Travel Knots - Part II

Last week --48 hours after my return from Europe-- I doggedly pushed a few words into this space; upon reviewing that post, I see the fragile mortar between ideas, infelicities of word choice, awkward alliterations.  Oh well. I wanted to get it done, no matter how crappy I was feeling.

And I gotta tell ya, coming back is always about as much fun as I can have outside of an Iron Maiden. Not that I do not feel love for and from my community here (starting with the Darling Companion, then on through the sortafamily who show up smiling and warm).  But the atmospheric difference can be tough to negotiate.  My body's reaction is predictable: develop some kind of transient infection and pull it all down for a few days.   (And then we throw Mother's Day into the mix.  Yeah. Good times.)
But onward:  Last blog gave a few key ideas about timing your journey, what to expect food-wise, how to move across Greece, the availability of lodging.   This post will look at acquiring connectivity and maybe some language.

There are a half-dozen phone companies in Greece, and while I did use Vodaphone briefly last year, for the most part I have stayed with the Ma Bell of Greece, Cosmote (unlike ATT, they are not affiliated with the CIA).  Wind and Vodaphone are ubiquitous, but Cosmote seems to serve the most remote villages (and beyond, while crossing the Pindus mountains or 800 kilometers out to sea) almost without interruption.  Their offices are in every town square, and there is usually a tech/salesperson on the floor who can configure your devices.  The two prepaid plans are What's Up for your phone and Kosmokarta for tablets/iPads.  The links provided here will take you to the webpages, but do yourself a favor and just go to the Cosmote store.  Once you've bought the SIM card (10€ includes installation/configuration), you can register the account online and top-up through PayPal or credit card.   The total to set up new SIMs in your phone and tablet with about 1 gb on each them should be less than 30€.

In the event that you run out of phone-data before getting back online to top-up, your alternative is to buy a top-up PIN from any kiosk - the storelettes that dot sidewalks all over Greece.  You just say: Yparkhi Cosmote? Do you have Cosmote? and the guy (usually) behind the counter will assent with a little diagonal headbob (he's not saying 'no' - 'no/okhi' is a nod). "Deca evro, parakalo."  Ten euro (card), please.

You then send a text to 1314; in the body you key in the word ANA, then the PIN you just purchased. That puts the entire value (minus taxes) on your phone.  To convert to data, you text 1330 and send the number '200' in the body of the text.  In a minute or two you'll get a text back from Cosmote saying that 600 mb has been added to your phone, with about 10 minutes of talk time left (you'll be able to receive phone calls beyond that limit, but outgoing is restricted to 10 minutes).

Also, I gotta say, customer service with Cosmote (well, until the tourist season) is sterling.  Kind, patient, cheerful.  And their techs are actually competent.  But really, do as much as you can in the store itself. It will save you a LOT of time, and costs about the same as trying to shimmy through the website.

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As for language study, I must confess that during this most recent journey, I let lapse most --if not all-- of my daily practice.   At some point I grew weary of 'chasing' the language like a reluctant romance, so I just stepped back and said: maybe --one fine day-- it'll just appear inside of my mind. Hah.  Greeks know, and were constantly commenting on, the fact that theirs is a curiously resistant language, especially for people raised in the Saxon sounds.  Now that I am back in the States, the study has begun in earnest again.   

Here are a few of my favorite apps...

Duolingo •

(arrrghhh... Blogger just dumped half of this blog, and I don't have it backed up yet... So now the language section will have to be pieced together again next week.  Sorry!)

Combing Out the Travel Knots...Part I

Returning to Austin late last week was as arduous as getting to Greece a few months ago.  Both ways, I had completely new itineraries.  While there are no assurances that I have learned anything recycleable during our milieu of Daily Fruitbasket Turnover,  I'll drop the dime anyway and see if you can use any of my experience.

First night back in Austin (the first 'day' according to my ruffled circadians) I serendipitously met a young hellenophile. We wound up having coffee at 4 a.m. to talk about Greece.    His questions spurred this blogpost, since it seems I might know one or two things worth sharing.

As my friend Wu pointed out yesterday, there is a difference between a tourist and a traveler, and I hope my readers consider themselves the latter.  Not a tourist, nor a refugee or ex-pat, but like me, willing to spend the time and energy to actually dwell (albeit lightly) in the faintly bedazzled sweetness of an unfamiliar sky.

