Italics are mine

Trip to Asheville NC

I just came back from Asheville, NC. That trip had been on my bucket list for about ten years -- back when I lived in Pennsylvania, my best friend from grad school and I had discussed taking a road trip down the East Coast to the Blue Ridge Mountains, and then our schedules didn't align, and then I moved to Texas. But ever since the move, I would have that pang of regret whenever I saw something mentioned Asheville online, and since I subscribed to multiple Instagram feeds about Asheville, I would regret not going in a semi-frequent basis. After my mother died, I tried to check off more items on my bucket list, but going to Asheville in October during leaf season proved far too expensive for what I was willing to spend on it, and it was only two weeks ago that I decided to make the trip happen. And I am so glad I did.

It is not just because I like getting closure for things I wanted to do. It is, mostly, because from the moment I landed at Asheville Regional Airport, I met so many interesting people who gave me tips on the next thing I should do or see, and it felt I was meant to be there. Dallas has such a narrow definition of success, especially for women -- blow-dry your hair smooth and long with little curls at the bottom, wear white pants, wear stilettos, paint your nails, showcase a signature necklace along with your designer's purse, plot to move to University Park where you can bitch away with other housewives after yoga, devote all your energy to snatching a man because how dare you believe you are worthy even if you're not a man's sidekick -- that it is easy to forget this is not normal anywhere else in the country. And so I felt home in Asheville in ways I haven't felt in Dallas ever since I moved there, and I understand by now that I will never feel at home in Dallas.

Let me get over the key points of the trip. I landed in Asheville, got an Uber. There is a shortage of drivers, but I was lucky: I only had to wait a few minutes. The driver had only been in Asheville for a couple of years, ten at most, and I asked what had made him move, since it is a very salient question for myself at this point. (Not that I don't like waste my life in the pinnacle of consumerism where wealthy donors think they can buy prestigious, undeserved appointments for their proteges because the university wants their money at all costs, but I digress.) And the Uber driver mentioned he had asked a location astrologer and reader, I find my work environment to be so bad that I asked the driver for the astrologer's name and got it and checked that person online and ascertained that they were not fraudsters and I am going to ask them for advice just because my current environment is not good for people like me, whose family members got themselves out of poverty by playing by the rules and believing in the system. The system where I work has a distinct predisposition toward letting self-pay students do whatever they want, and it is my fault I didn't realize early on the problem it would become.

 So I reached the hotel, glad to have met my Uber driver, and went to dinner across the street at a place called Salsa's. It was crowded so I ended up sharing a table with the person waiting by herself in line before me, who ended up being an anti-vaccine Trumpist working as an air stewardess for a well-known airline, and I have to say she was amazingly nice and helpful in giving me recommendations for things to do while I was in town. In fact, I was aware of most of the restaurants I visited later during my stay only because she had recommended them: Chai Pani, Sunny Point, Limones. So here I am the next day, trying to get into Chai Pain for a late lunch. The wait was twenty-five minutes, which surprised me because it was after the main lunch rush, and since it was very windy I didn't want to walk around and ducked into an art store called Sol Collective two doors down, where I bought some cute accessories, mostly necklaces. The co-owner, who was manning the cashier's desk, told me Chai Pani had received a James Beard Award the previous year, and that was why they were so popular. 

 Then my seat got ready and I went to Chai Pani (pictured left is what I ordered). I was seated at the bar where I had delicious food and ended up striking a wonderful conversation with my neighbor, who was in Asheville for a five-week residency in ceramics. Reading about the James Beard award, I learned that local Asheville restaurant Curate (pronounced the Spanish way, with the accent on "-te") had also received a Beard award in a more minor category, so of course I had to go to Curate for dinner. (Those restaurants were all within walkable distance from my hotel.) I ended up striking a very nice conversation there with my neighbors, including a salesman from Charlotte who adores Asheville and whose daughter was planning on studying in the city.) 

Left is my favorite drink at Curate, if you're curious.

 

 

 

 

On Wednesday morning I went to Sunny Point for brunch -- that one required an Uber. Then I walked around the River Arts District and had a cortado at Summit Coffee. I also wandered through Marquee, which is supposed to be an antique store but really is a home decoration store with artsy personality.

 

 

 

 Then in the evening I went to Limones, where I continued my arduous task of trying as many ceviches from as many restaurants as I could, and the mercado ceviche was indeed spectacular.

 

 

On Thursday I had the most amazing avocado toast with eggs for breakfast at the hotel, and for lunch I went to Wasabi's, (rock shrimp + Play boy roll + sake), and then I dropped by the Asheville Art Museum.

