August was proving to be a slog. In the best of years, this month is the frayed hem of summer, the heady exuberance of the season having played itself out in June and July. Now, the trees were drooping under their weight of dark, dusty leaves, like a Victorian matron swathed in wool at a summer picnic. In my garden, the liriope were struggling to put out a few spikes of violet-blue florets, but everything else was succumbing to too much heat and too little rain. It was so dispiriting, I was even losing my appetite for watermelon (http://blog.bonnielcasey.com/2010/08/10/melon-quest.aspx). In short, the month was boiling down to sweat, stink bugs, and lost mojo.

            For a woman in touch with her wild, instinctual nature, intuition is the voice of her soul. It’s the part of her that has resisted the denaturing effects of cultural mores, societal expectations, religious strictures, and familial demands to keep her in touch with what women have always known best—the natural rhythms, needs, and cycles of living things. An intuitive woman has sensitive antennae that alert her to the reality beneath appearances, where she is going and what must be done, where dangers lurk and where joy is cached. Well-honed intuition can also be clairvoyant, bumping into little bits of the future ahead of schedule and picking up on “coincidences” that really aren’t.

Like all living things, intuition is kept alive by proper feeding, and you feed intuition by listening to it. The wonder is that the more you listen, the more it speaks. A woman who neglects to feed her intuition through creativity, meaningful solitude, play, and self-nurture is in danger of losing touch with her own life. It can feel like driving at night without headlights, embroidering with gloves on, or listening to music under water. The senses are dulled, boredom sets in, and before you know it you’re staring at an episode of “Law and Order” that you’ve seen ten times before and not even bothering to mute the commercials. I tell you, it’s a sad, slow decline, and it’s where I was heading until a visit to Baltimore got me back on track, mojo alive and chugging. Who knew that the prescription for my August ennui was a dose of Charm City?

The week had been going badly. On Monday morning I flung my shower curtain open and confronted a wolf spider who was not happy about having her web ripped apart. I was none too pleased with the encounter myself. The next day my email was hacked by someone selling cut-rate Viagra. At the office, my workload was spotty and uninspiring, so on Thursday I left my cubicle and wandered down to the little convenience store in the basement to assess my craving for chocolate and found to my dismay that even it was depressed. I decided to skip work on Friday for the simple reason that if I didn’t, I was fairly certain my head would explode. I felt dull and wan and hadn’t heard a peep from my inner voice for longer than I cared to remember. I thought again about my friend Diane, who had been on my mind all morning. It was a long time since we’d had one of our searching, nourishing conversations over a shared meal. I wondered if she was okay and figured I’d check in with her soon, so when I got back to my desk and opened my email, my breath caught in my throat. There was a message from Diane, who wrote, “I’m juggling five crises at once and am really stressed out! Can you come to Baltimore this weekend? I miss our talks.” I pumped my fist as imperceptibly as possible and whispered, “Yesss!” I wasn’t dead yet.

* * *

Last April the celebrity guest on NPR’s news quiz show “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!” was John Waters, the famously eccentric writer and director of such cult classic films as “Hairspray” and “Pink Flamingos.” Waters is a Baltimore native and one of the city’s most enthusiastic boosters. Like many of Baltimore’s ardent fans, his love for his hometown is matched by an equally ardent conviction that it is the epicenter of Oddball America. “Everyone here thinks they're normal, but they're insane!” Waters declared on NPR. “When I first came downtown from the suburbs, where I was born, I saw people that didn't fit in. I saw outsiders that didn't even fit in with their own minority. And that's always been my people, really.” In 2000 Waters addressed the Baltimore Chamber of Commerce about their efforts to solicit a new slogan for the city. Not surprisingly, he urged them to focus on Baltimore’s long-standing tolerance for the seamy and grotesque. “This is the strangest, coolest, most peculiar city in America,” he told the Chamber before suggesting the slogan, “Come to Baltimore and be SHOCKED!” The Chamber actually printed the slogan on a hot pink and yellow bumper sticker (http://www.flickr.com/photos/considine/2607110151/). The following year the Greater Baltimore Alliance, a nonprofit marketing group that promotes economic development and is not known for flights of whimsy, proposed the slogan, “Baltimore, Suit to Nuts.”

I met Diane at her chic bowling-alley-turned-loft apartment, situated conveniently above a CVS drugstore (her kitchen table is a slab of hardwood reclaimed from an actual bowling lane), and we headed on foot in the direction of Federal Hill (http://www.livebaltimore.com/neighborhoods/list/federalhill/). As we walked we dissected the first and second of Diane’s five crises, stopping occasionally to commiserate or to admire the restored 18^th-century townhouses in this quaint neighborhood. Federal Hill is now a park with a panoramic view of the Inner Harbor and Fells Point. The hill was discovered by Captain John Smith (whose BFF was Pocahontas) in 1608 and earned its name in 1788 when thousands of Baltimoreans marched up the hill to celebrate Maryland’s ratification of the Constitution. By the time of the Civil War, however, Baltimore’s enthusiasm for the principle of federalism seems to have waned. Not taking any chances, Union soldiers commandeered Federal Hill and persuaded the city of its loyalty to the Union cause by aiming a cannon at the Inner Harbor until the cessation of hostilities.

