Sometimes you have to go away to learn (relearn) where your heart lives.  Last month I was on the Seine River for eight days and then in Paris for four days and saw a lot of really charming towns, beautiful buildings, churches, bridges, landscapes and gardens. But none of it made me think – yes, this is the place. This is home, this moves my soul. (I mean I really like Paris, but…)

At the same time I was reading Michael Perry’s memoir, Population 485 and his hometown New Auburn, Wisconsin is like a character in the book, deeply loved and understood. He opens with: Summer here comes on like a zaftig hippie chick, jazzed on chlorophyll and flinging fistfuls of butterflies to the sun… and I was reading Richard Ford’s The Sportswriter and it’s obvious that a place that moves his soul is New Jersey.  I was also reading Mary Oliver’s poems from Why I Wake Early  – and of course her place is in the fields and woods and at the shore in Provencetown, Massachusetts.  Yesterday up at my cabin in Arrowhead I read Billy Mernit’s wonderfully funny and moving novel, Imagine Me and You, and felt his love for Los Angeles, especially Venice and the beach.

A sense of place for a writer goes beyond knowing the geography and weather – it’s feeling that place in your bones as you write. Knowing it so well that you can close your eyes and smell it, hear it. It’s that feeling of ahh.. when you get there after being away – Like at the end of the 10 Freeway in Santa Monica

What are the places of your heart?  Make a list or write a poem.

The photo above is of the Seine in the rain and I took it with my BlackBerry.  Certain members of my family say that this is the only good photograph I’ve ever taken.