Aftermath - Octber 31, 2012

Now that the winds have died down, we have had a chance to survey the damage.  And it is horrific.  Hard to even begin to describe what it looks like around here.  And we did not get hit with any surge.  The images of the shores, of downtown Manhattan are shocking.  Taxis underwater, subway tunnels flooded and filled with sludge.  Streetlights not working.  And death, tragic deaths. 

I realize this isn't a journey, per se, but it is what has happened in the world beyond the four walls in which I'd spent much of the past three days - cozy and warm, watching the news, annoyed by the storm, and not really understanding all that was happening.  I was lucky.  We were lucky.  I don't know what else to say.  We walked outside the morning to see much of the landscape around us altered, forever changed.

These images show what has happened to the trees near our house and in Prospect Park where we were this morning, despite police patrolling, telling us to leave.

The image above is the street next to ours, Garfield.  Below this huge tree was one of our favorite as we entered Prospect Park.  Others are in the park and one on the street - an enormous tree that fell between two cars, crushing them.
Two years ago we lost a thousand trees (I believe that's the number) to a tornado.  And now this.  We have more light, less shade, and less beauty around us than we did four days ago.

The Writer and the Wanderer - in Italia!

Nice write up here on the blog in Italian Vanity Fair.

http://www.vanityfair.it/viaggi-traveller/notizie-viaggio/news/2012/10/30/come-diventare-travel-blogger-di-successo

Thought for Today - After the Storm

"I don't understand anything.  Life is so strange.  I feel like someone who's lived all his life by a duck-pond and suddenly is shown the sea.  It makes me a little breathless, yet it fills me with elation.  I don't want to die.  I want to live.  I'm beginning to feel a new courage.  I feel like one of those old sailors who set sail for undiscovered seas and I think my soul hankers for the unknown."  - from The Painted Veil, Somerset Maugham.

The Donkey's Mouth

 At the end of the perfect day Anna, Paola, Nicola and I, plus dog whose name I can't spell, went to Boccadasse - a former fishing village which is now a part of Genova.  The name means the donkey's mouth, and a local told us that's because the beach is shaped like a donkey's mouth, though I didn't see it.  Paola had her own theory that dated back to the 14th century and involved beasts of burden but we couldn't quite follow it and anyway she was making it up - brilliantly I might add.  Anyway Boccadasse.  Very gentrified, very beautiful.  This little haven right in the middle of the city.  This was after our pesto lunch.  And finished with the best gelato I've ever had.  Perfection doesn't happen that often.  So glad I got to enjoy it, however briefly, with such wonderful new friends.

Tangled Up in Blue

Pestle, Presto, Pesto

Today I'm hunkered down at home, waiting for Hurricane Sandy to hit, but a week ago I was with friends in Genova, eating the best pesto I've ever eaten in my life.  I'd gone to Genova for the Travel Blogger Elevator 2012 conference where I spoke on my blog.  I'd saved a few days for myself.  I'd planned to go around the area, travel perhaps to Portofino or La Spezia.

 Instead I liked Genova so I decided to stick around.  And my friends, Anna, Nicola, and Paola, along with Paola's dog whose name I can't spell, met me at the Piazza de Ferrari.  I thought we were going to be heading right to Boccadasse - a nearby fishing village.  But they had other ideas. 

They wanted to have lunch at il Genovesse where chef and ower Roberto Panizza, founder and judge of the International Pesto Association, was said to make some of the best pesto in the world.   In fact I was told that if we were lucky he might make it right at our table.

When we got there, Roberto greeted us.  And, alas, we weren't so lucky because he didn't have time to demonstrate the making of pesto.  He apologized profusely.  He was very busy and he had just done a demonstration.  He wished he'd known we were coming.  But there is something I've learned about Italians - something that endears them to me even more.  They often say that they can't do something.  It's impossible.  They wish they could.  They hold their fingers to their chests, lamenting their inability to please us.   And then they do it anyway.

Thus it was with Roberto.  He was very busy.  He didn't have time, but he did the pesto demonstration anyway.

First he brought out the mortar and pestle and an assortment of ingredients that he'd put in his pesto.  This included pine nuts and garlic from a particular region in Italy.  Vessilicca.  It had to be garlic from Vessilicca.  He ground these, removed them.   

Next he smashed basil (a lot of basil) with extra virgin olive oil, blended it with parmesan cheese and a special smoked Sardinian peccorino (had to be from Sardinia). 

And then voila.  The pesto.  Tasted it.  Couldn't quite believe how good it was.  Roberto suggested we ate it with gnocchi which we did.  The rest is history, including the fried milk desert, and various wines, and a chestnut soup that I thought I would die over. 

Shadow Travel

Yesterday at an airport in Paris I heard an employee inform a traveler that she needed to take the next shadow.  "To get to Terminal 1, you must take the shadow."  It took me a moment to grasp what she was saying.  Clearly you must take a shuttle, but I prefer the idea of taking a shadow.

After all in New York we have Shadow Traffic.  A lovely expression if you think about it, really.  Given that to shadow someone means to follow in a surreptious way.  There is also a delight in shadows.  One can't help but remember Peter Pan's problems with his shadow and his need to have Wendy help him by sewing it on.  Or one of my favorite childhood poems that I can still recite from memory.  Robert Lewis Stevenson's, "My Shadow," from a Child's Garden of Verses.  "I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me and what can be the use of him is more than I can see." 

The notion of a shadow as a form of transport appeals to the child within me.  When we think our shadows are real or that they are following us.  When we try to hide from them.  This leads me to the idea of Shadow Travel - journeys to the dark side. Why should we only see the spectacular and the beautiful?  Why not the ruble, the dirty, the underside?  I like to think of the shadow world as the one where the wild things are. 

So, after having spent almost twenty-four hours in airports, in taxis, and airplanes, the idea of taking the next shadow appeals to me.  Perhaps we could even hail one as we do a cab.  Perhaps it is a flicker of memory, a way to travel back to the past, or a hint of things to come.  If we take the next shadow, where do we end up?