In Love with France, At Home In Italy

  I found her, and here is what she said about my   Letters to Men of Letters—   Dear Diane Joy Charney,   Thank you.   I love this.  I completely love this. I love it so much that I want to sit right down and write you a letter -- not an email. Which makes me realize how loooooooong it's been since I've written anyone -- anyone -- an actual, handwritten letter.     I used to write long, long letters to people.  I loved writing letters.  I loved getting letters.  I still do.  Except these days, I never write any -- except condolence cards; how telling is that?! -- and I never get any letters.  Sigh.......it's all emails now, and as we all know, live by computer, die by computer, and should the computer crash, well.....there go the "letters"...   To backtrack a bit, I read about your starting out your Yale presentation about the book with Fats Waller’s “I’m gonna sit right down and write myself a letter” playing i...

I am thinking about endings as I stand here in 2012 making myself some very fancy French cocoa that had an expiration date of "best by May 16, 2005." I have been known to do stuff like that, especially when the expiration date police are not watching. This particular brand of cocoa, a requested birthday present of some eight years ago called La Parisiennne, is described as "silky swirls of cream gliding, intoxicating and arousing." According to the blurb on the fading package, the maker of this sensual product product trained at the Cordon Bleu where her responsibilities while working at the Hotel Crillon in Paris included making this ambrosial drink. And here she is having created in the spirit of this memory, "a Parisian style of chocolat chaud for those who want to bring a taste of Paris home." Well here I am in my kitchen channeling my inner Proust, and something has made me reach for this box that has about two more servings of this transfor...

This is the weirdest kind of fan letter, but I know that you will understand. How many times have I read book reviews in the New York Times that made me want to run right out and read the book, yet I never follow up on it? Well, this time started out as only a minor exception. I was cautious. I asked the library to buy the book so I could see if my instinct that we were meant for each other was right. As a so-called writing expert and specialist in French literature, I do not give my writing heart up to just anyone. But the evidence that you might be the one was there. As I think back to that article I'm trying to recall just what it was that snared me. Was it the lavender? I never actually thought I'd like its scent, but now that I have become a newborn in Italy, I have a special relationship with this flower whose relaxing and sleep-inducing properties I have come to appreciate. Or was it all of those references to Marcel Proust? Well he and I have had a thorny relat...

As fate would have it, on the plane ride back there were no crashes, thanks to my magic travel shirt--the one Z told me to buy that keeps the plane aloft, and without which I could go nowhere. Further, of the many films on offer, I first chose a sweetly sentimental French one, "La Tete en Friche," starring Gerard Depardieu, and then "Eat, Pray, Love." Not yet having read the book, I had heard that the Italy section was the best, and I could see why. But as an Italian resident, although I loved it as much as the next person, I found it maybe even more sentimental than the French film. One line from "Eat, Pray, Love" rang out as so memorable that I had to write it down. "A ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation." It is an opportunity to create something new that builds on the old, paying it due homage, but making it your own. When we first met with Luca at the bank about getting a mortgage, all of the nuances of that vocabulary were ...