 

 

 

 

 For dinner I went to Posana (kale + trout + some delicious cocktail I forget the name of). Before dinner I attended the social hour at the hotel where I met two wonderful elderly ladies who showed me the rooftop bar of the AC Hotel across the street where I enjoyed a magnificent view of the North Carolina hills from there.

 

 

 

 Then I returned to my hotel where I tried a drink or two at the hotel bar before going back to my room and catching up on sleep. (The bartender was another great conversationalist, planning to move to Vermont in August after seven years in Asheville.) On Friday I had another great avocado toast for breakfast at the hotel and then I packed my suitcase to head to the airport. My Uber driver was a very interesting person -- is anyone in Asheville not interesting? -- who had moved to Asheville from Charlotte for a girl a few years ago and had stayed after she had left. He was active in a ultimate frisbee professional league and talked about how he wished he had gone to college. 

I regret not having time to visit the Biltmore Hotel or the Omni Grove Inn, but if I go back (I hope I will), this will be high on my to-do list. Ultimately the trip was amazing because it allowed me to connect with a lot of different people, highlighting that the problem for me in Dallas is more about a poor fit between me and the community than an issue with my ability to connect with strangers, I am just not in the place where I am meant to be, is all. In Asheville, I ate exceptionally good food, and gained a peace of mind I normally don't have, in addition to benefiting from many amazing conversations.

This was a bucket-list item and I am so glad I took the time to take the trip after so many years of putting it in the back burner! I'll remain grateful for years. And to all of those who make Asheville unique: thank you. 

Update: I forgot to mention I visited the Black Mountain College Museum in downtown Asheville! I can't believe it slipped my mind to mention it. The museum is small but it was a delight, especially given how much I like non-conformists and hyper-creative types. Highly recommended!

Bennington One

So I got accepted into the Bennington's low-residency MFA program a few months ago (the best low-res MFA program in the country if you ask me, but it is said to be neck-and-neck with Warren Wilson). Bennington is of course famed for its innovative, student-centered curriculum, mostly at the undergraduate level -- besides writing, there are a couple of MFA programs in dance, music and public action at Bennington as far as I am aware -- and its role in pioneering a new era of modern dance thanks to Martha Graham, whom I adore. I applied to the program after my mother died unexpectedly, because I wanted something positive to come out of her passing -- she would have wanted that for me, and she was the only one in my family to fully support my writing. So throughout the residency I kept taking stock of how lucky I was to be sitting in this or that auditorium and meeting so many phenomenally talented writers and I kept silently saying: Thanks for making this possible for me, Mom. 

I can do a low-residency program because the residencies fall outside the academic terms at the university where I teach. I was wondering if I had made the right decision right until the moment I showed up on the Bennington campus on the shuttle from Albany Airport, and then it was so obvious I had I thanked my lucky stars and I enjoyed ten days of phenomenal master classes with top instructors and best-selling writers, great readings, and the wonderful cohort of my amazing cohort members. I have met more interesting people in ten days in Vermont (none of them living in Vermont, but still) than I have met in almost seven years in Dallas, Texas. It has been a while since I was surrounded by so many talented creative people and it has already pushed me to achieve a new level of proficiency in my writing. That residency was total bliss (ok, it helped that the weather was very mild for early January in Vermont, going barely below freezing). The 20+ first-termers all lived in the same "house" (dorm), we just had to get up in the morning and get ready and walk to the dining hall, which was about 4 minutes away and had delicious organic food sourced from local farms. The first tremors would recognize each other and we would sit together in the dining hall, in maybe two tables due to the size of the group. Then we would walk to the first class or reading of the day and would just keep going until it was lunch time, where we would repeat the same process as for breakfast. Then there was time to go back to the dorm if needed before going to the mandatory workshops (where our work would be workshopped). Then more classes and readings and then social hour (wine hour at Roz's Cafe!) and then dinner and faculty readings. It was an extraordinary experience. I can't wait for the next residency. 

