Phoebe Writes A Novel. 1. Spring in Gold Strike

The first day of spring dawned in Gold Strike, California. The oleander gleamed, the pines sparkled, and the mighty eucalyptus perfumed the clean, crisp air. A brilliant sun shone over the Gold Country and a blue sky surmounted the activities of muses and mortals alike. For the hundred miles between the state capital and Platinum Lake, every available squirrel stopped for a second to usher in spring with a prayer for peanuts.

In Phoebe Barlow's house on Pistachio Street, all was quiet. Thirteen-year-old Phoebe's parents had already left for work, her mom to Roosevelt Hospital, where she was a bioethicist, her dad to Evergreen College of Arts and Ideas, where he taught classes in interdisciplinary creativity. Her sister Anastasia was off to university. Her brother Thomas was away in Iceland, playing new music with a band of wild Scandinavians. Lexington, Listerine, Hoot, and Minerva, the Barlow's cats, were around, but they were a pampered bunch and only broke the silence when their food dish plummeted to half-empty.

Usually some muses were also about, but they too made no noise. The house could be full of them--Harold Spider, Monica Butterfly, Melanie Caterpillar, Adam Snail, Myrtle Mouse, and more--and you wouldn't have a clue. Melanie Caterpillar might be lounging in your potted geranium, Harold Spider might have burrowed deep in among your books, and as far as you knew your house was tidy and muse-free. Muses were even quieter than indoor cats, which made them about the quietest creatures in nature.

And if you actually needed a muse!--well, then they became downright invisible. There might be a lizard muse right behind your bowl of vegetable soup, a whole troop of them holding a meeting in the tunnel of your rolled-up poster, and, since you needed one, since you had no idea what to write for your science paper on fulcrums and levers, you could train your strongest magnifying glass on every corner of your house and not spot a trace of a muse, not a web, not a wing, not a footprint. Phoebe understood why most people skipped creating, the invisibility of muses-when-you-needed-them being what it was.

"Muses!" Phoebe thought. "They are not nearly as romantic as people make them out to be."

Phoebe had six classes in eighth grade--math, science, history, English, French and P. E.--a free period, which twice a week she filled with Lincoln Middle School's Freethinkers' Club--and lunch. Next for her would be Wilson High School and a good state college. But in her heart of hearts she dreamed of going to Presidio High School, the special high school for gifted students in the capital, and then directly to Paris and the Sorbonne.

She had already decided not to live on either the Left Bank or the Right Bank but instead on the island in between, where Notre Dame and several excellent ice cream stands could be found. From there she would hop right or left according to her mood, right to the Picasso Museum and the bird markets, left to the book stalls, the Rodin museum, and, well, school. In her mind, Phoebe had frequent encounters with her cruel concierge, who always complained and criticized. "No painting allowed in your room!" she would cry at Phoebe's passing figure. Or "Good girls never wear that shade of red!" Phoebe was thrilled to have a cruel concierge in her future.

Phoebe wondered if Paris got snow. Gold Strike definitely got snow. Even with spring arriving, you couldn't be sure that a snowstorm wouldn't materialize out of a clear blue sky. The highest Sierras were snow-capped year round and Gold Strike was only three thousand feet below the Donner summit, where legendary tragedies occurred in the days of wagon trains and pioneer settlers.

Phoebe got together her math homework for Mrs. Knievel, her history homework for Mr. Teasdale, her English homework for Mrs. Edison, her science homework for Mr. Soo, and her French homework for Miss Labelle. As she picked up her French homework she revealed Harold Spider.

"Good morning," Phoebe said.

"Morning," Harold Spider said, stretching. "What beautiful light! Quite Alpine."

"Only 48 more days of school, Harold. The eighth grade takes forever!"

"Wait until your junior year of high school."

"Thank you very much!"

"Sorry," Harold Spider apologized. "But college is quite nice. Particle accelerators and classes that don't start until eleven in the morning."

"I will certainly have no need for a particle accelerator," Phoebe replied crossly. "I mean, don't particles travel fast enough on their own?"

