My Writings This Month
Admittedly, a bit slow this month. At least I managed a bit of variety - here’s a summary:
My review of Tolstoy’s classic novel, and regarded by many as the pinnacle of realistic fiction. It’s a work both entirely Russian yet also modern, because of the depth Tolstoy brings to his characters, and how he develops them as the world they know crumbles beyond recognition under the social reforms of the late 19th c. Although Tolstoy reputedly hated the novel by the time he finished writing, Anna Karenina is one of the great modern classics.
I had no idea what to expect on sailing into the port of Nagasaki. Shoreside greetings around Japan are always an exuberant affair, and this was no different with bedecked cartoon characters greeting me as I stepped ashore. The town itself was a delight, with tourists in the minority. From the taxi driver who spoke no English but made a few detours to show us the sights, an exquisite knife shop, and the gardens which inspired Madame Butterfly, Nagasaki was well worth the visit.
What’s not love about Florence? Especially when I stayed in an apartment where I could brew my coffee and watch the San Lorenzo markets come to life each morning, then of an evening watch the swallows come home to roost against the colours of sunset.
Then there was the classic Italian clothesline hanging out the window - how could I not use it?
On another site, I visited Singapore’s famed orchid gardens, looked over the roofline of Prague from my window, and exploring a forgotten temple in the jungles of Cambodia.
Plus I also ventured into the world of diaries and notebooks using my photos (this photo shows sunset in the Maldives.)
Maybe more next month, but I’m currently finishing my next book of poetry. Go me!
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An elderly matriarch walks through walks through her kitchen garden in the Tuscan hills, carrying her sketch book. The morning mists swirls around her, but soon they will fade and it will be time for the Spring Offering.
The mist muffled the day. It lay over the light, holding captive the cold air of dawn, until under the warmth of a late morning it would become nothing but a chill memory. Spring was still a few weeks away, and for a while longer winter would hold the hills captive. The valley below her was a world of grey. A tangible, moist grey, which flowed and ebbed with the centuries. It came with its own remembrances, damp with clinging. Of journeys to places where there was no winter, of the magic of coming home. Of lying warm abed with her beloved whilst the bells called. Of being young.
In another time, in a Venetian palazzo, a lord fumes on learning a priceless statuette, of an Etruscan goddess, has been stolen. He knows her worth, but remains ignorant of both her history and the power of her beauty over others.
Waves of cold anger flooded the room, spilling into halls where servants hid in the shadows, pretending not to hear. The wrath spiralled down the marble staircase and into the spacious receiving hall, made a few twirls under the candelabra then past the imposing tapestries hanging from the walls. It pushed through the heavy wooden doors and onto the chaos of the street outside. There it searched for a horse and rider who had fled through the night and continued now by day, splattered by the foam of exhaustion.
As the mists of the morning fade, the two times and places overlap, and the goddess returns to the light of the world.
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