visit-SWAZZILANDThe Republic of Swazzi (note the double Z) is vast and quirky place located entirely in my head. In modern technical parlance, it’s actually a blog. But the powers that be (me, myself, I) think that blog is a frumpy, unpoetic little word, far too closely related to blah. So, in accordance with Swazzi Imperial Edict Number 001, Swazzi has been designated as a First-Class Imaginary Realm.

It’s a nation! It’s a republic! No, wait. It’s an empire! (Because this means that yours truly gets to be Empress-for-life.) Yes, a sovereign state and a benevolent dictatorship, Swazzi is a mental travel destination with a ton to offer the discriminating brain tourist/reader. So, in conjunction with the Swazzi Tourism Association, we cordially invite you to visit The Republic of Swazzi today!

PS: The exchange rate is great right now, so you can visit all our most fabulous attractions, stay in six-star accommodations, and enjoy the finest of treats—all for less than the cost of a cup of nothing at home.

Your Swazzi Travel Guide

Swazzi is unique among countries, because it’s not geographically fixed. It’s a travel-loving republic, so it’s often on the move. Wherever Swazzi may currently be in the world, it’s a good idea to check out the map before you venture forth. (The natives are notoriously bad at giving directions.)

Swazzicutin volcano, in the north of Swazziland

Swazzicutin volcano in southernmost Swazzi

Swazzi’s Northern Territory is home to the Ministry of Philosophy and Cogitation. Folks up North are more introspective and prone to thinking Medium-sized and Big Thoughts. Locals think it’s because of the cooler weather and the strong coffee, grown on the slopes of the Swazzicutin volcano. As the saying  goes, “There’s nothing like cloudy day, a cozy sweater, and a hot cup of Swazzi Dark Roast to bring on the Big Questions.”

Conversations often stretch late into the night, tackling conundrums (connundra?) such as: What is the meaning of life? Where do we go from here? and Who’s picking up the check? As well as compelling contemporary issues like Starting Over, Midlife and Other Crises, Surviving as a Single Women over 40, and the Egg vs. Emu debate. Incidentally, Northern Swazzis are also the biggest consumers of aspirin in the land.

The Eastern Territory is home to our biggest city, Swazzitropolis, also our thriving center for the arts. Overseen by The Ministry of Culture, the region is especially known for its photography, fiction, literature, and wordplay in general. (The yogurt is pretty good, too.) The famed Swazzi Lecture Series features visiting dignitaries and guest contributors from all over the globe. Book reviews, too!

On these Eastern shores, creativity is revered, along with strong black tea and black clothing, and there are three bookstores and two museums for every citizen. Less favorably, in East Swazzi, there are 6 single women for every single man, and 18 women for every sane, mature, responsible man who doesn’t live with his parents. Not surprisingly, these are the empire’s greatest consumers of chocolate and quirky foreign films.

South Swazzi is under the general, generous guidance of the Ministry of Travel and Horizon Expansion and the NAA (National Adventure Agency). Lowland valley dwellers are famous for tall travel tales, saddle sores, and jet lag.

The most mobile of Swazzinos, Southerners collect more passport stamps than the all the other provinces combined. The beaches of Southern Swazzi are celebrated for their white sand, warm water, and wanderlust. It’s also where you can get the best food, from Sopapillas to Falafel to Nasi Goreng. Their motto is “See South Swazzi and See the World!”

SwazziLand Blog World's FairLastly, in the Western Province lie the Steppes of Swazzi (home of the Great Swazzi Veldt Lion & Unicorn Sanctuary). Under the purview of the Swazzi Storyteller’s Guild, the region is famous (’round these parts, anyway) for personal essays, musings, and the occasional rant. (Also for herds of wild miniature horses and the manufacture of delicate, fanciful blown-glass tchotchkes, which don’t necessarily combine well.)

The vineyard-covered province’s other main export is a velvety Merlot-Cab blend with a tangy swazziberry bouquet and a peppery finish. (Second largest consumer of aspirin.)

Getting there: Pack your mental bags and hop on board: www.Swazzi.com

Swazzi Airlines reminds you that you may bring as much baggage as you like, be it emotional, on wheels, or both. There are no fees for checked bags, the in-flight meals are ample and excellent, and cocktails are free on days that end in a Y.

