When I listen to Antonio Carlos Jobim, I dream of Brazil and of riding on a float at Mardi Gras, just once, in a feather hat, dressed like Rita Hayworth. Music evokes a writing mood, like jazz or blues writing; they are similar. When I listen to Sarah Vaughn or Nancy Wilson, it feels like a close female friend confiding in me and knowing I understand heartbreak.
When I sit at my desk and look at my mother’s photograph, I dream of the first lunch we had at Bullock’s Garden Room, watching the fashion show and discovering style. When I shovel snow, I dream of the coastal beaches: Del Mar, La Jolla, Santa Barbara, and Carmel. Commercials about travel dominate and fuel my craving for a flight. As my responsibilities here are unfinished, I will wait and daydream about the next voyage.
Daydreaming, unlike night dreaming, where we are flying, conquering, or battling some inner masked trauma, illuminates where we want to be, who we want to be, and if we take it seriously, how to get there. The medicine of daydreaming is unmatched by books, healthy food, vitamins, yoga, religion, or mind-altering experiences; it is the essence of who we are.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
The sea is like rolled oil, and the breaking waves are the size of lake ripples. At this momentary recess of chaotic beach activity, all the heaviness of life rolls out with the waves. Observing the elan of beach life carousing, suntanning bodies already tanned leather, joggers and runners, bicyclists, fishermen, volleyball players, and the surfers.
That’s my garden of grace and glory. They are like ballet dancers, some of them, some seem to think they’re driving a car or motorcycle, but the longboarders, old school aged surfers, skim waves athletically and spiritually, one with the board like a musician with an instrument.
And the fisherman, the other clan, is worth watching because they are interlopers in Del Mar. They come alone, dressed in rubber boots, floppy, stained hats, and pocket vests, like longshoremen or train conductors, an aura antiquated in Del Mar history, when fishermen were in greater numbers than joggers, lifeguards, and beach parties.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
She closed the shutters to his wanting eyes and alchemized from a cocoon to a butterfly beneath a circle of friends in tune. She removed the photos, gifts, and letters and put them in a box to reminisce later. Talking out loud, “She takes just like a woman,” but she will not break like a little girl. “No more hours fanning the past; on this day, my view spans.” She sat peacefully by the fire into the night and let her broken wing sing as she watched the wood turn to gold.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
I’D LIKE TO RIDE A CLAIRVOYANT CIRCUIT INTO THE MINDS OF SINGLES OVER THE AGE OF SEVENTY.
I’ve often wondered why advertisements, the media, and politicians don’t address the single segment of society. We don’t hear the beginning of a statement, whether it is legislative, political, social, or cultural. Singles around the country are not traveling, purchasing more products, refusing to get vaccinated, and are unemployed…etc. We are a minority class; I found statistics on The UnmarriedAmerican.org website. More searching led me to the American Association for Single People website.
There are 106 million unmarried adults in the United States. Singles constitute more than 44% of the adult population in the nation.
About 44% of the nation’s workforce are unmarried employees
The Census Bureau estimates that about 10% of adults will never marry.
I’m not going to make a huge leap into this as my thoughts are more about adventures in singleness.
This conversation is from a close friend, married for twenty-some years.
“You are so lucky you have no idea. If I were single, I’d move somewhere where life is simple, maybe Greece.”
“You don’t know about the loneliness, the awkwardness of holidays, the fear when you get sick and have no one to care for you, so many things really.
“I can think better when I’m alone.”
I told her I understood. That is the crucifix of making my pen my mate rather than a three-dimensional man( Temporary singleness). Some of my interactions go like this; going out to dinner,“Are you alone?” She or he leads you to the most obscure table. Then she or he removes the second table setting and suddenly aloneness is visible. An hour later another customer asks if they can use the spare chair. That’s when I ask for the check and leave.
Taking a road trip and feeling vulnerable when I’m pumping the gasoline and a stranger is gawking at me and I’m in the middle of nowhere. It is usually truck drivers and I immediately think of Thelma and Louise.
Dressing for an event that I’ve never been to on my own. In my closet, I lay out three different outfits. Then I have a wary of decisions on which shoes, flats or heels. When I’m all dressed and ready to go self-consciousness billows up and I change the outfit. It’s a ridiculously amusing routine.
Taking myself out for a cocktail just to get out of the hotel has numerous consequences. I end up sitting next to couples who are having a roaring twenties time of it, and the only single man or woman at the bar is fixated on their phone. Instead, the woman next to me strikes up a conversation about her boyfriend.
