Past Salons – Travel

To Agistri by land and sea . . .

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“Strolling the decks in the morning sun as the ship cruises past the islands of Cephalonia and Ithaca is the nicest part of the trip”

The Man in Seat 61

That sentence sold me the idea of travelling to The Iliad study by train and ferry rather than plane. And it turned out to be worth every jot of the extra time, planning and money.

I started with The Man in Seat 61 website, which recommended Day 1: Paris-Zurich-Milan. Day 2 Milan-Bari then overnight ferry to Patras. Day 3 Patras-Piraeus-Agistri. Looks daunting, doesn’t it? And to begin with it was. But once I started booking the trains, it fell into place and the trip itself went very smoothly and was fascinating.

Day 1: The Eurostar London to Paris. The schedule doesn’t dictate taking a night in Paris but, since I abhor early starts and have two nephews living there, I did. This enabled me to see the breath-taking Brancusi retrospective at the Pompidou Centre and visit the Musee de la Vie Romantique in Pigalle, a gem of a mansion-museum whose charming courtyard cafe is worth it alone. But you can go straight on to Milan that day. Typical timings: London 08.01-11.18 Paris; Paris 12.22-16.26 Zurich; Zurich 17.33-20.50 Milan.

Musee de la Vie Romantique, Paris

Normally there is a direct train Paris-Milan but, following a landslide in 2023, that route is closed until 2025. Going via Zurich lengthens the journey, but you get to see views of the Alps and travel alongside the Zürichsee and Lake Lugano for long stretches. Deeply enjoyable. I stayed at the functional but comfortable Mythos Hotel, 4 minutes from Milan Centrale Station (which is a stunning example of Mussolini-era grand architecture).

Architectural detail, Milan Centrale Station

Day 2: A train all the way down the East coast of Italy to Bari leaving Milan at 08.05, arriving 15.27. Try to sit on the left for beautiful views of the Adriatic. I paid an extra €20 for business class, giving very comfy seats and a little snack. Once in Bari, you could get a taxi to the ferry terminal, which would mean driving along the perimeter fence, entering by the vehicle gate and doubling all the way back. This is the walking route Google maps will show. But you can walk there more directly in about 30 minutes: go in a straight line from the station towards the port. Weave your way through the charming old town, bearing right around the impressive Castello Normanno-Svevo until you join the last stretch of the road route. Keep walking to your right (as you face the sea) until you get to the gate, then follow signs for Terminal Crociere. Don’t be deterred! The terminal is set up for cars not pedestrians and sometimes it looks like you are walking through a building site, but you eventually reach the big blue check-in building. Boarding starts at 17.00 for a 19.30 departure. The ferry is a huge modern complex so not as romantic as a Greek trireme, but the skies, the Ionian wind and the wine-dark sea are the same. I love sleeping on trains and boats, the motion providing a gentle lolling. You can get 1-4 berth cabins, a reclining seat or, as some brave souls were doing, just bed down in a corridor or on deck. In the morning you sail past Ithaca and into the Gulf of Patras, with marvellous sea and island views.

Bari Old Town

Day 3: The ferry lands at 13.00 at Patras on the West coast of Greece, so you need to get a bus/train combo to Piraeus. This was quite challenging, but that great technological aid of asking the people around you still works pretty well. Follow the lorries to find your way out of the port. You might be able to pick up a taxi here, but it was rather deserted. I teamed up with three youngsters from Zurich, Paris and Boston and walked 20 mins along the coast to the old station. The trains no longer run from here or from Patras at all – you have to get a substitute bus for the first leg, but a very friendly women inside sold us the tickets and told us where to get the bus to Kiato (a further 20 minute walk). It leaves at 14.25 so you have plenty of time. It travels mainly along the south side of the Gulf of Corinth, with mountains visible over the water. Beautiful. From Kiato you pick up the regular train to Piraeus (though be alert: at one point it was “all change” and we had to get a train on the adjacent platform to continue). Arrival in Piraeus is 17.41 so you can get straight on a ferry to Agistri (though you would miss part of the first evening session), but I stayed overnight (Hotel Lilia, another simple and welcoming hotel) and had a lovely Italian meal in Restaurant Parmigiano overlooking Zeas Harbour in Pasamilani. This also gave me the next morning in Piraeus to explore its many charms such as the Kastella district, the Archaeological Museum or the Hellenic Maritime Museum before hopping on a ferry around lunchtime.