You don’t need a visa—just an open mind and a sense of humor. (In a pinch, a fondness for the bizarre will do.)

Swazzi Trivia:

Full name: The Republic of Swazzi

Motto: Unumquodque possibile

Primary Languages: English, Absurdity

Flag: A saluting emu in aviator sunglasses on a field of gold.

Coat of Arms: An emu and a lion dancing the tango, on a field of fuchsia and gold checks.

National Movie: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai

National Anthem: Sung to the tune of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai theme song

National Mascots: Albert Einstein, Buckaroo Banzai

Demonym: Swazzino/a

Currency: Swonders

GNP: 1,321,345 weird ideas per capita

Literacy Rate: 120%

State Sponsored: Schools, public transport
and chocolate

Largest City: Swazzitropolis

Time Zone: UTC+13.25

big blue ocean

The Gulf of Mexico, yesterday a turquoise mirror, is feathered with whitecaps this morning. I’m shimmying ungracefully into a clammy, slightly smelly wetsuit. It’s too tall for me, giving me a neoprene spare tire. I tromp awkwardly down to the dock, where a motorboat bucks violently in the choppy water. I climb aboard and am forcibly seated as it speeds off. Apparently, we’re in a hurry because the wind’s picking up.

At an isolated buoy in the middle of watery nowhere, we do the falling backwards off the boat thing. It’s all very spy movie, but instead of combing the unstable horizon for bad-guy speedboats, I’m wondering: what the hell was I thinking?

On a lark, my friend Kris and I splurged on a package vacation to an all-inclusive resort near Cancun. A touristic paradise where the ocean is so smooth and blue that it looks fake, like the painted sea in an architectural model.

After one too many free margaritas, Kris convinced me to take the beginner’s SCUBA course offered by the resort. Certified years before, she’s a dive fanatic. “You’ll never forget it.” She promised as she sipped, raising her eyebrows meaningfully over the salty rim.

She’s right. I won’t forget it. Mostly because, as much as I adore the sea, I only trust it as far as I can touch. I am terrified of deep water. And yet, here I am, far from shore, breathing canned oxygen, struggling to get my mask on. When I get it on, the experience is even more disturbing. The water line sloshes up and down in front of my eyes, and yet I am breathing air. It just feels wrong. We are humans, not fish; we don’t belong here. 

big blue ocean

The big (deep) blue. Photo courtesy of KConnors

Scuba Doo School

At least I was trained—yesterday, for four entire hours. Now, as one of five heads bobbing in the big (deep) blue, I wish I had taken dive class more seriously. My classmate Joe and I were strangers on vacation, at school in a resort. After a couple of hours of lecture, we dressed up as divers and played in the pool. We made Darth Vader jokes, did the elbow shark fin thing. Ha ha.

We did learn some fun stuff, like regulating your vertical position with your breath: inhale, float up, exhale, sink. How to do the squid: let your flippers do all the work while your arms trail unnaturally beside you. And, of course, we learned the diving thumbs up.

Scuba diver doing thumbs up in the ocean

The scuba thumbs up. Photo courtesy of Star5112

Carlos, our handsome young dive instructor, spent an inordinate amount of time on the thumbs up. Over and over, we “practiced” this—the signature gesture of drunk frat boys and the Fonz. Repeatedly, Carlos interrupted our pool scuba play to ask the silent thumbs up question (Are you OK?), to which the silent answer was: thumbs up (Yes).

Of course, I’m OK, I thought. We’re in a pool and the water’s four feet deep. But Carlos doggedly insisted, earning increasingly goofy, exaggerated thumbs up.

Out here by the bobbing buoy, there’s Joe and me, Carlos, and two cocky, impatient guys—actual, certified divers—who came up from Cozumel, where diving was cancelled due to high winds. While Joe’s looking wan, the divers appear a bit too avid, as if they plan to rob us once we’re underwater.

Carlos checks our tubes, gives last minute advice. Again, with the thumbs up? I obediently lift my opposables out of the water. I’m OK, already! The diver guys are so supremely OK, they’re jumping out of their second skins.

But Joe, he doesn’t look so OK. He’s not upping his thumbs. The instructor shouts over the wind in broken English: “Make up jor mind, Yoe, or we’ll all get seasick bobbing around here.”

The power of suggestion.

