Delightful Writer – Page 3 – Modern Creative Life

October 21, 2018

Make-Up by Patricia Wellingham-Jones

I stopped with the serious cosmetics –
foundation, blush, powder, all the eye stuff –
as a young nurse working back east
in an old brick hospital,
long wards cooled only by ceiling fans.

When the mask melted
and goo ran down my face,
dripped from nose and chin
to patients’ sheets and bandages
I’d had enough. Hustled to the bathroom
mid-shift to scrub my face.

That’s when I reverted to original skin.
I did keep lipstick, which I still wear
mostly to keep my lips from cracking.
For a long time the eyes
still got their gloss.

After neck surgery and nerve-damaged hands,
mascara, liner and shadow left my eyes peering
as if from a sad raccoon’s face.
I’ve grown comfortable in my own skin,
glad to put the masks away.

About the Author: Patricia Wellingham-Jones

Patricia Wellingham-Jones is a widely published former psychology researcher and writer/editor. She has a special interest in healing writing, with poems recently in The Widow’s Handbook (Kent State University Press). Chapbooks include Don’t Turn Away: poems about breast cancer, End-Cycle: poems about caregiving, Apple Blossoms at Eye Level, Voices on the Land and Hormone Stew.

October 11, 2018

Fertilization by Lisa Zaran

Counting the years of his absence,
the child’s repetition, I stand at the
door smoking a cigarette.

Ashes land like snowflakes on the
step of a bright Spring day.

My father sits inside a small box
with his eyes closed.

I paid cash for his ashes. Carried
them home on the floorboard of my
pickup.

Guru in seclusion, flesh and action
trapped. My father breathes motes,

flecks of dust, particles preserved
in a bed of pleura.

Deep inside a barefoot lung I empathize

About the Author: Lisa Zaran

Lisa Zaran is the author of eight collections of poetry including Dear Bob Dylan, If It We, The Blondes Lay Content and the sometimes girl. She is the founder and editor of Contemporary American Voices. When not writing, Zaran spends her days in Maricopa county jails assisting women with remembering their lost selves.

October 9, 2018

Nostalgia by Nancy Richardson

I grew up in a typical midwest town in the 1950s and 1960s. By typical I mean we had free range of our middle class neighborhood. Freedom to ride our bikes, run and play with friends, and take walks in wooded areas with no fear of harm. It was a safe childhood. I am still drawn to the sound of screen doors slapping, the smell of newly cut grass, the voices of children playing.

Yes, I look back on those days with nostalgia. In my poem “Youngstown, Ohio, 1952” about that town, that nostalgia is mixed with the beginnings of a doubt that the city of my childhood might be a place to stay in the future. Perhaps I was beginning to sense that air filled with soot from steel mills and called “pay dirt” by the citizens might not be the best place to settle.

Youngstown, Ohio 1952

I climbed the hill on my green Schwinn
at dusk when the air lifted enough
for me to see the fevered orange flush
of the open hearth on the horizon.
Tomorrow, it would rain ashes
on our ’52 Chevy. Later on a field trip
to the mill I walked on a catwalk
above the mouth. The runoff turned
into the sour taste of ash on my tongue.
The men were so close their sweat
turned to powder on their faces.
The cast heat rose and billowed
my skirt into a small suspended
parachute. Later, floating in the haze
that wanting makes, I lifted off
beyond the yard, beyond the gray sun
imagining a clear trajectory.

As the time to leave for college and marriage the next year approached, I was caught up in my own future, and so missed the signs that my town was slowly at first, then more rapidly, disintegrating. The first sign may have been a visit in the early 1970s to my old neighborhood which was exhibiting signs of deterioration. Trash on lawns, a few boarded up houses, rumors of carjackings. After that, there continued the ominous warnings: “don’t drive on that street,” “people are burning their houses down for the insurance money,” and more boarded up stores. When the town became the site of two federal maximum security prisons I began to lose hope.

How does this happen in America? A middle-class town becomes a host to graft and corruption at every level and the citizens do not respond. I began to think of Youngstown as Beirut, which had been decimated by the wars of the Middle East.