Zeas Harbour restaurant in Piraeus

The reckoning? A flight would have taken a full day door-to-door and cost £100-200. My trip could be done in 3 days and the cost for transport plus Milan hotel was £700. Clearly overland options are only for those with budget to spare or who can cut down on expenditure elsewhere to make it possible. But what price do you put on the glory of seeing the Swiss Alps outside your window, feeling the evening vibe of Milan Centrale, strolling through the old town of Bari, meeting other foot passengers on the ferry, each on their own odysseys, eating a breakfast coffee and croissant as you sail past Ithaca and engaging with the local people of the country you are in. It beats the inside of an airport and plane!

Writing Through the Seasons: Summer

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Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Praying

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

Mary Oliver
from Thirst, © Beacon Press, 2007


At the LitSalon’s Reading the Body retreat in Umbria earlier this month, I was reminded how intimidating creative writing can be for many people — even the most intelligent, eloquent and accomplished.  

As fifteen of us gathered and got acquainted in front of the villa, with its many varieties of trees and birdsong, I knew there’d be no shortage of inspiration for our writing together. Not to mention the literary discussions and daily yoga practice. Yes, we’d be not only reading the body but writing it too.

A few people pulled me aside to say that they would not be joining the writing workshop. More than a few were hesitant: it wasn’t their thing; they’d been scarred at school; they weren’t creative enough; it’s intimidating . . .  But, like Mary Oliver says, ‘it doesn’t have to be.’ 

The way we write together in these workshops is more about noticing, connecting, and playing with words.  Because I gently direct the writing, participants can be released from pressure and be spontaneous and intuitive — the opposite of the kind of writing we did in school. There’s no concern for grammar, spelling, punctuation, ‘You don’t even have to use words — you can doodle if you want,’ I say.  We’re not concerned at all with perfection.  It’s precisely the imperfection of spontaneity that’s at the heart of this playful writing, and I reckon that’s why it feels so good.

It feels good because there’s no critique, no judgment, just reflection. It isn’t a contest; it’s listening to our inner voices and knowing that everyone has something to say. Sharing and noticing the process of writing, not the writing itself.  Of course, you can read your words if you want to. And sometimes, but not always, there’s a bit of magic in what emerges.  

By the third workshop, word had spread like our laughter in the air. Almost everyone had given it a go.  We made pantoums (an ancient Malaysian poetic form), sankalpas, metaphors, a collaborative poem . . .  As a facilitator I was grateful for the bravery and creativity of all who participated and I like to think it added to their retreat experience. I wrote in my own reflections, ‘the Salon is as full of curious, creative women as the place is full of aromas — herbs, grass, rain. Fruits are ripening. Are we?’

If you feel curious or inspired, why not join me online for the next set of workshops in the ‘Writing Through the Seasons’ series? Summer starts on Tuesday 27 June.

Editor’s note:

Below, hot off the press, are two reviews of Alison’s writing sessions in Umbria.

‘An unexpected bonus for me was Alison’s writing groups. I went with a lot of trepidation, wanting, but not expecting to be able to write anything creative – even though I have wanted to do so for years. I have come back with a notebook full of fragments, embryonic poems, and ideas. We were told to dismiss our inner critic, and thanks to the time limits- (5 minutes to write a poem!) – my ‘busy old fool’ – (a Welsh Methodist superego) – never got a chance to stick his thin nose into the process, or to sniff disapprovingly at my unruly spontaneity.’

‘Alison proposes a writing experience which works just as well for a seasoned writer as it does for a beginner. Her exercises are uniquely tuned to take away inhibitions and provide participants with the confidence they need to express themselves freely. I found the writing that emerged could be as surprising as it was effective. Alison’s natural empathy immediately makes everyone feel comfortable. It’s about harmony; she creates a little circle of concord. She provides the wings we need to fly. And we do!’

Days on Agistri

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Photograph of Toby Brothers on Agistri by Sandrine Joseph, @london_lost_in

As we wrap up another sparkling Salon week at Rosy’s Little Village (a name that doesn’t do justice to the place), I reach to capture the enriching moments that make this immersion so fulfilling. 

