Writing is a mystical process that wells up from a deeply powerful source. Words can bring peace and foster understanding or pronounce wars. They’re building blocks – serious toys for our minds to use to construct concepts and prompt us to grow and change. They form our minds, create barriers or help to break them down. My mother repeated often, “If you don’t have anything nice to say then don’t say anything at all.” This little piece of wisdom, if put into practice, can transform an environment by promoting silence and comprehension. By relying too heavily on words, we often ignore that the feelings and intentions behind them, hidden in the secret garden, carry weight too and may even contradict speech. When I say, “It’s fine,” with a reticent tone, it’s clear to a good listener that I’m not in accord with myself or the situation. It’s not fine. The same happens on paper. Through a combination of words, we put ourselves onto the page and with them go a hint, a feeling of what we carry inside. Words, when used with love make a tremendous impact.
Words harm. Sometimes the very act of labeling someone or an act they’ve committed contributes to and fosters misconceptions. The label becomes a judgment rather than an observation. It puts up artificial barriers. The pain of past words that hurt reminds me not to injure my family, my friends and colleagues. Not to shoot off emails without thinking twice.
Words can heal too. I watch how eyes light up when I give someone a sincere, heart felt word of encouragement. One word can be enough to make a difference for a child to make a decision between going onto higher education or heading onto the street. It can encourage a sick relative or send her deeper into despair. A friend recently experienced the traumas of breast cancer. Through the cycle of shock, denial, anger and loss of a piece of her, she came out stronger and her eyes shine with renewed self-confidence. Family and friends call on her to help them understand their own dilemmas with breast cancer. “I’m happy to talk to them,” she says. Through her matter-of-fact approach and kind, gentle words of support, she is changing their world, her world and mine to make it a better place.
Some rules I follow about what to write and say:
Will it help? Will it encourage and inspire? Will it improve on the silence or just add to the mental pollution? Is it the right time to express this? Is it true? Will what I have to say and write foster unity and understanding?
Finding Four Leaf Clovers
In childhood I developed the ability of finding four leaf clovers. Out of boredom I sat with my sister and neighbor under the giant oak tree and stared at the lawn. Together we found tens and hundreds of these genetic anomalies, plucked them and pressed them in books. I developed a great skill of selective perception.
On the walks to the waterfall in this little mountain village and along the river I glance down and find more four leaf clovers to add to the collection. Sometimes I put them in letters and post them. For many people the clovers symbolize good luck or a good omen. But for me they’re a reminder to look for the good among all of the rest. Often as writers we focus on the ugliest or the most extreme and dramatic to attract attention to our work. Singling out the worst is a bad habit of the untrained mind. In spiritual practice, we do the opposite and focus on and draw out the best in others. It may seem harder, but is it really? Or is it simply a question of changing habit?
For a writer, this focus on the uplifting and the elevating takes on great importance. With the media mostly focused on the negative and horrible, we’re called on to go deeper and look into the light at the core of those around, not to ignore the overall picture, but to find balance.
3:39 PM GMT | Read comments(1)August 11Tasting 1981
Last night a friend who worked in the wine business, opened a 1981 bottle of Amarone. Made with hand selected grapes from the Veneto vineyard of Allegrini, this numbered bottle of Fieramonte (they made only about 18,000 bottles that year) contained twenty-seven years of work, patience and sunshine. I love good wines and a few days earlier the same friend opened two bottles of vintage Laurent Perrier rosé champagne from 2000. Her habits in Zurich, she said, were to drink Crystal champagne with brunch and Chateau Equyem is on her list of must haves. “Very spoiled,” I called her. “Très gâté.” She spoiled us too.
For anyone who observes wine making (and not just the drinking), the process begins years earlier with the planting and careful pruning of vines. In Switzerland, I watched the wine growers clip the first vines, cut off excess grapes, cover the rows and rows of hillsides with black nets to keep the birds from eating the grapes. One fall harvest, I volunteered to harvest the fat, sweet juicy grapes of merlot to help some locals with mountainside vineyards. The air turned sweet from the sugary scent of warm fruit and my hands and fingers turned purple from the back-breaking work.
Ticino wines have an excellent reputation, but they’re made in such small quantities that they’re rarely exported – and they’re costly (rarely under twenty dollars a bottle - especially with the high exchange rate). A vineyard at Cademario charged seventy dollars a bottle for a young wine grown on this hill above Lugano. Connoisseurs willingly paid the price. With names, like “Tracce di Sassi” (Traces of Stone) and “Bucaneve” (Crocus – the flowers grow wild here) they reflect the characteristics of place.
When I lived in France, I kept a small cellar with wines bought during the good years. The trick is not giving into the temptation to drink them immediately but conserve them for five or ten years until their flavor blossoms in the bottle. Though I’m not generally patient and I’d often consider opening them and then put them reluctantly back, the wait was worth it. Not only had their taste turned mellow and rich, but the same wines on the shelves had doubled or tripled in price. My favorite was the Chateau Margaux. (Hemingway named one of his daughters after this wine.) More than a snobbism, it became a pleasure of savoring each drop, each instant that the taste of wine held fast to the palate. It also became an exercise in the appreciation of the passing of time.
