Before...

Before my daughter, Kate, was born, twenty-three years ago on this Saturday, January 23, I went out for one last hurrah. It would be a long time before I'd be traveling solo for quite a while. A friend and fellow writer, Dan O'Brien, who lived on a ranch in South Dakota invited me to visit. I recall little of where I slept or what we ate except that conditions were rustic. And Dan lived on this vast, seemingly endless expanse of plain.

I once spent a fair amount of time in the West, riding, traveling. And I had a certain nostalgic, and I'd have to add romantic, notion about what the West was. Or what it had been. For a time I fancied myself a free spirit and I would have just hopped on a horse and ridden across the plains. But that was behind me now. I certainly wasn't going to get on a horse, given that I was seven months pregnant. Instead I walked.

For days I walked around Dan's ranch. His ranchhand, Ernie, was there and the two of them enjoyed regaling me with gruesome farm and ranching stories, then would laugh their heads off as I winced. Dan had a hawk named Dolly. He wrote a book about her. He would take her out and I'd watch her fly. It was a lonely time for me. I wanted a baby. But I was having her alone. And I felt very alone at this time. The future was full of doubt. I didn't know where we'd live or how'd we manage. I had no idea what to do with a baby (I would soon learn).

But there was no turning back now. Still I felt as if my life was suddenly going to be divided into two halves. Before and after. And I knew that nothing would ever be the same. Friends had warned me not to have a child. One told me that my life would never be my own again. Just that past year in '86 I had gone from Beijing to Berlin by rail - a journey of several months. Basically around the world. Now I thought I was grounded. I'd never go anywhere again. My head was filled with these fears.

One afternoon when Dan and Ernie were out doing chores, I went for a walk. I had my camera with me and, as I was roaming, feeling a little sorry for myself, I came upon Blackie - Dan's horse - standing alone in this golden field, before a storm came. It was this beautiful magical moment and something settled over me. I felt that everything would turn out all right. The next day I returned to New York. This is the last image I took before Kate was born.

The Kindness of Strangers

Having just spent a little time in Key West, it is difficult not to think of Tennessee Williams who lived here for many years. In fact the legend is that he and Carson McCullers wrote together on the same long dining room table. As Tennessee once said, "I can write anywhere, but I write better in Key West."

I was just down in KW, visiting a friend, who told me that I should bike by the old compound where Tennessee lived and also find the house with the pink door, called The Rose Tattoo House - probably my favorite Williams play and a great Brando, Anna Magnani film. Whenever I go to Key West, I go to the butterfly conservatory. I seem to be going down once a year and once a year I make it a point to stop here.

I'm not entirely sure what the allure is for me. I have to get there at 9 a.m. to avoid the cruise ship tourists. And it's a kind of New Age, touchy-feely place, but I love it. I love seeing the faces of children when a butterfly lands on their shirt. And, well, I love butterflies. I always have.

When I was a girl, I had a small science lab in my bedroom where I kept my rock collection, my assortment of plants, and insects. The insects I collected in jars usually for a day or so. But once in a while I got a caterpillar and once, as I recall, a monarch butterfly actually emerged from a crysalis I'd watched all winter. My parents, who didn't pretend to understood my fascinations with the natural world (and it was always changing) had the good sense to nurture it.

For gifts I received a microscope (where I examined blood I drew from my poor brother) and various samples of quartz. And my South American butterfly book. I couldn't put that book down. I studied and read everything I could get my hands on. But the morphos, those magnificent blues, entranced me the most. And they are everywhere in the KW conservatory.

This year I did my usual thing - arriving at 9a.m. Always alone. I sit in the gazebo and draw and write, but then after a while I started to walk around. I came up a sculpture of blue herons in a small pool and wanted to sketch them and, as I did, two morphos landed on my journal and stayed as I drew. I took a few snaps with my cellphone, but a lovely young man, named Markos Alexandrou, took the pictures I am posting. It was very thoughtful of him to do this.

This is one of the things that I love about traveling. That a perfect stranger will do a simple act of kindness. I realize that the original use of this phrase (in Streetcar when Blanche, as she is escorted away to the asylum, addresses the doctor and says those famous words - how she has always relied on the kindness of strangers).

But the truth is strangers can be kind. I can think of no better reason to tour the world than to prove that this is so. The butterflies stayed on my journal for a long time. In fact I wound up walking around with them on the book until they flew away. But it was one of life's little blessings and I am glad that Markos took these pictures and recorded the moment for me.