It is, of course, a luxury to spend a week immersed in one work of literature.  To do so on a wooded Greek island in the Saronic Gulf is pretty extraordinary. Our venue provides a unique community feel: just minutes from a humming port, Rosy’s Little Village offers all we need to sustain us through our days of reading and discussion, and it is a simple amble down through the flower strewn terraced rocks to the sea.

Going away. The upheaval of habit, the reckoning of what you really need (and how that can fit into the limits of baggage), the many details of home leaving that brings you to some clarity about how complicated life is—how many daily tasks need to be passed along, how the build-up of things undone needs reckoning to be able to leave with some lightness . . .

But when all that is done—or, at least, done enough—the lightness that you have earned as you step off the plane, find your way to the ferry, drink deeply of the sea-fed air and let the intense sun of the Saronic gulf envelop you: this is where the release begins. 

In the first week, the Odyssey study rolls out with sessions of reading and discussion, exercises to develop our attention to breath, language, presentation, embodiment of the text and a sense of play; poetry interludes allow us to explore as a group —sometimes discussing, sometimes just sitting in wonder at the craft. Everyone finds their own rhythms around the scheduled sessions and nourishing meals. For some, it is early morning walks to the wild headlands to seek alpine swifts skimming over the sea. For others, it is an early dip to greet the dawn and her rosy fingers. For others, it is Jane’s gently guided yoga practice where the sun salutations feel like an intimate encounter with the glistening light that floods us from the open space of the performance tent. For others, it is painting or writing or reading time in a nook of the flowered rocky terraces. 

Photograph of dawn on Agistri by Sandrine Joseph, @london_lost_in

In this fresh world, I find my mind unclenching as the days simplify. This makes a fecund space in which to consider ancient and profound works. No matter how many times I have encountered the monsters and sought Ithaca with Odysseus, I open myself newly with each group and learn more—about the epic, about myself. S points to the way Homer makes respectful space for grieving as natural, as necessary; SJ wonders if the journey shows how the structure of home can be psychological – a space that moves with us – can you, snail-like, be your own home and therefore make peace with a travelling life? Others are amazed at the immense staying power of an oral text: interactive and shared in the group, these passages become chants that we embody. 

In the second week we encountered the Oresteia with a seasoned group—many of whom had been on the previous year’s Odyssey study. This was my second encounter with the dramatic trilogy, first studied on a long weekend in the outskirts of Paris. I gained such rich nuggets from the work on Agistri with this particularly game group. I learned what stichomythia is, how it functions in the dramatic context and, finally, how to pronounce it.  I watched Jane coach the group into speaking as one voice, and witnessed the pulse of power that group chanting creates. There was also the special sonnet recitation while planking, but that really needs to be experienced to be appreciated . . .

We considered the strange and primitive drive for justice—when is it revenge, when is it punitive, when is it restorative? We discussed the various ways of understanding the resolution of the Furies into the Eumenides: what it suggests about the role of female deities, how this moves towards democracy, whether this is the submerging of matriarchal power into patriarchal authority. We considered the right of a mother to rage against the needs of communal security when faced with the murder of her child. We read together the astonishing poetry that the Oresteia has inspired since its first performance and, after inhabiting rage and vengeance performed in the most majestic language, we danced a jig of life to celebrate our return to the clear light of present-day sea-soaked space.

To immerse myself in one work, for one week, with a curious and playful gathering of minds is truly a luxury. We come together, we question, disagree, explore, inspire and laugh together. Sometimes, we even dance.

Here is some feedback from participants:

“The Odyssey study on Agistri island has been a total marvel . . . It was on every level nourishing, emotional, spiritual and always caring . . . The island is beautiful, especially in Spring, you can swim, go kayaking, walk to the village and go hiking in the pines trees forest. Looking forward to going again!”

SJ

“To sit by the Agean and delve into the mysteries of Homer’s Odyssey, expertly facilitated with an intimate group was such a treat!  Learning about meter, oratory performance, Greek history and mythology with breaks to dip into the blue was heaven.  I think what I enjoyed most though was the extraordinary community formed over the week-long study.  Looking forward to the next one!”

SC

“What more can I say than that it was once again fabulous in every sense of the word!”

JG

“I love Rosy’s; it’s peaceful, beautiful and uncomplicated. The location and access to the sea are both amazing.”

ST

Odyssean dreams

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As we begin to prepare for our next visit to the Greek island of Agistri for another week reading Homer’s Odyssey (28 April – 5 May 2023) here are a few reflections on our past experiences.

