Category: AGE RELATIONSHIPS

STRANGERS THEN LOVE

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

From Anais Nin Diaries 1939-1944. 

“I respond to intensity, but I also like reflection to follow action, for then understanding is born, and understanding prepares me for the next act.” 

JANUARY

SNOW, ARTIC BLAST, ICE, FREEZING. Maelstrom of inconveniences toppling down in every nook and cranny of body, home, and outdoors. I wore a long-sleeved liner, wool sweater dress, rabbit poncho, and over that, a wool wrap, laptop mittens, sherpa leggings, wool socks, and boots. Mornings, eight degrees, afternoons eighteen, and the absence of sunlight grids my spirit. Repetitive lessons in endurance, tolerance, and acceptance. The outer world stenches corruption, propaganda, cruelty, violence, and haranguing reporters. The election year dominates the bunkum reporting.  

It’s been almost a month since I texted or called Dodger. Somedays, I enter the memories, a reel of episodes on our cross-country road trips, hiking barren, narrow, unclaimed paths in Baja, mountains and canyons in New Mexico, and lakes and forests in upstate New York. They appear to be aberrations of myself; I am unrecognizable as he is, too.ย 

FEBRUARY

MATURITY has caught up with me, and I am viscerally aware of this pendulum as replacing the nonacceptance of my lifestyle and future to hardened acceptance, which is a relief. I used to be full of follies, gaiety, and impulse; inner choreography is now critical thinking, studied decisions, and a spoonful of distrust. Instead of unleashing all that I think and feel with strangers, the narrative is split between inching closer to listening rather than personal tete e tet. Once a week, I go outing to the social club, where I find conversant strangers, couples, singles, divorces, and a variety of ages, and yet they all have a commonality that I don’t, they seem genuinely satisfied with their lives, one comment this, after asking the bartender how are you, he smiled, slapped the polished wooden bar with both hands and replied, I couldn’t be happier. Then he opened his phone and showed me a photo of a baby boy. His expression soared through my senses, and I adulated with compliments. Another evening, I opened a conversation with a couple next to me, and for the next hour, I learned of their life; children, travel, cruises, especially, ” Oh, you’ve never been on one? You must go, you’re so perfect for a cruise.

” I’m uncomfortable with more than twenty people.”

“ I don’t believe that for a minute.” Wendy was really fit to her name; she wiggled in her seat, her hands never at rest, and her thoughts poured like raindrops. Her husband, Christian, nodded a lot, and when he tried to speak, she ran right over him. A few times, he rolled his eyes at me. They’d been married thirty-five years, looked to be in their early fifties, and semi-retired.  I left feeling love, had tipped our kinship, a surprising need to leap from trivialities to more substance.

MENTAL WOWS AND BOWS

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

May 10th 2017–FROM MY JOURNAL

        Greta got into bed early and started watching Feud, a new series about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, played by Jessica Lang and Susan Sarandon. The film etches overcoming a middle-aged woman’s obstacles in life:  men, finances, rejection, and loneliness.

       A knocking at the door, ‘Oh no, I don’t want to see anyone.’

  โ€œPolice, open up.โ€  You couldn’t cut her tension with a semi-truck head-on. She opened the door to five male Policeman and a Medic. 

       โ€œ Greta we are here because someone is very concerned about your welfare. I understand you made a reference to taking your own life.โ€

       โ€œ Who called you? It was Aaron right?โ€

   โ€œYes. He said you made a remark that disturbed him and he wanted us to check on you. Did you say you wanted to take your own life?โ€

  “Not in the way he interpreted. I’m not going to commit suicide I just need a break  from tortuous gaslighting.”

” Who is gaslighting you?”

” My ex-partner of thirty-five years and his demonic girlfriend. 

“How can you resolve this?” 

โ€œI donโ€™t know, Iโ€™m trapped.โ€ Then I noticed they were not convinced.

โ€œI think you should come with us for an evaluation.โ€

โ€œNo, thatโ€™s not necessary, Really, look at me. Iโ€™m enjoying a movie. ” Greta got back on the bed in a gesture of defiance. 

โ€œWe think it is.โ€  We have an ambulance out front.

โ€œWhat? Oh God. No, Iโ€™m not going.โ€

โ€œYou donโ€™t have a choice. It wonโ€™t take long, if the Physiatrist thinks you are not in danger theyโ€™ll release you.โ€

โ€œIโ€™m not going in the ambulance.โ€

โ€œOkay, you can ride with me in the patrol car.โ€

“Well, let me put on some lipstick. A girl can’t go to the Psychiatric Ward without lipstick.”’  They smiled, and in her pajamas and robe, she slid down into the back seat of the Patrol car avoiding neighbors’ observance.  

