutes the helicopter took off again.

I mention Apollo because he's the god of science and reason and, by association, aeronautics in general. You really sense his presence when you're around airplanes or walking through an airport, with the superstructure of a soaring atrium above your head. I guess when he's in a certain mood, he might take to a chopper. That seemed to be the case yesterday. It was a plain, dark helicopter that you couldn't see into, perfect for a god traveling incognito, except that it kind of stuck out in the bucolic suburban setting. Every neck was craned skyward as the helicopter proceeded to slowly circle a small area of the Arboretum, coming back at least three times to cruise slowly over the trees.

I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. It doesn't seem like Apollo, after all, to fly so close to the ground, directly over a park with so many people gathered below. A new kind of scavenger hunt, maybe? There are no wild mustangs in the Arboretum, so it couldn't have been a roundup. Maybe it's now legal, with the right permit, to hunt chipmunks from the air. Or maybe rich people now pay to fly over the famous LFUCG-UK Arboretum as they do the Grand Canyon, marveling at the staring locals below.

Feeling it was not really safe to sit below a rocking, nearly stationary helicopter, I got up to walk around some more. The helicopter finally flew away, leaving the blue sky and sunshine intact. Thinking it over on the way home, I decided it might be worth calling the police to see if anyone else had reported the incident or knew anything about it. I was told by the dispatcher that she had "just come on duty half an hour ago" and "didn't know what was going on" but that if that many people had been there "someone must have reported it by now." But when I asked if I could add my name to the report, she said there was no report. Then she said I should have reported it while it was happening. Hmmm. I thought someone was keeping tabs on public airspace other than random citizens, but I guess I overestimated official interest in oddly behaving aircraft.

Not feeling quite reassured by this conversation, I hunted around online for the number of the nearest FAA office. I called them today and received a call back from a gentleman who seemed pretty interested in the presence and behavior of a helicopter flying so low in a crowded area. He couldn't give me any conclusive answers but asked a lot of questions, took my report, and said any further sightings should be called in, too.

So there you have it. Be on the lookout for any random helicopters, especially if they seem to be flying low enough to knock you off a bench. If it were the end of a play, I guess we might suspect a deus ex machina, except no one descended, and nothing was solved, as far as I know. I still like my theory about the Grand Arboretum Tour but can't understand why it's necessary to get quite that close for views of scrubby grass, mothers with strollers, and middle-aged writers. Haven't these people ever heard of binoculars?

So Much Chocolate, So Little Time

I was reading a travel magazine in Starbucks yesterday afternoon when suddenly the memory of the late, lamented European Travel and Life popped into my head. I subscribed to it for the last few years of its publication, and it was a magical experience every time I found it in the mailbox. It had glossy pages, beautiful photographs, and great writing, and it even smelled good (due, I think, to perfume samples in the ads). I had gone to Europe with friends in 1989, and reading the magazine was a way of extending the experience.

On our trip, we did nine countries in three weeks, starting and ending in London. We stayed in small hotels and boarding houses listed in Frommer's Guide to Europe on $30 a Day and largely relied on the guidebook's recommendations for places to eat. Traveling light as we did, we were able to see and do a lot for a modest amount of money. We did not stay in the glamorous spots European Travel and Life depicted so lavishly, but we saw a lot of great art, relished street life and people watching, took in the sights, and sampled chocolates all the way from Germany to Geneva.

I kept a travel journal, stealing moments on ferry crossings, train trips, and the waiting rooms of bus stations to scribble down impressions, but even without looking at it I can call up images and remember tastes and smells. Sometimes it's the little things, small scenes glimpsed along the way, that stay with you, for whatever mysterious reason.

From a bus window, on the way to Dover, I saw a West Indian woman walking down a crowded East London street in the late afternoon. Her colorful clothing and dignified posture made her stand out in the gray light and drab surroundings like a rare flower. I remember the blue sweater my friend was wearing during a tedious ferry crossing to Oostende that night and how mysteriously several hundred passengers seemed to melt into thin air in the station at the other end.

I remember how cold the light was in Belgium that morning, how foreign (and daunting) Amsterdam and all its brick houses seemed when we arrived, and how very steep the stairs were in our hotel, not far from Anne Frank's house. A man walked by on the street that afternoon as we came out of a cafe whose face--intense, bearded, and thin--could have belonged to Van Gogh. A sandwich of simple bread and cheese on the train to Berlin was a revelation, as was the ease with which many Europeans spoke graceful English, even when they downplayed their ability.

A hammer and chisel for extracting your own piece of the Berlin Wall cost seven marks to rent, and the faces of the guards were extremely stern at the crossing between the former East Germany and the West. I recall my first sighting of someone wearing lederhosen and an alpine hat (in Munich) and the taste of hot chestnuts purchased from a street vendor (in Salzburg). I recall watching the sun go down behind snow-covered mountains as the mists rose over the lake and Salzburg lay at our feet like a fairy-tale village.

I remember how deep the snow lay around the town of Fussen as we walked up to Neuschwanstein with plastic bags on our shoes in lieu of boots; there were swans in the river as we walked through the town. We headed down into Italy, hoping for warmth, and stayed in a pension that had formerly been a monastery, with a shower in the middle of the room. We climbed Giotto's Tower to goggle at the Tuscan countryside, straight out of the background of a thousand Renaissance paintings. I tasted my first espresso in a small cafe and was impressed by the effortless style of the Florentines we encountered on the streets.

I remember peering out the window of our train compartment as we crossed the Alps, glimpsing some high and distant peaks in the dawn light. I remember how the grayness in Geneva made the mountains invisible, but the city itself was clean and prosperous. I recall little of the French countryside that sped by on the fast train to Paris (being distracted by an assortment of Swiss chocolates probably explains the lapse), but I can easily call up Paris's wide and elegant avenues. I loved Montmartre and the small, bustling place where we had dinner on a narrow street. Sacre Coeur was eerie by night, but the steps that led back down into the city were magical under the streetlamps.

I remember how unfamiliar Tavistock Square and Bloomsbury seemed to me once we were back in London, though I had spent half a summer there only six years previously. It was as if I had never been there. I recall the taste of naan in the Indian restaurant where we had dinner with a new friend, and her stories of traveling alone in Greece, shared over dinner, that made her seem so adventurous.

The next time I go to Europe, I hope I'll have as much fun as the last time. I've done a lot of traveling around the United States in the intervening years and had forgotten, until something glimpsed in Afar triggered the memories, just how exciting 1989 was, with all of the planning and dreaming that went into that European adventure. With a few versatile wardrobe items, light baggage, a Eurail pass, and an open mind, you can really get around. There's no place I have been that I wouldn't go back to, and there are so many unexplored destinations to anticipate. And at the end of it, you can always come home again.