A Novice's Guide to Israel, Part One

It's said all roads lead to Jerusalem, so that's where I'll begin. 

(Old Jerusalem, June, 2014. All photos by LBG.)

I recently spent two days exploring this ancient city on a ten day tour of Israel with a group of friends. I've travelled to many holy places in my life -- the Vatican, the Potala Palace in Lhasa, the sacred Ganges in Rishikesh -- but Jerusalem feels totally different. It's holy not in a peaceful way but in a primal way. Entering the walled gates, you are immediately swept up in the noise and clamor and dirt and magnetic energy of the place and it doesn't matter if you're affiliated with any of the religions that worship here (I'm not), you're suddenly part of it.

(Southern wall of the Temple Mount.)

Getting around is no easy feat --  the streets are laid with ancient cobblestones (wear good walking shoes!), and some alleys are so narrow you have to flatten yourself against a wall if someone pushing a cart wants to get by. 

What follows is a highly selective guide to the top sites we visited. There are so many places we unfortunately didn't have time to see -- if you have any recommendations you'd like to share, I'd love to hear them!

1. Leave a note in the Western Wall. It's a remnant of the ancient wall of the Second Jewish Temple (now part of the Temple Mount) and is considered the holiest site at which Jews can pray. 

I had someone I needed to pray for so I wedged my note into the wall (it's that large one) and stood there for a minute just taking everything in. On one side of me a young girl recited Hebrew verses in a quiet voice. On the other, a woman hugged her body to the wall and closed her eyes.

2. Walk the Quarters. There are four distinct quarters to the city -- Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Armenian -- and I managed to make it to three of them. 

(Muslim Quarter, Old Jerusalem.)

If you get turned around, you only have to glance at the market stalls to find out what neighborhood you're in.

(Muslim Quarter, Old Jerusalem.)

(Christian Quarter, Old Jerusalem.)

(Jewish Quarter, Old Jerusalem.)

On our way to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a Franciscan monk suddenly sprang out of an alley and catapulted ahead of us. It was almost super-heroish. Apologies if it's not appropriate to view religious clothing through the prism of fashion, but I love his cassock, don't you? Completely utilitarian and yet so stylish: Martin Margiela, fall/winter 1300 A.D.

(Monk on a mission.)

3. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre dates from 325 A.D. and is run by a status quo committee of Christian officials -- Eastern Orthodox, Ethiopian, Roman Catholic and others. According to a centuries-old pact, nothing in the church can be touched or rearranged without everyone's unanimous consent. If you're already shaking your head over the perils of decision by committee, you would be absolutely right. See that ladder under the right-hand window? Because nobody can agree on what should be done with it, it's been leaning there for over 170 years!

(Church of the Holy Sepulchre.)

Think I'm kidding? Look closely at this etching from 1834 and you can see the ladder in the exact same place!

(The Immoveable Ladder, via)

(Interior, Church of the Holy Sepulchre.)

The little building below is called the aedicule and is where Jesus' body is believed to have been buried.

4. Walk the 14 Stations of the Cross. The Via Dolorosa, or "Way of Sorrows," marks out the path Jesus is said to have walked from the courthouse to where he was crucified. 

(Sixth Station, Via Dolorosa.)

5. Trek the Underground Tunnels (not for the claustrophobic). If you don't mind hip-high water, venture through Hezekiah's Tunnel, the ancient aqueduct that fed water to old Jerusalem. If you prefer to stay dry, go for Warren's Shaft. 

I took Warren's Shaft. Our guide wasn't kidding when he said it was narrow. It was like being in an Indiana Jones movie. The man ahead of me had to angle his shoulders to get through!

(Warren's Shaft, discovered in 1867.)

My husband and son naturally took the more adventurous wet tunnel. They came prepared with water shoes, swimsuits and mini flashlights. That beam is them finally emerging from the darkness -- it took them about thirty minutes to navigate all 533 meters. My husband's reaction? "Totally amazing, but at times the ceiling was so low and the water level was so high even I was a bit apprehensive." I decided I was very glad I chose the dry tunnel.

(Hezekiah's Tunnel, built in the 8th century B.C.)

5. The American Colony Hotel. That evening, we travelled into the West Bank to have dinner at a legendary old hotel that I'd been desperate to visit. Although officially in East Jerusalem, the American Colony has always had a neutral status, being owned not by Jews or Muslims but by Americans, British and Swedes. Everyone from Lawrence of Arabia to Winston Churchill to Bob Dylan has stayed there. To me, it's Jerusalem's Chateau Marmont: old-school, elegant and a little bohemian around the edges. 