Moving through the World Like a Child

The other day I was thinking about how to help my students write in scene. Some of them put things that happen before they really happen. For example, "On the steps stood Marjorie Cooper" even though the narrator has never met Marjorie before and can't really be sure yet that this is Majorie since he/she hasn't been introduced.

I was trying to think of a way to help my students think about the scenes they are writing and help the writer to see and experience the moment as the characters see and experience in. Then I thought that the best way to write narrative, and also to travel, is to move through the world like a child. With a child's sense of wonder and surprise. To move as if you've never been somewhere before, even if you've been there a thousand times. As if you are experiencing everything for the first time.

This is actually something that my husband has often said about me, and not always in a complimentary way. Every village we travel through, every painting we see, every meal eaten. It is as if I've never done these things before or been to these places.

This summer when we were living outside of San Sebastian in a little fishing village and big boats would float past our living room window. Every time a boat went by, I shout to my husband, "Look, a boat!" It didn't matter how many times a boat went by, each time I was enthralled. And truthfully so was he.

So I was thinking about how to help my students and it came to me that this child's sense of wonder if a very good way to be a writer as well. To allow yourself as a writer to still be surprised, to walk into a room as if you've never walked into that room before. To meet a person as if you are seeing them for the first time.

Recently in the news I read the strange case of a man who could form no new memories. While I wouldn't envy this man, I do think it is an intriguing notion to wake up each day afresh, to do everything as if you've never done it before. I think it is that child's sense of wonder that makes for good writers and good travelers.

And, after all, children are people who are able to live very much in the present, unplagued by thoughts of the past or concerns for the future. Perhaps that's really the thing about travel - for me at any rate. It allows me to be in the moment, present, wherever I am. As if I am six years old again. And I am happiest when I am there. Tomorrow we head to Montreal. A place we've been to many times, but I'll see it with fresh eyes as if I've never been before.

Blue Heaven

Blue Heaven is just my favorite place to eat and hang out in Key West. Love their breakfasts, their lunches, their drinks and the cats and the chickens and the inspirational message on the paper dispenser in the bathroom (The Magic is In Your Mind)and the rumors about Hemingsways boxing ring and the funny shower. But mainly love the food and everyone is nice. Also tried their new place on Higgs Beach - Salute. I feel as if I'd been dropped somewhere in Italy, maybe the Amalfi Coast. Loved it. Go. Enjoy!

Inner Maps

On Sunday I flew down to Key West (where it is the coldest is has been since 1919). I've been here many times for short stays - maybe six or seven. I was down last year as well. The first thing I do when I land in Key West is rent a bicycle and I spend my days, when I am not writing, peddling around.

But when I arrived on Sunday, it was as if I'd never been here. It was a very strange feeling. I couldn't remember the roads, the houses, the restaurants. I couldn't remember anything. But slowly a kind of internal geography took over. I remembered that the bike shop I like to rent from is at the intersection of Simonton and something.

As I walked in that direction, I felt this inner map forming inside my mind. I started to know where things were. The bike shop was at Simonton and Truman. The butterfly conservatory at the end of Duval. Hemingways house on Whitehead. Then peddling along the ocean I saw a sign for Vernon Street and took it because I knew I'd lived at the base of it when I came to KW one year. And right beside it was Louis' Backyard, a restaurant that brought back memories of one very wine-sotted night. After an hour or so a place that had at first seemed unfamiliar returned. It had taken shape in my mind and I remembered where everything was.

It is the same with faces, isn't it. We walk into a restaurant and someone looks familiar. A face takes shape in our minds. We recall five, ten years ago. This person was a neighbor, the boyfriend of a friend. And suddenly a world of memories comes up around this face. You recall everything (a meal shared, an argument never resolved) and you decide to say hello. Or look away. With places I like to say hello. Slowly it seemed.

At home behind a couch we have a large plastic bin and in it is every map for every place I think I've ever been. I keep them all here and when we are heading somewhere, anywhere, I go through that bin. Prague, Montreal, Palermo, Guanajuato. My mother used to joke when she'd see me looking at maps. "Oh, oh," she'd say, "she's going to travel again." And she was usually right. I'd get restless. My legs would start to roam.

Today in Key West it is very cold, but I'm going to bike around all day. There's an old fort I like and I want to go through the old Bahama part of town. Maybe stop for lunch at Blue Heaven if it's not too cold to eat outside (which it probably is). I'm not taking a map with me. I don't have to. It's all inside.

from Tennessee Williams...

"I can write anywhere, but I write better in Key West."