My nostalgia for my hometown was now mixed with sadness and wonder at its disintegration. A friend from my high-school class told me this story: He drove to his old street and stopped to look at his former house. A man with a gun pointed it at him through the window and said, “get outta here.” Going home again had become dangerous.

In subsequent years, I learned of the host of events that resulted in Youngstown, Ohio, becoming the poorest city in America. The lack of diversification and planning for new businesses; the end of the era of steel manufacturing; the presence of the Mafia and corruption of the town’s leaders; the desertion of the city by business leaders and middle class families; the lack of state and federal leadership. A total lack of vision and leadership, combined with corruption, resulted in swaths of city streets with burned out houses, the poorest school system in the state, epidemics of drug use, and unemployment at record highs.

I still go back. Every four years, I pound the pavement with labor members and progressive citizens to work for a democratic government. My poem “Door to Door” describes one of these moments.

Door to Door
November 2008

Let these people
not be home

let the flyers
blow away quietly

stick to the
chain link fences

let me not walk up
these concrete steps,
one more time

stand on this torn
green outdoor rug

read the Persuasion Script
promise life

will get better
perhaps not now

perhaps in some
other person’s lifetime

So my nostalgia for my hometown is for what was once true and what has become true in recent years. I go back now and see the devastation, but also a certain resiliency. It is not as though the early years were untrue. It is that time changed everything and a new city has emerged. And so my yearning for my hometown is for both the old and the new. The wonderful neighborhoods where children played freely and the neighborhoods now that are struggling to become safe and free. Yearning for what has been and hope for what might be.

About the Author: Nancy Richardson

Nancy Richardson’s poems have appeared in journals anthologies. She has written two chapbooks. The first, Unwelcomed Guest (2013) by Main Street Rag Publishing Company and the second, the Fire’s Edge (2017) by Finishing Line Press concerned her formative youth in the rust-belt of Ohio and the dislocation, including the Kent State shootings that affected her young adulthood. In An Everyday Thing, she has included those poems and extended the narrative to memories of persons and events and the make a life.

She has spent a good deal of her professional life working in government and education at the local, state, and federal levels and as a policy liaison in the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Education and for the Governor of Massachusetts. She received an MFA in Writing from Vermont College in 2005 and has served on the Board of the Frost Place in Franconia, NH. Visit her website.

Poems are from An EveryDay Thing by Nancy Richardson published by Finishing Line Press in July 2018.

October 7, 2018

Sunday Brunch: A Dish of Dreams

It’s four AM on Monday morning, but it’s not the storm outside that wakes me. Rather, I’ve been pulled from sleep because the end of a dream came at the same time as my smallest dog, a twelve-year-old chihuahua, is informing me that he needs to go out.

My husband deals with the dog.

I try to make sense of the dream.

It involved a wedding – not mine – and a white tennis dress that an older woman asked me to wear. Roses were a frequent image, and pearls, and items of clothing that were offered in pink paper-wrapped boxes. Oh, and I was twenty. (In my waking life, I haven’t been twenty in over a decade.)

At one point, I saw the name Margaret, and I realized that some of the clothing being gifted to me had been meant for her, for this mysterious girl who never appeared. I think she was the deceased daughter of the old woman, a woman who felt like family, but whom I couldn’t identify.

As dreams go, it’s not scary or stressful, but it sticks with me, and I wonder where it came from.

I pick up the phone and leave a message for a friend asking her to ask me about the images from the dream. My husband returns with the dog. I go back to sleep and have a deliciously smutty dream about characters from Star Trek: The Next Generation (don’t judge), but the other images linger into the next day, and stay with me all week.

It’s when I enter the kitchen two days later that a connection is finally made. Dishes. Dishes sparked this dream.

On the previous Friday, I’d received a box of old china from one of my cousins in California. Back in May, her mother had asked if I wanted the remaining pieces from my great-great uncle’s set of dishes, which were likely owned by his mother in the first place. She was asking because her daughter inherited her grandmother’s dishes, and I’m one of the only cousins in my generation who knew this uncle. “My generation,” she said, “is downsizing. So, I’m offering these things to yours.”

