Arrival, Lisbon

Talked tarts on a walk with Claire and Ariana, whose names I've likely spelled wrong. Ariana's a baker in Amsterdam. She and Claire chuckled over the wordplay of the name, which I didn't quite get, not being a tart-eater, except for the two I ate today.
Claire is a woman who, I suggested, as admiringly as I could, is a perpetual and peripatetic misfit. Two years in Amsterdam and she's ready, she said, for something else, maybe. Multilingual, she works with people--"coaches", is how she puts it--about how to function at our various crossroads--linguistic, cultural, psychodynamic, geographic, etc. I suggested that for some writers it is these moments of movement through, or tensions over, crossroads that generates the writing (hence, in my own case, the + that will mark pauses between passages in Hillsdale Book) (and a tip of the fedora to Robert Johnson).
So there we three blue-eyes sat, over our tarts.
The night before--yeah some night, flying east (an hour of settling, supper, two hours of squirminess, a moment's sleep, breakfast and arrival--all in six hours)--I sat next to Gilda from Toronto and her husband Harvey, talking about two articles in the Sunday Star: on a new anthology of Toronto writing about place, and on archival designs of proposed, but never built, major changes to Toronto landmarks. I'd told her just enough about my writing practice for her to conclude that both items were "right down my alley" (I hadn't mentioned my alley piece for the forthcoming anthology of writing inspired by Regina artist Wilf Perreault, who makes a home of alleys).
Anyway, Gilda and Claire and Ariana ended up getting my website address, which may lead them to these very words. If so, here's to you, ladies. Thanks for helping me break into Lisbon again.