Running for Your Life: Promise of Paradise Found

Miola, Puglia

June 2016

When you find the perfect place

And you’ve been searching your whole life long

There is a moment

This one under the pinos in a hummocky field cleared of rocks, the mura antica,

kissed by cool breezes that waft over us in the shade

from a pitiless sun, essential for the plants, the citrus and flowers,

so numerous that it would drain

the pen dry to put down.

And, yes, the breeze now stirs to a rustling wind, chases off the fly

And so keeps the promise of paradise found.

Next: Running for Your Life: Election Protection

Running for Your Life: Puglia Poetry

Polignano a Mare

Cold of the sea surf washes over us

As we sit on a rock

A Wicklow man

rescue team member on mountain trails

trains his eye

on a boy

gangly and good natured

shy to be the center of attention but relief

washes over him as our Wicklow man rises

out of the sea like

an Irish god, yellow locks

wet down an ample back that the boy is soon

making sweet use of as the act of mercy is performed

on the shifting rocks, the boy hopping on one foot, smiling

even now

with his Italian visit in tatters, his ankle, what has drawn our

hero’s eye, swollen to three times its normal size, something

the boy has not seen or felt before

but known all too well by the Irishman of the Wicklow trails.

“I have seen a fair thousand of these,” he says with a light

glowing from somewhere inside, not leaving the boy until

the story takes a turn toward a direction that is familiar and sound.

Next: Running for Your Life: Promise of Paradise Found

Running for Your Life: Puglia Puglia

It’s been about a month since being in Puglia (Apulia, in English), but the magic of the land, the light, the air stirs within me still. That is saying something, given the month of tragic headline news we've had back in America.

M and I never fully grew accustomed to where we were living: a masseria, or fortress farm, built in the early 1700s and renovated three centuries later. (In the vein of receiving a phone call from the Pulitzer committee – My response: Are you sure you have the right Larry O’Connor? Chances are …)

No, our two-week masseria, with a late eighteenth-century fresco in the farm’s former chapel (now drawing room) was not meant for someone more deserving. It was for us. Two writers who didn’t know how much we could take advantage of a sanctuary retreat like this one.

Inside the fortress farm: courtyard piazza, converted cow barn (with feeding station plaques and birthdates for three cows who lived there – Contessa, Principessa and Bianchina) to game room, where M spread out her latest novel manuscript on the netless ping pong table; a cheese room with vintage fireplace; second story sleeping quarters, with back deck for night sky watching. The door leading upstairs has a lock on it so old that it has to be turned with a metal key the size and weight of a small dog.

Puglia, in southern Italy, is not on the tourist trail. In the hills where we stayed, it is a place of sunny days and cool nights. Lemon and orange trees. Olives and capers and cherries and almonds. Primitivo red wine made with the grape that when it migrated to Napa Valley put Zinfandel on the map. But Primitivo in the terroir that is Puglia Puglia tastes nothing like the food clobberer that is California Zinfandel.

Looking for an Italy that is not Venice, not Florence, not Rome, not Tuscany, not Umbria? Consider Puglia Puglia. It will stay in your blood long after you leave it.

Next: Running for Your Life: Puglia Poetry

Running for Your Life: This Is Your Brain on Parasites

When it comes to the “body” journalism there is a lot to choose from. Diet books, exercise books, lifestyle books. At root, we’re either looking for validation of the choices we are making, or guided by fixes we feel we need to make: lose weight, build muscle, improve our sleep, revive energy.

Then there is This is Your Brain on Parasites by journalist Kathleen McAuliffe. As Publishers Weekly aptly notes, McAuliffe presents her research “less as fact than in a spirit of exploration.”

Understandably this book will piss off the serious science readers, but for a layman like me there is so much to chew on.  Here’s a sampling of my title page note-taking: Roundworms! Chance Favors the Prepared Mind; Guinea tapeworm body marauders; Malaria contraction wonders; Wasp vs. spider/cockroach; Caffeine and bees, before that ants/fungus! Sex = biological uniqueness; Bears and pelt cleaning; dirt eaters; Disgustology!

What's your appetite? Diet, sleeping, sex? Probiotics!

Do yourself a favor and look this title up. Among “body” book readers, you’ll be the talk of the beach.

Next: Running for Your Life: Puglia Poetry

Running for Your Life: Waking to the Wedding March

M and I were in a countryside villa lodge late last month – a hop, step and a jump from Fumicino airport, where we had arrived from JFK that morning. To take off some of the edge of our travel weariness from the overnight flight, we retired for a nap that was shortened by the playing of the wedding march. We both stepped to the balcony and from the sunny field beyond the garden wall came the sweet, unamplified sounds of the wedding march.

When M called to book our one night in Tenuta Torre Gaia http://bit.ly/28S78es the room registrar informed us that on the day of our arrival there would be an early evening wedding of two local young people. Did that present a problem? she asked M. Hardly …

So began our latest trip to Europe. This time to places where Italian was spoken first – if not exclusively. I’ve only now after almost a month (which explains my absence from adding to my blog; when I travel I make a point of going and staying offline – and cellphone free) started to stir from my Alice in Wonderland-like Italian mood that enveloped me that evening at Tenuta Torre Gaia and simply wouldn’t let go.

Next: Running for Your Life: Puglia Paradise