Misty

Preface

The truth of a journey is that the vast and mysterious lands, the terra incognita, you set out to explore, in the end, becomes yourself. Every grain of grief and longing, love, regret, triumph, slips quietly into your suitcase. Harper had learned that at nineteen, a scattered girl full of woebegone and madness who made a pilgrimage to Paris to forget. But there is no escaping yourself. No drug, no distraction, works indefinitely. 

            More than twenty years later, she was in yet another foreign country, and whether she’d gotten there by running toward or away, is debatable. Georgia was supposed to salvage her career and cure her loneliness. Nothing worked out the way she thought it would. A different story unfolded. The whole thing could even be comical, depending on how you told it, and if the story was only about her, which it wasn’t. Harper’s own story would become just one strand in a great tapestry of private chronicles and historical episodes she would spend nine months untangling, then weaving together again, in an attempt to understand some tiny, subtle thing which was the echo of a bigger, profound thing, which she had no idea how to find. Are we mixing metaphors here? Ah well, life is messy. Anyway, this is the thing, this is the beauty part — our stories give shape to our experience, which creates a delicate structure holding the essence of who we are. And sometimes, our stories can only be illuminated and understood, within a larger narrative; the play within the play, as it were.

            Walk with me; the story begins like this. 

Chapter 1 Preface  

Tbilisi 

September 2018

            In those first heady days, roaming through the twisting streets of Tbilisi, Harper Hanigan was brimming with ambition and optimism. She was almost frantic for a fresh start, new surroundings, different air to breathe. It had been a dark, miserable year, and the prospect of returning to Georgia was the pinprick of sunlight which kept her going. Maybe she should have gotten to work directly after arriving, but she didn’t. Leaning out the window of the cable car as it soared above Vake Park, Harper breathed deeply and thought of Gia’s parting words, “Listen girl, when you get back to Tbilisi, relax, you hear me? I’ll deal with professor Blakewell. And by God, hop in bed with that man of yours. Blakewell can wait for the edits. It won’t kill him.”   Harper’s furnished flat was in the fashionable Vake district named after the park. It felt indolent and romantic, with meandering tree-lined streets where the sidewalks lifted and cracked, and old, ornate apartment buildings with twisted iron balconies and laundry lines. Weather still warm, Harper slipped on a pale blue sundress and wound her way through vibrant street markets inhaling the colors and smells of harvest season. A tall blond in a sea of delicate, raven-haired women, men on the street noticed her. Though she might not admit it, she enjoyed the attention. At forty-two, Harper was not yet invisible to men, but her presence was fading for them, like an image on an old Polaroid. She passed lanyards of dried fruit and marigolds swinging from faded striped awnings, mud-spattered potatoes tottering in clumsy piles beside apples and walnuts, and mounds of gleaming, ripe tomatoes. Peddlers sliced pomegranates in half to display the ruby seeds inside. Whenever she saw one, open and glistening like a lusty invitation, Harper wondered if O’Keeffe ever painted a pomegranate. 

            Her first trip to Georgia’s intoxicating capital city was on a summer’s research trip in 2017. Harper fell in love with the small, quixotic country, its layered mysteries, the food, and the people. That summer she also met the three remarkable women who now agreed to be unofficial cultural advisors, translators, community liaisons, and all-round champions of Harper’s new research endeavor. It was Friday afternoon, at the end of Harper’s first week back in town, when they arrived at the door of her new apartment for the first project meeting. 

            Magda dropped her backpack on a table near the door and rummaged around for a moment.  

“Okay, I brought dessert. This is a new, gourmet chocolate bar — it’s supposed to have tiramisu in it, or something,” she rolled her eyes sarcastically. “But tiramisu isn’t Georgian. You know that, right?” 

Grinning, Magda held up two brightly colored packets stuck together with red tape. “And this, this is kid’s stuff. You know, crap candy.  But I love it. Okay, here it is.” She thrust the candy at Harper, “Am I early?”  

