Story "The Rooms of the Day" in Summerset Review!

 

A mountain chalet. A distant couple sharing small spaces. Mysterious backpacks and burning brussels sprouts. My new story, "The Rooms of the Day," is out now with Summerset Review!

Four years ago, I got that finger-ends buzzing inspiration at a gallery opening in Zurich where this artist's sketches of the rooms in his house covered an entire wall. Since then, I've re-written it three times, workshopped it twice. Some stories are triple-barrel scotch. Others are Beaujolais. All taste great but this one needed the ageing/editing.

Thank you to Joseph Levens, editor of Summerset Review! Read the story here.

The Waterfall and the Phone

Ok it’s time for me to write my ode to the Samsung Galaxy S7, because if any cell phone deserves an ode, it’s that one.

It all started with someone’s need to celebrate her birthday this year by staying a night at the Giessbach Grand Hotel in Interlaken (ahem, me). Mike met me in Interlaken that afternoon, and one boat ride and charming old funicular later, we were at the hotel. It’s grand all right: a 19th-century hotel complete with long staircase entrance, sunset lake and a 500-meter waterfall called the Giessbach Falls. We had a little time before dinner so we went to check out the waterfall. It has 14 stages of roaring white water, and at one of the stages, there’s a steel bridge that takes you behind the fall so that you can look down at the hotel through a misty curtain.

Definitely a selfie moment so I took out my cell phone. Because it didn’t have a cover and the back is made of slippery glass, I told Mike, “I’d better not drop this.” Two minutes and six selfies later, I turned around and knocked into Mike’s hand which was holding the phone. The phone fell in excruciating slow motion, a Peter Jackson movie kind of slow. We watched it flip, flip, turn and disappear into the waterfall.

We looked at each other with the exact same thought, “Did that just happen?” Freak out. Quick calculation in my head of the pictures and files I hadn’t backed up yet. Then I remembered I was supposed to give the phone back to my company the next week! We left the bridge and I went to sit down on a boulder to hyperventilate properly.


Mike had the idea that he could try and retrieve the phone. Before I realized he wasn’t joking, he was climbing down the side of the waterfall. I yelled at him to come back, it wasn’t worth it, but the falls drowned me out. I watched his head bob up and down among the slimy black rocks, then he disappeared behind a boulder. I thought, I’m going to lose my fiancé AND my cell phone on my birthday.

Mike’s head reappeared. He was smiling, waving at me. Jacket wet and glasses misty, he skipped back and showed me my phone. He found it in a pool of water along with other people’s dropped objects: a teddy bear, selfie stick, scarf, etc. Turns out that all his mountaineering in Switzerland and hours at the climbing gym were actually useful.
The phone worked! Not a scratch. Screen clear. All systems functional. At this point, all my up-and-down emotions burst out into tears. Mike took the phone and snapped a picture of me sobbing into my scarf. As we walked back to the hotel, I grabbed onto his wet jacket and told him, “I have to marry you.”

So congratulations Samsung, you’ve created a waterfall-proof phone. It gave me a birthday of tears, joys, adventures with water and gravity, heart palpitations and declarations of love. Plus it takes GREAT pictures.

The Hobbits of Switzerland

We went on this gorge-ous hike near Neuchatel and kept expecting elves to jump out at us, gracefully of course. I mean could this get any more Lord of the Rings?! And then 30min later it did…

We found Bilbo Baggins’ house! And Frodo’s! That’s it, Middle Earth is in the Gorges de l’Areuse of Switzerland.

Now I’m thinking of starting a booktag called #booksinreallife for famous books come to life in real places/people/situations. What does everyone think?

The Geneva of Jorge Luis Borges

Is there a better place to read Borges than with the mountains, swans and blue waters of Geneva? Across the lake in Old Town is a gray-stoned building where he once lived, and down by the Rhone river his grave lies in the Cemetery of the Kings. What I love about Borges' prose is how he presents complex philosophies, uncompromising intellect within a fantastical narrative grounded in realism. Right now I'm re-reading "Funes the Memorious" about the man who knows the time like a clock but has no sense of time because he can't forget anything.