The ward was a take-off of One Flew Over the Cuckooโ€™s Nest.  One woman was shaking and mumbling herself out of a drug withdrawal,  the nurses were telling jokes, one man was in a hospital gown striding up and down the corridor, talking to himself and Greta seated on a chair watched.  In the distance, she recognized Lally, a potential renter of her home.

 ” Lally, can you come over a minute?” 

โ€œ How are you? Whatโ€™s going on?โ€

โ€œ Oh God, I said the wrong thing to a friend, and he called 911.”

โ€œ Iโ€™m sorry to hear that. Are you here for evaluation?โ€

โ€œYeah, can you do it?โ€

โ€œ No, I’m assisting in another department. Don’t worry… I’ll talk to the Physiatrist so you get through quickly. Itโ€™ll be fine. Just wait here.โ€

I thanked him and ten minutes later I was led into a private room with bars on the bed. A nurse took my vitals, then a Doctor asked a few questions like,’ What day is it?’ and then she left without adding anything very comforting. Another knock on the open door and a petite female tiptoed in.  She infused sincerity and concern into that bleak sanitary room, and I opened up the story from start to finish. She used expression, voice, and patience to keep me talking. She didn’t inflame the rage against Dodger, she suggested I find counseling and asserted that I was indeed in a very traumatic situation.  ‘ I will call the the department supervisor and suggest you  be released.’ 

 The six hours Greta was in the hospital centered on the absence of a phone call or email from Dodger. Aaron must have told him to get the address.  Itโ€™s about two am and Greta is thinking about her birthday; another sort of mรฉnage of meaning, she feels like ten years have passed rather than one. Another doctor came in and released Greta, with a promise to call for counseling. She slipped into a cab in her pajamas and went home. Never had been so terrified of losing control. 

The next afternoon brightened when Audrey showed up with roses, champagne, a gift basket, and a happy birthday balloon.  She sang the entire birthday song and danced around Greta as she opened the gifts. 

 โ€œIt is a big deal!  I always was taught to celebrate friends’ birthdays with everything,โ€ her smile remained and Greta’s surfaced. She told her the story of the previous night and Audrey just sat there, eyes widened like two camera lenses, and told her. “I know you would never commit suicide.‘โ€‚She cradled Greta as they walked downtown for dinner. One of her gifts was five hundred dollars. Greta was so stunned she tried to return it, but Audrey blatantly resisted.  At our dining table, she waved at guests and waiters with her long arms, โ€œItโ€™s her birthday.โ€ She reminded Greta of her childhood when her father hired magicians and clowns to entertain at her parties. Greta felt sensationally spoiled, and thatโ€™s not always an indulgence, sometimes it is the only path to joy. The end of the evening placed her in front of Facebook where friends posted birthday wishes.  It was a blessed day and a reminder that she is loved.  Aaron was trying to help, and Greta felt his concern with appreciation. There is no replacement to cure your mental doubts than a visit to the Physiatriscat Ward.

Six years later, upright, achieved, and grateful for that day.

LONERS, SOLO, RECLUSIVE, still human.

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

Thanksgiving seeps into a day of light and dark, like a trajectory of blissful silence transitioning to watching the Macyโ€™s Parade, then dancing around my bedroom to old-school hip-hop. ย Internally feeling more adept than last year, the solitude and absence of friends didnโ€™t snake rattle me, ย it was more like a day of moving effortlessly between desires without contemplation or sorrow. As the year ends, the comparison of achievements and digressions seemed to evoke a visceral epiphany. Iโ€™ve always preferred less chaos and crowds to intimate gatherings, and being alone. Looking in the internal mirror, the reflection released a liberation of abasement, it is who I am, and if refusal of this characteristic triumphs, I will never feel self-affirmation.

Without that, life is an interior war.

I snapped this off a film, I cannot recall which one.

THANKFUL FOR ARMEN

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

NOVEMBER 23, 2023.

The sky is shy today, she wants rain and snow but she hesitates, as the climate is over thirty. But outdoors isnโ€™t of concern these last sixty days. I never felt more Jewish than now, a reclamation of my upbringing, that I was too rebellious to take seriously, now it is a cancerous disease, antisemitism. I asked my friend who grew up in Istanbul in a surrounding of Jewish Armenians. Why do people hate Jews?.

” They are jealous, most Jewish people are educated, and learn at a young age to develop ambition, to make a better life.”

” That’s it? Jealousy?”

” I think so.”

Armen has been the best believer for me in twenty years. If I didn’t have her confidence, I’d have flattened over the last five years. Everyone needs a friend like that, she presses my buttons, sometimes I say stop, then she says I’m sorry, and we go on.

