As if World Cup soccer weren’t enough (and it wasn’t), I have been enjoying mornings this month with the Tour de France.
More very fit men in shorts. This time on bicycles, using up God knows how many calories a day riding and riding and riding. Inspiring.
And it’s even more inspiring this year because we inherited my mother’s large screen high definition television set. Used as we were to small and grainy pictures, our eyes are bugging at the clarity and definition. ‘High’ hardly seems to describe it. It should be called ‘intense.’
I am reminded of a time when a friend made us a recipe for some soup she’d learned to make 
while spending a summer in Chinatown. It was delicate, light, amazing soup – and also, as her sister said, “thinner than water.”
Well, the Tour de France in high definition is clearer than real. Sharper than anything. And the scenery in France (the grass and trees and buildings and stuff – not just the men!) is amazing. In a word, wow.
It is even causing me to dream in high definition. I close my eyes and see things more clearly. Why is that?
Fortunately I’m seeing Nikolas and Edie fairly clearly at the moment. Particularly him. Now that he has finally deigned to make an appearance under his real name, he seems hi-def almost. Interestingly, though, he still hasn’t told Edie who he is.
He’s ‘waiting for the opportunity,’ he tells me.
Sly, that’s what he is.
I’m working away on him, and envying Kate Walker who has jaunted off to Caerleon for a week’s writers’ workshop. She has to teach, of course. But you can bet she’ll be enjoying it as well.
I was supposed to be there this year. But life intervened. It’s better for Nikolas and Edie that I’m not, that I’m finally getting some work done on them.
Still I’ll be thinking of Kate and Trisha Ashley and lots of other writers who will be enjoying an inspiring week – and hoping I can get there some day soon. I’m always refreshed by those sorts of workshops.
Have you been to writers’ workshops or conferences or readers groups? What refreshes and inspires you?
I went to California about 12 days ago. While I was there I went to a wedding, a funeral (of sorts), reconnected with, conservatively, several dozen cousins, and immersed myself in research for two books. Or three.
