Sketch: Meditation on Meditation

This is me under the birch tree in our back yard meditating, which never really happens in the traditional, close-your-eyes-and-clear-your-mind sort of way as shown in the sketch. But sketching itself is rare for me, so I'm going to take this as a win. I do sit under the birch tree and write often. And I watch the finches and jays and grackles swoop back-and-forth between the tree and the bird feeders, which is sort of a meditation on birds. Sketching is like a secret power that I don't use very often. Untrained, with no Big Plan, and not working very hard on it, I just let my pencil flow and see what happens. Joy. And thereby, meditation.

Addicted to Spider Solitaire

Even if I'm not playing it, I'm thinking about it. Thinking about not playing it. And how I want to play it but I shouldn't be playing it. That I thought of it but want to forget I thought of it. That it keeps coming back so I will let myself play a little later if I can just finish this sentence. Or finish up my hour of writing. But then I'm playing it and not wanting to stop.

Just want to try one more trick to solve this game. I can do this and then stop. But that didn't work and now I see something else that I think will work. Yes. But no, wait. Let me go back to the beginning of the game and start again and see if I can geta different pattern and have more options at this point in the game. Damn no. That didn't work. Let me back up a little and try again a different way.

Shit. It's been an hour and I'm still staring at these cards. I need to get breakfast. Oh and I haven't gotten very far in my writing yet. I still have chunk to do. And there are my morning pages that I haven't done yet. And there is my reading. I have three book going I want to finish. And I have errands to run and now I probably won't get to all of them before lunch. Damn.

The Quest

 With all due respect to Joe Darion and Miguel de Cervantes

The trees stand like giants in the yard,
Arms waving hello in the breeze
They seem rather static for giants
but they are my giants,
And they do not do battle with me today.

I see what I see
and then draw on the page in smears
the world is a melting painting, all colors and lights
take what you will.
Today I'll take the words “breath,” “dance,” and “forest”
you take the rest and
We'll see what happens.
--Not too many people take me up on that offer--

Must I appear crazed, lunatic, to others?
I do walk along the creek and hide
in the bushes when someone approaches.
When they discover me, as they inevitably do,
They wonder at my disconnected phrases.
My odd observations, explanations
when asked what I've been up to.
I'm a writer not a talker,
A tilter not a walker
of straight lines.

No wonder my friends and sometime antagonists
are giants with coverings of leaves.
No wonder I wander alone.
I need a sidekick like Sancho Panza,
But rather than a man and a farmer
She'll be a woman, a sower of words
Perhaps she is sitting at a coffee shop,
 a cup at her elbow right
Now
Writing a sonnet or an sf novel.
Or perhaps she is among the shallows along the creek
waiting for me and quietly gurgling
as she blows out against the current
creating large bubbles
That last mere seconds but hold an entire universe
Where else to find a companion for La Mancha
Except Low,
 in the shadows under the trees,
or High among the sun dappled branches
All else is too ambiguous
For marching into hell
for a heavenly cause
I can ignore the strange looks from the neighbors
Because, along with my companion,
I know if I only be true
to this glorious quest
That my heart will lie
peaceful and calm
when I've deemed I've dreamed
My best.

Ellen A. Wilkin

My Dinners with Julia

(First published on electricrider.net on December 18, 2011)
 

Enjoying soup and red wine while reading my kindle at the Hotel le Grande in Poitiers, France

“No,” the young woman standing behind the desk said, her face expressionless. She turned away from me and said something in French that sounded like “it's passed time.” It sounded like a dismissal.

It was my worst fear. I had asked for room service. A minor request at a three star hotel. I spoke only a little French so, instead of calling hotel reception, I brought the menu down in the creaky elevator to the night clerk and pointed to the items I wanted.

Her mouth was a permanent frown. “No,” she said and shook her head again.

Is she telling me that 8:30 at night was too late to order room service? That seemed odd because the menu said it was available until 9:00.

The view from my hotel room in Saumur that first night.

