Writers’ Retreat Pt. 2: A Highlight Reel in Words

You packed your laptop, some comfy writing loungewear, a swimsuit, and pajamas, and you biked across Italy to the Artisa Writers’ Retreat. Now it’s time to get to work.

Celeste and Anya, who run Artisa, own what used to be a tiny hillside village outside of San Severino, in the eastern Marche region of Italy. My digs at the Artisa Writers’ Retreat were in the bijou decommissioned church at the entrance to the compound.

You can find out all about the Artisa Academic and Art Retreat here: Artisa Academic & Art Retreat, the place to create and to connect – Artisa (artisagreece.org) There are weeks dedicated to PhD students, writers with projects to complete, artists, people planning a sabbatical project, and more. The most remarkable thing about Artisa, aside from the incredible beauty and peace of the place, is the way Celeste and Anya have created an amazing space of welcome and community that supports creative spirit and energy.

The entire place is gorgeous. Celeste and Anya have updated or are updating the buildings, including what used to be a cow barn, a tiny schoolhouse, and my now decommissioned church.

I shall show you my church.

Here is the inside of my church:

GOOD MORNING!

Your day at the Artisa Writers’ Retreat begins at 7:30 a.m. with Optional Yoga for 30 minutes, followed by 15 minutes of Optional Sitting Meditation.

Yoga is an appealing way to start a new day. In yoga there is no competition or judgement. You just have to get very bendy on your squishy mat. The Artisa yoga studio has open windows and expansive views of trees, which at 7:30 a.m are full of excited, voluble birds. And you can show up wearing your pajamas.

Sitting Meditation was new territory for me. The sitting part I have done before. I know how to sit. But the prospect of combining it with meditation was daunting, because that requires a much higher level of sitting: Sitting Still. Sitting still has never been my strong point, something I mentioned in this blog back when I was in Hawaii. The thing I am really good at is Not Sitting Still.

Which is probably why my Sitting Meditation Inner Monologue started out like this:

“Breathing. I will now focus on my breathing. In. Out. In … Out … Out. Out. Out. And I have now been sitting still for at least 25 seconds! Will ya look at me.”

A gong signals the end of Sitting Meditation, and then a bell chimes, and it is 8:30 and Breakfast is served. Since I always go to Breakfast directly from Optional Yoga and Meditation, I am still wearing my pajamas. Over the course of the two weeks I resided at the Writers’ Retreat, my main aim, aside from productively writing each day, became managing to change into actual clothes by lunch.

After breakfast everyone heads off to do some writing.

The bell for Lunch rings at 1 p.m. and that is not a moment too soon. You have been tapping away enthusiastically at the keys forever, churning out the most incredible top-notch prose:

“It was a dark and stormy night, in the Archives, where I was reading about the history of satire…”

Lunch, like Breakfast, one can eat at the dining room table or outdoors under a tree or at a table in the bright sunshine. The writers and artists congregate and share how the work is going. After lunch there is more writing, with the most terrific and sublime words hitting the page.

“Reader, I harried him, satirizing his every misstep and mistake…”

At about 4 p.m. a Snack is put out in the dining room, usually cake and fruit, and there is always coffee and tea there too. The late afternoon is an excellent time for a swim in the pool and a lounge in the sun, before getting dressed for Dinner at 7 p.m.

For those who are keeping track, it is still light out and I have now appeared in four different outfits.

Dinner is served around the table, where everyone sits together to chat about the day’s progress. After dinner is when writers share their work, reading a chapter or excerpt, bringing an abstract to workshop for some feedback, or presenting how they’ve narrated some research results. Each evening was full of discovery, lots of questions, shots of Limoncello, lots of writing suggestions and ideas.

Each Morning was full of sitting still.

My inner monologue continued as I attempted to achieve the serenity of Sitting Meditation:

“In… and Out… and In… and Out…

And Innie. And Outie. And

‘Get in line in that processional,
Step into that small confessional.
There the guy who’s got religion’ll
Tell you if your sin’s original!

So get down upon your knees,
Fiddle with your rosaries,
Bow your head with great respect,
And genuflect, genuflect, genuflect!

Make a cross on your abdomen;
When in Rome do like a Roman;
Ave Maria,
Gee, it’s good to see yah!
Gettin’ ecstatic an’ sorta dramatic an’
Doin’ the Vatican Rag!’”

Gong! Meditation over, Tom Lehrer’s song Vatican Rag was now firmly lodged in my head for the rest of the day, and Ding! It’s Breakfast time.

Porridge, fruit, and coffee with my pals at the picnic table overlooking the olive grove, and then off to work for the rest of the morning in my church.

Why is it that I can sit still in front of my laptop for hours tapping away at the keys with no sense of time whatsoever, churning out line after line of the absolute highest quality of stellar original prose —

“Call me Squishy Mat! I am a whale of a yoga mat, with a short attention span. How I long to see the watery parts of the world…” 

— but 15 minutes of stillness sitting in a quiet room is an endurance challenge for me?

Maybe writing IS my meditation.