have trowel will travel

it's that time of year when persephone heads underground.


wrong season, say you? doesn't persephone spend winter in the underworld, when the crops wither and die?


not this persephone.....she heads underground following the academic and not agricultural cycle. when school's out, digging begins.......




and so i am traveling to points east. but before i head to the dig in greece i am traveling to see an old friend who has asked me to visit for over a decade.......a friend who lives in a relatively new country amidst an ancient land where i haven't been in over 25 years. 

as i get ready to go, i trip over clothes, scattered all over the bedroom floor. electronic junk. lug soled work shoes. trying to pack for 5 weeks.


one thing i am taking for sure:

my favorite book of all time. i have been saving it to re-read and this is the perfect opportunity. 


what is up with all the post it notes, you might ask?

this is a book about obsession and i am obsessed with this book. few writers have captured greece for me that way john fowles has - few have captured the mysteries of life. each post it note was highlighting a sentence or paragraph that moved me, such as this:

None of the books I had read explained this sinister-fascinating, this Circe-like quality of Greece; the quality that makes it unique......in Greece landscape and light are so beautiful, so all-present, so intense, so wild, that the relationship is immediately love-hatred, one of passion. It took me many months to understand this, and many years to accept it. 

i removed 58 post it notes. as i am rereading the book during this trip, i want to start from scratch. to savor it, like any great obsession.

today i head off into the sunset. laptop in hand, i say thank goddess for skype (to keep connected to my family.) i will be posting as often as i am able....and leave you with these words:


Something had been waiting there all my life. I stood there and I knew who waited, who expected. It was myself. I was here and this house was here , you and I and this evening was here and they had always been here, like reflections of my own coming. It was like a dream. I had  been walking towards a closed door, and by a sudden magic its impenetrable wood became glass and I saw myself coming from the other direction, the future. 


This is dedicated to Erin and to Robin; one who meets herself in dreams and the other, my Fowlesian 'twin'.