Anyone else have a favourite Borges story?

Travel Tip
To visit Borges' Geneva check out these links:
https://www.nytimes.com/books/99/08/22/bookend/bookend.html
http://southerncrossreview.org/64/borges-letter.htm
https://shrineodreams.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/the-tombstone-of-jorge-luis-borges/

Castle Climb in the Fog

Fort l’Ecluse, France

The weatherman had promised unusual sun but all we got was a fog that deepened and thickened throughout the day. We still drove to Fort l’Ecluse as planned though, a trunk full of ski helmets, harnesses and the springy lanyards which are supposed to keep us firmly attached to the mountain. Close to the quaint French village of Collonges, Fort L'Ecluse was built in the 19th century by the Duke of Savoy to command the Rhone. The lower fort consists of a narrow tower staircase embedded into the mountain and leads to the larger, upper fort which overlooks the river. The parking lot was empty except for one man with two dogs and a pet sheep. From the car, it was only a few minutes hike to the start of the Via Ferrata. 

Via Ferrata is italian for “iron road” and it means what it says. Mainly found in Europe, they are constructed paths of steel steps, rings, ladders and ropes for an easy ascent to heights that normally would only be attempted by superhuman climbers. Made easy for the body but not the mind. Most people have the stamina and strength to do it: psychological limits are tougher to overcome. All your senses will bombard you with panic and flare guns. “Don’t do this!” your eyes will scream as you stare at the thousand-meter drop, the slanted rocks, unable to calculate how much farther you have to go, and how far you would fall. You have to have faith in the metal clips connected to steel rope connected to anchors drilled into rock, which together keep you from dropping from the mountain.

At first the climb was straightforward: the steel rungs made a neat vertical line up the cliff. The steel was cold and wet, which made my step a little more hesitant and my hands aching for waterproof gloves. A little further and the fog had swallowed us whole. Other than the immediate rocks and tufts of trees, we couldn’t see anything beyond the mist. We knew there were the castle walls and secret staircase, we knew there was a river somewhere and hundreds of meters of elevation, but we saw nothing but gray. It was a dewy and comforting blanket, which dampened my fears since I couldn’t perceive the depth of falling should a hand or rope fail.

Somewhere in the middle, the climb became more difficult with wider steps, scrambling up rock edges, calling on upper body strength I didn’t have. One section has you stepping on nails over sheer nothing to get from one chunk of mountain to the other and a sharp overhang that needs a broad swing of the arm to get back to vertical. In the fractured seconds I allowed myself to look down, I was amazed at how one toe on a tiny steel nail was the only thing between me and the ravine. Friends laughed at me when I raced up the tough spots, not giving myself any time to think, to build fear, and then crumbled to a whiny girl at some muddy slopes on the easy walk to the bridge.

Before arriving at the bridge, we first had to cross a wooden beam without handrails, which had me muttering, I don’t like this at all, why the hell did I want to do this, never again, I like the idea of adventure, less the actual doing... Then the monkey bridge came into view. The word “bridge” is used liberally here as it is nothing more than two steel wires, one for hands and one for feet, stretched across to the fort. The incessant wobbling and acute feeling of being naked in the air was unsettling at first, but soon I found it an easy slide over.

While the fog was close and personal during the climb, opened up at the fort, it was a billowing mass, rolling over the crumbling turrets, pouring through the narrow windows, lining the wet grassy paths. The stone walls, already softened by history, were now blotted and dimmed to a fantasy. Did we accidentally climb into another world? Chocolate and dried mangos revived my cold fingertips, made a damp fire in my chest, while we walked between the gray walls with flecks of white, stepping on weeds and grass hardened by autumn, passing under the tragedy of vines and blackened moss.

 

Of course M and T had to find a way inside the iron-locked fort and with some scrambling up a hill and squeezing through a window, they managed. Inside, they said, the fog was filling and filling the vast loneliness of the castle. There was an entrance to the long staircase down the mountain but they knew the exit would be locked. Instead, we took the hiking path down, a conventional loveliness of fall leaves and dewy spider webs, leaving the ghosts behind us with every muddy step.

