Virginia Woolf had a room of her own. Vladimir Nabokov said "If I do not demand an ivory tower it is because I am quite happy in my garret." (from "Pushkin, or the Real and the Plausible" in Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews, and Letters to the Editor and Edited by Brian Boyd and Anastasia Tolstoy, p132) I once had a tower, like a bird's nest above the house where I was surrounded by books, the sky and the mountains. I moved closer to the earth, into a caseta which is closed for transformation at the moment. Now I have a dining room with music and windows all around, and a view of the sky and water. Some of my garrets are nothing more than a state of mind; a place I go to escape and not be found, at least for a short period of time. This is a picture of one of those far away places I keep close in my mind. A place that is both haunting and thriving; a place where the past, the present and the future are all one. A place that is both a part of the earth and sky.
Ercolana (at the foot of Mt. Vesuvius), Italy, 2010