Jackie Shannon Hollis

Well, as I secretly expected, I haven’t written much while on these travels.  We’ve been in Italy and France and Switzerland. There is so much to see and do, the experience of different experiences, that I am not compelled to write, just to take it in. So I surrender, to the idea that I am gathering and storing things which will hide in various places of my memory. They will come out later, in some new form and find their way into stories. Things like the man in Italy with thick whorls of hair on each finger; the late night walk on the pier in Imperia where all the teenagers were celebrating the last day of school and we walked among them, invisible in our age; the duck in the water at the port in Rapaolo who demanded–DEMANDED!–bread, and all the fish followed her because she seemed to get what she asked for her; the sound of the harbor in Genoa–the freighters coming in and out; the thunderstorm in the early morning that sounded like railroad cars clashing into one another, the smell of fondue prepared especially for us in a chalet in the mountains; and the connections with friends–sometimes smooth, sometimes bumpy, but always rich because even when we are in places that are different and foreign, we are exactly who we are.

Packing for a long trip. WHEW.   We leave tomorrow for Europe and I think I’ve got MORE than enough packed. As usual.

I did talk myself into taking one pair of pants out. That made my bag SO MUCH lighter.  Or, it made room for something I’ll stick in at the last minute.

I’m taking my laptop and I plan to have some writing time. So you might hear from me. Or the revisions on my novel will hear from me. I always have great writing ideas when I travel — all the inspriration of a new place. But my brain sometimes goes very fuzzy on vacation, there are so many other things to do. Like lay in the sun, nap, read, talk, eat, see things. So if you don’t hear from me, you can assume I’m in the fuzzy zone.