As I watch Joe vomit, I think, absurdly, Oh, the current will carry it away. Then I’m treading water in a cloud of shredded chicken and cheese and tortilla bits. My next thought: He had the chilaquiles for breakfast. Carlos lets out a piercing whistle and the boat roars over to pick Joe up. Decision made.

Wow. I am literally swimming in vomit. But before the thought has time to turn my delicate stomach, I catch the pro divers’ faces. Grinning and leaning towards me, they’re just waiting for me to freak out. That does it. I tighten a mental belt I didn’t know I had and give them an aggressive thumbs up. They lean back. Carlos asks again. Six skyward thumbs.

We’re good to go.

Going Down?

Slowly, we begin to sink into the deeps, thanks to our weighted belts. After ten or so feet, my wetsuit gets way too tight. Something cold and slimy creeps into my stomach: fear. I try to deny it, as I’ve been taught by countless motivational posters and protein bar ads.

Fear is for cowards, not for me.

Back in scuba class, Carlos had said a random, weird thing: “You may feel like you want to take your mask off.” I had rolled my eyes. Now, as I glance at the quicksilver surface further and further above me, something in my head snaps. Ice water floods my chest, flattening my lungs. My heart swells until it’s about to explode. I can’t breathe!

Of course, I’ve felt fear before. Rattlesnake. Car crash. Burglar in my house. But all that, I realize, was nothin’! This is the biggest, most all-encompassing terror I’ve never imagined, coupled with a single, irresistible, implacable urge—an absolute imperative: to rip off my mask, in order to stay alive, twenty feet under the surface of the vast, inhospitable ocean.

It made perfect sense at the time.

We’ve stopped descending, and Carlos is doing underwater charades. He looks at me. Freezes. My eyes must be giant, fish-like, panicked orbs. In an instant, he’s beside me, staring into my mask, asking the thumb question: You OK?

Huh? I think. (I’m usually quite talktave. Only panic makes me monosyllabic.)

You OK? He wiggles his thumbs, like maybe I can’t see them.

I will be, just as soon as I get my mask off so I can breathe. Now, where are my arms?

Are you OK? His thumbs are now an inch from my mask.

Ok? Am I? That’s a good question. Let’s see…

Carlos’ eyebrows have popped over his mask. His thumbs are now yelling: ARE. YOU. OK?

Am I OK? I look at the divers as if they can answer the question for me. In tandem, they roll their eyes with a complete and utter lack of compassion. With that, a plug is pulled, the freezing liquid in my chest starts to drain, and the urge to unmask myself passes. Rationality bubbles in: Guess what! I’ve been breathing this whole time. Go figure. Next thought: Jerks!

Somehow, their mockery breaks my paranoid terror trance and some semblance of logic returns. (Well, as logical as one can feel, breathing underwater, several yards below the surface of the ocean.) I give Carlos a belated thumbs up.

His eyes scrunch in a smile, and we set off into a dream.

Breathing Underwater

scuba diver breathing underwater

breathing underwater (with the fishes)

Squidlike, we glide effortlessly in and out of undersea canyons, past graceful turtles and prehistoric-looking king crabs, through kaleidoscopic clouds of darting, shimmering fishes, flying through a forbidden fantasy universe of coral castles and technicolor sea creatures. For a little magical while, I am free as a fish. Free of gravity, buoyed simply by the air in my lungs, hovering in supreme, exquisite, silent beauty.

And, I get it.

I get now why the divers so resembled junkies looking for a fix. And why Kris talked me into doing this. (I even forgive her.)

Later, as we speed back to the resort, the big, strapping diver men are shivering like mad, but I’m not cold. Quite the opposite. I’m tingling all over—radiating heat, energy, and conquered fear.

Funny thing, fear: like vomiting, it’s not voluntary; like breathing underwater, it’s not always rational; and, like snarky diver dudes, it’s not always the enemy. Sometimes fear is there to keep us from harm. And sometimes it’s an invitation to truly live. As the boat races over the bumpy sea, I sit right up front on the bow, facing into the wind, grinning like a maniac.

I am so very, extremely OK.—Part of our Adventures series…enjoy!

Join in! What was your peak fear experience and how did you overcome it?
Herald Article Gonzalo

Miami Herald, Mexico Edition —

A profile of a San Miguel native’s return to Mexico as head chef at a historic local hotel.