The other side of these dismal forecasts is; I have no arguments at home(just interior dialogue), I can eat whenever I choose, watch what I elect on television, keep the bedroom light on, adjust the thermostat to my body temperature, and make all the decisions myself, the most infuriating and worthwhile to building courage and self-reliance.
One of the lines in The Godfather struck me as an authentic gangster testimonial: “Women and children can afford to be careless, men cannot.” As a teenager one of the repetitive reminders my father said angrily was, “Watch what you’re doing!” This was the most relevant and truthful observation he made of me. Admittedly, I am easily distracted, careless, and ignore risk.
Without someone to look after my carelessness (I’ve been on my own now for six years), one three-month friendship ended strangely. When he asked me if I had been boosted, I said I hadn’t. He punished me, citing his father, who lives hours away, and he rarely visits. I had Covid, vaccinated twice, that wasn’t enough, so he vaccinated me out. Now, living in hotels I find men talking to me, but the substance is absent, trivia or weather. I have inducted my interests, literature, art, philosophy, culture, travel, and those subjects return, a glazed stare most times, or they are married. I am not in a rush, I’ve learned that scaredness comes when I’m ready… guess I’m not ready yet!
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
Writing feels rusty today. I plow deliberately through the blank mental soil to find a blade of substance in a week of tragedy and cultural chaos. In conversations with men and women about our fractured culture.
” It was never like this when I was growing up,” that is from a fifty-year-old,
” I won’t get on a plane, no way?” from a forty-year-old.
” I don’t talk about my views with anyone at work or out of work, except my family and friends.”
I replied, “Yes, we have to talk niceties, bland boring conversation. “
When I was growing up, there was more joking, laughter, and confessional conversation. I was thinking about my high school years; we talked a lot about emotions, our parents, our dreams, and our fears. I don’t recall restraining what was on my mind. Perhaps that is why the majority of the younger generation prefers social media friends, as they can be easily deleted or blocked. On my FB page and feed, not one follower or friend reveals their political views, including myself. Isn’t that so contrary to humanity? And political violence, I keep hearing we won’t tolerate that on the news, but we are tolerating it. Do we all need drones over our homes for security? An optimist would say, We can do better, and we will; a pessimist might say, I think it’s going to get worse, and a nihilist would say, Life isn’t worth fixing; it’s just worthless.
I canceled my utubetv cable account, because on most days anxiety is at full tank without the news. In this new state of freedom from home; maintenance, repairs, showings and tenants, time is on another clock.The one that ticks as a writer in progress who is dusting off the least truest of thoughts.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
The order of this week is disorder. Not the trivial disorder of a closet, or a work in progress; this week is the unraveling of the self, which comes with separating from someone or something you love dearly. It is the subject of: poetry, theater, film, literature, dance, visual arts, and music — all forms of music from opera to rap. For all of you who have mothers and fathers close to death, and you don’t want them to leave.
Adults protect you from the brutality of death when you’re very young. They keep it behind locked phrases like ‘she had to go away to a better place; you’ll understand when you grow up.’The camouflage of death may go on indefinitely until one day, you are hit over the head with a block of ice, and it splits you right down the middle. You can see your guts spilling out, and everything is all out of order. Walking is an effort. Thinking clogs with the big question: Why? Why can’t we all stay here together and live forever?
Flashback to 1966 — I was very young, not so much in years, but when I was 13, my mental and emotional age was more like that of an 8-year-old. I don’t know if I was ADD or DDT because those acronyms were not in vogue yet.
My development was arrested because I was raised on a fantasia of false identities, fiction, and privilege. I thought we were prosperous, happy, and would live together forever. The fantasia of falseness was abruptly taken away on June 19, 1966. On that day, I saw for the first time my father weep uncontrollably. I was told my mother was in heaven. My father was seated on my mother’s avocado green sofa in our tidy mid-century apartment in Westwood. Nana — mother’s mother — was sitting on the sofa next to my father. Nana and Dad had reconciled for the period my mother was sick with cancer. They both were sobbing. I was not, I was in shock. There was nothing inside of me but resistance, a blockage of emotion that remained there for so many years.
I was left in my father’s care. He was busy avoiding government subpoenas and running the Fontainebleau Hotel in Florida. He kept a command post on my emotions. He would not tolerate my grief, because he could not tolerate his own. So, I had to chin-up, chest out, walk up and down Doheny Drive in Hollywood where he lived and pretend I was going to be fine.
When I turned eighteen and left my father’s apartment, I was free to unravel my feelings for the first time. The emptiness was filled with confusion, anger, and drugs. If college was supposed to be my best years, then I missed that chapter. Looking back, the real leap to personal growth came at that time when I was left unattended to wander through life with my own eyes as guardian, and my heart as my compass. That is when I missed my mother the most. It was my fortune to have my father back in Los Angeles, throwing his weight around from a distance. He kept me under radar by having a friend’s son working in the admittance office of Sonoma State College.