Here are some pictures of residency. (The man at the podium is David Gates, author of the amazing Preston Falls, who teaches at Bennington.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes life takes you through a meandering path, and that has certainly been the case for me and the MFA program. If I had been able to, I would have done a MFA years ago, but I had no one to recommend me, a student visa and later a H1B, and even after I got my Green Card, it never occurred to me to quit my job to pursue a full-time MFA. I come from a blue-collar family, so quitting an engineering job I was good at for a MFA just didn't cross my mind. Where I come from, the priority is to make a living. But years ago (close to twenty years ago, I think), a friend of mine who lived in NYC at the time had told me about the Gotham Writers' Workshop, and I took a couple of online classes there, and I hired someone to give me feedback on a story of mine through them. That person was an adjunct at the UCLA Extension School, so about nine or ten years ago I looked into whether they offered online classes, and they sure did. That's how I got started taking online classes at UCLAx, back when I still lived in Pennsylvania, and ended up taking two master classes there and getting a Certificate in Writing (with Distinction :) from them. Through the first master class I met a woman my age who was writing a similar type of fiction, and we stayed in touch over the years. She got a NY agent but when the agent refused to send out her manuscript (perhaps the agent's assistant had been more enthusiastic about the book than the agent herself was), that friend of mine announced she had decided to pursue a MFA at a local low-residency MFA program. This is how I learned low-residency MFA programs existed. I also got my literary agent through the UCLAx program, and she has been excellent. When that friend of mine told me about her MFA program, I researched the top MFA programs in the country (hers is one of them), and applied to the top three. I was accepted into two of the three, and picked Bennington due to the name recognition, the great support for students and alumni especially regarding publications, and the better fit with me as a person (innovative curriculum... Martha Graham... student-centered... groundbreaking...)

Now that residency is over, we have to read about 20 to 25 books each term (approved by our advisor that term), and submit about 25 pages of new writing to our advisor each month. I actually have already read 11 books for the program since the beginning of January (I was having a dry spell in my writing so I decided to read a lot), and now I am working on new pages. My cohort has a Discord channel and we keep in touch through that as well as occasional group Zoom calls. It's been such a joy to meet people as dedicated to their writing as I am and as talented too. For many years I didn't have nearly enough writer friends. We give ourselves book recommendations, celebrate good news, share publication opportunities and cheer each other up as needed. 

One thing that is embedded in my mind about residency is that I liked to sit at the back of Tischman Hall for the faculty readings and the master classes, and one day I looked around and noticed how different everyone looked -- everyone with their unique style of clothing and hairstyle and shoes. This is so different from Dallas, where women in particular most often have their hair down with little curls at the bottom and wear some kind of revealing dress with stilettos or other high heels.

I went to some breathtaking graduate readings and I can't wait to see where the recent graduates end up publishing. The Commencement ceremony was also the most enjoyable Commencement ceremony I have ever attended. This is a remarkable program and I am so glad to be part of it. And if you ended up on my page because you consider applying, all I can say is that this program has been incredible for me. 

New York City

A few weeks ago I went to New York City. This was the trip I was supposed to take the week when my father called to say my mother was going to die and I had to cancel. In fact, the trip I was supposed to take was much shorter -- a few days -- but when I was able to reschedule some time after my mother died, I decided to go all out and do what I love most, attending a lot of theater performances in New York City. 

It was a phenomenal trip. I stayed in three different hotels, each close to the performing arts venues I was going to visit at the time: first in Brooklyn close to BAM where I saw A Little Life and Hamlet (A Little Life in Dutch, directed by Ivo van Hove, the production was gorgeous but the topic is so depressing that I had, like many other attendees, to speed-walk to the exit at intermission, and Hamlet in German with a zany energy that was invigorating), then on the Upper West Side where I saw the NY Philharmonic and Don Carlo at the Met as well as Straight Line Crazy in midtown (the performances besides the Wednesday matinee were sold out, given that Ralph Fiennes was starring in the title role), and then in Midtown/Theater District where I had to get back to the Upper West Side to see the Paul Taylor Dance Company (hotel snafu) and I also saw the musical Into the Woods (definitely a Broadway staple, although it is more touristy than the sort of New York entertainment I usually seek), The Piano Lesson (with Samuel Jackson in a play directed by his wife and also starring the son of Denzel Washington, and I have been so out of the New York theatre scene over the past few years that I didn't even realize the woman with Jackson in her name was Samuel's wife and the man with Washington in his name was Denzel's son, until they made their entrance on stage and Samuel Jackson got a lot of applause but the man with Washington as his last name also got a lot of applause and it wasn't until intermission that I realized why), and Death of a Salesman, which was phenomenal although the review in the New Yorker tried to convince you otherwise.

I wish I could have found the time to go to the Whitney for the Hopper exhibition and to the Metropolitan Museum because I will love the Met no matter what is on display, but I already found myself lucky to take this trip after all the darkness that befell my family over the past few months. New York City theater exhibits a level of innovation and creativity that other cities just cannot display if they want to satisfy their customer base, and I always leave the City feeling refresh and exhilarated. I hope to be back in the spring/summer for a couple of key theater productions. We will see if I can make it happen. In any case, I went back to my daily life with more energy and creativity than I had had in years. I am so happy I was finally able to take this trip. My mother would have been proud.