Sebine and Nina arrived moments later carrying a bag of perfectly ripe, golden grapes. Sebine’s brilliant green eyes flashed with excitement, then she smiled shyly. “The vegetable man said these came from Kakheti this morning; they are very fresh. Here,” she said, lifting her hands. The grapes smelled earthy and sweet. They smelled like Indian summer. 

            Nina breezed into the living room, turning slowly, her long black skirt twirling around her ankles. She sighed, “Oh Harper, I loooove your apartment. There’s so much light.  Are you unpacked already?” 

            “Yep,” she smiled, pointing to the bookshelf.

            In her tiny, sunlit kitchen, Harper rinsed the delicate grapes, enjoying their coolness and weight in her hands. On a tin platter, her impromptu charcuterie board, Harper set them beside a fat wedge of smoked sulguni, fresh figs drizzled with honey, sliced apples, a roll of rich salami, salted nuts, and warm shoti, a Georgia style baguette.  In the center, curled like rosebuds, were the badrijani nigvzit, purchased from a delicatessen near her flat. Harper smiled, remembering the first time she tasted the heavenly eggplant and walnut rolls, and wondered if it was possible, she’d actually come all the way back to Georgia just for those.  “Open the wine someone!” she called from the kitchen. Feeling happier than she had in months, a rush of excitement washed over her as she stepped into the living room with her platter of offerings. 

            On the coffee table, two bottles of Château Mukharani Grappe Noir stood beside an old 

 “Oh, good wine,” Nina purred, pulling a crisp packet of cigarettes from her bag, and settling herself on a pillow. Sebine took off her shoes and pulled a wooden chair near the sofa. 

            Magda scribbled something in the notebook on her lap. Lifting it up she said, “Look guys, I’ve got a new journal so we can keep the notes from our meetings.”

            Sebine chuckled, “What’s your first note?”

            “Harper begins meeting with food and wine, like a good Georgian.” 

            The tray still in her hands, Harper paused, smiling at the three women. They were her friends, and she felt so damn lucky. 

1) STORY STATEMENT

An unconventional academic on a research assignment in the Republic of Georgia, fights to save her career and find the link between food and freedom. 

2) ANTAGONIST 

Schulyer J. Blakewell III, is the lauded chair of the Political Science department at Anderson College, and Harper Hanigan’s domineering supervisor. Blakewell is a dyed in the wool WASP, but he slouches around campus like a hipster-type professor better suited to the Philosophy department. He disliked Harper immediately because she was a smart outsider who saw him as an ingratiating fake. 

Blakewell is an ambitious, successful man, accustomed to getting what he wants. He is not afraid to deceive, manipulate and even plagiarize, if he thinks he can get away with it. When he sees an opportunity to take credit for Harper’s work and sabotage her career, Blakewell rises to the occasion. 

3) TITLE LIST

Current title – Feast 

Alternative titles 

1.     The Song of Jam

2.     Harper’s Poiesis 

3.     Food, Love & War Behind the Iron Curtain

4) COMPARABLE TITLES - Genre is Literary Fiction, Upmarket 

Feast is on a continuum between Eat Pray Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert, and Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow.

5) HOOK LINE/LOGLINE

An unconventional academic alone in a former Soviet Republic, wrestles with her past and a colleague’s treachery, while desperately searching for the link between food and freedom. 

6) SKETCH OF CONFLICTS 

A. INNER CONFLICT/core wound

One of Harper’s strongest early memories is staring at the glossy tile floor of the rec hall, speckled squares flickered in the sunlight just like the ones in the lunchroom. Black shoes tucked under rows of blue plastic chairs. A man in a dull brown suite stood near a window talking about Ray Sandaburg, killed in a terrible accident. Kids in a pickup-truck riding through the desert; when the truck flipped over if cut off Ray’s head. The man in the brown suite didn’t say that but Harper knew it was true. She heard her brother Hank talking to Marty about it. Marty was in the truck too. That same autumn, just a few months before Josie ran away, the sweet old man who ran the laundry mat was robbed and murdered with a two-by-four. Someone had hammered long nails in one end and beaten him with it. She and Mama used to go there once a week. The Penny Wash, smelled like bath bubbles and the old man always had a lollypop for Harper. Mama used to hum songs from Oklahoma when she pulled sheets from the dryer. Occasionally, they sang the lyrics together. Harper’s favorite was the part about the corn and the elephants. But Mama didn’t hum anymore. The world outside Harper’s front door was ugly and dangerous. She felt like a stranger there, as if her family had gotten lost on the way to somewhere else. 

