Michael Zank

Miriam and I arrived in Vagamon, a hill-station in the Western Ghats, about 100 km east of Kochi. Our host, Cyril Jacob, who gave us a ride, is a retired banker who created a little paradise on an eighty-acre lot where he cultivates tea and cardamom and has built a lodge he calls Green Meadows and where he hosts the Palette People artists residency. We are currently the only residents here, but there is room for six to eight people. See HERE. We found out about this place through Resartis and Transartists, which are sites that list artists’ residencies world-wide. I am here to write and Miriam is here as a visual artist.

We were surprised when we found out that we were the only residents. We were also surprised by the stunning beauty of the landscape and the ideal conditions we are given here. Someone cooks our meals. Miriam already learned how to eat with the fingers of her right hand. We still do our own laundry, just so we don’t get too uppity.

It is an unbelievable privilege to be given the time and such ideal circumstances to work without any distractions. I hope, by the end, I will have something to show for myself, though I am not sure what exactly I will be working on. The last two days I was reading Bob Erlewine’s book on “Judaism and the West,” which I am reviewing for the Journal of Religion. I need to select maps and images for my Jerusalem book, and get permissions and high-res files for some of these images. I have no idea what changes my editor will require of me or when I will hear back from the publisher with the readers’ feedback, at which time I will need to set everything else aside and finish this short opus I’ve been working on for ten years. There are the very intriguing notes by Strauss that Thomas Meyer unearthed and deciphered, which need to be edited and translated. And there are half-thought-out ideas and drafts of the next projects. We’ll see what comes of this. I might just look out of the window a lot, walk through the hills, sleep, and practice the clarinet.