[Full disclosure: I will probably affiliate this blogsite with some of the services mentioned herein, so if you do get to clickin', please look for the clutter on the margins of this post. Inelegant, yes, but perhaps helpful for both of us...]

First, let's talk about dates.  People, you want to be in the Eastern Mediterranean from late September until early April.  Maybe until Easter.  No later.  I have now experienced ellenikaApril and the onset of tourist season in early May, and it isn't pretty.  Not only are there a welter of very confused UK drivers on the road (who wind up in your lane on a regular basis), prices for many things rise about 25% every week in April.

Now, on to transportation: Buses, cars, ferries, metro.  The bus system in Greece is KTEL/ΚΤΕΛ (no that V has not tumped over, it's an L). Each prefecture and state has its own website.  Thus ~ ktelioannina, http://ktelattikis.gr/, ktelprevezas.gr/... etc.  Each website is designed differently, so you'll have to poke around a bit, but there's an English option on most.  Every site has a schedule of local destinations and an itinerary for buses to Athens and Thessaloniki, the two 'largest' (cough) cities in the country.   They almost never publish prices, but I can tell you to expect 8-15€ for local, 35-50€ to Athens or Thessa.

When traveling across Greece, you may realize that a roundtrip bus ticket is more than the price of a car for a couple of days, and reconsider public transport.   In the cities you'll need a particular kind of sensibility to deal with Greek drivers (I have it in spades), but the countryside is less obstreperous. If you are not in a hurry (try not to be) the state highways run alongside the expensive toll road system (Etnikas); otherwise budget another 20-25€ to get to your destination.

Roadwool

I reserved a car through Sixt before starting this journey, but found upon arrival that the major rental companies are charging a 900-1400€ deposit.   The lowest deposit was Europcar at 500€.   It took a while, but I found a mainland company --carNmotion-- that rented with NO deposit.   While the daily rate was not the 8€/per diem broadcast by Hotwire, Expedia, etc. it was quite reasonable (<20€ a day), and served my purposes perfectly.  But you should know that carNmotion subleases from Enterprise, so you have to go to Enterprise offices, which are usually in town, not at the airport.  And they do NOT provide cars at any of the 'local' depots shown in their list until April.   Call or write and ask where the nearest pickup might be.   And add the bus rides to and from those offices into your budget.

The islands are another story.  Just walk in, hand over your dab of money, and drive away.  Don't bother to reserve anything, there are dozens of little rental agencies.  Yes, you can also rent scooters and bicycles in the same way.  Cash works.

The Metro system in Athens is very good, as are the bus systems in Athens, Thessaloniki, Ioannina.
A week's pass on the Metro system --which goes out to Piraeus and the airport-- is 9€, an excellent deal.  Otherwise the day pass is about 2€.  City buses are between 1-1.50€.

You're gonna wanna keep this map.  

The cheapest ferry to the islands is the Blue Star out of Piraeus port.   And they have terrible terrible food on board, so bring your own.    Routes are 25-50€ each way.   Their wifi is an additional 5€ charge for 24 hours, and if you don't pony up, expect your dataplan to burn like fatwood otherwise.   There is free parking right by the ticket offices, or you can pay another 20€ and bring your car, but most rental companies prohibit ferry transport of their automobiles.

Lodging is abundant & cheap.  I haven't used couchsurfing yet, but will as soon as I have a place to trade into that network.   There is, of course, the hostel system.  Air BnB continues to delight and amaze.  I have also had really good luck with Booking.com over the last couple of years, not sure how they do it, but their prices are consistently 25-30% lower than otherwise published.

Food is something of a splitscreen.  In the South (Attika, Pelepponese, Boeitia, islands) food is more expensive across the board. 1/2 kilo cheese ~ around 8€; in the North, same cheese, 5.   By 'North' I mean anything north of Preveza or Volos - Thessaly, Epirus, Macedonia.  I was able to put together a kitchen list with coffee and table wine for about 35€ a week in the North; closer to 50 in the South. There are grocery chains owned by Germans (LIDL for example), and others owned by Greeks (My Market or AB). Try to stick with the Greekgrocers.   Oh, and most food would qualify as 'organic' if it was being sold here in the States.