Madrid

Last year I visited Madrid for Thanksgiving. I wanted to discover the city because my second novel is set in it and I also needed frequent flier miles to keep my airline status. So off I went. I was blessed with dry weather and crisp temperatures more in line with early October in Europe than late November, and that made for a trip to remember. Madrid is a beautiful city. I didn't expect how beautiful it was - far more beautiful than Paris, and far cleaner too. I took many inspiring long walks in the Centro and tried to imagine what the city looked like back in 1939, for my novel. 

I landed on Thursday morning and had set up car service to go to the hotel, the Doubletree by the Prado, which is undeniably the hotel to stay in if you want to be near the cultural attractions of the city. The hotel was well furnished and the custom if for the hotel staff to give guests a warm cookie/brownie at check-in. I am not too much of a brownie person but I have to say that warm brownie was excellent. Then I left my luggage in storage since my room wasn't ready and went straight to the Prado museum, a short walk away. Yes this is the sort of things I do after a transatlantic red-eye flight. Let's go see some paintings! I should have learned more Spanish before I left (I ended up learning a lot of Spanish after I came back thanks to the two volumes of introductory Spanish available on The Great Courses but since everyone in the hospitality industry knows English it was not very important to know Spanish, although it helped to read menus).

 

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The Prado was as magnificent as advertised, but since I prefer modern and contemporary art I was eager to visit the nearby museums that were more aligned with my taste after checking in at my hotel. My heroine and her husband live close to the Puerta del Sol (although of course I might change that) and given the historical significance of the square I obviously wanted to see it myself. It was quite a mental exercise to remove all the modern additions to the square but in 1939 it must have seemed just as busy, in a different way. 

I was very impressed by the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, with its amazing collection of modern paintings by giants such as Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Gauguin, Robert Delaunay and Georges Braque and artists I had never heard about such as Frantisek Kupka and Albert Bierstadt. 

 

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I went to see the inevitable flamenco show and walked through the Barrio de Las Lettras near my hotel. A friend who had lived in Spain many years ago had told me about la siesta - that time between approximately 4pm and 7pm where everything closes - and I thought that surely this was a thing of the past, but no, the siesta was still in full force, although it is possible to find a few restaurants open continuously from lunch to dinner. I found one where I enjoyed a delicious gazpacho and some Spanish specialties.

 

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  Now, my favorite museum of the whole trip was the Reine Sofia. As luck would have it, it not only displayed pictures relevant to my novel (lots about the Spanish Civil War, and I'm not just talking about the remarkable Guernica) but the special exhibition Lost, Loose and Loved: Foreign Artists in Paris 1944-1968 had just opened. 

 Coming out of the Reine Sofia I took a peek at the train station, which plays a key role in my novel (assuming I don't change the ending) and wandered through the Royal Botanic Gardens. I also tried a couple of bakeries, which were ok but nothing special. I wanted to see the Palacio Real but by that point it was the weekend and the lines to get in were enormous, so I just walked through Madrid some more.

 

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At the end of the trip I managed to go to the church of Santa Barbara, which also plays an important role at the end of the novel (again, assuming I don't change the ending). It was closed but I got to walk along the side where my heroine is supposed to make her escape. Even with the street view of Google Maps, there is something to be said for on-the-ground research so that you get the key details right. The church looked very imposing. I could easily imagine Franco walk through its doors back in 1939. The sense of history was very strong.

To improve my Spanish I bought myself several Spanish-language books, the best way I know to make me practice a language: the Spanish-language guide of the Prado, the Spanish translation of C.J. Sansom's A winter in Madrid, which I love (except for the ending), Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One hundred years of solitude in Spanish (I have the English translation already), Los pacientes del doctor Garcia by Almudena Grandes and a book about the creation of the Guernica painting. This is in addition to the two small catalogs of the Reine Sofia that I bought in English, another book in English about Guernica, a sketchpad with a Guernica cover, a CD about music played at Federico Garcia Lorca's memorial service and a completely unrelated CD about Antonio Pappano directing the Santa Cecilia Orchestra in the three symphonies of Leonard Bernstein, whose biography by Humphrey Burton I adore. I swear I managed to make everything fit in my carry-on for the return trip to the United States but it was a close call. 

I am very glad I took this trip. 

 

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