Jane, Caroline and I have now run two Odyssey retreats at Rosy’s Little Village on the island of Agistri in the Saronic Gulf near Athens. Each of these journeys has been personally and collectively deeply fulfilling. It is such a beautiful indulgence to spend a week fully immersed in an epic that – however much I may think I know of the narrative – surprises me on every reading with what it reveals about human nature, the deep past, our present relationships, the encounter with the stranger . . .

That quality of immersion, away from loud and full regular life, allows the mind to expand in unexpected ways. And then there is the space itself: Rosy and family have a created a unique environment, full of natural beauty and views over the crystalline waters, which feeds the imaginative realm. This is not to forget the wonderful feeding of the body, the food at Rosy’s is deliciously fresh and thoughtfully created. 

We have devised a schedule that combines the rigour of study with time to reflect and enjoy the place itself. Caroline’s guidance through contemporary poetic interpretations of the Odyssey is often cited as a favourite part of our week together, as is Jane’s generous sharing of her talent and passion for enacting the text: the words come alive as each participant has the opportunity to prepare a passage with her expert coaching and support. Without giving too much away, Jane and Caroline have activities and sessions planned that open us all up to each other and to the themes and language of the text. 

Every journey through the Odyssey in Agistri feels almost dreamlike as we experience the beauty of the place and the depths we are able to discover in our work together. And then there is the swimming, the sunshine, the company . . .

Many of last year’s participants are returning to Agistri with us to enjoy reading Aeschylus’s Oresteia (which is fully booked) and here are some of their comments on the Odyssey experience:

“It was a wonderful trip . . . the landscape, especially around the islands, is so seductive that you can see how these wonderful texts were written.”
 
“I loved the discussions around the text and getting to know a fascinating group of people.”
 
“It was an amazing and enriching experience.”

The Odyssey group on Agistri in 2022

There are still some places available on this year’s Odyssey trip if you would like to join us for this special offering!

Proust in Paris with Toby – January 2023

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“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who
make our souls blossom”

Of course I didn’t make that up.  It’s one of Marcel’s quotes which, I think, sums up the glorious weekend we all had in the City of Light (and not a little rain too – just enough to make us appreciate the gorgeous blue sky on Sunday).   

We all saw so much, eyes wide open and heads spinning with pages of handwriting, scrawly, spidery, crossings out, reworkings, work in progress.  We looked at photographs, information, paintings – so many paintings, books, artefacts and yes, even exquisite embroidery.  Painstakingly stitched and secured pearls and sparkles on fabrics woven by fairies, spun by silkworms and coloured by artists much greater than Elstir.  The purple opera coat which our man from the hotel said was too heavy for his wife to wear.   What a lark! As VW’s imagination might have said. 

We threw ourselves into Marcel’s world of suffering and lethargy, neurotic creativity, excess, music, madness and memory.

We definitely achieved our 10,000 steps each day.   And let’s not forget the food which was so central to our study (ha ha!) and sustenance.  We tasted foams, pearls, shavings and aromas of fermented Iranian lemons, liquorice.  We ordered  perfect scallops languishing in sea salty green puddles of unctuous who knows what? Fricassee and blanquette de veau, frites and farm cheeses. And the soufflé – the melting chocolate middle of the perfect sugared cake, the framboise birthday panna cotta with only  one candle to symbolise the hundreds of candles representing Toby’s circle of curious readers.  The metro carriage where everyone, almost on the dot of midnight sang Bonne Anniversaire to the amazing teacher who dreams up these treats for us all.  Did I say there was wine?   There was. Bien sûr!!

Le Swann Hôtel Littéraire was a treasure. “I created the Sociéte des Hôtels Litttéraires to share my love of books with the thousands of visitors whom I do not know, but who, I am sure, would be happy to find an author or a book by chance on a trip to Paris.”  (not to mention many other French cities) explains Jacques Letertre, President. 

Monsieur L came to talk to us over tea and madeleines.   He reminded me of a plump, pink, favourite uncle from Dickens.  This former banker and très sérieux collector of Proust books and much more, lives in an apartment in the factory where Marcel’s favourite coffee beans were roasted. The hotel, he told us, still serves coffee from the same company.  It is situated in the heart of the area where Marcel lived.   

