At three in the morning the walls of reality merge with dreams, timelessness, restlessness, and an alertness of unspoken needs.
What I think of at three in the morning is never the same at ten o’ clock in the morning. The labyrinth of safety, colliding with the unknown, seems to be the most innocent of emotions. It is also a time that springs bright eyed realizations, recognitions, and a time when our mirrors move toward us. I see my looks fading. All I ever wanted was to see myself as pretty as my mother was.
The wind is sudden as it whips through the spruce tree outside my window.
I get up and wander downstairs, listening to the wood floors crackle at my footstep. I walk outdoors onto the back porch. The wind is like a mirror to me. This sound, so clear and unmixed in Santa Fe, brings me back to the years in Hollywood. The nights my father went out allowing me the freedom to explore outside. I would run down Doheny Drive to Santa Monica Boulevard and just keep running. It was on those windy Santa Ana nights that I’d run the longest.
I was running because the need to express something was bulging through my body. Back then I didn’t keep a journal at home. My father had discovered it and then questioned me about everything I’d written.
This night is like that, only I don’t feel like running, I am listening to the sound of the chime and the wind. I am thinking of the music of Charles Lloyd, and the shadows that look like people, and the clouds that appear to have message, and how everything is different when you are alone.
I dine without pause and usually finish before I’ve even wiped my mouth. I have extended conversations with the cats, Bugsy and Alice, and moments are elongated. I sit down at the counter and this wind and chime continues to circulate the house. It is an announcement- it is expectant of spring. I jotted down some notes and knew what I wished to write about today.
April is expectant- there is expectancy everywhere you look. The buds on the stark tree limbs are about to bloom, the birds have evacuated their nests and begin singing early in the morning, and insects eject themselves from their hidden corners. I don’t know what spring is like for a man, I’ve never asked any man, but I am going to tell you what spring is like for one woman. The essence of spring is sensuous, and for a woman it is an overture.
We strip down the layers of clothing; replacing socks with sandals, and sweaters with t-shirts. When I hear birds and watch them in the trees, I think of babies, and innocence. There are flowers about to shoot through the heavy clasp of winter dormancy, and when they do, the colors remind me to replace all the black pants and turtlenecks with pastel shades of peach and blue.
The sunlight radiates through my skin and warms every thing. My heart feels like it has been through a tune up. My body wants to dowse in sea water, and to eat less, and to run up canyon road, and listen to music, and dine al fresco, and get pedicures. Men, do notice your woman’s new pedicure, it will make her very happy. All of this preparation is to tune up the romantic notes, and to get YOUR ATTENTION. It is time to bring you out of the garage, or wherever you go in spring, and to notice that we are blooming. This is what I felt the night I heard the Charles Lloyd Quartet; I heard him blooming.
Surprise us with flowers, a new hat, or a picnic on the banks of the Rio Grande. Spring is time to redirect your attention to woman because we are at our best in spring. Our attention is on our surroundings; we will want to buy flowers, and baskets and new cushions for the patio furniture. We change our lipstick color, comb our hair different, and we look for new ways of expressing how good we feel.
Today I see cherry blossoms in my neighbors’ yard. They remind me of
a day in April at Golden Gate Park. Then I feel young again, like I was in the park that day, when I was in love with a man who would prove to be one of the great adventures of my life.
If you live in Santa Fe then you understand when I say-hurry up spring and start undressing.
“Is there any feeling in a woman stronger than curiosity? Fancy seeing, knowing, touching what one has dreamed about. What would a woman not do for that? Once a woman’s eager curiosity is aroused, she will be guilty of any folly, commit any imprudence, venture upon anything, and recoil from nothing.”
Guy De Maupassant, “An Adventure in Paris.”
My responsibility as a writer is to assure people taking a chance in life is the only way to live, and so … I throw the dice.
The inner voice where gaps of expression are liberated. 