We had lunch and discussed Diane’s crises number three and four (number four required a few tissues) at The Metropolitan on South Charles Street (http://www.metrobalto.com/). This neighborhood café peppers its menu with quotes from Socrates, Robert Frost, and Thomas Jefferson and is the only eatery I know of where you can wash down a spicy bean burger and fries with a St-Germain champagne cocktail. St-Germain (http://www.stgermain.fr/) is a French-made liqueur that purports to be distilled from elderflowers that bloom in the Swiss Alps for a few fleeting days each spring. The flowers are hand-picked, so the story goes, by 40 or 50 elderly Swiss gentlemen, who gently pack the flowers in cloth sacks and lovingly transport them down the mountains to market—on bicycles. I was introduced to St-Germain by another friend earlier this summer. In fact, just the previous evening this friend and I had joked over dinner about our suspicion that the fragrant liqueur was actually processed by underpaid workers in some grungy maquiladora in Ciudad Juarez. This coincidence elicited another “Yesss!” in celebration of my resurgent intuition.

* * *

After lunch Diane and I set off toward downtown, taking a route through the historic Otterbein district (http://theotterbein.org/index.html). When Diane divulged the details of crisis number five near Wheel Park, I had to sit down to take it all in (the crisis, not the park, which was serene and leafy). When we were both composed enough to move on, we headed in the direction of our major destination for the day, Baltimore’s famous Bromo-Seltzer Tower (http://www.bromoseltzertower.com/), easily located from any point in the city. Just look for the most bizarre structure on the skyline.

In 1911, “Captain” Isaac E. Emerson, owner of the Emerson Drug Company and inventor of Bromo-Seltzer, built a clock tower at the corner of his factory on Eutaw and Lombard Streets. The Captain wanted to bring a little class to the city, so he ordered that the tower be made to resemble the Palazzo Vecchio clock tower in Florence, Italy, which he had seen and greatly admired. The tower did bear a resemblance to its Italian cousin, but Emerson gave his version a few personal flourishes. In lieu of Roman numerals, the clock signifies the hours with the letters B-R-O-M-O-S-E-L-T-Z-E-R. And until 1936, the tower’s rooftop bore a 51-foot-tall rotating replica of a Bromo-Seltzer bottle topped with a crown. This mammoth ornament was dark blue, like Bromo-Seltzer’s distinctive blue glass bottles, and lined with more than 300 light bulbs that cast an eerie glow against the night sky. A few years ago the tower, which had become virtually abandoned and derelict, was taken over by the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts (http://www.promotionandarts.com), and the small offices on its 14 floors were converted to artists’ studios. Tours are given once a month, and Diane and I got the last two spots on the last tour of the day (“Yesss!”).

The tour began in the room that houses the four-faced clock on the 15^th floor (which is actually the 14^th floor, but this being Baltimore, there is no 13^th floor). After exiting the tiny antique elevator (“Maximum Capacity Four Adults”), our group accessed the cavernous clock room by a flight of stairs and a steep metal ladder. Joe Wall, tower manager, mechanic, clock repairman, and raconteur, first filled us in on Captain Emerson and his amazing invention. Bromo-Seltzer was formulated and marketed as an effervescent cure for heartburn and indigestion and quickly became a popular hangover remedy. The product was named for one of its original ingredients—sodium bromide, a type of sedative withdrawn from the American market in 1975 due to its toxicity. The original formula also contained acetanilide, a known poison, for headache pain. The Emerson Drug Company’s unerring instinct for endangering public health continued in the 1950s with the invention of FIZZIES (http://www.fizzies.com/default.html), a kind of instant soda pop that was essentially fruit-flavored Bromo-Seltzer pressed into tablets and sweetened with sodium cyclamate, which was soon found to be carcinogenic. (Thankfully, both Bromo-Seltzer and FIZZIES have since been reformulated to meet more stringent safety standards.)

Joe next described the lengthy renovation of the tower’s four clocks. He made all the repairs himself, and kept us in stitches with stories of repairing the clock that faces nearby Camden Yards (http://mlb.mlb.com/bal/ballpark/index.jsp), where the Baltimore Orioles play baseball. He was interrupted almost daily by calls from one of the park’s managers. “Hey, Joe,” the guy would complain, “hows come the clock stopped?” “Hey, Joe, the clock’s two minutes off today.” “Hey, Joe, whenna ya gonna get the damn clock fixed? You got any idea how superstitious ballplayers are?”

