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Wind-Whipped Walk

Wind-Whipped Walk

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On Friday, ahead of what I’d heard would be a snow-stormy weekend, I took a brisk walk around Lake Audubon. Well, not exactly around, but as far as I could go. 

The wind had already picked up, and it was moving across the lake, creating patches of sunlight on the water that glimmered and moved with the wind.

I was wearing my warm black parka with the faux-fur-lined hood, which kept me warm but hampered movement, so I wasn’t skittering ahead as quickly as I usually do. But I was comfortable and meditative and feeling energized by the wind in my face. 

These are the moments that gladden the lives of walkers everywhere — or at least this one. 

For Mayfield

For Mayfield

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I heard about Kentucky when good friends wrote to ask if my brother was OK. I checked the news then and learned of the horrible tornadoes that ripped through the country’s midsection. So this post is a lament: it’s a cry of solidarity for the residents of Mayfield, Kentucky, a town I’m embarrassed to say I had never heard of until Saturday, native Kentuckian that I am. 

At first, I thought it was Maysville that had been hit, a river town near where some of Dad’s kin were born. But no, it was, as I often say about Kentucky towns whose names I don’t recognize, “in the western part of the state.” And it truly is there, close to both Tennessee and Missouri, more midwestern than southern. Dawson Springs is there, too—another town hit by the deadly twisters. 

I keep thinking about the folks in the candle factory, perhaps some of them working an extra shift since it’s Christmas time and they could use the money. I think about the malls where those candles might be sold. Do we need those candles? Not really, but yes, because the residents of Mayfield need those jobs. 

It could have been any kind of factory, though. And it could have been any place. But it was in Kentucky, so my heart is even heavier. 

(Dark clouds outside of Nicholasville, from my August trip to Kentucky)

The Concert

The Concert

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It had been a while since I sat in a concert hall. There was Wolftrap last summer, always fun, but open-air, even when you have seats. 

Last night was the whole experience: the Kennedy Center itself, the approach and the entry, picking up the tickets, walking down the long hall, and then, in the hall, the chandeliers above and instruments tuning below. There were the black ties and tails, a hush when the lights went down. 

And then, there was this young man with a clarinet, swaying with it, bending with it, reminding me of James Galway on the flute, that same elfin charm.

The clarinetist, Lin Ma, played the Mozart Clarinet Concerto as if he was born to do it, so softly in parts of the Adagio that I felt myself lean toward the stage in order to hear it better. When he finished, the audience leapt to their feet.

Last night’s concert was not only all Mozart; it was all late-vintage Mozart, every piece written in 1791, the last year of the composer’s short life. And it ended with this: bliss. 

Coming Home

Coming Home

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When you live somewhere a long time, as we have, you become settled. Even in a place that I originally feared was placeless, you find the firm ground, the sticking places. You join a book group that people leave only when they move out of town — and even then, some of these people return and rejoin.

Yesterday, I became a “re-joiner” too, meeting once again with a writer’s group that welcomed me eight years ago but which full-time job, family responsibilities and logistics (this is a Maryland group and I live in Virginia) made impossible.

Now the full-time job has fallen away and the family responsibilities have lessened, and there I was yesterday entering yet another funky old Italian restaurant a few blocks away from the one where we met years ago. 

Once again, there was the company of writers. It felt like coming home. 

Scott Hotel

Scott Hotel

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Only time for a short walk yesterday, but I had a destination in mind: the Scott Hotel, once owned by my grandfather and great uncle. Mom and her family lived at the hotel intermittently through the years, sharing quarters with the horsemen and the tobacco farmers in to sell their crops. 

The hotel was right across from the Southern Railway Depot, a natural place to stay for a night or two if you were in Lexington on business.

It was a less likely place to house three young daughters and a son. But these were different times, harder in some ways, easier in others.

The hotel is abandoned now, has been for years. It stands in mute testimony to those long-ago lives. 

Olmsted in Kentucky

Olmsted in Kentucky

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I learned through weekend wanderings that famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted once turned his attention to my hometown. 

He and his brother, as the marker explains, had a hand in designing Transylvania Park, where the lovely Lexington Library once reigned; Ashland Park, where I spotted this sign; and Woodland Park, one of my favorite haunts.

It doesn’t surprise me. These places may not be the Chicago World’s Fair or Central Park (two of Olmsted’s more well-known accomplishments), but in them the built and natural environments work together. They have a beauty and a presence — a  sense of having always been there.

Feast for the Eye

Feast for the Eye

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A walk this morning before the rain moved in: tall grasses swaying, leaf piles growing. I love to walk in Lexington because, at least where I stroll, no two houses are alike. 

Some are traditional, others contemporary. Windows are mullioned or plain. Doors arched or square.

Chinquapin oak leaves litter brick sidewalks, and a ground cover I’m not familiar with froths around the base of a tree.

The variations are a feast for the eye and a balm for the brain.

In Kentucky

In Kentucky

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I drove to Kentucky yesterday, following the new route through the mountains. For the first few hours, I took in the late-fall color on the gleaming hillsides. But by early afternoon, I had driven into the predicted cold front. 

Dark clouds gathered above the huge windmills, and strong gusts sent leaves swirling and scudding across the highway. The rain started when I was at about 3,000 feet, lightly at first, then heavier by the time I reached the interstate. 

It was not the bucolic drive I had in August, when I stopped to admire the mountain views. This was a no-nonsense-just-get-me-there kind of trip. 

And it worked. I pulled into the driveway just as the last light was draining from the sky. 

Immersed in Van Gogh

Immersed in Van Gogh

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“I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.”

Vincent Van Gogh

The Van Gogh immersive experience begins as soon as you walk in the door and are greeted with a wall of sunflowers, or, I should say, a larger-than-life Van Gogh-like depiction of them. A few steps away is a bust of the painter that morphs from black and gray shadows to the swirled blues and lavenders of his flowers.

You pass a re-creation of the room at Arles, complete down to the washstand and window and hat hanging from a peg on the wall. Take a photo of the room and you’ve created a masterpiece.

There are videos on the artist’s life, his hospitalization, self-mutilation and eventual suicide. And there is music: Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, something by Debussy, others I couldn’t place, all soaring and emotive.

But the best is saved for last, when you walk into the final gallery and find yourself a part of the paintings. You stand or sit or recline on the floor while the art comes alive around you, pages slide off easels, stars explode in the night, and a hundred sunflowers bloom against a lapis lazuli sky. 

Dancing in the Streets

Dancing in the Streets

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I read this morning of the return of 26 pieces of history from France to Benin. The return was celebrated with dancing and singing and general merriment. There were thrones, statues and other artifacts, all taken by France from what was then its colony of Dahomey, all of them finally home after more than a century of exile.

Since some of my family hail from Benin, this is big news. And since I’ve been to that wonderful country, I have a small sense of what it must have been like to see the big truck pull up, the decorated horses and riders escorting it to the presidential palace, the jubilation of the people.

There are plenty more looted treasures to be returned, and it sounds as if Benin is fighting for those, too. But for now, for one small country tucked between the Sahel and the sea, there is dancing in the streets. 

(At the Voodoo Festival in Benin, January 2015)