            A few years later, when her parents had more money, they sent Harper to a private Lutheran School on the other side of town. They wanted Harper in a safer environment, but it wasn’t. The principal’s daughter told the entire fifth grade class that the new girl was poor, and her family never went to church. From her first day of school, the kids whispered about the poor sinner-girl from Trailor Estates. At first, Harper was confused because everyone at the new school pretended to be nice, but they really weren’t. She was an outsider there too, but she got used to it. Playing alone was safest. How could Harper tell her parents, who had sacrificed so much to send there, she was swimming with sharks.

            Looking back, Harper realized that for as long as she could remember, she’d been desperate to prove her value, to transcend circumstances, to prove that pretty did not equal stupid, that poor did not equal dirty and useless. A tangled sense of inadequacy, pride and rage burned inside her.

B. SECONDARY CONFLICT (Obstacles/challenges in her research)

It rained steadily for the next three days. Harper sat, dangling bare legs off the ledge of her bedroom window, staring at life on the street below, drinking bottles of warm Stolichnaya, and smoking cheap Russian cigarettes. She liked the way they burned in her throat. 

Nothing made sense anymore, and she longed to hear her mother’s voice, just the sound, the gentle lilting notes, could always sooth her. Harper felt confused, hurt, and trapped by Blakewell. In her gut she knew analytical analysis and formulas were not going to capture any truths. Yet, she’d been cornered into doing some trivial research bullshit when she knew there was a bigger story out there. Something deeper, subtler, more poetic. Harper’s mind raced. She thought about two upcoming interviews, and about Rancière’s concept of rupture, which was relevant, she just wasn’t sure how yet. She thought about tiny acts of dissidence, and survival, and feminized labor, and the kitchen as the locus of cultural preservation… there was a connection, she knew there was. She just couldn’t see it. Harper didn’t want to analyze data, she wanted to tackle big ideas, but she knew that’s not what academia was interested in anymore, unless you’re Jacques Rancière, which she wasn’t. “This is social science. Leave the big ideas to Art,” Blakewell had snarled at her once. Maybe he was right, she didn’t have the skills to tackle thick research with layers of meaning. Clearly, she was too stupid to understand Davit. Maybe she’d wasted years of her life on that damn PhD. What am I doing here? What happened to my life? 

7) SETTING

Georgia is a lush, verdant former Soviet republic known for a rich culinary landscape, wine making techniques dating back two thousand years, polyphony singing, and acrobatic dance. In John Steinbeck’s 1948 travelogue, A Russian Journal, he wrote that wherever he went, the Russians spoke of “Georgians as supermen, as great drinkers, great dancers, great musicians, great workers and lovers. And they spoke of the country in the Caucasus and around the Black Sea as a kind of second heaven.” 

Georgia is also the birthplace of Joseph Stalin, a brilliant crook who blossomed into a tyrannical murderer in the 1930s at the helm of a nascent empire. Thanks to Vladimir Putin, his bloody legacy has been polished, and across Russia, Stalin’s cult of personality is on the rise. For some in Georgia, Stalin’s popularity has never waned, neither has Russian influence, nor the supremacy of the Orthodox church. But many others, particularly the young, long to join the European Union and embrace the liberal individualism of the West. Georgia is a country at war with itself, and has been, in varying degrees, since 1990.  This is the setting of Feast.

Sub-settings within the narrative also include Amsterdam, India, and South Africa.