I move into the kitchen and pick up one of the platters. It’s worn with age and manages to be both sturdy and delicate at once. Nothing dramatic happens. I’m not zapped back into my dreamscape. No ethereal beings appear in my house to tell me their story.

And yet, I feel a sense of history and connection.

I don’t believe in ghosts in the traditional sense. I don’t believe there are actual spirits trying to speak with us or attempting to resolve unfinished business. I know there’s nothing supernatural about Ouija boards: the planchette moves because of something called the ideomotor effect – unconscious, involuntary actions in response to prior suggestions, expectations, and preconceptions.

But I do believe that objects and places retain the essences of people who owned or inhabit them. Houses take on the tones of those who dwelt within. And maybe dishes retain something of the people who chose them, and loved them, and passed them down to their children’s children.

My dream remains with me, still, a week later, and I’m no closer to picking it apart than I was when I first woke up, but I now know that the china I received is from an English company called Johnson Bros, and is likely one of the first patterns they sold.

Perhaps this china is connected to the nocturnal imagery created within my mind. Perhaps my dream is merely a combination of receiving the china and watching the Stephen King miniseries Rose Red. Perhaps it’s just my vivid imagination at work, providing me with story-fodder for my annual Horror Dailies writing project.

If there is, or was, an actual Margaret, I wish her well.

And if there isn’t… may whatever story I eventually write honor the memory of her fictional self.

About the author: Melissa A. Bartell

Melissa is a writer, voice actor, podcaster, itinerant musician, voracious reader, and collector of hats and rescue dogs. She is the author of The Bathtub Mermaid: Tales from the Holiday Tub. You can learn more about her on her blog, listen to her podcast, or connect with her on on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

October 1, 2018

Escape to Art Camp by Jeanie Croope

It all started as a fun weekend for two like-minded friends to leave work and families behind, escape to a lakeside cottage and share their mutual passion for creating. For one, it was paint and linoleum block printing. For the other, it was a combination of mixed media and craft.

The weekend was such fun, they decided to do it again another year. There was more of the same and sometimes the media changed as a new skill was learned. But the message was clear.

This wasn’t just a weekend. It was art camp. And it was fun!

My friend Kate and I have been “doing” art camp for probably close to ten years now. I’ve lost count. That weekend expanded to several days, even a week, and this past month, eleven days. Eleven days of long talks, walks, swims, visits into town, wonderful dinners using all the best from the local farmer’s market, time to read, a nightly viewing of a Miss Fisher Mystery on Netflix and most of all, time to create.

We choose a time each summer when we can head to my Northern Michigan cottage, the car packed full of art supplies, swimsuits, necessities and a rather vocal black-and-white cat. We arrive two-and-a-half hours later, quickly unpack and settle in and then whip out the projects.

On occasion a lesson will be involved. Several years ago Kate showed me how to carve linoleum blocks for printing. Another year I shared a technique for making journals I learned at a workshop.

Sometimes we do the same thing. How the kitchen survived two women doing gelli printing and creating volumes of brilliantly colored deli papers I’ll never know.

But most of the time we do our own thing, sitting at opposite ends of a table on the screened-in porch. In recent years, Kate has focused her time on the bird calendar she makes and sells each December.

The images may be done in watercolor or gouache or perhaps she’ll design and carve a block to be printed later. I confess, I love to turn to my annual calendar and see one of the creations that evolved at art camp!

Several years ago I decided to channel most of my visual art energies into photography and painting and art camp is my painting intensive. Working with a more experienced painter is fun and useful too. When I get into a jam on color mixing, I know that there’s someone who can provide some sound advice and more than once that’s saved me from a big mess!

For me, and I think Kate would agree, art camp is the perfect escape.