I remember days when my mental attitude needed electric shock therapy. Miraculously, I did find my way home, and to the matter of my mother, and growing up with gangsters. From a wafer of stability, very slowly, I’ve built a nice lifeboat to keep me afloat. My screaming, cantankerous, and intimidating father who loved me beyond measure is in this imaginary boat, and my mother who loved with a silent gentle hand she gave to me whenever I needed assurance.
All I have to do is look at her photograph placed in every corner of my house, and I regain momentum in my lifeboat. When I am particularly insolvent with life’s measures, I recall the years she spent fighting cancer so she could continue to hold my hand. How can I disappoint such a woman? I cannot, and I know that with more certainty than I know anything.We all have a basement strength that rises up and balances us when we need it. Each time we cross that unpleasant road and say goodbye to our friends, our pets, our parents, or our siblings, we have to find our basement strength.
You can read poetry and essays, listen to opera or rap and find five-thousand ways of expressing the same painful stab of separation. If the comfort comes in just knowing — we all have that in common — then all you have to do is tap the shoulder of the person in front of you, and ask, “How did you handle it?”
Or as Henry Miller said, “All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience.”
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
THE BEST WAY TO FIND YOUR PATH.. ROAMING
ADVENTURESS IN LIVINGNESS this week ends with new directions in living. Before that happens, you have to get lost, detached, and miserable. It messes up your social life, your routines, your comfort, and your partner. I don’t have one, so it’s all up to me.
Men wonder why women change so often, why we are spirited unicorns one day, and mules the next. It comes from the universal need to roam, to feel new sensations and passions, and to find more things to love. Even our closets are overflowing with love: “I love those shoes, I love that coat.” We replace our wardrobes because we need more garments to love.
At the crossroads of some moment in time, I stopped loving material things, my reflection, and went looking for a deeper direction of sensation.
It started last year, when my life was tangled up in two projects that were not progressing. As long as someone didn’t raise the curtain on my imaginary life, I stayed right there, like a gearshift left in neutral. When failure and rejection continued to knock me on the shoulder, I welcomed the familiar knock and remained stationary.
The exact moment I decided to shift gears was a painful one. I let go of both projects that were obstructing my motion. I have extracted the nature of the projects because it really is irrelevant. After I let go, and watched those long-term efforts just dangle from boxes, notebooks, and letters of correspondence, the straight of my back curved. Where is my direction? Where are any of us going anyway, except away from that moment we have no control?
If I asked why this happened, and that happened, I was then distracted by some woman in the car next to me who was having more fun in her convertible talking on her cell phone. Routines were becoming burdens, and my favorite places of comfort were boring. Encouragement came from writing columns, reading letters, and those long, solitary road trips in the night. I felt like I was sleeping, but even in that state of detachment people were finding me, and shaking me up.
I remembered one of the faintest memories of my childhood. I cannot even recall the place I was, or who was there; most certainly, it was not my father and mother. We were camping out and I was in a sleeping bag on the hard gravel ground. It was so unfamiliar to me, the simplicity of the natural surroundings, the heavy black balm of tranquility, and the brightness of each star. I lied awake most of the night talking to my fellow campers, and at some point they said to go to sleep. I could not close my eyes. The adventure had swept me into a state of alertness, the kind that makes you feel extraterrestrial. That night must have taught me to welcome new adventures. Sometimes they have ruined months of my life, but most definitely, at the end, I sprung up with a new line of faith.
Again, I am leaving out particulars because it is not the direction I took or what I’ve chosen. After all, it could be anything. We all want to roam, and love, and find some nugget of truth at the end of the road. I think women need to roam more now than men.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
ADVENTURES IN LIVINGNESS began with lightning and thunder. My bed braced against the window didn’t alarm me like when I first moved here, and the storms startled me with their voluminous sound. After five years, the fears of weather, creaking noises, bats, mice, or a running deer as I drive have sifted through the thread of experience. As the first attempt to accept relocation coming, I am unwinding with you, not at you, because you’re all closer to me than you think.
I begin late on Friday, watching a half-lit scene with descending sunlight, the other bathed in asphalt gray, the solid remains of this week’s punishing climate. Who cares about that after the news this week? I imagine every parent was stung in a way they may never have felt before. Everyone loves children, even those who didn’t have them, cherish their innocence and liberating emotions. I asked a friend, how it affected him, he replied, “ I didn’t know I can’t watch the news.”
“ You never watch the news?”
“ Some stuff on social media.”