She did not speak English, I knew, because the night before, after I'd arrived late by bus, I'd had difficulty understanding what she was telling me. I never quite got it. Luckily I was able to get into my room and didn't give it a second thought.

Now I stared at her incredulously, the open room service menu lying between us on the desk. “It is too late?” I said in broken French.

"No, no! It is not too late!” she replied. Still, she would not meet my eyes.

I shrugged and repeated my order. “Je voudrais un casserolet y un salade y un verre de vin rouge.”

“No,” she said and then something more I didn’t understand.
I stared at her hopelessly. “Pourquoi?”

She just looked at me and said something more in a tone that sounded infinitely rationale and logical, but in words of utter incomprehensibility to me.

I shrugged. “Forget it!” I said and turned back to the elevator and creaked back up to my room. I had walked the streets of Saumur all day taking photos and I was too tired to venture out to find a restaurant. So, I did not eat.

I took it hard that night, crying on the phone to my husband back in the states. He helped me feel tons better, but during the ensuing weeks of travel I still feared that when I asked for something I would be told “no!”

Until I met Julia.

The marketplace in Saumur.

I was traveling through Europe for the first time and alone: seven weeks by train and foot exploring Eleanor of Aquitaine's twelfth-century domains. I didn't speak more than a few phrases of any language other than English and, after sight-seeing all day in cities where few people spoke English well, I was often exhausted. It took all of my energy (and an afternoon nap) to get myself back out on the street in search of dinner. In my head I could still hear the night clerk in Saumur saying “no!” and remembered my stomach grumbling with hunger as I fell asleep that night. Sometimes I just wanted to hide in my hotel room for twenty-four hours.

You might wonder why I put myself into this situation to begin with. From the time I started to think about it, I knew this trip would be difficult. But touring the ruins of the castles, abbeys, and churches that Eleanor of Aquitaine walked when she ruled France and England would make it all worthwhile. It would revive my creativity and interest in the novel I was writing that featured Eleanor's time as back drop.

I would be home sick. Anyone would be. To counter this, I planned to establish a routine while traveling that included some of my every-day habits.

I have always had books piled around me since I learned to read at age five

I have always had books piled around me ever since I learned to read at age five. One pile teeters on my bedside table right this minute. Another sits, semi-collapsed, on the guest room futon. I find it easier at times to converse with the narrators of stories and the characters in books than with groups of people. If I was to feel comfortable talking to strangers in a foreign language day after day for weeks, I had to have a refuge. I had to have Fiction. Memoir. Travel. History. Books that kept me company. Books to help explain what I was seeing and where I was going and why. And books to help me escape. Maybe the practice of reading would help prevent me pining for the homeland too deeply.

I had traveled alone years before in New York City and Boston doing research for a biography. I had eaten out by myself in restaurants every night. But even in New York City where it isn't too far from chic to ask for a table for one, I had to wait for service because my server assumed I was waiting for a second. This created that familiar awkwardness anyone who has dined alone is familiar with. You don't wish to be overlooked, yet you don’t wish to be looked at too much. Like Goldilocks you want the attention to be just right. This balance calls on all one's communication skills: the subtle body language, the correct words, the demanding tone when needed. If all goes well, you order your meal, then sit back and sip a glass of wine, casually glancing over the pages of a literary tome while sneaking looks at new arrivals. You are of the world when you want to be or, when people-watching becomes too uncomfortable or boring, you can disappear into a book and be outside it. So I knew all too well that in France, Germany, and Spain, I would feel these classic symptoms at potentially excruciating levels. I would be alone and often essentially mute. There was no way I was living my literary friends behind. Because I was traveling by train and foot during my Europe stay and I could carry only so much weight, I put as many books onto my Amazon Kindle as I could. It added no more than a pound to my luggage.

And so, when I left on my arduous journey, I felt I had planned for every contingency. What I hadn't expected was that by escaping into a book in Europe, I could propel my dining experience to a whole new level.

* * *

Me on the rooftop of the Hotel le Grande restaurant in Poitiers.

