Trip Crazy

I recently came across a funny, interesting and creative traveling website called Nowhere Magazine where just a few people write about their travel experiences.  Many of them seem very food-focused, so my interests couldn’t be more cleanly met.  Food & Travel.  If I didn’t have such a need to be creative (“too creative” some might say), that’s exactly what I would call any travel blog/magazine that I created.  Too apt.  

Anyway, perusing this site made me crave more travel (and food, but that’s a different entry) and highlighted how little traveling I’ve done over the past few years.  I used to travel abroad and domestically every few months it seemed.  Now, hardly at all.  Granted, most of my time over the past six years has been wholly consumed with being a mom, wife, lawyer, good doobie, poor, etc. but that’s really no excuse.  Well, except the being “poor” part.  That tends to put a wrinkle in any well-laid travel plans.  Nevertheless, I really want to do more traveling in the coming years.  Good friends that MMoon and I adore are actually willing (well, at least until they get to know us better) to travel with us – hopefully to Italy where we will share a villa, food, wine, art and history.  So, my plan for 2010 and beyond is to find a way to get around more (in a travel-sense of course, as I’ve already done my “getting around” in other senses. [badumpbump]).  

Leave a comment and tell me your travel hopes, dreams, stories.  I'd love to hear them.

A Whole Lot of Shouting and Murmuring

If you don't read Shouts and Murmurs in The New Yorker, you should.  The articles are simply brilliant.

Here are The Best of Shouts and Murmurs (via The Rumpus) from the past year.  Enjoy!

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Chock Full O' Fail

In typical fashion, I dashed off a quick piece for entry into the Flash Fiction Chronicles String-of-10 Contest but then totally blew it. 

The String-of-10 Contest is when the editors provide a string of ten words (the Prompts in this case were: SURVIVAL-SKIMMILK*-LOLLYGAG-CRYPTIC-ONLOOKER-LEAK-RAW-FORBIDDEN-RADIO-VERDIGRIS) and an aphorism (Quotation:  A person usually has two reasons for doing something: a good reason and the real reason. –Thomas Carlyle) and the author is to provide seamless integration of any four of the prompt words and utilization of the aphorism as an additional source of inspiration (if desired) in no more than 250 words.  

Well, I put a quick piece together, shopped it by my Dedicated Reader and then promptly failed to submit it timely.    *Sigh*   Alas, at least I put something on paper.   So, my Dear Blog Reader, I give you my forgotten piece.   

__________________

Yéle 

Johanne, aware enough to know that in a different world, one that existed a week ago, she was doing the unforgivable.  In that other world where food was at least available if not necessarily bountiful, just having these thoughts was forbidden.  But now, all bets were off, as Renaud used to say.  He’s gone now.  Dead under the rubble of their collapsed home.  The constant struggle against poverty and repression Johanne’s alone to fight.  Her motivations weren’t cryptic or apologetic.  She was in survival mode. 

Peering into the rubble, water leaking through the corrugated verdigris-colored roof and collecting in pools at her feet, she saw a hand clutching a filthy bag containing two small cans of skim-milk.  Not much but to Johanne – a veritable feast.  She hadn't eaten for four days and that was a dirty half-sandwich taken from someone long dead. 

Johanne, careful to keep a watchful eye out for onlookers, tugged the bag and felt a corresponding pull.  Nerves frayed RAW, she screamed and fell back. 

"THANKGODTHANKGODTHANKGOD," a tear-filled whisper filtered up through the dust and the dark.  Without thinking, Johanne grabbed the bag and ran.  In the pounding of her heart, her bare feet slapping a syncopated rhythm against the buckled street, she heard that merged prayer, Thank…God…Thank…God….  She slowed to a jog and then a walk. 

With a choked breath, Johanne turned and ran back to the remains of the store.  With a brief caress of that solitary hand, she began to dig.