There are no appointments to tend to, no social obligations or requirements. While we work together and dine together, we are free to operate on our own schedules. Kate will be up and walking by 7:30. I’ll sleep later and walk later — or opt for an extended swim instead. If creative overload saps one of us but not the other, we feel free to take a book-break and read or get a snack. We talk often and about every topic under the sun, but we don’t feel compelled to have conversation for conversation’s sake. There is simply no pressure.

Weather doesn’t matter. We’ve experienced a rainstorm that overtook our work area in a matter of seconds and killed the power, sending us to town to buy battery operated reading lights. One year, we went in late September — a particularly cold September. We brought the work table in from the porch and set up in the living room, keeping the fireplace glowing and space heaters on high.

It’s not easy for me to spend extended time with anyone. I’m an introvert by nature, the only child who grew up learning to occupy herself happily. By and large, I am far more content independently than with others, and when my time “runs out” I long to escape a conversation, a place, a person or activity and just breathe. There are probably only two or three people I could do extended art camp with, without one of us grinding on the others’ nerves and making me want to escape.

But art camp is the escape. There has never been a time when I’ve wanted to run from a single moment. But there have been more than a few moments at other times, in other places, where I’ve wanted to run and run fast to art camp.

In determining which colors to use in a visual art piece, artists often work with a color wheel, which displays all the colors, showing how they blend into the next on the wheel, complement one another or are totally in opposition. The color wheel reveals tension and harmony and when used correctly can help the artist find balance in the piece at hand.

To me, art camp is the perfect physical rendition of the color wheel. The days move harmoniously, one into another, blending and evolving into something quite different, yet with the tones of the day before.

The reds of a steamy hot day into the oranges of sunset and the golden yellow glow of dawn. The greens of the woodland walks blend into the blue of the cloudless sky and sparkling lake. Those blues evolve into rich purples and violets, another sunset.

We all have our own “art camps.” It may be a spa or a yoga retreat. It might be a week at a writer’s colony or a cooking weekend. The media doesn’t matter. It’s the message. Relaxation. Joy. Peace. Restoration. Creation.

And it’s all good.

PS – Join me tomorrow and I’ll be sharing tips for creating your own artist camp.

About the Author: Jeanie Croope

After a long career in public broadcasting, Jeanie Croope is now doing all the things she loves — art, photography, writing, cooking, reading wonderful books and discovering a multitude of new creative passions. You can find her blogging about life and all the things she loves at The Marmelade Gypsy.

September 30, 2018

The Longing to Escape by Christine Mason Miller

I can’t escape the things I can’t escape. After fifty years on this planet, I’m finally starting to get that. Or maybe it’s that I’ve learned how to discern between the things that appear to be inescapable and those that actually aren’t.

Example: Taxes. Non-negotiable, inescapable.

Another One: My demise. There will come a day when I leave this body, this earth, this life. No getting around that.

Beyond these two circumstances, what else is there beyond the purely physical? I can’t escape the fact that my eyesight isn’t what it was in my twenties, and that I can’t read without glasses. It isn’t possible to magically make my T12 vertebrae whole again after it was crushed in a bicycle accident nearly twenty years ago. I can’t live without water or food. Or love.

I consider most everything else totally escapable; the real question is what is it I feel the need to escape and why? And then, am I willing to do the work necessary to actually escape if that is truly warranted or, if it isn’t, to find a peaceful frequency within the situation in question?

This question of whether or not to escape has been with me for most of my life.

I decided at a fairly young age that striving to be somewhere other than I was would serve me well. Call this the result of generational family patterns, parental examples, and being an only child, which reinforced an independent streak my mom says I was born with. (In third grade, I loved nothing more than playing Billy Joel’s “My Life” at full volume on my portable record player.)

I embraced ideas of escapism as a way to cope with unsettling circumstances at home (news of my parents’ divorce was shared with me when I was eleven) and also to push myself to expand the dreams I had for myself. If something is good, I’d think, what can I do to make it great? Whatever the situation, it was usually driven by a longing to be somewhere other than where I was.