"Good point," Harold Spider agreed. "Though I'm not much of a physicist muse."

"Are there physicist muses?"

"Of course. Where there are physicists."

"So what kind of muse are you? Because that would tell me what sort of artist you muses suppose me to be. Wouldn't it now?"

"My dear, that is a bit of secret. Excuse me while I hunt up a fly."

Phoebe shrugged. It was the kind of answer you expected from muses. In her own mind she supposed that she would become a writer, or maybe a writer and a visual artist (children's books sprang to mind), or maybe something she couldn't visualize, a rasferatu or a krangwingbu, something that didn't even exist yet, a new kind of artist. After all, the traditional roles were so stale: painting images on rectangular panels for hanging on walls, writing arch short stories for literary magazines that nobody read, hopping around half-naked in music videos for screaming teens. No, even if new genre public artists were doing things that were strange and downright silly, like making ice sculptures and photographing them while they melted, or creating arty upscale shopping carts for the homeless, at least they were trying to break free from the conventional, the tired, the moribund.

Lost in thought, Phoebe filled up her backpack, made herself some cinnamon-apple instant oatmeal, and ate her cereal by the window nook with its view of the wild back garden that no one tended.

"But the novel isn't dead," she heard herself say. "At least, I hope not! Because I do want to write my novel about an all-girl rock-and-roll band stranded on a desert island. I am looking forward to writing that novel and I would HATE to think that I might write a fine novel whose only problem is that novels are old hat!"

It was time to leave for school. Phoebe had to switch her mind to conjugating French verbs. "Je suis, tu es, il est, elle est," she began, in that sing-song way known to all conjugators of French verbs. She had a French quiz, probably a pop science quiz, and who knew what other indignities waiting for her at school. "Can I survive until Paris and the Sorbonne?" she groaned, letting herself out and shutting the front door behind her.

A bright morning sun shone down on Gold Strike. Phoebe passed one nut street after another: Peanut, Walnut, Pecan, Macadamia. She passed the High Country Diner, Miss Alma's School of Dance, the All Things Golden antique store, the Sutter's Mill real estate office, and the Gold Strike Collective ceramic studio. The High Country Diner was already full of tourists who had spent the night in Gold Strike and gotten up early, their appetites whetted by the mountain air and the beautiful spring morning. Now it could rightly be called a beautiful spring morning, Phoebe reckoned, since spring had officially arrived. That made her think of the naming and dividing of things, like years into seasons, which made her think of Vivaldi ...

"Paris!" she cried spontaneously. Then, mustering every ounce of will power, she returned to her conjugation. "Je suis, tu es, il est, elle est ... " Finally Abraham Lincoln Middle School appeared. Phoebe picked up her pace, suddenly in a rush to get another day of eighth grade behind her. Read more!

Two Pistols, One Expected, One Unexpected

Thomas Eakins meets Rosa Bonheur.

From The Life and Works of Thomas Eakins, by Gordon Hendricks:

“From Tom’s acquaintance with Germain Bonheur we were invited to his parent’s home. His sister Rosa Bonheur was there on a visit from her home in Fontainebleau. Below she wore skirts but her upper attire resembled that of a man. She was very bossy and dictatorial with the family, and when Germain differed from her on any point she would tell him to go to bed! Tom was speaking of our national mechanical skill and to illustrate the point he pulled out from his pocket his Smith & Wesson revolver. (I know of no other person in Paris who carried one!) Rosa put HER hand in her pocket and pulled out one of the same make. She acquired the habit of carrying it during her sketching at Fontainebleau.”

An artist may be sensitive. That doesn’t mean that she has to go unarmed! Read more!

ARI'S OASIS. 1. The Writer Who Craved Discipline

A market town had flourished at this oasis in the desert for more than two thousand years. Travelers from the East and the West stopped here to shop the twisting alleys of the Bazaar, to buy blown glass, spices, and oil, to sit in the deep shade and sip sweet tea, to buy and sell treasures, to sing songs, and to write poetry. Some made the trek, even from thousands of miles away, just to meet with Ari, a man with a great beard who saw clients in the back of his daughter's bookstore and gallery.