We sat in an lush open courtyard surrounded by a symphony of foliage. The atmosphere was so magical that I recorded it on my iPhone -- clinking glasses, hushed voices in a medley of foreign tongues and the rustle of palm trees overhead, all wrapped up in the deep velvety intonations of a muezzin from a nearby mosque.

We did a little exploring around the hotel and stumbled on this underground bar (only open during the winter) and were told that it was the nightly meeting place for all the foreign correspondents who used to stay here in the 1930's and 1940's. Oh, if those walls could talk.

6. The King David Hotel. If the American Colony Hotel is Jerusalem's Chateau Marmont, then the King David is definitely the Plaza Hotel in New York. A soaring Art Deco edifice with gorgeous hand-painted ceilings, it's stately in a way that the American Colony isn't. If you're a world leader, you probably stay here. 

The carpet was a wonder unto itself.

We sipped cocktails in the gardens overlooking the old city and pretended we were a coterie of important dignitaries. It was wonderful while it lasted.

Leaving the next morning, we passed by the Israeli West Bank barrier wall. 

I'm already dreaming of going back.

Shalom Y'All

Just returned home from the most magical trip to Israel.

(Yarmulkes in Jerusalem, June 2014.)

We rode camels in the Negev desert, walked with jaws dropped through the ancient stone city of Petra, pilgrimaged into Old Jerusalem, floated in the Dead Sea, explored the bottom of a three million year old crater and much more. 

(In retrospect, Luca and I probably shouldn't have been so close to the camel!)

While I was away, a lovely piece about my upcoming book "Novel Interiors" was posted on Tory Burch's blog. To say I am honored is an understatement --  a big thank you to editor Venessa Lau for interviewing me and writing the article. 

(Click HERE to read the interview.)

More very soon...I'm busy uploading photos and tussling with a fierce case of jet lag.

x/Lisa

P.S. My friend Ione Skye just wrote a wonderful children's book called "My Yiddish Vacation" about her funny childhood experiences with her grandparents Ruth and Sammy in 1970's Florida. It's full of essential vocabulary words like "shvitz" which my son now uses as often as he can.

Luca: Mom, why are you shvitzing so much?
Me: Because it's ninety degrees and I'm lugging groceries. How about you put down your DS and help me?

 You can buy it HERE and read a great interview with Ione about it HERE.

(Jeanne Tripplehorn and me at Ione's book signing, June 2014.)

Pardon My Hiatus

(Tilda Swinton at MoMA, 2013, via.)

What have I been doing since finally finishing my book?

Writing as little as possible!

I'll be back after the 4th of July with heaps to share.

x/Lisa

Birth Announcement

After two-plus densely packed years of writing and researching and revising and editing (and the entire last month especially!), I am so thrilled to announce that the gestation period for my book is finally over:

And if you wonder whether I woke up last night and clicked on the Amazon link just to make sure I wasn't dreaming, I have zero embarrassment in telling you that yes, yes I did. 

(Me at 2:51 AM: Phew, it's still there!)

Here's a bigger photo of the cover:

(Photo by Ivan Terestchenko.)

There will be lots more to say about the book in the coming months, but I wanted you to be the first to see it here. 

It was this blog, after all, that inspired me to write it. 

And it was YOU, my blog readers, with your unquenchable passion for literature and design, who I think of as the silent co-writers on my shoulder. 

What's Novel Interiors about?

It's about taking cues from the enchanting worlds of classic novels to show you how they can inspire your decorating style, the way you relax and entertain, even the colors and fabrics that you're drawn to.

In a bouillon cube, it's about living a well-read life.

It's for design aficionados who want to add another layer of meaning to their personal spaces. 

It's for lovers of classic literature who want to hone in on the design style that reflects who they truly are. 

Whether you're a fan of Austen or Proust, Woolf or Waugh, Cather or Fitzgerald, I promise there's a chapter for you. 

It comes out December 2nd, and you can pre-order it HERE. 

x/Lisa

Why Eccentrics Matter

Build Your Own Designer Memory Palace

What if you could remember your entire grocery list just by retracing Peter Seller's steps in the house he goes to in the movie "The Party?"  