Now that you have an idea about how to move around, where to stay and how to eat - what to do. There is a robust music and drama scene throughout Greece, antiquities under each step, a lively and quite mantic geography, a kebab & café scene that will leave the inside of your mouth wondering what took you so long; not to mention Crete, Turkey, Egypt less than a half-day's travel away.   In 2015 I was invited to Cyprus to write;  went back in 2016 to mourn; and this year to resuscitate my creative life, so I wasn't in the 'entertainment' stream very often.   But it is out there, especially in Athens and Ioannina.  Oh, and Dodona... 

Next post: Language and Data/phone plans. 

May Day in Greece!

I am traveling on May Day, and in honor of She What Brung Us, trying to stay off of highways.   Other Greek drivers drop  a clue when I see their windshield wipers festooned with roses (real roses), which won't stay attached if you drive over 50 kms per hour.  

What this also means is that all archeological sites are *closed*... because in Greece May Day is really not for tourists, it has been called into the Orthodox calendar as one of the Μαρια holy days.  

But the wander is marvelous ~ and I glimpse a few things worth sharing: 

Corinthian coastline

Kato (beneath) Olympus

How we roll on May Day

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Gymna Trochoús Sti Gi

(Naked Wheels on the Earth) 

Sun in the Sunless City!

I took a walk through Ioannina today; maybe my last meander here for a while.  We've had TWO continguous days of sunshine, unusual for this silvery place.

A few impressions. . .

Wild Lavender, pretty much everywhere... 

Blooming Horse Chestnut tree (thanks, Sarah!) 

'Cava Cafe' the first coffee cave I visited in 2014. 

Bee Disco ("Live")

OK, the real 'Bee Disco'...

Visiting Scholars

Need anything amputated?  

...or disinterred?

Moi, bathroom selfie (serious) 

Macedonia, thataway... 

Yia Dodoni

Philopygic Parking 

Wednesday is the New Monday

...this week, at least.

On Monday I was rambling around the country, and as I have written elsewhen, traditional Greek road-space requires a certain happy attentiveness.  But I discovered the Greek government has committed to a new set of 'Etnikas' -- interstate feeways -- that are as soulless as anything we have in the States, and much, much more expensive.   My GPS kept rerouting to these gargantuæ - much to my irritated surprise. And as the tolls mounted (one pays about 4€ every 30 kilometers in Attica), I finally stopped and fiddled with the settings until SIRI dumped the tollroad defaults. Whew!

The last (unexasperated) stretch was a tiny road that twists between the Sanctuary just west of here and Ioannina, which finally gave me  a view I have been chasing down for the last three years:

This is two of three villages perched on the side of Mt. Tomaris which forms the western flank of Dodonopoulos, home of some of the most amazing feta and yogurt in the Cosmos... among other things.   

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But what I really wanted to discuss today are eggs.   And not just because we are coming up on Easter Sunday, but because this little apartment came with some charmingly perverse decor. 

Behold,  the giant, nine-inch ceramic egg on the credenza... 


When we discovered this a few days ago, we opened  it up to find, what? 

Oh, right ... eggs within the egg. 

Well, okay,  if the egg is too big to fit into a nest, it might make sense to put the nest inside the egg.  I could go along with that up to a point, but then a closer look revealed. . . 

Yes, that is a feathered egg {shudder}
inside a nest
inside an egg.

Has the entire world gone tweeting mad? Or is this perhaps some kind of sly allusion to President Featherhead twittering away in his Oval Office.   And yes, the Oval is supposed to suggest the Orphic Egg and its divine potentials, now utterly wasted on this superannuated golden Goose.  A goose who indeed migrates weekly to his Florida habitat, but instead of the noble cacophony of his breed, prefers to Twitter like a drunken sparrow.

Maybe we should start a campaign to get the Donald to honk rather than tweet.  What did my old bumpersticker say?  "Ankh if you love Isis"?  

And speaking of Osiris... There is an Easter on the horizon,  common this year to both Orthodox and Catholic calendars, so perhaps all that Rising will have a salutary effect.

Zoes Theá, y'all...

1800 kilometers...

What is that in Olympian inches?   One million?   Something like that. Anyway, I have every single one of them lodged somewhere in my (still lovely) derriére.   So please forgive the delay, EE-seekers, as I roll a few hundred thousand of these off of me.
A dip in the tiny tub and a nap (maybe simultaneously) should do it.

See you on the other side. . .

