TOO LITTLE TOO LATE. HELENE

September 30, 2024 ~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

I’m angry. We can go to the moon, build cities, and predict weather, but why are we waiting now to rescue North Carolina, Florida, etc.?

The hurricane was reported days ago. I looked up the exact date but couldn’t find it. All federal resources should have been there before Helene took lives, animals, homes, streets, businesses, and infrastructure.

HELENE: LOSING A HOME.

September 28, 2024September 28, 2024 ~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

It’s impossible to feel personal tribulations when I see Helene’s destruction. The shock is unimaginable unless your home has been removed by earth, wind, or fire.

When our family home burned, my mother drove me up a day later to see what remained. I was eight years old. I felt lost. My stomach was empty, and my breath held. Nothing but ashes; it changes your perspective on what to hold on to.

Burt Lancaster lived above us; a spark dropped from his home onto our house. Ours was the only house that burned on Thurston Circle. We direct our life, and then it returns a different ending. Lucky to have had those years in Bel Air, a paradise of charismatic neighbors, children up and down the street, parties, and safety.

The 1961 Bel Air Fire was a disastrous brush fire that began on November 6, 1961, in the Bel Air community of Los Angeles. It destroyed 484 homes and burned over 6,000 acres, fueled by strong Santa Ana winds. At least 200 firefighters were injured during the fire ¹

RANDOM THOUGHTS

September 21, 2024September 23, 2024 ~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

My emotional tail is wagging. Curled up in my desk chair, I feel almost as if I was born in this chair. It’s cushioned me through a cyclone of adventures in livingness.
This piece of writing was handwritten on a tablet back in late January. I’ve made some minor additions and deletions. Before submitting to a publisher, the editor I used asked me, “Why do you keep switching between past and present tense?” I told her I don’t control that until I’m in final editing. My control over my writing is identical to how I live. Acting on impulse, expanding the mundane into a musical, feasting on all the emotions, and fabricating thorny Walter Mitty encounters. I don’t even think of applying proven methods; I make up new ones.
Back to this plateau of solitude. Love what you have, and especially yourself, with all your flaws. Integrity is more critical; be proud not just for yourself, but because someone out there needs you.

PART TWO: After reading this and while emptying the trash, I was struck by this: the big payback to living as I described is an adaptation to proven methods. I’m learning pragmatic over poetic.

MOTHER’S

September 17, 2024 ~ LouLou ~ 1 Comment

It is my mother’s birthday, so I am thinking of her. If she had been here today, we would have had this conversation.

Mom, I can’t hold up, I’m so beat down.”

” You have to. I know your situation is degrading and frightening, but you don’t have a choice. You have to use all your strength.”

” I wish I was more like you.”

” You are like me, and I know you will overcome.

After our home burned down in the Bel Air fire, my parent’s divorce was in motion. Dad moved to Hollywood, and Mom moved me to Westwood to a studio until she found work. Mom returned to modeling to support us.

THINKING?

September 7, 2024September 8, 2024 ~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

ADVENTURES IN

LIVINGNESS TODAY,

SEPTEMBER 7, 2024

Silhouette of sounds: a whispering wind, the freight train blowing the sounds of its coming, Neil Young music, and the flutter of thoughts that sometimes feel like sounds.

The sky is building into a rainstorm, and watching its manifestation is dramatic—nature in motion. Although there are tasks to be threaded, I’ve chosen to retire from pesky vacuuming, wood polishing, laundry, unpacking my winter clothes, and preparing for winter. The clothes are trivial to the transformation of light, outdoor porch lounging, and then the trees. When they turn naked as skinned cucumbers or buds without flowers, I think a visceral adaptation occurs in all of us.

This week unfolded over Dad. The most honorable collector of Mafia artifacts bought some of father’s collection. Years ago, I sold them to the Mob Experience for their Museum in Las Vegas (bankrupt), and the owner resold them to Julian’s Estate Sales in Beverly Hills. I viewed the items for sale; imagine your phone book selling for sixteen hundred dollars and an album of photos taken by Dad’s doll in the thirties for, well, I forget the price. Anyway, Avi Bash of the Avi Bash Collection bought what was left. When he wrote to me, I felt immediate relief that he owned these moments Dad had kept all his life. He said,” Let me know if you want to see photos or anything else.” He’s a prince of a man. That was one slice of the week. When I checked my list today of my crossed-off tasks, it was not too impressive, but sometimes we can’t produce. As I said, I’m adapting from sunshine and warmth to seasonal change.

Digitally, I fixed a few troublesome changes Microsoft made to my documents and feeds.

It’s not me of years ago—driven, disciplined, empowered, and confident. Maybe it is not worth thinking about, not for me. I think more than I act these days. Everything we do in life needs revision. We are never through evolving into more thoughtful, loving, or wise human beings. Every day, there is an opportunity to leap into a saintly hood. It is the same with manuscripts; they get better.

The next adventure in livingness is one I have lived with all my life, moving. I would love to move, even to another part of town.

The dismantling of things gives me a twisted alignment to my life. The beginning is again: unpacking boxes, meeting new neighbors, sunsets, and cafes. If I am ever to rest in one address, I’m sure it will be a headstone and a plot of dirt. I have chosen to relocate because of an internal destiny.

These are the ones I know will happen with some certainty. The inner self concerns me and how it jumps from one dream to one nightmare. When I was thirty, I was afraid of getting married; when I was forty, I was scared of not having children. Now that I am seventy-one, I am fighting another fear: the fear of singleness. But I’ve always been a loner; it just didn’t scare me when I was young.

The Rain came, Dylan is singing, and I’m planning risotto pasta for the night.

I just finished another Denzel Washington film, Man on Fire. DW is my actor of the week, so I watch all his films. An alert popped up, another mass shooting, this time in Kentucky. I wanted to delete my last column.. It’s not what is breaking me apart; personal threads seem vacuous. What I’m escaping in writing and films are mass shootings and unbearable violence. It’s not one every few months; it’s every day. Yes, cure Cancer and all other physical diseases, BUT CONCENTRATE ON CRIME, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. MENTAL ILLNESS.