Herald Article Gonzalo

 

Text and images, Françoise Lemieux

 

Casita de las Flores, before remodeling

or How to Start a B&K (Don’t Try This at Home)

What a trip!

Once upon a time, eleven years ago, in a land sort of far away… a dusty, overheated and traumatized (Mexican roads) 12-year-old Nissan Pathfinder rattled into the yet-to-be-fully-discovered town of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

The car, more tan than red at this point, lurched to a stop next to the (then only) Pemex gas station on Ancha de San Antonio, the main drag. Muffled sound emanated through the closed windows, and the attendants in their green coveralls looked at the car sideways…is that a cat howling? Is that women arguing?

“I’ve just got to stretch my legs!” I shouted, slamming the door and stalking away. A few deep breaths in the nostalgic noise and fumes of Mexico, my childhood home, calmed me (oddly enough).

My temper was frayed, to say the least, after three days cooped up in a car with:

• My mother (very cranky)
• My cat (also cranky)
• My two large dogs (good sports, really)
• Blurry childhood memories
• Absurdly high hopes
• No idea whatsoever of how to make a living in Mexico.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

A few months and three days earlier, I had started packing up 15 years of life, college, work, grad school, and then more work in San Diego, California. I had decided to move back to San Miguel, where I lived as a kid. Where my mother still lives. She kindly came up to help me pack, not realizing it would take more than a month to finish dismantling and dispersing said unreasonably cluttered life.

We set off on a three-day road trip, visiting family on the way. We never drove more than eight hours a day, but it felt like 28. We stayed at whatever strange lodgings accepted pets. Or we snuck them in.

Crossing the line

When we hit the border two days later, my mother got the dogs out of the car for a stroll. The Mexican customs official came over to the open rear hatch of my car, leaned his folded arms on the tailgate, and, lifting the top blanket, surveyed the two-foot-thick mass of densely packed items that lined the back.

The top layer was only a taste of the madness that lay below. An hors d’oeuvre, if you will. Ie: a cast iron frying pan filled with rolled-up underwear. A French-English dictionary the size of a toaster oven. A box of Triscuits (regular flavor). A set of knives, forks and spoons bundled with a rubber band. The base of a cordless phone. A cheese grater with several pair of socks stuffed inside. A pair of folded flare-leg jeans (be kind — it was 2000, after all).

My “baggage” was huge, and deep. It had levels, it had strata, it had echelons, even. My mother, the self-appointed Master Packer, had convinced me that her method was the most efficient. “More stuff will fit without boxes,” she said, wedging my hair dryer next to a framed photo of my father wrapped in two sweaters. “If I just pack it very carefully.”

What resulted was a three-dimensional possession puzzle, like a huge lasagna, composed of my worldly goods — topped off with my bedding and an old dog blanket. Rilke and Buddha, my dogs, rode 3,000 miles to Mexico on top of what was left my life, basically.

As Isolde, my cat, meowled indignantly from her cage behind the driver’s seat, the customs guy dropped the top blanket and put his head down on his folded arms. I just stood there, smiling my best kiss-up-to-uniformed-third-world-authority-figures-so-as-to-be-on-my-way-soon smile. Looking up, he turned to watch my mother carrying on a loud one-way conversation with the dogs as they sniffed at a post a few yards away. Finally, he looked at me.

“You got any guns or drugs in there?” he asked, gesturing vaguely at my lasagna.
“Why, no.” I answered, grinning madly. “Of course not.”
“Bien.” He said, slapping the car as he turned to walk away. “You can go.”

The rest of the trip was pastel (cake.) And so, my mother and I made it home to San Miguel, without getting pulled over into secondary inspection (which, in unpacking and repacking, would have delayed us by at least 12 hours) or killing each other.

How to start a b&b (not)

I wasn’t trying to get rich (not going to happen), but I needed to be able to support myself in the style to which I hoped to become accustomed. So, hourly Mexican wages were not an option. I also had to have time for creative projects (whatever they might be), so a normal, full-time job was equally out of the question. After several months of dawdling around trying to find a non-toxic way to pay for a modest life here, I decided real estate had to be the thing.

Through several strange coincidences, I found a very odd little property in a great, as-yet-ungentrified, older San Miguel neighborhood not too far from the Centro. With five bedrooms, a kitchen, two baths and no living room, the house sat on a dirt rubble “road” (read: riverbed), but it had a second entrance on a nicer street. (Both streets have mercifully been repaved since.)

