I have never been so utterly at peace and in my element as I was on the terraces outside the caseta where this perfect rustic table gave on a view of the distant sea—a writer’s table, an artist’s table, the table of a person who loves beauty for its own sake and loves the simple, elemental things that make life rich and satisfying without a lot of obvious effort.
Looking out, looking inward, both were inspirational there on that quiet hilltop in Mallorca. I wrote as well as I ever have, during my time there, a week’s retreat after each writers’ workshop two years apart.
Oddly, much though I love Lake Como, I was not especially peaceful there during the last week I spent in wondrous Bellagio. I felt restless, removed from my real being, an outsider who had come too far from home and what I was at best. Disconcerting, since I should have been perfectly at peace there. It shook me, finding I felt that way. (Crete, on the other hand, was wonderful but strange, with never any expectation on my part of feeling at home there—though it appealed to me hugely, to the adventurer of my Gemini twins.)
What is it in certain foreign places that calls us by name? Why do some feel familiar as our own birthplace, or even more so? And why do others have nothing of importance to say to us?
image: Christie B. Cochrell, Table on Lower Terrace, The Writing Mills, Mallorca
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