Travel Tips

·       Where: Fort L’Ecluse is a 30min drive from Geneva, makes for an easy day trip. See map. ·       Duration: Ascent is about 1hr 30min, hike down another 30min ·       Bring: Helmet (climbing or ski), harness, lanyard, climbing gloves (especially if it’s cold), sneakers or hiking boots not climbing shoes ·       Links: http://www.cc-pays-de-gex.fr/fortlecluse/Via-ferrata.html http://www.viaferrata-fr.net/via-ferrata-129-La-via-ferrata-du-Fort-l'Ecluse-L%E9az-Ain.html

Night of the Museums Geneva

It was a cool and fresh sort of night, and an inaugural one for Geneva's Night of the Museums. My friend and I went to buy our tickets at the Musee de la Reformation Internationale, devoted to Calvin and other Protestant reformers. It has a gilded courtyard complete with a pretty fountain. The Night of the Museum's ticket consisted of a white rubbery ring with “Nuit de Musees Geneve” engraved on it. What a lovely idea but the rubber turned out to be quite uncomfortable. Inside the museum an adorable, white-haired man was giving a printing press demonstration. His friend, a professional ink roller, assisted him by showing us a metal block of an assembled page. I had always thought that printing blocks were built letter by letter but I realize now that using assembled words would be much more efficient, assuming that the words one needs are all there! The presenter was so sweetly eager with his talk, spouting off the number of printing presses there were in Geneva throughout history. I admit that we were a little impatient and were just waiting for him to launch the presses. Finally, his assistant rolled the ink and folded the wooden slabs, cranked the handle and voila an engraved scene from olden Geneva was imprinted on the white paper.

We went on to the Cathedral Saint-Pierre’s archaeological site, a church basement like none other: a massive sprawling thing representing centuries of stone foundations. At least three cathedrals were built on top of each other before the currently standing one, evident in the markedly different layers of stone. Some layers were made of large blocks, others of little river rocks. When it was unearthed in the 1970’s, they had found tombstones as well but the bones were removed much to my disappointment. (My fascination with catacombs surely comes from Edgar Allen Poe's The Cask of Amontillado)

In the Parc des Bastions, the poppies and tulips were in full bloom, flaunting their bright orange, pink and yellow petals. Just as we arrived at the steps of the main library, a majestic building in the middle of the park, two women who worked there locked up the doors and told us it was closed. Even on a night of museums, the library was closing at 7pm. Looking at the hours posted on the door, we laughed. The library closes at 6pm every day, during lunch hours and on Sundays! Clearly no employed resident can be making use of the library. How I miss the New York and Palatine ones. Brimming full of books, CD’s, movies, and open at all hours of the day! The Parc des Bastions was truly beautiful though, and so was La Treille. The view looked like another city with the trees in thick foliage and dotted with spring blooms.

The Musee D’Histoire des Sciences turned out to be my favorite museum yet. But to get there we had to walk through a pitch-black path along the lake and park, where sketchy-looking men were hanging out with boomboxes and something to smoke. It was an alarming walk but we were relieved to hear the salsa music once we got closer to the museum. A full salsa party was in swing at the steps of the museum, with drinks, shaking hips and seducing shoulders. The museum itself seemed another world compared to the hot-blooded dancing just outside. There were fascinating trinkets from the early stages of Western science: old telescopes, a humidity measuring device that used hair as its main component, trompe l’oeil toys that demonstrated perspective, the frilly clothes and basic nail shoes that a famous Swiss scientist wore while scaling to the top of Mont-Blanc.

The Jardin Botanique was further up the park. The lights promised were faint dots along the path. A Rimbaud exhibit in the greenhouse was closed and from we could tell, mostly consisted of words like “soif” painted in red paint on the glass. The labyrinth was not made of actual plants as I had imagined. Instead, there were white linen walls hung up on wooden sticks. The “walls” were quite easy to see though and even more easily walked through with a parting of the hand. We soon ran into two drunk guys holding beers in the maze so we walked through many more walls for a quick exit. Sitting on the midnight bus home, I thought of the night fondly and of a small city that makes big cultural efforts.