ADVENTURES IN SOLITUDE

~ LouLou ~ 1 Comment

My emotional tail is wagging; curled up in my desk chair. I feel almost as if I was born in this chair. Itโ€™s cushioned me through a cyclone of adventures in livingness.


This piece of writing was handwritten on a tablet back in late January. Iโ€™ve made some minor additions and deletions. My control over my writing is identical to my control over how I live. Acting on impulse, expanding the mundane into a musical, feasting on all the emotions, and fabricating thorny Walter Mitty encounters. I donโ€™t even think of applying proven methods; I make up new ones.

This plateau of solitude and especially with yourself; with all your flaws. Integrity is more critical; be proud not just for yourself, but because someone out there needs you.ย  Sometimes, solitude feels like a draft, and no matter how many sweaters Iย  put on, the seclusion tugs at my bones. There are not a lot of senior soloists that reside in my village, the majority are family mothers, fathers, and grandparent saints.

If I am drawn into a canvas of what seems my destiny, I draw the opposite silhouette.  I am the light against the dark.   The green light in my head reminds me that I have some passion for almost everything that God and man created.  I just can’t decide which passion to follow. Should I do a  museum, gallery, lecture, cruz the country roads, go to a concert, dance at a club, engage strangers in conversation, watch old movies, or read more of the stacks of books on my bedside table. Should I interview the straggly teenagers in the park or hit up the high rollers? Should I write, submit or edit:  clean the laundry room, make a fancy dinner, iron my clothes or clean the refrigerator. Living unstructured is a discipline that threads easily some days, and when it doesn’t, I have to control my passion for daydreaming.



ON THE SOLO STREET OF DREAMS

~ LouLou ~ 1 Comment

I am not afraid to write the truth, to stare and embrace the reflection. It appeared last night; a thought manifested in an abstract way; a torch of light, a rainbow, an open door that symbolized a guide to contentment, and peace of mind, it felt reachable if only I evaporated into the sensibility, allowing change, a complete transformation from this encampment of isolation and fear of making the wrong decision.

Drizzle Thoughts

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

The embryo of thought. Sometimes it is negligible, as is life.  I am the puzzle maker and every time I try to carve the right size square, I fall off the board and have more material to write about. The puzzle is so vast that it covers our lifetime and the pieces are the choices, and non-choices that fit into themes.  My life, is like a melody, a Gershwin tune. As a dancer and prancer at heart, my feet are my hands, and my hands are my heart. Drizzling rain is relative to thoughts on a Saturday; a few thoughts for my book, assembling the bedroom fan, calling friends, a walk with my umbrella to live in rain, answering emails, and those hypnotic Film Noir Classics on Utube. When world news disables self-absorbency, it’s a relief, I hold hands with whatever keeps me alive.

HONESTY-REMEMBER

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

Except from a work in progress.

Greta dressed in pink jeans, a pink striped polo shirt, and low-heeled pumps. As she opened the door she thought, and said out loud one step to go. She flipped down the top of her car to ride visible, a sort of rehearsal to adjust to the main street on a Saturday afternoon. Storm clouds churned and after checking the weather channel, rain coming in one hour, Greta closed the convertible and went back indoors. Not truly disappointed as sheโ€™d stayed up till three am watching the Shooter series on Netflix and woke at eight.

(I use the name Greta in my manuscript because of this, my father repeatedly scolded me when I said, I want to be alone, he replied, ‘Who do you think you are Greta Garbo?’)

Journal June 10th.

The street was quiet except for the barking dogs so I sat down to write, and let the paper stare back blankly. I switched over to Facebook and viewed my feed, the Rolling Stones, Italy Travel, Artnews, Creative Non-Fiction, Emily Luxton Travels, and Jazz photography. Voyeurism, the normalcy of our culture, to watch life from a screen, I’m guilty because I’m at heart a loner, a drifter that moves on the outskirts of socialization. When discourse and confrontation knock at my door, I go dormant to the world outside. My mask is not convincing, So, I bear up, like today, and take nature as my friend; a patch of blue, gray skies, the sun tea cup surprise, the birds and chipmunks on my lawn, and the occasional passersby who are living in their world. At seventy only two lines matter: I’m proud of you, and you could have done better. HONESTY.

PHILIP TOWNSEND REMEMBERED

~ LouLou ~ 1 Comment

The Beatles and the Maharishiย ย  1967 –Philip Townsend

“The Beatles and Maharishi at the Meditation Centre, Abbotsbury Road, Kensington. After this meeting, they went to the Hilton Hotel, Park Lane, where Maharishi gave a lecture.ย  These shots for Beatle purists were taken before they went to Wales or India.ย  The shot of all the fabs, partners and road crew is interesting as it is one of the few with the whole lot in one snap.