I savor the last bite of Poached Eggs in Wine, holding it in my mouth to let the flavors roll back on my tongue. The Auxerre restaurant has a huge fire going between the dining room and the kitchen despite the mild June weather and it is quite warm. But I don't care. I sip the local wine and then turn to my dinner companion. “What do you think?” I say, swirling the glass.

She smacks her lips and leans her tall frame forward. “The sauces are so rich, like the Burgundy countryside. There is nothing fresher than produce bought at the local market, wouldn't you say?” She takes another bite of her egg, and smiles. “And of course everything is made that much better when accompanied by a nice glass of Burgundy wine!” She raises her glass and we toast to Americans in France.

Julia is as ebullient as ever. Perhaps that's why the couple near the fire glances in our direction, their eyebrows raised.

This meal is a result of hundreds of years of simmered local tradition and culture,” she says. “We taste a bit of history with every bite!”

I agree. This was the life. I grin at Julia sitting across from me at the Four Chaud restaurant: tall and angular, a food and culture goddess. And happy to be here. This is what I needed. A reminder of how happy I am to be here. I raise my glass and its raspberry color flashes with the firelight.

“Bon appetit!”

Fondue on the Left Bank of Paris at L'Etoile du Berger

I dig into the next course and, although I am reading her words from her book, My Life In France, I listen to Julia McWilliams Child as if we are having our own conversation. I hear the merry quaver in her voice as she describes arriving on the northwest coast of France at Le Havre by ocean liner in 1948. Her husband, Paul, who had traveled extensively in France before World War II, knew the way to a wonderful restaurant in the Norman countryside. Julia was not fluent enough in French to order for herself, but Paul ordered an incredible meal of briny oysters portugaises and fragrant Dover sole with lots of freshly baked bread and butter.

As I sit enjoying my meal and reading Julia's book, I realize that she felt as alienated then as I sometimes did now. She had sailed to France with Paul when he started a new job at the American embassy in Paris. Otherwise, she had no strong ties to the country. It didn't help that her father had ridiculed the French culture when she was a girl. She knew nothing of the cuisine and little of cooking in general at that point in her life. But she kept her mind open and learned to love France, to cook fantastic French cuisine, and to teach others how to, as well. If Julia could learn to love living here, I could learn to enjoy my five-week tour of medieval castles and churches.

I am so involved in Julia's stories and our shared dining experience, that I forget that I am sitting alone in a restaurant in Burgundy, France, sipping wine with one hand and holding an Amazon Kindle in the other. But Julia's words are alive: They are much more than lines read from her memoir.

* * *
Julia's companionship continued throughout my travels. I worked hard, stuttering through dinner orders and keeping my phrase book at full alert for questions or comments as the staff brought each course. Once dessert and coffee arrived, I relaxed into a rhythm of conversation:

--How is your meal?
--Wonderful, thank you!
--Do you want anything else?
--No. The check, please.

Cheese burger and fries, French style.

Thankfully, restaurateurs in France plan on one seating in the evening so they expect you to linger after eating. I looked forward to this time and, after I'd paid the bill, turned my full attention to dessert and coffee and Julia.

That one night in the Saumur hotel was the only time I missed a meal during my tour of Europe, but it could have tinted my whole trip like a water color drenched in a dark wash. In discovering the magic of reading Julia's memoir during meals in bistros, brasseries, bars, lounges, and restaurants all over France, I realized I am made of even tougher stuff than I knew.

Julia, in her cheerful American English, stayed with me the entire journey, even following me into Spain and back to England before my flight home to Denver after two months abroad.

Yes, I traveled alone. But one is never completely alone when one has a book.

Forgotten Past Re-Emerges in Digital Age

Or How a Woman Rediscovered Her Acting Past with the Aid of YouTube

(First published on electricrider.net on November 25, 2012)

You know how there's an old favorite movie or TV show you saw when you were a kid and you just loved it but, years later, you wondered what happened to it? And you waited for it to come out on DVD and it took FOREVER? And then sometimes it just never happened at all, like Jean Shepherd's The Fourth of July and Other Disasters starring a young Matt Dillon and broadcast on PBS American Playhouse in 1982? You keep checking back at the store and then online, and all you see are some used copies of the VHS version?