The hotel madeleines however (this is a hotel with sweet cakes and excellent breakfasts) are, he admitted, slightly more ordinary.  The original moulds and recipe from Remembrance etc proved too expensive   They are, trust me, perfectly delicious for the weary, sugar-deprived Proustian  visitor whose head  is swirling with Albertine, Charlus, Swann and Odette.  They are what Francoise would have given everyone before they set off for a morning at the Bibliothèque Nationale or the Jacquemart André where, we were assured, 1000 guests could attend a soirée with no danger of one barouche crashing into another on the grand drive to the entrance.      

By the way, we all had rooms with names of characters from the volumes.  As probably the oldest participant, perhaps it was fitting that I was aunt Leonie….aaaargh!    I must rise from my couch and exercise… and, to quote MP “try to keep a patch of sky above your life”.  

Others must relate the Musée Carnavalet.  I only have the delicious photos and reports from the WhatsApp group.    I ran out of steam and time, filled my rucksack with mustards, fig jam and memories, hailed a taxi.  No porter or Françoise to report that “Madame has gone.” 

Going away with Toby on one of her magical study holidays – because, no apologies, these are holidays from everything you do and think about in real day-to-day life, is possibly a form of internet dating.   You don’t know who you will meet.  But you know it could work because there is a common theme.   We are all Toby’s students.   For me, meeting up with Proustians 1,2,3,4,5,6 – who knows how many! – was such a joy.   Crossing paths with new friends who have no ‘baggage’ apart from the carry-on kind, with wheels.  

Perhaps the best treat of all was getting to know some of Toby’s closest friends from when she lived in Paris.   Friends who have been on life’s journeys with her and continue to light up their lives. They certainly lit up ours.  

I think it was the ‘light’ in the darkest month of the year which I have taken away from our Paris adventure.  The light of everyone who was so game, so generous of spirit, who, in their own unique way, added something special to our beautiful time together.

To end on a low note… I lost my Freedom Pass somewhere along the way.   Quelle horreur! to arrive in the underground and no travel pass (young things won’t understand, a Freedom Pass allows geriatrics to go free on London tubes and buses.)   The complications of applying for a replacement online brought me back to real life with a bump, that and having to find the fridge and something to eat.   But the magic stays a little longer and I feel that Le Swann Hôtel Littéraire could be a Paris homecoming in the not too distant future.    If only Scott, who is a human Google walking map of Paris, would come along too!  Thank you, Scott, for always leading us in the right direction.

“My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing.”  

Marcel Proust

Remembering Javier Marias

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Writer, translator and journalist

Photo: Javier Marias, Wikimedia Commons

20 September 1951 – 11 September 2022

I had the wonderful opportunity to study two of the works of Javier Marías in Valencia in the years before the pandemic. Veteran Salonista Robin Tottenham hosted our gatherings on her lovely terrace overlooking Valencia’s glorious Mercado Centrale; Salonistas Keith Fosbrook and Ellie Ferguson had been emphatic in their urging me to dive into the works of Marías—and I am so glad that I did.

At first, I struggled to get a grip on his aesthetic vision. With his works, I often felt that I was a voyeur observing the lives of contemporary people struggling in spaces of passion and betrayal—his characters felt like people I had come to know, the entanglements dramatic but recognisably arising from all-too-common blindspots in human behaviour. But the work of studying Marías with a committed group paid off: I came to understand that what Marías offers is an acute understanding of how human consciousness is revealed in all the forces that press upon our fragile integrity: desire, history, injustice, guilt, betrayal…and how we employ narrative to give a shape to what has happened—even when we cannot shape what has happened into coherence. 

I think this quote from a Guardian article on Marías in 2013 gives a sense of his profound probing: 

“As a columnist I write as citizen and maybe have too many opinions” – he has published a whole book of just his football articles – “but writing as a novelist is different. I don’t like the journalistic kind of novel which is now rather fashionable. If a book or film takes a good subject from the everyday press – say domestic murders in Spain, which are a historic disgrace – everyone will applaud, but it is easy applause. Who will say it is bad? People say the novel is a way of imparting knowledge. Well, maybe. But for me it is more a way of imparting recognition of things that you didn’t know you knew. You say ‘yes’. It feels true even though it might be uncomfortable. You find this in Proust, who is one of the cruellest authors in the history of literature. He says terrible things, but in such a way that you know that you have experienced those thoughts too.”