I asked Joe about the ladder leading up from the clock room. His shoulders slumped as he sighed, “Oh, that. That goes up to the Tippi Hedren Room.” It seems the roof of the clock tower is inhabited by flocks of pigeons, numbers of whom are routinely plucked to their doom by peregrine falcons. The ravenous falcons devour their pigeon snacks on the spot, leaving only the heads, which, after a heavy rain, clog the roof’s drainage system. About once a month Joe has to climb up to the Tippi Hedren Room (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056869/), plunge his arm up to the shoulder into the fetid drain, and scoop out hundreds of waterlogged pigeon heads. His vigorous reenactment of this grotesque process was the highlight of the tour.

Diane and I opted to take the stairs down to street level so we could check out some of the artists’ studios along the way. Each floor has three small converted offices that painters, photographers, and crafters can rent to make and display their work. It was late afternoon and many were closing up for the day. On the 12^th floor, Keith Haller, who paints portraits and landscapes in oil, was just locking the door to his studio, but reluctantly opened back up when we expressed an interest in seeing his work (http://www.keithhaller.com/). He slouched in a chair while we looked around, but became animated when I expressed interest in his interpretation of photojournalist Dorothea Lange’s iconic portrait of a Depression-era mother, set against a distinctly Van Gogh sky. Haller got up and started flipping through some canvases stacked against the wall, and I commented, “These must have been done during your Cezanne period.” He leapt back in surprise and grinned at me. “You’re the first person who’s gotten that right!” he exulted. “I spent a whole year copying Van Gogh’s style and nobody even noticed. Then I started painting like Cezanne and everybody said, ‘Oh, I see you’re copying Van Gogh.’ You’re absolutely the first person who’s got it right! Thank you! I’m really glad I let you two in.” (“Yesss!”)

On the 6^th floor a paper sign taped to a door announced “The Intuition Project.” The door opened a crack and Diane suddenly disappeared, as though sucked into the room by an unseen force. A strange woman stuck her head out the door and whispered, “Coming?” Inside the dimly lit room were several folding chairs facing a low stage that held only a faded yellow settee. A young Asian woman with a video camera explained that she was looking for volunteers to speak on camera about a time when intuition played a significant role in an action or decision. She said she was hoping to use the clips to produce a film on intuition and asked if any of the half dozen or so of us in the room would volunteer. Diane immediately raised her hand. She sat on the settee under a harsh overhead light, smiled into the camera and told the story of a dream that had saved her and her son from disaster during a hiking trip in the mountains. Then I took the stage and described how intuition and clairvoyance had helped me as a mother and spiritual seeker. The artist thanked us profusely, asked us each to sign a release giving permission for our footage to (possibly) be used in a (possibly) upcoming film, and ushered us out the door. On the landing, Diane and I giggled, gave each other a “What was that?” look, and continued down the stairs.

On the 2^nd floor, brightly colored fabric caught my eye through an open studio door. The proprietor of Plum Blossom Kimono (http://www.plumblossomkimono.com/) was starting to close up shop but was delighted to let us browse through a rack of vintage kimono jackets called haoris. Each was unique, fully lined, and hand-sewn in pure silk by kimono makers in Japan. I was immediately drawn to a magenta haori that had a pattern like snow falling on pine boughs. I slipped it on and stood in front of the mirror the proprietor eagerly provided, silently chanting, “I do not need a silk kimono jacket. I have no place to wear a silk kimono jacket. L.L.Bean does not sell silk kimono jackets, ergo I do not wear silk kimono jackets.” The proprietor cooed, “It fits you perfectly,” and knocked 15% off the price. Later I asked Diane to imagine the response when people asked me if I got my kimono jacket on a trip to Japan and I replied, “No, I got it in Baltimore—at the Bromo-Seltzer Tower.”

* * *

Back out on Lombard St., we walked a few blocks to Westminster Hall (http://www.westminsterhall.org/Westminster_Hall/Welcome.html), a converted Gothic church on the grounds of the University of Maryland Law School, now used for conferences and musical performances. Out back, Westminster Burying Grounds is the site of the tomb of Edgar Allan Poe, best known for poems and stories of death and the macabre. Poe was born in Boston and migrated from city to city during his lifetime, but Baltimore proudly claims him as their own since he published his most famous poem, the doom-laden “The Raven,” while living there. Poe also died in Baltimore, of mysterious causes, after wandering the streets one night, delirious, ranting, and dressed in another man’s clothes.

That evening as I drove out of town, past Poe’s white marble tombstone and the nearby M&T Bank Stadium where the Baltimore Ravens were practicing, I wondered how many fans knew their football team was named after a gloomy poem written by a mad genius given to drink and obsessed by death, who married his 13-year-old cousin while living in their fair but oddball city. Heading home in a downpour, I pulled onto the ramp for I-95 South and switched on the radio to catch the last few minutes of “A Prairie Home Companion.” Sarah Jarosz was singing a song called “Annabelle Lee” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1b2vcHVG90), an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s last complete poem. “Yesss!” I rejoiced again. I was definitely back.