The photographs are exclusive as I was the only photographer there. I had been asked by the holy manโ€™s Public Relations agent to take them but they failed to pay, me therefore I own the copyrights.”

What I love is every Beatle has a distinctive expression at the meeting. Note John contrasted with Paul.

Gallery Loulou 2008

Philip arrived from London late in the evening. We met him at La Posada Resort Hotel. He did not stop smiling and chuckling in spite of his lost luggage, and a twelve-hour flight. His photographs had arrived and were already placed when we invited him into the gallery. Again, a resonating joyous outburst, ” Oh, it’s lovely, marvelous, just marvelous.” He was tall, lanky, and at seventy-something majestically youthful. We spent hours together over the next week. He loved when I made him a cup of Tea, the bumpy New Mexico road trips we planned, and the dinners. The slightest bit of congeniality towards him was returned with a pat or a hug and kiss. Opening night was a sensational tribute to a prince of a man.

What

SANTA FE-WINE & CHILI FESTIVAL, A MEMORY LIKE CEMENT.

~ LouLou ~ 1 Comment

THE MEMORIES are fading, like images floating through a mist, not just of Dodger but the life pre-break-up, a carousal of my favorite places; swimming, hiking, running, new restaurants, gallery openings, shopping, concerts, clubs, dancing in the street and our porch parties, but I cannot remember the state of grateful, emerging in the vortex of sensations, stimulation, surprise.

Do we ever return to that kind of forever spectrum, as if it will never end, and then it does, and we cannot go back. Itโ€™s not too late to feel grateful, fortunate, and lucky to have lived so many acts of my choice.

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RELOCATION…SENIORS

~ LouLou ~ 2 Comments

My direction is following Lawrence Durrell, โ€œSpirit of the Place,โ€ and living where I would never expect to live.ย I wish I could control my impractical, impulsive, and annoying spirit of adventure. I think about architecture, Jewish deli’s, Italian restaurants, at one movie theater built in the 1930s, and neighborhoods of unfamiliar lighting, expressions, and conversations. Gambling on yourself is how much you can adapt, change, influence, and accept the days of your life.

In my syndicate, there must be a dozen pals with the same unsolved equation. Is it age that blocks me and maybe you from relocation, or is it the trauma and stress? What liberation to just pack a suitcase and board a plane like in the movies. Separation from the familiar. The spirit of adventure has arrived. My home sold and so relocation isn’t a muse any longer, it’s reality. Today, coincidently is Independence day and so am I. It is a day of nostalgia. The Rudster painting Follies. It took two summers to remove the aluminum siding, scrape, caulk, prime, and paint my chosen seven colors to resemble a wedding cake. Mr. Doolittle built the home in 1883 as a wedding present for his daughter.

The Rudster painting Follies. It took two summers to remove the aluminum siding, scrape, caulk, prime, and paint my chosen seven colors to resemble a wedding cake. Mr Doolittle built the home in 1883 for his daughter as a wedding present.

GASLIGHTING AND RECOVERY

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

โ† Back

Thank you for your response. โœจ

He’s digging my grave
For the dragon he pays
With our nest, now shaved
Tumbling into the abyss
I visit the comfort robes of the past
Monogrammed in stone

The will to relive what’s past comes at night

And must be excluded by daylight.

Of HUMAN BONDAGE

The sky hasnโ€™t decided if it will let clouds overturn the sun, and I havenโ€™t decided if I will pack the stack of books on the floor. No, I donโ€™t feel the drive to lift and organize, my bed is warm and the house is not as warm.

I brought my coffee and peanut butter and honey toast upstairs, on a tray, I happen to collect trays, reminiscent of times when women ate breakfast in bed. Propped upright, I explored a movie about uneven love, tragedy, and resurrection. Of Human Bondage lit my taste, featuring Bette Davis and Leslie Howard. —– FILM MADE IN 1930 IN GRISLY BLACK & WHITE. Uneven love.
Days now remind me of reading 1984 in high school, and Fahrenheit 451 on film. We did evolve from a simplistic, hand-carved culture, built on rebars of freedom to a house full of furniture, relics, gadgets, screens, gates, and beeps. The beeps for me, make me jumpy, not seductively strolling around my apartment lighting candles in peace. I really do shimmy every time I hear the beep.
I chose Sunday to shut down all communication with the mainland, take the longest bath I can stand, and write. I need a rest, like a chaise lounge on a spacious veranda with honeysuckle, wisteria, and lavender, and then a mile away is the ocean, let me swim again.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I feel artists, and their works are not featured in the media, or maybe it’s because my scrolling is stuck on the essentials of living. In times of war, people must have known, see it now or never. Over two million working artists in the country, so google says, and when was the last time you discussed it at dinner, with anyone. I haven’t, and I don’t know why? Pop-up thoughts on life.