As often happens when I get excited about an idea, I leapt without looking (at more than one place). I bought my cute little hovel and started fixing it up immediately.

Somewhere during the 3 months that turned into a year of renovations, I had a conversation.
“What are you going to do with it when it’s done?” asked a friend as we poked around the construction site, choking on cement dust.
“Make it a vacation rental, I guess.“
“You’d probably make more money if you made it a B&B.” He said.
And Casita de las Flores was born. (Thank you, friend.)

The Casita (technically not a B&B but a B&K — Bed and Kitchen) started out on the thinnest of shoestrings in 2002. A garage sale fridge, a garage sale stove. Mattresses on tapetes (woven straw mats) on the floor.

The very first weekend we rented was the infamous erstwhile Pamplonada, when 20 or so young people paid to not sleep at my place. (They were very busy partying all night and vomiting in the town square.) Other than a very messy avocado/guayaba fight, the Casita survived their onslaught. (PS: in September, our trees offer you all the free avocados and guayabas you can eat — NOT throw.)

This inauspicious event helped me pay for bed frames, closets, desks, and chairs. For the website, I had to go into hock. Soon after, Casita de las Flores really opened for business.

We started out charging US $20 a night for one person. Less than US $400 for a month. My very first guests stayed before construction was totally done and are now lifelong friends. (I was so happy to have them there. Such forgiving women.) Spring just had her first baby and Tina is coming to stay with me again next month.

San Miguel business school

Of course, I had no experience whatsoever in the field (other than having traveled a lot, and having often been a guest/critic at different accommodations). Business plans are much worse than Greek to me — they’re like math (shudder). My minimal market research, as there was no affordable online hospitality market then, was tooling around on the internet to see if the name was taken. (Since then, the Casita name, website text have been stolen wholesale by a place in Chile, thank you very much. Even some of the pictures! Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, or so they say. Note to travelers: be sure to look up your lodgings on at least a couple of platforms/websites to make sure they’re real.)

But I’ve always felt I knew better than most how things should be done (much to others‘ chagrin), so I figured I could handle it. And I knew in my bones that San Miguel needed a comfortable, accessible place for real travelers to stay. Not some fancy shmancy US $120 a night place, but something even I could afford. A place where I would want to stay. A place where I could have both my privacy and an opportunity for social interaction (a much different interaction from what can be had in an impersonal hotel, a sterile lobby, or a sloppy bar). Those were my guiding principles. That and a love of art projects (none so huge, before the Casita).

Casita de las Flores took a while to catch on. Our first year, earnings were laughable (cryable, mostly), but I kept meeting great people and business slowly grew.

In the first months, we had a particularly difficult guest who complained about absolutely everything. The noise from doves and roosters. The sounds from the high school across the street. The occasional noise from neighbors. The lights’ sporadic flickering. The dust. The breeze. The sun. (Basically, she was complaining about Mexico.) “It’s not as nice as a Motel 6,” she said of the Casita, sniffing, as she left. (The profoundest of compliments, I’ve come to realize.)

As soon as her taxi sped (well, rolled) away, I grabbed my web guy by the collar and told him we were making some changes. I went back into my lovingly designed and written website and dressed it down. I took out all marketingspeak and made things sound less inviting. Consciously working for the frump factor, I spoke of Mexico in all its gritty glorious reality.

Since then, we’ve mostly gotten travelers (a very different breed from your average tourist). These are people who’ve been around. Who know that things are unavoidably different in other countries (that’s actually why they go there.) And who know that finding an oasis of comfort, security, charm, and relative peace in any foreign country, much less a developing nation, for under US $50 a night is not to be sneezed at. They are grateful for my efforts, and I am very grateful for them. My customers and I get along swimmingly now. Mostly. (See Lesson 2).

Build and learn

Back to the shoestring. We started out with a garage sale fridge and stove, and minimal furnishings or decor. Seven years later, we have a fancy newish fridge (time flies) a garage sale stove (still works perfectly), and quite a bit of cute stuff. (But not too much—I hate cluttered decor. The Casita is of the little-known Mexican Zen School of Design.) We make a living. More importantly, we have made tons of friends and family. Even more importantly than that, we’ve learned a lot.

