Ideas also Ripen

I could learn a lot of secrets watching an artist work. I’m captivated by their peculiarities, their methods and obsessions, seeing which specific wounds of childhood still bleed onto their pages. 

The documentary 20,000 Days on Earth (2014) chronicles the making of musician Nick Cave. We see the claustrophobic flat of his youth, a saggy bed hemmed by walls plastered with cutouts and found ponytails, the place where he sat carving out his first lyrics. We also see the ghosts who he debates while he’s wheeling through drear of drizzly Brighton. Cave appears as a guy who thinks himself as more obsessed than genius, yet you can’t deny his range and wonderful specificity.

Yet one offhand observation followed me out of the theatre, or in this case, the meeting room of a small Chilean municipality. “To act on a bad idea,” says Cave, “is better than to not act at all.” His thinking is that ideas are neither good or bad. Don’t judge them. Give them time to ripen.

Two weeks ago, I rushed the thorny blackberry patch in my backyard, eager to harvest something before I left for the winter. With brittle, waist-high grasses, the land is less garden and more farm gone to seed.

With utter concentration, I scanned for the rare, ripe purple berry in each green bunch of hardened nubs. Most resisted my tugging. Thorns tore my finger pads, rogue branches wrapped around my ankles like sea monsters. On one hand, harvesting offered relief from writing. But for anyone who has ever done it on an industrial scale, fruit picking offers no romance. It is labor that leaves its marks.

Hot days slid by collecting popcorn clouds on the horizon. Then a steady rain, the first in months. Yesterday I returned though squeaky grass for a last attempt. The berries collected into my wooden bowl at a touch. The work was fast, rewarded by a taste of every mess that crushed between my fingertips. Piola the dog worked alongside me, always choosing the ripest fruit, no need of hands ever.

Time—both time passing and that ‘aha’ moment--is that elusive factor in artistry that requires more of our respect. How many times have I discarded an idea because I couldn’t imagine its trajectory in future time? It’s an error. A work cannot be willed into shape, but accumulates in droplets and merging currents, like a stormhead.

I look forward to my next bad idea.

A Day in the Life

· Start in the highlands. Bus 1.5 hrs to the regional capital, grab a taxi and research furiously to make the last southbound bus.
· Wait while a hotel receptionist prolongs a personal conversation. Minutes tick.
· Just make the bus without time to hit a bathroom first.
· Notice how the bus stops every 10 feet.
· Listen to some very loud reggaeton.
· Endure.
· At transit point, take another bus.
· Arrive to your destination, a place without phone reception, internet or taxis.
· Start the mile walk to lodgings.
· Lodgings dirty.
· Walk an extra mile to beach cabins.
· Find a rogue wave has taken out your beachfront lodgings. Locals say this hasn´t happened ever in their memory.
· Return to town, 2 miles, in noonday sun with backpack.
· Passing car does not stop.
· Visit another lodging. Sweat beads your face. Listen as a surfer´s girlfriend lying in hammock violently disses XX publication. You work for XX publication. Smile and leave.
· Find a place with one room left.
· The manager is out surfing.
· Watch a six-year-old wax his surfboard.
· Wait.

(to be continued...)

Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be....

New Zealand writer Liz Lewis regularly interviews travel writers on her Write to Travel blog. This week you can check out my thoughts on making a career out of strange encounters and interminable bus trips.

Guidebooks as Gurus (or not)

A teething baby, a musing mind and ample time on the road has me guest blogging at Perceptive Travel this week, relieving regular blogger and new mom Nia Malchik.

The topic: When should you toss your guidebook? (Funny question for a guidebook author). Check it out and leave a comment...

Where I get philosophical

Yesterday I was writing a travel piece and found myself employing the word destination. It just slipped in but was passable. The trouble was I immediately felt vexed. Dissatisfied. What is it about that word?

In the good old days of Siddhartha or, say, Victorian caravans slaking across vast deserts in stockings and big hats, the word destination meant something.

Hunger, curiosity, lovesickness or fever pushed you forward to meet destiny. You didn’t necessarily have a goal (the source of the Nile or top of Denali). The idea lay at the end of the Road of Unknown. After getting to your destination, you would either meditate into eternal bliss or write beautiful, grieving letters to your beloved sister about the follies of your foresight, the fragrant local spices and viral scourges.

These days the word has been co-opted by the mega resort. First you seek Sizzling Spring Break Destination, eventually followed by the Most Romantic Honeymoon Destination, Fun Family Destination, or (post-separation) Top Ten Spa Destinations.

The purpose of your destination? To pamper yourself. To negate the meaninglessness of daily existence by discovering exotic fruits that go well with vodka (don’t they all?) and a temperature-controlled pool. Basically, you have taken a direct flight here from real life to forget.

But there is a fine line between relaxation and flat-out boredom.

Few have the luxury of traveling like a travel writer, but I’d recommend one thing. Omit the destination from whatever trip you’re going on. Give yourself X number of days to travel a route. Don’t fixate on the finish line. Meet people. Wander. Dawdle. Maybe you’ll make it halfway. This way, there will be no disconnect between you and your destination. You’ll know it when you’ve found it.

On Writing: The Boulder in the Kitchen

I've been on hiatus from the blog while I write up some 100,000 words for a new edition. Call it superstitious. As if we were comprised of a finite number of words and those spent here cannot be redeemed elsewhere. I know this must not be true, but when the muse is stingy there's no taking chances.

Every guide I write, the process is the same. Pets (this one, a cat named Tiger Lilly, is not even mine but an appendage of the apartment I rented) need attention. The house is dirty. I remember that I've been on the road for three months and--is that a fully equipped kitchen?--decide I need red curry made from scratch. It will help me "work better."

I don't think we resist writing because we hate it. Writing, like life, has its chores (strange how I can only clean the house while on deadline). Call it fear of mediocrity. In guidebook writing it's too easy to be dull. I need fifty ways to describe a plain, clean linoleum room, twenty to describe a plate of rice and beans. A dashing insight.

I thank god for the quirks (bare bulbs, boulders in the kitchen, grasshoppers in the stew) that we writers cling to like meat hooks. Of course, some of these turn out to be utterly useless. I search my notes for help describing a tranquil colonial city. Beyond the bus timetables, hotel and restaurant descriptions, I have scrawled one comment:

What's up with men--everywhere--using street as urinal?

And then comes the dilemma, the reason it takes an hour sometimes to wrestle 100 words of text. The fact that Ciudad X is home to indiscreet pissers may be a pointed insight, leading a random anthropologist to follow my lead on fellowship. Or, I could be scarring a noble (read "marketable") image because I just happened to visit during football finals.

I don't know how you'd solve it. I don't know how I will. But for now I'm going to make some popcorn and...hey, where's the cat?