Tiny Tubs and Sausage Situations

Last week's Mondaypost went missing as the Goddessdaughter and I were frantically preparing to head for Athens.   The four days we spent in Attika was something of a wash for me; I may report on the grossness later, or I may leave it to sleep with the fishies.   But Hannah seemed to be having a good time and made lots of new friends.   As usual.  

Returning to Epirus was divine, as always, but I was too busy watergazing from the bus window to take any photos. I do wish you could have seen the sun slipping down behind the mountains to echo light across the bay of Corinth.   The sea was perfectly stippled with the most gorgeous pink/blue/silver meld, a color I've only seen fleetingly on rainbow trout as they flashed away from the nets.

Once I figure out how to write in it,
this may turn out to be my office.  

We are now back in Northern Greece, and settling in for a sweet visit.

The apartment here is small, but super-cute; we went to this area's IKEA last week, and upon arriving to the studio, realized it is basically an Ikea showroom, complete with Klimt prints and what would have been a Lisa-approved salmon-colored accent wall. But the best of our über-tiny studio is the bathroom's doll-tub. I couldn't find anything to show the scale, but trust me when I say it is rather womblike.  Or maybe a birth canal, being narrow AND deep.

Last night we wandered out to eat, found ourselves at a restaurant fairly removed from the tourist path.   I do my best *not* to be an Asshole American (though my native Texanity does pose an extra challenge), but the menu of this place earned some laughter at Greek expense.

First, the dinner page which leads with "Frying Chicken."  Foghorn Leghorn flashes before my mind's eye, hunched over the fryer with a basketful of human fingers.

Then another look reveals the Frying Chicken is served with what?  estragon.  But in the interest of gender balance, further down the page we have 'Sausage Situation' -- though confusingly, it is not served with 'rise.'







By this time, I have given up any mask of decorum. Hannah is shooshing me, I am snorting shamelessly behind the menu,  but then we turn the page...














. . .  to the housewares section?   No wait, that 'LAMP' is LAMB... Lamb LEAVERS & TONGUES.  Or livers. And tongues.  Talk about* your Silence of the Lambs.

(*go ahead, I'll wait here...)




Finally,  someone must have spent a day or two at le Cordon Bleu because now we move on to Coq au Vin, but translated for Yankee Brits  as ::

And yes, that unfortunate entrée above it is Stuffed Bunny (or Stiffed, if you please).

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

Today we had a small wave of Weather, temperatures dropping into the Threes.   I took a walk in the late afternoon, as the sky was clearing.  Here are a few images:

First greengold light through a silvery afternoon...

 "Main" street, with mountain guardians. 

Personal Protection.  

Greekffiti (note the "no parking" OVER the tag).  

Last / First Day

... of the Zodiacal year, anyway. I took the photos that follow on March 19 (the last day of Winter and Pisces) to publish this slideshow on March 20 (the first day of Aries) when Persephone  rises again to Her Mother's realm.

Welcome home, Kore!

It's Spring Day, my honeys.   'Hope yours is twice-lively...
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Last / First Day (rePublished)

Published directly from Youtube, so a better copy. . . I think.

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Rivetectures

i.
As you can see from the blogstyle chosen, I love bodies of water - everything from wee koi ponds to whale-coddling seas.  Salt or sweet, green to marine-blue, black-blue, and all the whites between, by Ladylord, I love 'em!   But from childhood, rivers have shaped my soul.   It isn't just the constant inconstancy that gets to me - "moving and staying like whitewater" (though Wilbur is actually talking about laundry).  My source of existential relief is the fact that a river both is and isn't.  

When we see that glossy haul between two banks, our mind insists on the Thing Itself, a flowing plenum, all isness.   But in English the word river, rive'r suggests a cleavage, one side straying from the other, like watching a train window as the next car begins to glide -- a movement that seems to pull your face from the rack of its cheekbones.   It is that falling away that sweeps my heart, as I feel for the invisible undermine of it.

In a hydroform riverbed, the sheets are always tangling, kicked up and around the flux beneath the flow, a kind of emancipated undertow.  Last week, while taking the curves of the Arta-Ioannina road, I watched the Louros blanche blue and thunder-blue, its Ναιαδες the color of new wheat.  Maybe you can see them?

ii.
The legendary Acheron (pronounced Ah-care-rón, my Greek soundmistress tells me) is more laconic in its personality.  If not as wide as the American Mississippi, it bears a similar gravitas.   By happy accident I landed an apartment just a few kilometers from this marvel, so have been to visit several times - hoping to catch a glimpse (hey! only a glimpse!) of the Ferryman.