His daughter Maya was a glass artist who sold her art--along with scented candles, totems, musical instruments, and books--in a dark shop with a curtained entrance at the center of the Bazaar. It took you twenty minutes to get to Ari's room at the back of Maya’s shop no matter which entrance to the Bazaar you selected, and kings and beggars, talk show hosts and hermits, each had to make the same pilgrimage, past the rug merchants and the stalls with their hammered brass lamps and filigreed incense burners. There were no short-cuts, no special treatment. Ari's clients knew that intuitively, without having to be told; they knew that each would be treated alike and that each had to make the same journey.

Ari would counsel you by phone or by E-mail, if that was your preference. Many creators chose that route, since their lives were busy and the desert was far away. But a surprising number came in person. Creative and would-be creative people from every corner of the globe negotiated the narrow, teeming alleys of the Bazaar and arrived at Maya's shop--writers came, entrepreneurs came, rock musicians on tour came, scientists came. All found their way to the shop at the center of the oasis.

Ari's wife, Rose, took care of unwanted babies, hugging them, kissing them, singing to them and playing with them. That was her job and her life. Ari's daughter Soledad, two years older than Maya, lived in Barcelona, where she taught bioethics at the great university and wrestled with life and death issues at Barcelona's main hospital. Ari's son Abraham was a foreign correspondent whose bravery and hatred of petty dictators was legendary. Ari, for his part, loved strong coffee, which he took black, baklava, the smell of cinnamon, and truth, beauty, and goodness.

One day a young writer named David, pained that he had not completed a single one of the twenty stories he had begun in the past year-and-a-half, came to see Ari.

"I am so undisciplined!" David blurted out as soon as he was seated. "What is discipline?"

Ari stared at the young man without smiling. Then he replied, "For an artist, the word 'discipline' has a special meaning." He fixed David with his gaze. "Let's say that the urge to write about something welled up in your soul. You understand that feeling?"

"Yes!"

"What are your two possible responses?"

David thought for a moment. "To say 'no' to the urge or to say 'yes' to the urge."

Ari nodded. "If you said 'no' to the urge, maybe you would go out and exercise. Maybe every time you said no to your creativity, you would exercise, one time jogging, another time lifting weights, and so forth. If you did that all the time you might get very fit. What might people say about you?"

David pondered the question. "Well, I think that people would say ... that I was very disciplined!"

"Exactly. But would you be writing or completing your stories?"

"No."

"Would you be a creator or something else?"

"Something else."

"For a creator, discipline means creating regularly. It can have no other meaning. Being disciplined in some other way, like doing yoga every morning or doing superb work at your day job, is not only not an artist's discipline but it may even be avoidance of an artist's nature. So, you ask, what is discipline? For an artist, it is artist's discipline and no other kind of discipline, not even the very important discipline of the alcoholic artist who maintains sobriety or the depressed artist who maintains hope."

"I understand!" David pulled on his short brown beard. "But how can I acquire artist's discipline?"

"Imagine that you've been placed on a spinning beach ball and that you can just maintain your balance. It takes every ounce of effort to keep yourself upright, every ounce of mental and physical dexterity. Could you also write?"

"No. Not as you described it."

"No, you couldn't. What would artist's discipline mean in that context?"

David thought for some time. He imagined that if he got very skilled at riding the beach ball, maybe he would then possess the wherewithal to also write. He could picture a great acrobat twirling on the beach ball and also drinking lemonade and writing War and Peace. That image was very seductive. The great acrobat's mastery was impressive and also looked easy, effortless. Why couldn't he learn to handle life, no matter how chaotic and demanding it might be, and also write? But in the pit of his stomach he understood what riding on that ball would feel like. It would never be possible to write, not so long as he had to maintain his balance.

"I would have to fall off the ball first," he murmured.

"Or hop off!" Ari laughed. "Yes. On and off, on and off, one minute in the whirlwind of spinning life and the next minute in the deep quiet of not riding the ball. The first step is hopping off the spinning ball. Then you will meet yourself, in stillness, in all your nakedness, without that balancing act to distract you or occupy your thoughts. What will be spinning then?"