“ The Mystic Camp tragedy didn’t come up?.”
“ No.. what happened?”. So I gave him some of the details, and when his expression turned dour, I stopped. Something another friend mentioned to me was Duty to Bare Witness, as we were talking about the Ukraine War. Some call it tragedy trolling, I suppose that’s another kind of news watching. Between the bubble wrap and boxing of what I think I’ll take, I listen to some news. I realize I’m not such an immoral person after listening to cantankerous battles on the hill.
This city is drowsily awaiting the start of the Saratoga Race Track today. It is a sacrosanct epic convergence of rich and poor, doused in jewels or leather neck chokers. I love loyalty, and this event dates back to the 1880’s. It’s the oldest race track in the country. When I had a press pass, and didn’t wait in lines to attend, interview, and observe the festivities, it just can’t be forgotten. I’m familiar with the groups that oppose horse racing, viewing it as a degenerate sport that harms both horses and gamblers. I understand that, considering my father was a gambler and horse lover, but it goes on for thousands who feel different. Can we not allow one to enjoy the other not?.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Sifting through collectibles, I found my letter to Amtrak. Many years ago, I wrote to the executives at Amtrak with this idea: Give a writer a free ride for a long journey, and allow them to write about it. Then, engage reporters at the different stops to show up and give the writer a pass to visit the city or town and meet the nuances that no one knew about. I felt pressed to seek escape, ‘I’m going to live on Amtrak!’ The idea blossomed over some cabernet, and I lingered there in the kitchen, while I cooked up this idea, of riding Amtrak across America, while writing about subjects I choose from a long list, and develop it into a documentary, and a book. I realized how much effort it would take to launch and live this idea that was born in the kitchen over a bottle of cab. I spent the day researching and looking at the bedroom suites on Amtrak. I went to sleep imagining myself on the train, and the inherent comedy that would roll out, from living in a room the size of shoe box. I watched movies about trains, and started reading Paul Theroux’s The Old Patagonian Express. Del Mar, watching the Amtrak.
There I am on Amtrak, with a laptop and a recorder, strolling through the aisles, interviewing people, and then I’m in some unfamiliar city, hopping from one place to another, and writing in cafes and adventuring. The illusion became real, like a dream that represents reality. I do see myself on such an adventure. I must sculpt new routines, learn how to do the things I’m not used to doing. I wrote to Amtrak, and I did not get a response. Several years later, they invited a writer to do what I had suggested. As the day descends into afternoon, I am perched in between, clinging to the wisdom of my posse, whom I call on for solace, for answers, for encouragement, and you readers, who keep me adventuring in writing.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
“Young woman sitting on the books and typing, toned image”
The world we are living is not familiar; everyday it erupts with an inconceivable corruption, acts of violence, and viciousness against humanity. It’s not the Italian roast coffee that wakes me up, it’s world news. I feel less and less a part of humanity and more like a wild creature chewing on an old bone. My outlook on social clubs, synagogue and church congregations, membership clubs, group classes, and let’s meet up organizing makes a lot of sense now. Especially if you don’t have children or a life mate. The temptation to retreat into a decorous world of fantasy is irresistible. Experience taught me that losing it, giving up, hugging the pillow with film noir on the screen will revive me. It may take two days or more, permitting freedom to indulge in the abstract absurdity, tragedy, and comedy of life available to me.Two days are up: six noir films: Sleeping Tiger, Dangerous Crossing, Ruthless, Finger of Guilt, Wicked, and Cast a Dark Shadow. All suspenseful meandering around themes of greed, deception, romance, uneven love, and forgiveness.
It’s a great big wide wide world if you leave the doors open. Now that the house has sold, I am fortunate that all those years studying real estate and proving myself by placing money in the boss’s pocket, trickled into my life. The first triplex I bought was in 2002, the one that sold, The Follies House. The rent provided income and paid the mortgage. For my Gen X and Millennial pals, I say this: buy a duplex somewhere you want to live.
I’m feeling overwhelmed as I go through this four-story unit and decide what to keep, give away, and sell. Perplexed as I go through boxes of journals dating back to 1996. I assume I won’t live to preview them for new stories, but I sill feel a sense of belonging to them. I have learned after selling a dozen furnishings that once they are gone, it takes about a week to stop lamenting the loss.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
I posted a column on Sunday, The Mind Hike. When I checked my stats, it was rising like a new sun, and hit a record-breaking 127 views! That has not happened since I published my book in 2017. I did not optimize the column or take any steps to increase readership. Today it is up to 126. Whomever you are, thank you so very much for reading my columns.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
LUELLEN SMILEY ADVENTURERS IN LIVINGNESS 
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