(Artwork by Federico Babina. Here.)

Or recite the seven ancient wonders of the world by "walking" through your favorite apartment on The Selby?

(Photo by Todd Selby. Here.)

Or remember Charles Dickens' twenty major works (15 novels, 5 novellas) by taking a mental tour of Wes Anderson's "The Grand Budapest Hotel"?

I know, I know, it sounds too weird to be true. 

But with a memory palace, you can -- and I'm going to tell you how.

A memory palace is a mnemonic technique invented 2,000 years ago by the ancient Greeks that uses your brain's superior spatial memory to memorize information. 

It works like this: You think of the layout of a location you know well -- your house or apartment, for instance. Then you "attach" whatever objects or items you want to remember (i.e. your to-do list, the American presidents) to specific places within that location. When you want to retrieve your list, you take a mental walk through your memory palace and "see" everything right where you put it.

[There's a great TED talk about it HERE by Joshua Foer. Watch it and be gobsmacked.]

Why am I so sure it works?

Because in forty minutes, me, the person who can't find her keys in the morning and who routinely leaves her sunglasses in restaurants, memorized all 37 of William Shakespeare's plays in the order they were written. 

Even more impressive, so did my 12 year-old son.

And he has zero interest in Shakespeare.

But when he heard me reel them off, he got jealous and wanted in.

The book that taught us how?

("The Memory Palace: Learn Anything and Everything, 

Starting with Shakespeare and Dickens", $3.33. HERE.)

"The general idea with most memory techniques is to change whatever boring thing is being inputted into your memory into something that is so colorful, so exciting, and so different from anything you've seen before that you can't possibly forget it."

~Joshua Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein

Here's the best part, though:

For design-minded folks like you and me, who carry around a treasure trove of unforgettable spaces and layouts in our brains already, who says our memory palaces have to be places that we've actually explored in real life? 

Why not use the charming English cottage you saved from that magazine?

Or the layout of the S. S. Belafonte from "The Life Aquatic"?

 ("The Life Aquatic.")

Or how about a location from your extensive literary wanderings?

Holly Golightly's apartment in "Breakfast at Tiffany's"?

The Marchmain house in "Brideshead Revisited"?

Odette's Oriental-influenced apartment in "Swann's Way"?

How fun would it be to "visit" Gatsby's West Egg mansion when you need to remember your shopping list? I can see it now: "Look, here's the pile of colored silk shirts that Daisy wept over, but how strange, they're completely ripped to shreds! Oh, I remember -- craft scissors."

For more information on how to build your own memory palace, here are some helpful articles and links:

Click HERE.

Or HERE.

Or HERE.

Or HERE.

Or HERE.

Before you go, do you have a favorite location from a book, movie or magazine that you would use as a memory palace?

Geek-end Getaway

Two weeks ago, I went away for a long-anticipated weekend to Palm Springs with my friend Jeanne. (I have to plug an amazing performance she gave recently with Eddie Vedder -- ever wondered how Julie Andrews would sound singing The Rolling Stones "Shattered"? Click HERE and wonder no longer.) We had been plotting our escape for months and had finally managed to coordinate the schedules of our respective husbands and sons so that we could slip away for thirty six hours and indulge ourselves.

"You all ready for our geek-end getaway?" Jeanne asked as I loaded my bags into the car.

Geek-end getaway. 

I had been wondering what to call it. Instead of bathing suits, sandals and embroidered caftans, our suitcases were loaded with laptops, iPads, digital writing tablets, creative manifestos (this, this and this), and our comfiest clothes.

Our dream weekend had nothing to do with yoga, mountain hikes, massages or mani-pedis -- and everything to do with recharging our brain cells.

This was going to be a learning vacation. Our goals?

~Inspire each other creatively

~Provide each other with constructive feedback on personal projects

~Trade sources of inspiration (What books/magazines/music/videos were obsessing us?)

~Learn new apps (Which ones could we not live without?)

~Brainstorm without limits

Heck, if we were really on a roll, we might not even leave the room until Sunday checkout. (We didn't.)

Two of my favorite discoveries from that weekend?

1. The Noteshelf app ($5.99) which lets you create amazing layouts and collages just like the ones you see in design magazines like Domino and Lonny -- great for people like me who don't have Photoshop. 

You can create your own little notebooks from the covers provided or do like I did and upload photos from the internet to make your own custom ones. (I found some good old book covers HERE.)