"My stomach!" David blurted out.

"Exactly. Then and only then will you get to create. Then you will find yourself in the very best anxiety, in real quiet, married to your own thoughts. Then you will write and finish things."

David nodded. He knew what Ari meant. But he didn't know how to acquire that discipline.

"Go now," Ari said before David could ask his next question.

"But--"

"You have the idea. Now master it."

"But--"

"Go now."

David got up reluctantly. A few seconds later he found himself back in the tumult of the Bazaar. Just as he emerged from the shop, a shaft of mid-afternoon desert sunshine completely blinded him. Read more!

Episode 1. Two Cokes, Two Cafes

Paris is the artist’s home. An artist, arriving in Paris for the first time, instantly feels as if he’s returned to a place he has known and loved his whole life. The writer John Holmes explained: “So deeply embedded in the world’s dream of freedom, youth, art and pleasure has this city become that, when you arrive, you feel a strange pang evoked in you—a pang of nostalgia.”

The ordinary sights of the city are rendered extraordinary because of these associations. It is therefore the ordinary sights that visual artists endeavor to capture: the look of a bench, the façade of a building, the Seine at night, a flower market. These simple sights tug at an artist’s heart. He is compelled to grab his sketchbook, set down his easel, or pull out his camera and capture what he is feeling. An artist’s heart is set to beating by the simple sights of Paris.



Yesterday or the day before one such artist arrived: his name is David. So did another: her name is Genevieve. Will they meet, make love, and stay together for a few wild hours? Will they last longer than that? Or will the fates roll out a different story, leaving David to take up with a café singer and Genevieve with an Italian? Well, we can’t say yet. Each has just arrived—and is already completely immersed in the dream and the life of Paris.

An artist comes to Paris to be charmed. She is ready to smile, to nod at strangers, to let down her guard. Genevieve crosses Boulevard Montparnasse, her sketchbook and pens at the ready in her portfolio, and glances up: the café in front of her is called “The Dog Who Smokes.” Exactly right!

She has come for the cafes but she has also come for the café names. She has come a long way just for the sake of the cafés, for the legendary ones like Le Procope, Les Deux Magots, Café de Flore, and Brasserie Lipp, but even more for the sake of the ordinary ones like The Dog Who Smokes. She has come for the ordinary café that will become her personal spot, the place where she sits and sketches and watches the world. That is her real living room, her real Parisian home, the café on any corner.

Genevieve buys a Coke.

David is out walking at dawn, at midday, at dusk, and late at night. A student of light, a child of the Impressionists, he holds light as his subject, his very reason for being. Midday it is sunlight—at night it is moonlight and light cast by the lamps of Paris. His first look at the nighttime Seine took his breath away. He had seen it a million times in films, books, photographs, and even as genetic memory but nothing prepared him for how this first glimpse felt. He may have his own way of working and his own way of seeing that appear to owe nothing to any tradition but when he saw the Seine last night he felt like a living link to something very ancient.



In Paris the artist sees art everywhere. No matter where he has come from, he has never experienced an art environment like this. There are the great museums, the art galleries, the architecture, and the street art. Like every artist before him, David rummages through the bins of old prints at the stalls by the Seine, taking in images whose faded glory remind him that art has been made here for a thousand years.

Here a sixteenth-century map whose calligraphy is art, there a Belle Epoque print of princesses at the ball: the images may make him smile, so far has art moved in the ensuing centuries. He may paint in a way that would flabbergast these bygone artists but he is still their good friend. He handles this Seine-side art lovingly. Then he moves on, stopping after awhile to buy himself a Coke. But it is at another café, not at The Dog Who Smokes.



Will David and Genevieve meet soon? Check back and see! Read more!

Welcome to my blog!

This is my first blog post. I am very excited! This is a view out the bedroom window of the apartment Ann and I will be renting in Paris for the month of July. It seemed to me that I couldn't start this blog with a better image! Read more!