Nicholas Wroe, The Guardian, 22 February 2013

We have lost a wonderful writer and philosopher in the death of Javier Marías. I hope to re-visit the works I have read and expand my knowledge of his writings in the coming year. I am grateful to Robin, Ellie and Keith who inspired the Marías studies—and I look forward to more. 

“Marías also wrote movingly about old age, and cast an unflinching eye on male-female relationships. The novels often begin with a shocking scene – an unexplained suicide, the sudden death in bed of a lover, a complex love triangle – plunging reader and narrator into the plot-to-be.

The main characters are often translators or interpreters – or, latterly, spies – people who have renounced their own voices, but who are also, in a sense, interpreters of people, which is, of course, precisely what any good novelist aspires to be. In Your Face Tomorrow, the narrator, Deza, is recruited to become exactly that, “an interpreter of people”, whose job it is to write detailed reports on the people he has seen only in videos or via a two-way mirror.”

Margaret Julla Costa, The Guardian, Obituary 15 September 2022

The Salon in Umbria: April 2022

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It is truly one of life’s great experiences to be in a beautiful place, with a group of adventurous and stretchy readers, immersed for a week in a complex book (Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady) that drives us to consider closely our own identity, relationship to history, cultural context, social relationships, familial inheritance . . .

Our insights into the challenges facing Isabel Archer, her enclosure in tradition and the interior maps she must negotiate to claim agency in a claustrophobic space, reflected back upon us all and inspired each of us. Some responded with creative writing, some with nuggets shared in discussion. For others the illuminations are held within, to carry back home and keep turning over.

Jackie Seigler and I worked to find the right balance of yoga and study sessions while leaving time for reflection, walking and adventuring in the golden landscapes of Umbria. There were food adventures to be had, wine-tastings, underground caves to crawl through and lakes to discover and dip into. Back in London, I feel my body strengthened with the careful attention of the yoga and my mind calmed with the wonderful focus of the discussions around the complex art of Henry James. I learned from every member of the group – Salonistas from Paris, London, Bristol, New York City, Upstate New York, some who have been with the Salon since its early days, a few experiencing the Salon for the first time. Thank you all for making this adventure so inspiring!

Some feedback from participants:

Location:  ‘Really beautiful and welcoming. Just the right balance of comfort and simplicity.’

Food: ‘Very good! Appreciated the many varieties of greens. A bit more pasta perhaps . . .’

Schedule: ‘Nicely paced. I could not routinely find my way to yoga twice a day but was really happy that the possibility was there when I did. Really enjoyed the afternoons at leisure too.’

Cost: ‘Good value for money.’

Yoga: ‘Really enjoyed the restorative and gentle yoga classes. Jackie, your warmth, joy and expertise is in my cells after this retreat.’

‘I found everything about the yoga just right. I felt really held and taken care of in the sessions. I particularly liked the restorative yoga and yoga nidra.’

Salon: ‘Toby, difficult to put into words the depth of the experience. I appreciated so much the slow read of a well-chosen classic and how it gave meaning to my own life in new ways. So good to read closely and in the process become closer to such thoughtful people.’

Overall: ‘Thank you both for all you did and are. I am renewed, recharged and changed after these seven very special days. See you in September.’

‘You both held the group beautifully . . . just the right balance. You were both really kind, sensitive, attentive and inclusive. It made for a great group experience . . . Only suggestion is to get people to read the book completely!’

‘This was a rich and revivifying experience – physically because of the wonderful yoga, and spiritually and intellectually through our collective reading of one of the great 19th century novels. The opportunity to drop into a book, deep below the surface, with a group of open-minded, intelligent, sensitive readers – and to stay there for a week, under expert and self-effacing leadership – is a great privilege. That privilege was enhanced by first-class yoga teaching which kept us grounded, and physically well-tuned.’

And finally, a poetic reflection from our creative writing facilitator Alison Cable:

On reading Portrait of a Lady with LitSalon in Umbria

Where am I positioned as reader

Of words, characters, people?

I am invited to slow down--

I experience others.

 

Words, characters, people,

When our systems crack, what are we left with?

I experience others--

Half-closed eyelids, a full moon.

 

When our systems crack, what are we left with?

It was an act of devotion to conceal her misery.