While the 1981 Amarone played out a symphony of almond and raspberry on my palate, I recalled that year in my life. It tasted of dreams of European travel and a time to come when I’d be free to write.
For over a week TS1 – Tele Svizzera Italiana – the regional TV company has been courting us for an interview. Someone in Sonogno, this little village where we live, must have told them about the “Americani” writers who spend long days inside and then escape to the mountain paths for reflection and quiet.
TSI called three times asking all of our personal details, what we might say about the village and the country. They wanted to know where we came from, how we found this spot and what we’re writing about Switzerland.
Mike and I discussed it. Both of us prefer to be – like most writers – observers and not the observed. We like to stay in the shadows and enjoy the show. Besides, I’m usually the one asking for interviews from architects and writers. But we felt an obligation to put in a good word for the people in Sonogno.
TSI scheduled to come on Friday, August 1st, the Swiss national holiday, but another story came up. They rescheduled to come to our house today at 11:00. Just as we started to clean and shower, the reporter called. He wanted more information. He needed to talk to his bosses. He didn’t make the decisions directly. He’d get back to me in ten minutes.
I finished a short story and continued to clean. Ten minutes later he called. “They’ve got another story. Sorry we won’t make it today. When are you leaving?” he said apologetically. The man spoke as if he announced a funeral. As if he thought we might be devastated.
“So what’s the news?” Mike said when he walked in from taking out the trash.
“We’re free!” I announced. We’d been worrying over our Italian.
“Yes!” he yelped.
We danced around the house happily freed of duty. While some people might cultivate publicity and seek attention, we're quite content to remain out of view. Now we’re off to Ascona to celebrate our free day over yellow curry.
Visible from the glass-walled house here, Mount Zucchero (Mt. Sugar), one of the highest accessible peaks in the Verzasca Valley, beckoned. Though 8,400 feet may not be much higher than Smoky Mountain peaks, unlike the rolling terrain of the Southeast U.S., the mountains here wear sheer granite cliffs and shifting rock. A few years ago, one huge boulder the size of a three story building dislodged from higher up to stop in the Alpe Muggai (a high mountain summer farm), crushing a small rustico (the local stone houses). These boulders pepper the descents. The locals are used to the unpredictable shifts, avalanches, extreme rains and mud slides. But the wild, rugged nature of the place means you find few fellow trekkers high up.
To conquer Zucchero we set out on Wednesday and stayed overnight in a hut (Rifugio Sambucco) at about 6,000 feet. The refuge had improved since my last visit. Now instead of heating and cooking with a wood stove, the owners had installed a small gas burner – much easier for making dinner of hot pasta and boiling water for tea. At that altitude, the spirals with tomato-basil sauce seemed a thousand times better than the same eaten at home. Carrying them up on your back improves the flavor. The shower was an outdoor fountain with a temperature of about 50 degrees F. Invigorating to a tired body, but the wind chill made it a two-wool-blanket night for sleeping on the hard mattresses.
Earlier on the red and white trail, we passed a mad man from Zurich – mad because he’d brought along his four and a half year old son. They picked wild blueberries and I thought they would turn back before reaching the higher path and 1,800 feet elevation gain to Sambucco. But they followed us. In many years of Alpine hiking, this was the first time I’d seen a child this young. He wore baby hiking boots and a cartoon backpack. Despite the long distances (four and a half hours the first day and six and a half the second), the child didn’t whine or complain, but instead seemed elated by the mountains and studied the maps with interest. His face reflected calm and contentment. Some of the rock passages proved too high so he’d pull with his arms and push with his little legs to scamper over the stones. The child’s efforts made my own seem meager.
We passed them again on the second day. When we finally headed up Mt. Zucchero above the pass, the child and his dad didn’t’ follow but headed down – a wise decision since the exposed path virtually disappeared into powdery dust and small chips of stone during the last 200 meters to the peak. With only about a hundred meters to go to the top, I made a mistake. I looked down. The snow-covered Alpine peaks circled around. The world fell away into angles – all slanting down at 60 degrees to the valley and our little home in Sonogno visible some 5,000 feet below. A 90 degree drop off lay behind me. Already at the refuge, I’d felt the dizziness of heights. The tiny stone hut lodged on the only relatively flat area at that elevation. If you dropped a bottle or anything round, it seemed it would roll straight down over the cliff to the river valley thousands of feet below. I once was used to this, but looking down from near the peak of Mt. Zucchero, I lost my nerve and could go no farther. So close and I’d even made it to the top once before, but this time I committed the error of looking back. Last time I’d kept my eyes fixed firmly on my feet and on the path ahead, above. I didn’t look out until I’d climbed to the small flat area on the very peak.
In mid-writing of my book, it’s the same story. There are moments for reflecting and looking back, but mid-draft is not one of them. “Don’t look down or back, not yet. Keep going until you get to the end,” my better angel whispers. I listen and keep working one step at a time. I returned to the valley and my desk with renewed energy. 4:00 AM GMT | Read comments(0)