(And the place has changed a wee bit…)

img 17031 The Casita de las Flores Story

Casita de las Flores, after…

Lesson 1: 99% of people are really great (at least in our price range). Oddly enough, this business has increased my estimation of human nature, which wasn’t terribly high nine years ago. Through this very social enterprise, I have met quantities of fabulous people, many of whom are now friends and neighbors. And, thank the modern gods (demons?) of rampant anonymous criticism, the large majority of our reviews have been good ones. Though the occasional malcontent and his/her (snarky, public) bad review still hurts (see Lesson 2).

Casita de las Flores is fortunate to have many return guests who enjoy coming home to us, year after year. (I hope they like the color we just painted the kitchen, and Gayle’s room—I’m expecting some flack. People get attached.) My favorite example: a group of women (three of them named Gail, in various spellings) who met at the Casita years ago returned for a “Casita Reunion” here last October.

It was a time of much giggling.

At least once a month, be it at a party, an art opening, or at the grocery store, I run into a former guest who is now a San Miguel resident. I love this brand of deja vu, and I love knowing that my Casita was their first home in this town. Together, we’ve survived the real estate boom, world renown, the cartel hysteria, the swine flu hysteria, and even (more or less) the first-world media. They are now my men- and women-at-arms, my hairdressers and acupuncturists, my vecinos and compadres.

Lesson 2. You really CAN’T please everyone all the time. Unfortunately, that less-shiny one percent of guests — the ones who are never happy no matter how much you do, no matter how much you give — sometimes seem to outweigh the other 99%. They have made me, on more than one occasion, consider selling the business. But then the 99% moves in again and I feel better, and I keep on.

Lesson 3: Humans are (mostly) sociable animals. Sure, there’s been the occasional fight over cheese ownership (we now have a separate fridge shelf for each room) and we’ve had a few feuds. (The Casita is its own little ecosystem, after all, evolving with each group of guests.) But mostly, people have fun. They befriend one another. They end up having dinner parties and outings and trips together. Sometimes, they even become good friends and correspond with each other, and me, for years. (This whole people-getting-together thing was a huge, unexpected fringe benefit buried within the “let’s start a B&K, shall we?” pseudo-plan.) Of course, socializing is optional. If you simply “vant to be alone,” we’ve got privacy, too.

Lesson 4. It is possible to make a meaningful life outside the box. Ok, Casita de las Flores is not saving the world. (It may be saving my life, however, as I slowly recover from 9 to 5 fluorescent lights.) I’m no Mother Teresa, but, I take my role as a Vacational Therapist™ quite seriously.

Vacational Therapy™

I now know (yes, in my bones) that this “job” is not really a job, and that it’s far from just a means to an end. Ok, so Casita de las Flores makes us a living (nearly every month!), but more importantly, the Casita helps people. Not in any huge, earth-shattering ways, but in small, yet meaningful ways. Having this unusual little nook in which to be at home while not at home helps our guests to make connections—with San Miguel, with fellow travelers, and (most importantly) with themselves. (Often by allowing them to have a moment, or many, to simply be.)

The magical, stress-dissolving hammock

After hours and hours of travel and years and years in the hectic realms of the first world, people often arrive stressed out, exhausted and extremely cranky. They blow in the door, blasting cold first-world anxiety around them, like one guest I’ll call Molly:

“My luggage…it didn’t make it on the plane!”
“My cell phone isn’t getting reception!”
“I left my wallet in the cab!”
“What do you mean there’s no TV??!!!!”

After a few days, it’s a different story

Fast forward two weeks. On a particularly technicolor-blue sky, big white puffy-cloud, birdsong and butterfly day, I wandered out to the patio with my pruning shears. There was Molly, gently swaying in the hammock, lazily trailing her fingers back and forth on the patio bricks.

“Whatcha doing, Molly?” I asked.
“Watching the laundry dry,” she replied.
I smiled, turned and tiptoed away.

Another Vacational Therapy™ success story. Life is good.

Hawaiian sunset palms

Hawaiian sunset palms

A wedding in Troncones beach, Mexico

 

A wedding in Troncones beach, Mexico

Troncones wedding

Day of the Dead crosses and marigolds, Lagunillas, Mexico

Elizabeth Gilbert speaks

Elizabeth Gilbert, courtesy of Steve Jurvetson

I’d scrolled past Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear online, or rather Amazon had thrown it at me (You, you’re the perfect sucker for this, whispered the marketing department.)