In many cases, especially as I started to make my way in the world after graduate school, this approach did serve me well. I built a business. I traveled all over the world. I wrote books and made art and even went swimming with sharks. As soon as I wrapped up one endeavor, I’d immediately set my sights on another. If I didn’t have a project with quantifiable goals in front of me I’d feel like I wasn’t really living.

In my late twenties and early thirties, when my escapist proclivities were at their peak (at the time, I’d call these tendencies pursuing ambitions and, with regard to more personal situations, setting boundaries), I appeared to be impressive, strong, and all together.

Beneath this, I had a life built on sand.

Until the day it all finally came crashing down and I had no choice but to stay exactly where I was—to not escape—and take a good, long look at all the ways my striving—to be successful, to be independent, to be “fully alive”—had, in the end, not served me well at all in the areas of my life that truly mattered.

That is the short version of a story I’ve shared at different times, in different ways, with varying levels of transparency as to the specifics of how my personal life crumbled like a sand castle. I’ve used words like leave, departure, abandon, close down, let go, and release, and they’ve all explained what I’m talking about. But there is, very often, a desperation in the idea of escape, and it is this sense of unfocused desperation that initiated my journey of discernment and kept it going all these years.

What I’ve had to learn—most especially as a wife and a member of my entire extended family—is the importance of making sure I’ve got it right when I feel the desire to escape curl around my ankles like a vine. After expending undue amounts of energy trying to escape one scenario after another for the first three decades or so of my life, I finally began to understand how devastating it can be to blindly obey the voice that says things like This is not good enough for you. You don’t need/want/deserve this. This is too hard. Get out. Go somewhere else. Run for your life.

Sometimes this voice needs to be heeded, other times not. Learning how to discern the difference has been my most important work—more than my work as an artist, a writer, a teacher, or any other professional title. Without these efforts I might still find a way to appear successful and content, but what joy is there in simply trying to maintain appearances? In learning the art of staying put, I opened myself up to more of life’s gifts than would ever had been possible if I’d continued down the path of departure.

About the Author: Christine Mason Miller

Christine Mason Miller is a writer and artist who lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with her husband and chocolate lab Tilda. Her forthcoming book, The Meandering River of Unfathomable Joy: Finding God and Gratitude in India, will be available later this fall.

Keep up to date at www.christinemasonmiller.com.

September 28, 2018

Just for One Day by Selena Taylor

Take a deep breath. Try and hold it.
“But the clothes are smelly.”
Do you want him to find you?
“Point.”

I cannot hold my breath my fear is so strong. My hideout in the laundry is pretty good. With so many lumps what is one more? I can hear him moving downstairs. For some reason he left the house; maybe he thought I was going to go out there. I am not sure.

You should try to control your breathing.
“I am really scared this time.”
I know. I am sorry.

The footsteps come up the stairs.

“Oh, no!”

I begin to sing and play music in my head in an attempt to quiet my thoughts, or at least mask them. His footsteps go right to the pile of clothes, but he does not investigate at all. He does not move within the room, but I can hear his stupid breathing.

He can breathe just fine. Nothing makes him want to stop breathing. Nothing makes him try to control an asthma attack, so his beater doesn’t find him. Nothing makes him want to run away and give up. Nothing.

SMASH!

Something in the other room must have fallen over. I have no idea what it is, but he actually leaves the room to find the answer.

Run now.
“No way!”
You can make it.
“No, I can’t.”
There are the stairs. They’re a hurdle for sure.
“Told ya.”

His footsteps leave the other room and start back. Panic is just the beginning and fear is always there.

He is yelling, and it is deafening. I can hear all the nasty names and whatever else he wants to make up. Just because all he spews are lies doesn’t mean the words don’t hurt. The tears run down my face and on to the reeking clothes. My breathing becomes more strained, roaring inside my head. I try to stifle the sound with a sock. It works… almost.

All too soon, yelling is no longer enough. Objects are flying around the room. I can hear them crashing into the walls, the lamps, and the dresser. Something strikes the pile and the sock does not muffle my “oomph.”

“NO!” That is the only thing I can scream as he grabs me by my hair.

I am always here. I will pray with you.

“Our Father….”

