I’m breaking and entering the past. I wrote this 4/26/2016 and didn’t publish it. I’m sweeping out documents to ease reviewing my folders and documents.

It is five in the morning on a Sunday in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This is the time when silence is my symphony. The Aspen tree leaves on the other side of the street are turning the shade of pumpkin. It may be a very early fall. I prefer to write in the morning, very early before even the farolitos’ lights go out across the street. When I write at night self-reckoning secrets seem to seep out like drops of water from a faulty faucet. At three in the morning, there is an old heartbreaking movie on the television, and a draft of solitude in my room and in my soul.  These movies always make me feel better. They allow me to cry; as I shift my melancholy to the heroine of the movie: Betty Davis, Norma Shearer, or Susan Hayward.  

  I look over the rooftops through the living room window. Are there writers and artists stalking the rooms in the middle of winter night? Stationed beside the heater or kiva, in thick wool socks and heavy robes?  Are they drinking tea to settle their thoughts or coffee to stir them up?  I imagine there is another woman far away from the plains of the Southwest, in Russia, Europe or Asia who is also at a desk and writing down all that she cannot say during the day.  It would be magical to know another writer awake at the same exact moment, is thinking something similar, something you save for yourself. 

 One woman is thinking of a different man than the one she faces each morning. Another woman is thinking how she could never survive without the one she has. I am thinking of the continuing discovery of self. Our needs change; with season, age, and exposure to contrasting, confrontational and complex situations.

I met several women this past week, well-heeled international travelers, on the road with enterprising spirit.  They’ve lived abroad, met an assortment of celebrities, and made enough money to finance their leisure sprees.  For a moment I imagined myself, with a large Prada tote bag, sitting in first class of Jet Blue keying in appointments with my Blackberry. Then the image evaporated.   It’s like the daydream of another person, not who I am, My voyage would be an expeditionary life of someone like travel guru Bruce Chatwin.  

There are moments of regret. The most pressing is that I refuse to settle down. This home is temporary. I know the feeling; it has been part of my baggage most of my life. I cannot trade it in for a new brand, its mine, and it gives me enormous drama, change, and adventure.  It infuriates my friends; who continually must erase and insert new numbers and new zip codes next to my name.  

The secret of what’s ahead in the journey.   Wouldn’t you like to peek into ten years from now and see where you landed?  There is still a dot of danger to my passions.  Not the danger that comes with racing cars or extreme sports.  My danger is in the incurable obsession to combine all the things I love in one package, place them all in close proximity, and live happy bold and free.  

I’d have a mid-century black bottomed swimming pool and not far from the patio a grove of avocado trees. The tree house studio would be my private writing room. On the branches of the tree, wild colorful birds would flutter, and I’d watch them with joy. In the main house I’d have a library with a thousand, and one books, an outdoor dining table with plenty of dinner parties for twelve, a basement filled with rare wine, and an assortment of animals. There would be a little village in walking distance with a fresh produce market, a bakery, a jazz club, and a French bistro. After reading this a day later the house I described is similar to my family home, the one that burned down in the Bel Air fire. Realization! I’m still looking for home.