I was considering buying it, when I tripped over an interview of the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, by Marie Forleo. (Living out of the U.S. for 15 years has its advantages, like blissful ignorance of the cult of personality going on en El Norte.) I found Forleo’s questions to be insightful, but her continual self-referencing made me squirm. I can only hope her comment about getting a blow out as suffering for one’s art was a (grossy entitled) joke. Didn’t really seem to be, however. Now there’s a whole other conversation to be had, one more about psychology than creativity.

Despite the interviewer’s incipient narcissism, or perhaps because of it, the show highlighted just how down-to-earth, smart, and funny Liz Gilbert is. (She calls herself Liz, and we, her pals, do the same.) So yes, glam girl Forleo made a good foil, an irony I’m sure her highlights appreciated.

big-magic-gilbertBig Magic is not a fluffy self-help book on how to unleash your wildly artistic archetypal/goddess self. It’s an accessible yet philosophical meditation on  fundamentally re imagining your entire relationship to creativity, for very practical reasons. Simply put, Gilbert wants you to revamp your expressive mindset in order to be more productive, yes, but most importantly, to be happier.

Though I suppose it hangs out in that genre, it’s not your average self-help book, either. It contains no exercises, bullet point lists, or case histories. Just straightforward discussion of Gilbert’s views on living a creative life. Nor is it another new age read. She mentions spirituality briefly here and there, but always in a take-it-or-leave-it way.

The writing is grounded, friendly and accessible, as well as direct. No pomposity or grandeur here. Occasionally, it strayed a bit too far into the colloquial for me. Having a very imagistic brain, I did not enjoy the oft-used “shit sandwich” metaphor. These are minor failings in a sincere and original take on creativity, by a serious yet likable writer. And I know how she would respond to my critiques:

“Recognizing that people’s reactions don’t belong to you is the only sane way to create. If people enjoy what you’ve created, terrific. If people ignore what you’ve created, too bad. If people misunderstand what you’ve created, don’t sweat it. And what if people absolutely hate what you’ve created? What if people attack you with savage vitriol, and insult your intelligence, and malign your motives, and drag your good name through the mud? Just smile sweetly and suggest – as politely as you possibly can – that they go make their own fucking art. Then stubbornly continue making yours.”

In the end, I found the book refreshing and inspiring, much like its author. When I finished Big Magic, I wanted to call Liz up to talk about it.

Grab Bag:

Great Ted Talk: Your Elusive Creative Genius

My favorite Gilbert novel: a tie between City of Girls and The Signature of All Things

“Eat, Pray, Love, Get Rich, Write a Novel No One Expects,” NYT Magazine Profile

Committed, her lesser known memoir, an engrossing read and an interesting discussion of marriage. NYT Review.

And Liz even sings, sort of, for charity.

 

search-engine

The Search Engine, artist’s rendering

Picture an elaborate, old-fashioned cast iron contraption about the size of a washing machine, bristling with cogs and sprockets, dials and pulleys. Dormant in the corner until I flick a switch, it’s half Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (you know what I mean: the switch flick releases a hard-boiled egg, which wobbles down a track and bumps into a tottering Rubik’s cube, which tips and falls on a fulcrum, activating a lever that pushes open a tiny gate made of matchsticks, sending twelve green jumbo cat’s eye marbles spinning down a funnel and pinging into a metal Altoids box, whose vibrations upset several carefully balanced tinker toys, which fall in a heap on a big red button and turn the thing on), and half R2D2 (mournfully baweeping and weet-wuuing as it rolls around in tight, neurotic circles, processing, planning, and cogitating over the task ahead).

All warmed up, it comes to life and moves forward, gathering speed and scattering the cats—until it’s a blur in a Samantha Stevens cleaning/meth-head housewife flurry of activity, circumnavigating the house with gears turning, pistons chugging, and bearings bearing, emitting self-referential little clicks and whirrs, beeps and cheeps,
and the occasional puff of steam.

Lights flashing, it shifts into in high gear: picking up and dropping discarded clothing; peering into recipients; rattling containers; shuffling papers; shining light into dark corners; sending probes into pockets, bags, drawers, and shoes; even producing a passable X-ray diagram of the contents of my purse. Until, with a loud whistle blast, it rolls triumphantly over to me, brandishing my keys.