Acheron flowing to the Ionian Sea

Though I have not yet made it to Acheron Springs (which are not its headwaters) I did go to the 'footwaters' at Ammoudia, a nearby fishing village.  There is a long jetty built out between the Bay and the river's mouth, and a fair amount of its water is diverted to the Glika Limni, a lagoon nestled against the cliffs that shelter the village.   Even diverted and channeled, the Acheron still wields an impressive presence.   It is about 80 feet (≈27 meters) wide and curves along the south boundary of the village to a flare of cliffs on the left.  To its right is the chalice of the bay, adorned by a small grove of White Poplars -- related to aspen trees and very sacred to this river.

Walking the jetty between the two waters, I reached down to my left and tasted the river a few times to find the place where salt and sweet ran together.   Then realized I wasn't just 'tasting'; there was a zone --mere inches, really-- where the scents of landwater and sea folded round one another.  There I took a seat and removed my shoes, singswearing :: "Gymná pódia sti potámi..." Barefoot on this River, the wet version of my oath :: Gymná pódia sti Gi / Barefoot on this Earth. 

After a minute or two I started to laugh.  Oh Heraclitus! you can't step into this river twice, now can you?   I watched as the river pulsed around my feet, the waterway's heart beating beneath me.  We bipeds are always a-kilter, unsteady on our pins, but here I was shown that the worlds will roll up if we let them, a(rriving, riving, rivering) in wave-weighted steps.

ποταμοις τοις αυτοις εμβαινομεν τε και ουκ εμβοινομεν, ειμεν τε και ουκ ειμεν.

"We both step and do not step in the same river.  We are and we are not."

Heraclitus

Greek Infraspace

I discovered again yesterday that driving in rural Greece is a special experience, not at all comparable to any other roadastry.   Having learned to drive in the endlessness of Texas, then honing my intuition on the glorietas of Mexico City, I thought there wasn't much that could surprise me - until I started driving here in 2014.

(Don't worry, car rental agent, I did NOT drive this road.)

It isn't the improvisational flare of my fellow roadsters or the single-bed width of the village streets or the innocent twitching of the traffic lights that gets me.  It is the fact that distances between cities and villages are wildly miscalculated - based on a Western European technocrat's idea of how far things should be from one another.   Well, suck it, boys - I am here to depone: that satellite tells you one thing, experience another.

The nearest magnet town (can't be called a city really, with less than 200K people) is, by the map, about 100 kms from the coast.   60 miles. But go ahead, try to get there in an hour, I dare you.   And that is on the national highway.  When it comes to state roads --often 2-lane, shoulderless and switchbacky like your mother-in-law's monologues-- double your estimates.

Estuary of the Acheron River (Limni Gliki) 

Yesterday I drove toward the source of the Acheron River, which according to every map, was no more than 25 kms from here.  About 15 miles.  Leaving at noon, it was 1 p.m. before I even got to the prefecture, and still a good 10 kms away from the springs themselves.  Now, I did stop twice and take pictures, but that accounts for all of 10 minutes That's nine miles in 45 minutes (for you Amerikees), on a road with no traffic.  None.  

As I wrote last year, I have a theory that you have to measure Greek kilometers with some kind of toroidal, circular ruler. Yesterday, as I was gazing over the mountain gate to the Limni Gliki, it hit me, for every meter one expects to go forward, add another up or down. Or maybe up and down.

No, blasting tunnels through the Pindus Mountains doesn't seem to help.   Although they are lots of fun to race.

February & High Fives...

I am writing this on the final day of February... seems like I've spent all of this month getting to my little desk in Epirus.  From the first of the month I was wrapping up the Afterwords Bazaar and bringing the last of Wu's furniture to Texas.  As that project (six months!) wound down,  I had less than a week to prep for flying out of Houston.  I cast off on V'Day, riding a crawdaddy & tequila taxi with the ever-affable Roo (a/k/a 'Kangaroo Sexy'); then a 3-hour nap before a 3-stop hop across the US and Europe to a Macedonian city I have never found over-friendly (Thessaloniki).  That took 36 hours, though --ladylord-- it felt like 3 days.