Half-closed eyelids, full moon--

Epiphany, expansion.

 

It was an act of devotion to conceal her misery.

Where am I positioned?

Epiphany, expansion—

I experience others.



Alison Cable, April 2022

Travel Studies: journeys to the centre of so many things

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Leah Jewett (far left) and other members of The Years study group, St Ives, September 2021

Three times I’ve taken the train down to St Ives – a region apart – for London Literary Salon Travel Studies of Virginia Woolf books: The Waves, To the Lighthouse and the last book published in her lifetime, The Years.

Woolf means a lot to me. Growing up I read her journals, just as I devoured the diaries of Sylvia Plath and Anaïs Nin to enter into the detail of these female writers’ thoughts and lives. Some of the last lines of Mrs Dalloway saw me over the threshold of turning 50: “What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement?”

Travel Studies are worth going the distance for. Set against the backdrop of a place related to the book you are reading, a Travel Study makes the words come alive over time and feel shot through with new meaning.

I’d already been to Dublin with the London Literary Salon after doing a six-month study of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Because Joyce, as he proclaimed, “put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries”, the least daunting and most rewarding way to read this vast book is in the company of a group of people spearheaded by the astute, inquisitive, light-hearted, deep-diving teacher/facilitator Toby Brothers. Founder and Director of the Salon, she masterminds seminar-like discussions that are informal and in depth. Because she’s an avid swimmer, a Travel Study often incorporates swimming – in the bracing Atlantic (for The Years), in warmer Grecian waters (for The Odyssey) and off the Forty Foot promontory into the roiling Irish Sea (for Ulysses).

In Dublin on Bloomsday – which commemorates the events of 16 June 1904 described in Ulysses – we retraced characters’ steps and watched scenes played out in costume on doorsteps, in a crypt and at Sweny’s, the Dispensing Chemists (“Mr Bloom raised a cake [of soap] to his nostrils. Sweet lemony wax”).

He bought lemon soap; we bought lemon soap – and its tart scent time-travelled me back to turn-of-the-century Dublin.

That’s the thing about a Travel Study: it superimposes echoes of the book, and the life and times of the author, onto your experiences in real time. It transports you into the book and the book into the moment.

No 4 St Ives, the B&B where we’ve stayed for the Virginia Woolf Travel Studies, is a 30-second walk from Talland House, where Woolf spent 13 happy childhood summers. We stand transfixed in front of the white villa and think of how she movingly wrote in the essay “A Sketch of the Past”:

If life has a base that it stands upon, if it is a bowl that one fills and fills and fills – then my bowl without a doubt stands upon this memory. It is of lying half asleep, half awake, in bed in the nursery at St Ives. It is of hearing the waves breaking, one, two, one, two, and sending a splash of water over the beach . . . and feeling, it is almost impossible that I should be here; of feeling the purest ecstasy I can conceive.

A bit bedazzled, I keep thinking: This is the view (partially impeded, since, by houses) of the sea that she would have seen; that tide mirrors the waves she wrote about in The Waves; there’s the lighthouse from To the Lighthouse. Did the wind sound similar in these same trees? Undoubtedly she walked here, turned that doorhandle, looked through that pane of glass.

Time on a Travel Study is telescopic: it takes a while to put the workaday London world behind me, but by day two I’ve decompressed and am caught up in the escapism.

Each Travel Study is a study in work/life balance. It reminds me of the buzz I felt working at the Cannes Film Festival. Alternating schedule and spontaneity, you work, wander around, run into people, socialise, carve out some solitude.

Every day we parcel out the time: dash five minutes down to the sea for a 7am swim; join the others for breakfast; walk through the cobbled streets of whitewashed houses over to the rough-hewn, Grade II-listed Porthmeor Studios, which give on to a beach, to read aloud and discuss The Years; go our separate ways – to maybe take an open-top double-decker along the coast, tour the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden or opt for downtime to catch up on reading – then reconvene to discuss the book for another hour; continue talking over dinner; sleep.

A Travel Study, which elides past and present, is a journey to the centre of many things – of how aspects of a book’s personal and political landscapes resonate when you take them in experientially, how your ideas can evolve as you hear other people’s perceptions and analysis, and the connectedness – on location – with a writer and their words.

Leah Jewett is director of Outspoken Sex Ed and an inveterate Salonista

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