Location X: A Quest for Place

Not all septuagenarians become devoted grandparents, contented gardeners, or avid pickleball players, some still crave risk and adventure. Eva Rome enters her eighth decade and rejects her comfortable, semiretired life, questing for meaning beyond the mainstream. In the midst of Covid, she sells her home and hits the road to search for Location X, a place that speaks to who she is. Her investigations take her around the globe, starting in São Paulo, Brazil, on a street named for Diogenes, the Greek cynic who carried a lantern around Athens, shoving it into his fellow citizens’ faces and declaring, “I’m looking for a man.” Eva holds her own lantern up to the world and proclaims, “I’m looking for a place.” Her investigations take her from São Paulo to Mexico to Uncertain, Texas, to retirement hot spots in Costa Rica and Panamá, Spain, Italy, and Portugal. Archangel Michael, whom she learns is her guardian spirit, makes appearances and offers guidance.

On a pirate's map, X marks the spot where treasure is buried, and finding X was the focus of her process: pinpointing that singular location that said, this is where the next phase of my life will unfold. From the armchair globetrotter to the boomer looking for a soft landing in paradise, readers will recognize their unrealized relocation dreams in this compilation of humorous travel exploits and perhaps be prompted to take on their own new adventures.

Eva Rome (Laurie McDonald) is a writer and a media artist. She has published three books, written feature-length screenplays and short stories. Her narrative nonfiction book "Travel for STOICs" empowers the solo traveler who is obsessive, introverted, and compulsive, informed by ancient Stoicism; and her collection of semiserious semiotic essays "What It Means: Myth, Symbol, and Archetype in the Third Millennium, Vol. 1," examines how myth, symbol, and archetype manifest in everyday American life in the early third millennium. In "Location X: A Quest for Place," a septuagenarian who still craves risk and adventure ditches her home and hits the road in search of a singular place that offers meaning beyond the mainstream. She has designed books, graphics for print and video, built websites, and manages a blog called "Our Childhood Homes: Stories About Place." In the early 1970s, she was a founding member of the video art collective Electron Movers, Research in the Electronic Arts, and her video art can be viewed here: www.lauriemcdonald.net. She has received a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and four American Film Institute/NEA Fellowships, and her video art has been exhibited internationally.