We believe that almost ever since we had a full working Conscience (and a totally troublemaking Subconscious before that) we have wanted to become both a physician and a writer. It seems that reading the complete works of Anton Chéjov, a great healer and narrator of human nature, might have had a decisive influence. When I was a teenager, I submitted a short story (with the help of my father Mario who did the editing and typing) to a literary contest with the nickname of Gringalet.
A humongous amount of talking waters passed under the bridge of my Life until August 22, 2003, when, during a vacation with my children in our mother Gladys’s home in Montevideo, Uruguay, I decided that it was time to start writing. I sat in her living room and using a notepad that I still keep, I wrote the first two pages of my novel Madame D.C. – Three Voyages, which is parked in Kindle. When I told my grandmother Yolanda about it, she responded: “Congratulations, but how about finishing your thesis first, dear?” She was totally right. I suspended my novel writing and tackled my Columbia University Doctoral Dissertation in earnest.
After I finished my studies in May 2008, I was mentally exhausted and decided to “take it easy” for a few months by reading a lot and writing nothing. In that vein , we showed up sometime in June 2009 with my children Noël Marie and Gian Luca (after a delicious dinner in the closed Van Dyke resto in Lincoln Road) in the Books and Books shop a few blocks away, before going to Regal Cinema later. As my children roamed around, I pushed one of the chairs they had in their little café against the counter to enjoy the view. I did it so maladroitly (we, men, are so silly) that a display of little books of several colors came tumbling down on my back; the attendant girl at the time (I cannot remember her name) graciously assured me that everything was fine and started picking them up.
-“What are those?” I curiously asked.
-“Oh, these are Moleskine, the writers’ notebooks,” she said , handing me one.
-“Really, I knew they existed,” I said, examining the black one she gave me. “Gimme this one…It might bring me luck.”
I put the little book in my jacket and did not think much of it until I traveled to San Francisco the following Monday for an extended medical course on Acupuncture. I arrived in a late evening flight.
Being my first trip to California, and Frisco in particular, I did not have the slightest idea how cold it could be at night, like Mark Twain had wisely warned us. After I arrived at the San Remo Hotel, I quickly laid my baggage in the room and headed to the only open resto around , a Burger King joint. Having only a Columbia sweatshirt and a leather jacket on my body, I froze in contact with the cold air. I picked up a whopper with fries and retreated to the safety of my hotel room. When I tried to go to bed, I realized that there was only an inadequately slim blanket at hand.
Right before midnight I briskly walked to the small quaint front desk . I stopped in my tracks. What I saw then would be just unthinkable in our Banana Republic of South Florida. A gorgeous young girl, with the smart looks of a graduate student of Psychology, was reading The Grapes of Wrath from John Steinbeck. Wow!
Of all the sleepy hotels in all the towns in all the world, she had to work in this one.
Mumbling my request, I saw her skedaddle to a back room; in the meantime, I picked up the book to double check that I was not under the influence of a mirage. I cannot even remember how many times I had tried to read it, without going much further than page 20, I believe. And there she was, plowing through the middle of it. I ran away to my room and, feeling totally excited, I picked up the Moleskine. Right there I started writing the outline of my novel Madame D.C. -Three Voyages.
Two clairvoyant ladies, without much knowledge of myself, shamed me into action.
Coup de chapeau for all the fabulous ladies that daily kick our butts to elicit results.
What would become of us, silly-lazy men, if we did not have that feminine custody?
Stay distant. Stay safe. Stay beautiful.
What do you think? Please tell us.
Don’t leave me alone.