Amherst Writers & Artists recently introduced a new offering to their already fulsome events. Once a month as many as one-hundred writers from all around the globe gather online to write together. One of AWA’s skilled facilitators introduces the method and offers a warm-up prompt followed by two timed writings. This in itself is quite marvellous—to see all those little squares with heads down writing or faces intent while they type. Then the magic happens—in breakout rooms of five or six, additional skilled facilitators guide the reading, listening, and offering of feedback.
Everyone is welcome to join for as little as a $10. donation that goes toward AWA’s social justice initiatives.
All this to say that last month I attended one of these sessions led by Margaret O’Brien. One of her prompts was to write about a walk taken by you or your character.
I would like to invite you to write about a walk taken.
In the meantime, here’s my walk:
THE BOOTS DIDN’T EVEN FIT (Watch and Listen Here)
I’m walking fast along Via del Corso on my way to Piazza di San Silvestro, gobbling scent, sight, and the stories under my feet. I am twenty-four years old and my lover will be arriving from Canada in two days. I’ve been here before, Rome, and I want to remember it. For him. So I can give him the Rome I know. I don’t find the street truck where I took my panini breakfast three years ago. I don’t find the pensione where I stayed for the equivalent of five dollars a night. When he arrives, we’ll stay for one night at the Bernini Bristol hotel, a gift from my father. I’m hot, not on account of the weather. This is December and I will find out much later that David wasn’t going to come on account of him being broke, but because it is Christmas and my father hates when I cry, he doled out the airfare. I’m hot because I want David, my new lover. I didn’t want to leave him but he insisted I not jettison my travel plans just because we’d fallen in love. Just because we’d fallen in love. I’m trying, really trying, as I have been for the last two months to love my solo travels through Europe and Greece; to re-envision my journey around the world with the same sort of thrill I’d felt while planning it. Planning it before. Before I met David. I’ll wait for him to visit the colosseum, before the Sistine. I’ll take him to meet Baba Natale with his plastic beard and donkey cart in Piazza Navona. I’ll take him up the hill to overlook Trastevere and all the hills you can see from that fountain piazza. In Florence, I will buy him two-hundred dollar boots in a brightly-lit shop on Via de’ Bentaccordi; boots that years from now a fellow waiter will tell me he bought from David who will have told him he had them handmade by a cobbler in a hilltop village. I keep walking past gelaterias, trattorias, boutiques, and greying marble replicas, trying not to mourn the fleeting time we’ll have together before he returns to Canada and I go on to North Africa. What’s in North Africa, anyway? Moorish castles. Intricate tile work. History. Medinas. I don’t know what a medina is. A man with honey-warmed skin and soft brown hair curling around his ears approaches through the crowded sidewalk. Our eyes spark. His smooth hand caresses mine as he passes. I hear “Ciao, Bella,” in a voice like melting chocolate. He’s absorbed into the crowd. It’s too hot. My hand throbs. It’s only eleven in the morning but I need a grappa. Maybe two. I drink fast, guilt an engine I didn’t ignite. I’m too hot. It’s not my fault. I’ve been too long alone. The grappa scalds my throat, blisters all the way down. I’m sorry, I imagine saying to David, I made love to a stranger because I couldn’t wait for you to break my heart.
I’d love to hear about a walk you’ve taken or one you imagine.
Ho-hum - Same old trashy angst! Yawn!
Warmed me up, reading it!