You wonder why the owners of the rights to these little gems would not want to make them available to a wider audience. You look and you look and you look and it never appears. Weeks become months, months become years and then you finally stop looking. I've spent half of my adult life waiting for AMC's melo-dromedy Remember WENN? from the mid-1990s to make it to a format compatible with the late 20th century.

But what if this gem you'd been waiting for all your life had actually been out for years - even on DVD - and you had never noticed? You were so jaded by previous failures that maybe you weren't looking so hard. And what if this show had been broadcast on television, and you had missed even that? How could you know about it then? You knew it existed because you had been in it – actually on screen – even if it hadn't been broadcast. But no one else had ever heard of it.

You may be surprised to learn that this actually happened to me. I spent more than twenty-five years searching for it. At least I thought I had. I believed that the film had never been broadcast on any TV or cable network, and had never been produced on video tape or DVD. It had fallen off the face of the earth. It had to have. Otherwise, I would have found it. Right? Then I stumbled upon it on YouTube. I think I missed something.

***

The other day, my eye caught a flash of color from the bookcase in my study: the sky blue spine of a paperback I had forgotten about, Vladimir Nabokov's Lectures on Literature. I had been putting my yoga mat away in the closet and then there it was. I had bought the book in the mid-'80s, shortly after I left graduate school. I had never cracked open the spine. Over the last several years I'd been trying to consolidate my book collection: either read it or toss it. In this same spirit, I pulled the book out and flipped to the opening pages of the introduction, Good Readers and Good Writers. I read the epitaph: “My course, among other things is a kind of detective investigation of the mystery of literary structures.”

I smiled, remembering the day in January 1985 when I had a close encounter with both Mr. Nabokov and Christopher Plummer at the University of Pittsburgh. That day I sat in the Cathedral of Learning along with dozens of other young people dressed variably in poodle skirts, bobby socks, sweater jackets, and narrow trousers. This book. It was different. I not only had to keep it. I had to read it.

Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh

In those days, I had been a student at Carnegie Mellon University, a mile and a half east of the Pitt campus, getting my masters degree in professional writing. Before I left on Christmas break in December, I had seen a flyer on the English Department bulletin board: A call for students in 1950s dress for the filming of a new PBS pilot. It was based on Nabokov's lecture on Kafka's “The Metamorphosis” and would star Christopher Plummer, I utterly adored Mr. Plummer and had since I was a preteen and I saw him in the Sound of Music. How handsome and debonair he was no matter what else was going on around him! And those blue eyes!

Those interested in being part of this PBS pilot were to show up at the Cathedral of Learning on a Sunday morning in January dressed as students from the late 1950s. The gig was early enough in the semester that it wouldn't interfere with my class work or my teaching. I wrote it all down and vowed to show up whatever the cost. I had never been to Pitt before, so it would be an adventure. But I could not miss this opportunity to see Mr. Plummer in the flesh. I would kick myself for ever after.

Me (right) and my friend for the day

After break, I walked to the Cathedral of Learning tower at Pitt in a horrible outfit I had concocted from the limited number of clothes I kept at the apartment I shared in Squirrel Hill with another student. I had nothing that bespoke the 1950's era, but decided that a full, below-the-knee cream-colored cotton skirt and a light blue wool cardigan under which only the white yoke and collar of a short-sleeve polo shirt showed. This was lucky because that polo shirt also sported turquoise and yellow patches on the shoulder. These patches did peak out a little along the collar of the sweater, but I thought I could snug it closer around my throat and hide the distracting colors from the camera. My hair was short in front and just above my collar in back in that classic '80s Pat Benatar look. I gelled it and pushed it behind my ears so it looked like my hair was pulled into a ponytail.

