Susie Monday . El Cielo Studio

Would you just like a list of all that we have eaten?

The full report must wait until I can upload photos and use a keyboard that has a familiar ching ching to it. However, let this be a warning to you all.  I am now working on a fiber arts Italian adventure for next year. It will begin in Florence and proceed to Selva, a Tuscan home and studio deep in the woods of a 1000 acre estate near Lucca. We will see silks and cashmere goats, weaving and dyeing, and do our own work (as well as cooking classes) in the kitchen studio.

Foods to consider: bread soup and bread salad, bufalo mozzerella (forget everything you thought you knew about the cheese), gelati in all imaginable flavors, buttery lettuce and tomatoes shaped like the duomo, chocolate bars by the Bolognese Majana, lasagna from the street corner cafe, eggs with yolks as orange as saffron.

And that was I think day one. 

This had better be quick. In case I hadn't realized it yet, our departure to Italy is one week from tonight. You may be the organized focused sort who has it all together before a three-week journey but, I, on the other hand, do not.

OK, my suitcase is packed. (That, I know, is crazy. But Rick Steve, my new travel guru (along with Anthony Bourdain) says pack it all and carry it around for a day to see if you REALLY want to haul all that stuff. All of the less pleasantly anticipatory tasks are not (complete). And to compound the craziness, we launch the Botero Family Days for the public library system this week, and I am fine-tuning the art projects, buying supplies and organizing for that afternoon event at Landa Library. (For those of you in San Antonio, stop by from 1:00-4:00 for Colombian music and culture, collage, painting and sculpting inspired by Fernando Botero's work.)

So what did I do yesterday? Took a five hour drive through the countryside to Marble Falls. It was business-related. One hundred pounds of foundry clay awaited me at Dan Pogue's sculptor's studio -- at a better price than having it shipped from Dick Blick, especially if I did the schlepping. Of course, this involved a few sidesteps: a stop for pork ribs at Ronnie's Pit Barbeque in Johnson City, avoiding a round trip route by taking a side trek though Lady Bird Johnson country and a short little step in at Wild Seed Farms, and then a two-lane highway alternative to the interstate between Fredericksburg and Boerne. All this with a few roadside photo stops. In otherwords, an errand morphed into a pre-vacation vacation, just in time for sanity.

Meanwhile, in the email inbox, June Underwood's Ragged Cloth Cafe post about right-brained acendency for the future. Finally. Seems like I've had to endure round peggedness thoughout the square holes for not jsut the Industrial Age, but the Information Age as well.

I won't repeat her post, you can follow the link, but in short, the book by Daniel Pink just moved to the top of my wisl list. In short, though, what the world needs now (and will be looking for) are those of us with right-brain skills and experience. We in the well-enough-off American and other First World abundence may actually have enough stuff. Our hunger is for experiences packed with emotion, creativity, story. Just those things we artists happen to be good at delivering.

So, rather than see my escape yesterday as a flaky artist's escape from the calendar countdown, I prefer to see it as a refreshing palate-cleansing course in this particular life's banquet. The green was calling, the flowers were strewn along the roadside ever so much like magic carpet, a swirling, breezy tapestry of golds, reds, orange and blue. The gallardia, Englemann's daisies and blue mealy sage were splendid and so were the pork ribs. I am sure my right hemisphere is feelling nourished and saited with spring. What's on your plate today?