'Turned out I couldn't rent a car in Saloniki, so I took my flabbergast and bags to lurch across town to a hostel. Six p.m.: I tumbled into the first bed that looked relatively vacant in the women's dorm.  A pink blanket and towel slung across the bunk above me turned out to be pure kidology.   Three a.m.:  I wake up to the snoring of five soccer players.  Male futbolistas -- to be absolutely clear.

Ha ha, Goddess.

I must confess, the first hint had already arrived on the flight from Munich to Thessa.  On a six-seat row, I found myself surrounded by a quintet of German athletes in the middle of tying on their mid-afternoon Trinkgelage, and who clearly weren't going to let a little thing like an overcrowded flight get in their way.   Lucky me.

What might these quintuplets  portend? Well, at the last minute I had crammed the Great Book - a paper manuscript of Five Men - into my engorged suitcase. Some of you may remember FM from Cyprus at the end of 2014; a project that rolled off the desk with Quentin's demise in early 2015.

I am still a bit mystified by that last-minute addition; not entirely sure Five Men needs attention from me right now. But it sits right there (and under the infinitesimal layer of electrons of this screen), humming to itself.  

Being fond of threes as well as fives, let's see if a third quintaiety declares itself (besides the Everabsence of my son, of course).   I may yet be persuaded. . .


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March 1, 2017

Mesologue

After I posted the 2/28 blog above, I discovered my website 'Humandala.org' had been deleted - on that very day.

My webhost had tried to reach me on Valentine's Day, but I was in travel-mode and didn't see the warning.   Unbeknowst to me, the host had new rules in place, which included a "use-by or automatic delete" policy.   I called before the end of the deadline date, but alas, it was already offloaded.  The UI, which was clean and simple, didn't have an app for downloading the website content, and I haven't had the brainspace to go seek one out otherwise.  So.  Gone meant truly and really -- 95% gone. There were a few strays picked up by the WayBackMachine, but I had most pages password-protected - which meant no web-archive.

Eleven years of active work.  Including quite a bit of the Oneirocriticon, the Boundaries practices, Meeting the Girl in the Bone Bikini and a half-dozen other deep dives.  Not to mention 25 years of references:  my CVs, list of publications and links to those - which include some screen shots of publications that are longer in business.

A flurry of phone calls to close friends helped me contemplate this disaster on Tuesday night - and at 4 a.m. I finally succumbed to sleep, asking --actually, demanding-- to understand where this put me in relation to my creative work.

In the dreamworld I found a 7-foot rattlesnake draped over a jewelry box, hanging out in my bedroom.   Fear flooded me, of course, but in the end I decided to step around it and get to the French doors that led to my balcony.   As I moved, the glorious creature rose up and began to sound. "Here it comes..." I thought, then decided to just lie down for the strike.  I sat, then rolled to the floor, as the rattling crescendo'ed and went quiet.    I felt the animal move toward me, then it slithered up my body, stretching out over me.  I controlled my fear, reminding myself how important it is to die in a state of clarity; and the serpent draped itself on my hip and belly, sliding up to a shoulder as if to demonstrate its weight and sovereignty.   We lay like that until I was no longer afraid, then the creature withdrew - letting me know it had better things to do than destroy me.   It went back to its box near the dresser, and I stood up, aware that something -- a pettiness or obscurity in me-- was gone.   I stepped into the dreamlight of the balcony, relieved of some indefinable lump, as if a squab or homunculus had been removed from my flesh.

If you listen just so, it's funny how the rattling of the cascara sounds like paper.

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March 2, 2017

Epilogue:  The Fourth Shoe?

A friend (intuitively) queried with this phrase in an email a few hours ago, and indeed there has dropped a 'fourth shoe':

Just before sunset yesterday, I received a series of links from my former web-host.   Some 40% of the website had been recuperated, and I was able to scrape some of the text loose.   This didn't preserve any of the architecture, of course, which is half the value of such a space.   I have spent years exploring its depths, creating coves, nodes, link-backs to ideas & images that were supposed to have found their way into print.  But the website itself?  Gone.

Cutting away all of what I am compelled to think of as 'undergrowth' did allow a clearer view of my 2017 writing, and how best to approach it.  And that, my gentles, falls under the heading of For Writing Out Loud.

Down to it!

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