If I Could Fly | A Year In The World

If you can have some sort of super power, what would you like it to be?

If I could fly, I would travel the world.
Little wonder I was attracted to this book the instant I saw it in the library.  What a great title! - "A Year In the World." It invokes wanderlust and adventure... lot's of adventure.  Have you heard about or read this book?  What do you think?

Speaking of flying, I would like to share with you my one and only aviary tea cup for our Tea Cup Tuesday.  This cup is made in England by the Queen Anne company.   It is part of a five-teacup-and-saucer lot I got from ebay almost 7 years ago.  The seller was from Australia.  Isn't it wonderful to think how this tea cup flew around the world to reach me?

~*~

Frances Mayes is well read.  She would often have a quote from a book or an author ~ of differing styles and backgrounds, in wide array of subjects and literary forms.  I think one of them is definitely the dictionary, lol.  That is the opinion of myself, of course, whose language-of-the-heart is not English.  I had to consult the dictionary more than half the time.  There is a certain comfort in reading from a book-bound edition, but I had to switch to an ebook a few pages in as it made it easier to get word definitions.

Most of the time, I find myself drifting into daydreams.  The book is very interesting, that is why I daydream - about how I'd feel... or eat... or drink, if I were in her shoes, walking the path she is walking... on the place she is wandering about... or how I would write about my own adventures if this were my book.  Other times, I drift into memories - when everything in the "west" were new in the eyes of a girl from the east {Philippines.}

She says "Travel releases spontaneity."   I believe that.  When hubby and I went to Rome and we don't know where else to wander to, he thought of taking the subway and see what 'trouble' we could get into from there.  Spontaneous for one who always want to be sure where he's going or what he's doing. We decided we'd alight in a stop called "Flaminco"  I thought it sounded like "flamingo," fun :-)  And adventure it was for we saw there a landmark in Rome, something we would have been sad to miss.

Frances continues: "You become a godlike creature full of choice... You open, as in childhood, and - for a time - receive this world.  Free to go, free to return..."  Oh, if one isn't so worked up about how others would perceive her, would be free to show all the excitement that she feels deep inside - as in childhood :-)

About language, she writes: "When traveling, you have the delectable possibility of not understanding a world of what is said to you.  Language becomes simply a musical background for watching bicycles zoom along a canal, calling for nothing from you."  Doesn't that speak to you?  Until, when in Valencia, it's time to order some tea and pastries and the girl at the counter could understand no English, then you would pull out some meager Spanish from the recesses of your brain.  Sometimes speaking some Tagalog hoping that it means something in Spanish, haha...

Sometimes though, she would write her experiences and feelings in a very poetic (literary) way that I don't exactly understand what she means: "Free to go, free to return home bringing memories to lay on the hearth."  Memories on ashes in a fireplace, maybe? Okay, what does that mean?

Overall, I think its a wonderful read.  After all, someday, I would love, if I can fly, to spend a year in the world :-)

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I am joining these lovely blog parties:
Vintage Inspiration Party   |   Our World Tuesday | The Enchanting Rose | Rose Chintz Cottage: Tea Time Tuesday | Antiques and Tea Cups: Tuesday Cuppa Tea | Bernideen's Tea in the Garden on Friend's Sharing Tea |   Tea Cup Tuesday on Martha's Favorites |  A Return to Loveliness by A Delightsome Life |