His blow to my mouth makes me move my prayer from my speaking voice to the one inside my head. My thoughts and me stay in prayer. When we finish the, I hear a soft melody.

Can you hear the music I started?
“Yes, I can.”
Sing with the music in here. The music will help.

I retreat further into my mind and let the music wrap me in a warm blanket. I sing in my mind and I let it help me slip into sleep. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose and know it instantly, but sometimes you have to wait to win.

“Oh, there you are. Welcome back.”

The Ambulance is cold and unforgiving with every bump. The paramedics tell me that I was unresponsive in the house. They managed to restart my breathing and moved me into the ambulance. I cry and cry.

“Can you play some music? Please. I love music.”

“Sure thing.”

With a push of a button the radio comes alive.

What luck! It is your favorite singer on the radio with one of your favorites playing.
“It seems like I am lucky in more than one way today.”
Indeed. Sing now.

I begin to whisper-sing the song with tears going down my cheeks. My eyes close as I see the paramedic give me a small smile. I let my mind go and fall into song.

I will be a hero one day.
I will find my way out.
I will get away.
I will escape.

I will be a hero, even if it is for one day.
I WILL BE MY HERO.

About the author, Selena Taylor

Selena Taylor is a wife, a mother, and a woman who strives to tell the many stories that occupy her mind. She is active in the Rhett & Link fandom and appreciates dark humor. She and her family live in Illinois, where she takes every opportunity to lose herself under the stars and let her imagination run wild. For more from Selena, check her out on Facebook.

September 27, 2018

Instrumental: When the Well is Dry by Megan Gunnell

Where do we go when the well is dry? Where do we find our creative inspiration? How do we escape and not in a way to avoid, but rather to reconnect to our soul?

In our everyday, busy lives we need to make a conscious effort to connect, to seek inspiration and to find space to think, breathe and awaken. We can do this through mindfulness. When we practice being mindful, we pause and open our senses. When we do this, we bring our attention to the now. It’s an escape from ruminations on the past or anticipatory anxiety about the future. Being in the now also affords us a sense of gratitude and enriches our quality of life by helping us feel present and engaged in the moment before us.

When we do this, we tend to notice the sanctity of life and the miraculous wonders in nature.

We can bring mindfulness practices to everyday living through food and cooking. We can lose ourselves in new recipes with exotic spices and new ingredients, cooking slowly to downshift our life pace. The chopping and peeling and prep work of cooking engages our mind in the moment. The smells, tastes, sounds and feel of cooking becomes a sensory immersion, an escape from what ails us.

When I want to fill up my well, I go to nature. I take a mindful walk without my phone and listen to the birds or the wind in the trees. I notice the colors around me. I experience my breath and come into the moment. I connect with my body and my movement in a way that recharges and reinvigorates me.

I pause to notice small changes in my garden as the seasons change. New growth, new colors, new buds opening and also notice things dying back, changing shape and returning to the earth.

Moving beyond cooking and nature, I give myself permission to explore creating with art materials or with music.

My focus is always on the process, not the product. When I allow myself to make mistakes and create for the sake of creating, I’m not inhibited by perfection or expectations of what it will look or sound like in the end. Blending paint colors can be a visceral experience. ‘What does it feel like to mix this color with that one?’ ‘What do I notice?’ ‘Does this new shade please me or does it need more of this or more of that?’ Painting and music making are opportunities to escape into the moment.

Access to creativity can be simple and small.

We don’t have to make masterpieces to experience the joy and benefit. Creative opportunities expand us and create space. They break the bonds of limitations that we live in and help us see that other possibilities exist. Being creative helps us remain psychologically flexible and reduces rigidity in thought, feeling and behavior.

But we all know that being creative requires some element of risk and fearlessness.

We must suspend judgement in order to dive deep into the wells of creative expression. If we struggle to fit in or make something perfect, it will block our capacity to create. When we allow ourselves to stay in impermanence, knowing that what we’re creating today isn’t a statement about forever, but rather an expression of the now, then we can free ourselves up to be in the moment. And that creates a sense of freedom from attachment to expectations and a real escape!