When I got off the elevator there were crowds of students in '50s get-up. We were handed little tickets that said “Nabokov on Literature starring Christopher Plummer, Sunday, January 13, 1985, 9:00am to 1:00pm.” I clutched it tightly. It was proof that I was actually there. I met another young woman in the hall who was on her own. We chatted while the crew made the final adjustments to their cameras and lights inside the lecture room where we would be filming. We vowed to sit next to each other when we got in. I wish I could remember her name, but it is lost in the annals of time.

When we entered the lecture hall we were ushered to seats in the back. I knew I was unlikely to be caught on camera there, but it would be enough for me to see Mr. Plummer in person and in action. I was excited to see Peter Medak, who directed such films as The Ruling Class, at work. He was very active on set, even getting behind the camera.

Camera man at work

The script was taken from the actual lecture notes and writings of Nabokov on Kafka's “The Metamorphosis.” I heard that lecture ten times that afternoon, but I never grew tired of it. As soon as Mr. Plummer entered the hall where we “students” were already assembled, the rich tones in which he spoke the words of Nabokov's opening lecture on “Good Readers and Good Writers,” as well as the pauses in between where we were left hanging for a few microseconds, kept my attention and helped me hear the import of Nabokov's words:

Literature was born not on the day when a boy crying wolf, wolf
came running out of the Neanderthal Valley with a big gray wolf
at his heels: literature was born on the day when a boy came crying
wolf, wolf and there was no wolf behind him.

Nabokov sits down with suitcase

I walked away from this experience with the impression that I not only needed to read the “The Metamorphosis” again, but that I loved Nabokov's lectures and writings on literature and must read them all to gain insight into the artistic mind.

After the filming, Mr. Plummer took off his jacket and sat on a wooden bench with peeling paint and signed autographs. He signed my ticket. (And no, those aren't lipstick stains where I kissed his signature. Hey, I was a graduate student. I didn't get out much!)

For months I waited with baited breath to hear that the program would be broadcast. All the next summer, even as I worked as an intern at IBM, I kept track of the television listings. Of course, a few months is not long enough to produce even a short film, let alone get into the televisions schedule. But I didn't think of it at the time. Soon, I lost patience and then forgot about the film. I went off and got my first job, became a swinging single in Huntsville, Alabama, and married my husband, Dave. But, I swear, I did look. On and off. For awhile anyway. And I seemed to be the only one looking.

Christopher Plummer in make-up

Yet somehow I missed the initial broadcast of this program on PBS. The best explanation I can come up with is that it wasn't broadcast until 1989, well after I had given up on them ever broadcasting it. According to the DVD packaging, that is the copyright date of the film. 1989. It also didn't help that I didn't own a television from 1980 until 1990 when I married my TV Freak of a husband. Also unhelpful was that these were the days before Al Gore invented the internet. The IMDB wasn't available until 1995. I couldn't even Google it until 2007. By then, I had given up looking. Life had interfered. But every few years, I would come across the pictures and the autograph in my scrap book and wonder what happened to the little film. But I just wasn't curious enough to go the extra mile. Soon I forgot the film and the desire to see myself on screen entirely. I even forgot about the burning desire to read the Nabokov lectures.

Ticket for lecture with autograph

I don't know why, after picking up that book of lectures by Nabokov that fateful morning, I decided to give it another go. But I did. A Google search went straight to a YouTube video AND an IMDB entry. According to comments on YouTube, some folks had seen the film in college when studying Kafka or Nabokov. On amazon.com I found out that its been available on DVD since 2007.

I had missed the entire digitization of my movie career!

Actually, I'm kind of glad it took so long for me to find the film. It was so much fun unraveling the facts that day and finding out the truth about a little gem of a movie that was also a little gem of a memory for me.

And as far as my screen debut in all its glory, if you go to the trouble of watching this film short, you can just see me in the back of the lecture hall. Look for me at around 2:58 into the clip below. You can just see me over Plummer's right shoulder as he enters the room and steps down the aisle. I'm wearing the blue sweater, white shirt one chair in from the aisle inthe back row. My first professional acting gig (and last)!