Here's one of my books devoted to collages of favorite fabrics and patterns. I find that putting them together like this is a super helpful way of seeing what works together and what doesn't.

Here's another book I made to explore an embroidery series I've been working on. Noteshelf makes it super easy to choose the kind of paper you like, upload photos, add text and draw. Bonus: They have good type fonts like Gill Sans and Bodoni (the two I used below). Type fonts make a HUGE difference in giving personality and character to a layout.

Here's another one I made for various random ideas.

2. The other app I am absolutely in love with is Procreate ($5.99) It lets you sketch, paint, draw and create virtually anything you can imagine. I could go on and on about this app -- it's intuitive, easy to learn (be sure to download the free user guide) and as simple or advanced as you want it to be. I can't see myself ever getting tired of it.

And it has one specific feature I'm crazy about: It lets you write directly over a photo. You know, like Garance Doré does.

Remember the post I did last week with all those hand-drawn titles over the pictures? I made them all with Procreate. I just uploaded my photos, chose the style of "pen" I wanted, and drew right onto the iPad with my finger.

The upshot of our geek-end getaway? 

Brains were stormed, ideas were generated and the groundwork for great future projects was laid. 

Here's a photo I snapped of the hotel as we were leaving on Sunday -- it was the first time I'd seen the grounds since check-in. I bet it's a lovely place to spend some time outdoors. 

(Colony Palms Hotel,  2/9/14.)

Next time.

“For my belief is that if we have five hundred a year and a room of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the common sitting-room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality…then the opportunity will come and [we] will be born.”

~Virginia Woolf 

Monday Miscellany

This week, instead of creating, I'm curating. 

Below, eight totally random things to boost your energy, tickle your brain, and fire up some of those adorable endorphins.

1. Turmeric. I love it in Indian food, but did you know it makes an incredibly delicious and healthy tea? (For a list of benefits, click HERE.) This one hits the sweet spot and has a earthy kick to it that's not unlike coffee.

Creamy Turmeric Tea

1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder (if you're timid, start with 1/4 teaspoon)

1/2 teaspoon cardamom or cinnamon

1 inch slice of fresh ginger, peeled and minced

1 tablespoon honey 

8 oz. almond, coconut or soy milk

Mix first four ingredients together in a mug to form a thick paste. Heat the milk and then slowly pour it into the mug, stirring all the while. Strain out the ginger if you like, or leave it in for a more intense kick.

2. "New York Morning." This documentary/music video by English rockers Elbow is a paean to true love, punk music and NYC in the '70's. Plus the song is amazing. If you ever thought soul mates don't exist, you are about to be proven wrong. 

3. Waterlogue. This iPhone/iPad app has taken the design blogosphere by storm recently -- basically, it transforms any photo into the kind of stylish watercolor that you'd pay really good money to hang on your wall. I love what it does to the light in a room -- everything seems lit with an enchanted glow.

4. Have you ever wished a cute English guy would write a brilliant and heartfelt poem about how he appreciates girls with big books instead of girls with big boobs? Well, his name is Mark Grist and he has. HERE.

5. I discovered Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) about ten years ago and I think I would be hard pressed to name my three favorite authors and not include him. Part F. Scott Fitzgerald, part Freud, his stories are as seductive as they are haunting. If you're a Zweig virgin, start with Beware of Pity, a psychological boy-meets-girl horror story that reads like it was written in one long exhale. Make sure you get the editions from Pushkin Press -- they do his style justice.  

(Interesting tidbit: Wes Anderson loves Zweig too.)

6. I've always secretly thought the art and lifestyle of the Bloomsbury Group had a punk sensibility to it, so when my friend Vanessa Leigh Price forwarded me this video of Patti Smith sitting in Vanessa Bell's studio in Charleston House, I about keeled over. You will too. HERE.

7. This year marks the hundredth anniversary of World War One and I'm using that as a reason to plow through all the WWI novels I never got around to reading before. Richard Aldington's Death of a Hero was new to me and I loved it -- Aldington's prose is a mashup of Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell, with an armored cynicism to it that feels incredibly modern.

8. Charles Dickens as Morrissey. HERE. Leave it to BBC's brilliant "Horrible Histories" to turn a Victorian biography into compulsive viewing for kids and parents alike.

So what are you all up to this week?

xx/Lisa