In my study at night, it becomes very quiet. Twinkling lights stretch out across the bay. The owls call out in a language unknown to me. There are no birds to see in the dark, so I look for the moon.
Something happens in this kind of place that is difficult to explain. Words appear on their own: sometimes alone, sometimes in sentences, sometimes in fully formed paragraphs. Writing is still, so often, very hard, with days of nothing but crumpled paper. But on those magic days, it is as if that ephemeral “cloud” we so often speak of is sending words down to me, instead of the other way around.
At another place that is a little like this, I used to look out upon Lake Como from my room. Across the lake and up the mountain there was a tiny white chapel, alone along the cliff. How could it be perched on that steep mountain face, so isolated, I wondered. How could it even be reached? Finally one day, when a paper was finished, I took the ferry alone across the lake. I took a lunch, water, pen and paper. In a little town, I found the trail. It went through a settled area, and by a small farm. Along the way were religious shrines with wilted flowers. Then the trail became very steep, and the sun very hot, with too little shade. At the end of my climb, there was the chapel. It was not precariously perched, as it seemed from a distance. Instead, it was surrounded by a little grass, a picnic table, a tree.
I sat down for lunch, but something else seemed more urgent. Out came the paper and pen. I didn’t form the sentences that day, I simply tried to keep up with them, writing them down. It was as if they were waiting for me along the trail, and I had gathered them, unknowingly, on my walk. When the words were finished, the sun had begun to cast long shadows. I hurried down the trail and caught the ferry back to Bellagio.
Many research centers are full of bustle and obligations. There are so very few where one can truly find quiet, where isolation from the everyday comes not from closing a door, but from the very surroundings.
At CASBS, there is much more than alone time, of course. There is the kind of conversation that turns a project upside down – not because it was wrong, but because there is more to understand. I arrived here with a plan, and before long I dismantled it. It was full of details, but there was something missing at the core. Somewhat fearfully, I ignored my calendar with chapter deadlines. And then, little by little, the new pieces fell into place.
What is it about the trail along the cliff, or this study of mine where at the end of the day the bay can be periwinkle, and on a quiet evening, I can come face to face with a deer? Some would say that it is serendipity that is so generative at CASBS, but I think there must be something more. I would hesitate to believe in magic. But until the year is over and the last page is written, I must suspend my disbelief. For in the quiet, away from the city, in a place where red-tailed hawks circle and jack rabbits wander, I want to believe that if I listen very carefully, I will hear the words.
Mary L. Dudziak
February 2015