ATL
An apology to the city of Atlanta:
Dear Atlanta,
I know we haven’t always been the very best of friends. I was perhaps a little harsh on you when I moved there four years ago. But you’ve grown on me as I’ve gotten to know your people, your neighborhoods.
Standing on the rooftop looking over you I realized that a truth I never expected as come to pass: I will miss you Atlanta. And I’m proud to say I’ve shared some years with you.
I’ll visit someday. Until then,
Your friend, CAT
For those of you living in and passing through Atlanta, please patronize these places and give them a little extra with love from me:
Best of the Best
I literally cannot say enough good about these locations.
These spots are irreplaceable and will be deeply missed.
Brick Store Pub
Octane Coffee
Trinity
Other spots of honorable mention:
Best brunch: Highland Bakery
Best queso: Taqueria del Sol
Best bocodillo and second best queso: La Fonda
Best morning-walk coffee: Belly
Best porch for sitting in the sun: Dancing Goats
Best mahi-mahi sandwich: Eclipse di Sol
Best burger: Vortex
Best sangria: Solstice
Best karaoke: Southern Comfort
| Posted in » Diving Bell and the Butterfly
I recently saw the movie, “Diving Bell and the Butterfly”, which then inspired me to go back and read Jean-Dominique Bauby’s book by the same name. It is quite an inspiring narrative, communicated and written by the blink of a single eye by a man who suffered from Locked-In Syndrome after a massive stroke. Bauby was once the editor-in-chief of Elle Magazine. Francine Prose of Newsday says of the book, “An admirable testament to the unkillable self, to the spirit that insists on itself so vehemently that it ultimately transcends and escapes the prison of the body.”
I know you blog readers of my aren’t into reading so much as you like looking at pictures, but for the sake of variety, I thought I’d share a chapter from the book. Read it if you ever get your hands on a copy. Watch it if you ever get the chance. Highly recommended.
“I’m fading away. Slowly but surely. Like the sailor who watches the home shore gradually disappear, I watch my past recede. My old life still burns within me, but more and more of it is reduced to the ashes of memory.
“Yet since taking up residence in my diving bell, I have made two brief trips to the world of Paris medicine to hear the verdict pronounced on me from the diagnostic heights. On the first occasion, my emotions got the better of me when my ambulance happend to pass the ultra-modern high-rise where I once followed the reprehensible calling of editor-in-chief of a famous women’s magazine. First I recognized the building next door – a sixties antiquity, now scheduled to be demolished, according to the billboard out front. Then I saw our own glass facade, airily reflecting clouds and airplanes. On the sidewalk were a few of those familiar-looking faces that one passes every day for ten years without ever being able to put a name on them. When I thought I glimpsed someone I actually knew, walking behind a woman with her hair in a bun and a burly man in work clothes, I nearly unscrewed my head to see. Perhaps someone had caught sight of my ambulance from our sixteenth floor offices. I shed a few tears as we passed the corner cafe where i used to drop in for a bite. I can weep quite discreetly. People think my eye is watering.
“The second time I went to Paris, four months later, I was unmoved by it. The streets were decked out in summer finery, but for me it was still winter, and what I saw through the ambulance windows was just a movie background. Filmmakers call the process a “rear-screen projection,” with the hero’s car speeding along a road that unrolls behind him on a studio wall. Hitchcock films owe much of their poetry to the use of this process in its early, unperfected stages. My own crossing of Paris left me indifferent. Yet nothing was missing – housewives in flowered dress and youths on roller skates, revving buses, messengers cursing on their scooters. The Place de l’Opera, straight out of a Dufy canvas. The treetops foaming like surf against glass building fronts, wisps of cloud in the sky. Nothing was missing, except me. I was elsewhere.“
YouTube Trailer for the movie:
The History of the Camino de Santiago – The Way of St. James
Soon I’ll be jumping on a plane and heading to Spain to spend one month walking the Camino de Santiago – in English, The Way of St. James.
Pilgrims have been walking the 700+ kilometer path (almost 500 miles – cue my Camino theme song, “I’m Gonna Be” by the Proclaimers and bask in ‘Benny and Joon’ nostalgia) to Santiago de Compostela, Spain, for centuries. Exactly how this particular pilgrimage gained it’s spiritual significance is fuzzy at best, but let me see if I can give you the reader’s digest version…
Santiago (St. James), you remember him… Disciple of Christ, a son of Zebedee, fisherman, the first apostle to be martyred (beheaded by Herod Agrippa in Jerusalem around 44AD)… that guy. Stage set. Let’s depart from facts into some legend –>
So Santiago’s disciples stole his dead body and secretly carried it across the way to bury him in Northern Spain – but not without some trouble. They had to calm crazy, wild bulls by praying to the martyr that the local pagan queen sent down to destroy them. After magically recommanding their spirits and turning them into domesticated bulls, they buried Santiago in a mausoleum. Then promptly forgot to tell anyone where they put him.
Zoom forward seven centuries. In 813AD, a religious hermit Pelayo was lead by a shining star and angelic voices to the Roman mausoleum hidden under briars in northwestern Iberia. Inside, of course, were the remains of St. James, and the discovery spread across Europe. In a short time, the pilgrimage to see the location of Santiago’s remains became one of the three most important pilgrimages in medieval Europe- being considered one of the few pilgrimages one could do to earn indulgence (in short, get-out-of-the-consequences-of-sin free card).
But wait, there’s more. When Muslims and Christians were vying for control of Spain, Santiago was raised from the grave, no worse for the beheading, to be reborn Santiago the Moor-Slayer, and lead the Christian troops mounted on a white charger at all the important Reconquista battles.
Many monasteries were founded on the trails and more specific routes started to be followed as pilgrims sought out lodging at these monasteries. A guide book was published in the 12th century and people came in droves. Well, they did, until the Protestant Reformation…
The Way was forgotten by most of Europe for several centuries until it’s 20th century revival by the northwestern Spain tourism board. And now Catholics and pagans, the religious and atheists traverse the most popular trail (Camino Frances) that starts just on the other side of the Pyrennes in Spain, crawls 700+ kilometers through towns in northern Spain, and ends at the Santiago de Compastalla Cathedral. And I am only a few weeks away from joining them.
So, thanks for listening in on my history lesson. I hope you are appropriately bewildered and inspired about the amazing St. James and The Way.
Oh – and this was too good for you to miss-
I’m Gonna Be – the Proclaimers
Click that. You won’t be sorry.
