It is over a year since I spent the day with you on your lovely island. I remember it all very vividly… —Georgia O’Keefe, letter to her hosts on Maui FOR A LONG TIME I turned up my nose at Hawaii. The very name reeked of junior-high talent shows where pimpled hula dancers tried to keep their cell...
“She’s still sleeping.” At ten they were “eating breakfast.” And at ten thirty there was no answer. Shopping perhaps. But what if they were shopping all day? What if when they came home they were “eating dinner”? I was never going to get to talk with Trish, to ask her all the things I wanted to k...
All the nouns and adjectives travel sedately in front while at the end of every sentence there’s a traffic pile-up of verbs to sort out. I usually keep my German language skills firmly locked away in the emergency room of my brain, lest the syntax disrupt the smoother highways of French and Spani...
Tourists don’t seem to find it particularly enchanting, or to find it at all, for that matter. Since I was early, I took a seat at an outdoor café and pulled out Lovers and Virgins, but my mind wandered. This morning I’d been completely engrossed. But I had passed into self-disgust and disbelief....
The kind where everyone came in at exactly a quarter to nine, primed on caffeine or good spirits and ready to get down to work immediately, and the kind of morning we were having the Monday after the conference on sexuality. June lolled on one end of the long sofa reading the newspaper and groani...
Squashed between seedy buildings with store fronts displaying objects both useful and risqué, the palace retained its mystery. Gaudí’s architectural marvel opened up inside with rooms that made you feel as if you were in a huge medieval castle. High ceilings fretted with painted wood, long halls ...
Cap. 250) had been around since before WWII and hadn’t changed much in decor, menu or service since then. It had big soft booths you could lose yourself in and capable older waitresses wearing black skirts and vests and white shirts. The cocktail lounge had framed portraits of various canines all...