About the Author: Megan Gunnell

Megan Gunnell is a Psychotherapist, Speaker, Writer, International Retreat Leader with over 20 years experience. She has presented and facilitated workshops and retreats globally and nationwide most notably in Finland at Jyvaskyla University, in Costa Rica at Anamaya and Ahki Resorts, at Miraval Resort and Spa, Arizona, the Bryant University Women’s Summit, Rhode Island and at Red Mountain Resort, Utah. A leading expert in women’s health, self-care and mindfulness, her work helps clients transform, restore and reach their highest potential.

September 25, 2018

Floating with Piano Jazz by Patricia Wellingham-Jones

A stream rippling
in timeless riffles
slides into backwaters
wanders down a rivulet
slips back into its
liquid trail
downstream
ever downstream
rippling

About the Author: Patricia Wellingham-Jones

September 23, 2018

Sunday Salon: Armchair Escape

I can’t help chuckling at the theme for this issue of Modern Creative Life – ESCAPE. It’s particularly ironic for me at this moment because six weeks ago we brought home a tiny puppy, so we’re spending most of our time tethered to the house or the puppy’s needs. When we do “escape” it’s to make a quick run out for a meal, or groceries, or more chew toys, or to the veterinarian’s office.

And while I absolutely adore this little critter, there are times when I do long for a real escape – somewhere the sights and sounds consist of other than squeak toys, kibble dispensers, puppy pads, and all the assorted accoutrement puppies now seem to require.

Here is just where art and life intersect in a marvelous way. In the past few weeks I’ve traveled to India and South America, to Spain and France, and even back in time to the 1930’s and 1940’s. All while ensconced in my favorite chair, a bundle of fur curled up beside me snoring softly.

If you’re a reader you understand what I mean. Books have always been my preferred means of escape. In reality, I’m not much of a traveler anyway. I always prefer home over foreign locales. For many years, I wasn’t inclined to admit that, because it seems most people count traveling as a huge life goal and have exotic locations lined up on their bucket lists. Alas, I’m happy spending the majority of my time in my own home, especially as I get older and admittedly more persnickety about my personal spaces. Whenever I do travel, I’m usually disappointed. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in Self Reliance: Traveling is a fool’s paradise…I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the same sad self, unrelenting, identical that I fled from.”

Yep, there’s just no escaping that “same sad self.”

So books – and also music and movies and artwork – take me most anywhere I want to go these days. Add in some rich coffee grown in the Andes mountains and a buttery Parisian style croissant, a cold crisp glass of Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand with some cheese from the coast of England, and the armchair international experience is complete.

Maybe a few months from now when the puppy is grown up and settled I’ll decide to take a real trip instead of a virtual one. I’ll hire a pet sitter, pack my trunk, wave farewell to my friends, board a plane, and take off into the friendly skies toward unknown and interesting destinations.

Then again, maybe I’ll just settle back in my armchair with a pile of good books. Think of all the money I’ll save to buy chew toys and dog treats.

How about you? Are you an armchair traveler or an explorer for real?

Here’s a list of books I’ve “traveled” with in the past few weeks:

A Place for Us – Fatima Farheen Mirza

The Masterpiece – Fiona Davis

Another Side of Paradise – Sally Koslow

The Story Hour – Thrity Umrigar

Moonlight Over Paris – Jennifer Robson

Women in Sunlight -Frances Mayes

About the Author: Becca Rowan

becca_rowan_bio_may2016 Becca Rowan lives in Northville, Michigan with her husband and their Shih Tzu puppy Lacey Li. She is the author of Life in General, and Life Goes On, collections of personal and inspirational essays about the ways women navigate the passage into midlife. She is also a musician, and performs as a pianist and as a member of Classical Bells, a professional handbell ensemble. If she’s not writing or playing music you’ll likely find her either playing with (or cleaning up after) the puppy, or curled up on the couch reading with a cup of coffee (or glass of wine) close at hand. She loves to connect with readers at her blog, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Goodreads.