VCFA Puerto Rico Residency Day 2

[Posts from my Vermont College of Fine Arts winter residency.]

Saturday morning. I sit here at a stone checkers table in the shade of this fine old tree down by the marina. You see the garbage men taking a break from their work. I stare out over the water pretending to be a lost soul from centuries past waiting for a loved one’s ship to return from sea. To my right two elderly men play checkers while a woman, her toddler son, and the pigeons look on.

This morning we walked out to El Morro Fort. Actually first we took a lovely side trip strolling around the wall that was built along with the fort to guard the northwestern tip of Puerto Rico. Beautiful vegetation but it can be hazardous to history: the National Park Service folks must constantly pull plants from the cracks of the wall so their roots won’t compromise the stone and cause it to crumble.
The park ranger while delivering a bit of a history lesson also repeatedly reminded us that we are not cannons and should not climb out through the spaces on top of the fort’s walls meant for cannons! We held our talk in this lovely chapel. The saint in the painting watches over sailors.

Once inside the fort Mary Ruefle and I discovered the best view was actually through this odd nook in the women’s bathroom!

Later Mary and I ventured out to see the hauntingly beautiful Santa Maria Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery, across the lawn and just below the fort. I’ll let the art and majesty of this gorgeous place speak for it:

In the afternoon we had our first faculty lecture: Richard McCann on Grace Paley’s short short story “Mother.” We read it out loud multiple times and examined how Paley creates the emotion of the story and holds the piece together with a spine formed by very specific imagery. We also noted how the story was most likely inspired by a song Paley heard on the radio. Her mention of the song, “Oh, How I Long to See My Mother in the Doorway,” opens the piece. Mary pointed out how stories and poems come from real life inspiration–a good thing to keep in mind since we are continually being inspired here in this beautiful place.

Later we visited the home of author and journalist Hector Feliciano–he wrote The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World’s Greatest Works of Art. His eight-year investigation brought about the recovery of over 2,000 works of art. I loved hearing about Hector’s passion for the work. Often it took him years to get key people to do interviews with him. His hands floated up as he spoke of how helpless he was in the grip of the folly he knew it was to be so obsessed. But then, he said, “Any enterprise of writing is a folly. But for us (writers) it’s necessary.” Another great thing he told us: “Writing books is a deep and important matter. It remakes me again and again and again.” I sat there thinking of how sometimes the greatest work takes the most time and patience, well beyond what you already assume it will take. You must add more on top of it.
Afterwards Hector invited us up to the roof to enjoy the ocean view.


Tonight, just now, I hear a cruise ship’s horn and in an instant I am flung into that scene in “An Affair to Remember” where they have to leave Cary Grant’s grandmother and return to their ship. I realize the quiet, graceful beauty I’ve been feeling about Puerto Rico is the same as that place in the movie. I think they were in Italy? Anyway, funny what a sound can trigger. That’s all for tonight. Until later,

Sophfronia