Julia Park Tracey

Just a quick check-in as I’m packing up to return to sunny California (is it sunny there?). We bailed on Canterbury today because Mia is getting a cold and I wanted to repack everything. I arrived with one suitcase and am leaving with three and a carry-on; I’m bringing back a boatload of her stuff that she can’t pack around Europe later this summer. Egad. We saw Billy Elliot (the musical) last night — sweet, funny, but sad to say, not a single memorable song. But the 12-year-old boy who was Billy carried the entore show on his (ok) ability to sing and awesome ability to dance — tap, ballet,…

(from 13 days Without You, a series in progress) I midnight upon your morningand rise upon your set;I wake against your sleepand dream throughout your daytime.We are upside each other,shadowing movements, silence,motion or stillness.Our bodies are silhouettespuppeting one another, soleil, lune, noir, blanc,sweet and bitteras rosebuds and rosehips. Bring those lips, those hips to mine. Across the worldI reach for you.

In the city of seven hills,rain rattles like a bead curtain.Stones gleam in the wet.The cobbled alleys blow emptyas we maze our way back,cocked for the echo of voicesfrom another street. We cliche our cliche as we cliche,collect another image for a European scrapbook —thoughts and ideas I do not want to forget,what has been seen and written a multitude of ways,thought not by me. And I lie here in bed,trucks rumbling in the street andthe sound of someone’s footsteps inthe hall,and try to write Hemmingway’s one true thing. The one thing about it that’s true.

In the rough seam between the brick walland the asphalt,lemon balm and bluebell,grape hyacinth,daffodil and ivy —a garden grows itself,no matter if anyone loves it.

Waiting for the train, a block away. Catching up on mail, etc. Alameda seems very far away today. It is. Last night we ate at Sally Lunn’s, in the oldest house in Bath, and our meat came on trenchers of bread. We ate it all. It was yummy. Mia had Cumberland sausages and treacle tart and I had woodland pork and raspberry Pavlova. We had a nice chat with the waiter, who was from Malaga, Spain, and the couple next to us, an older man and wife from York. Lovely people. She gave Mia some travel advice. Enjoyed our conversation v. much. We went to the cinema afterward to see…