WINTER WRITING IN UPSTATE NEW YORK

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Still flustering over how to save more money, and which expense she should solve; the dental appointment that’s six months overdue, the servicing of her car overdue since June, or elevated reasons to book a trip to San Diego. The urgency to decide sent her into a minor mid-afternoon tizzy and she decided she needed potato chips to solve her physical edginess. She does not use salt in her cooking, and from experimentation over the years realized that salt could elevate her dizzy thinking and lackluster posture. The momentary outdoor freshness stilted her, to stop moving, and breathe deeply like she was in the doctor’s office and they say, ‘ deep breath.’ The street is absent of walkers, workers, delivery trucks, and residents, it’s almost like a graveyard and this does not irritate Greta, she uses the bliss to engulf her creativity, and so she began to write.

“Young woman sitting on the books and typing, toned image”

PUZZLE OF SOLITUDE will always be a puzzle because our lives, solo or mated, are puzzled by too much solitude, or not enough.

I contest what seems endless solitude with my Irish Russian temper; condemning irritants like street noise, absence of friends, short-tempered customer service reps, world news, and mindless tasks. After the first ice rain and snow, the fever dulled, and mindfulness triumphed. I imagined my basement of survival would sink. It did not. There is an inner exploration happening, unfolding like spreading new sheets on my bed, that solitude has befriended me all my life, in the best of times and the tedious. I have to find the frolic and follies in the world I created. I have to laugh alone so I watch screwball comedies, seek humor in my irregularities; wear a sweater inside out, pour coffee into a wine glass for a cocktail and chuckle up and down the staircase, because I keep forgetting where I left my phone. My head is elsewhere-daydreaming.
I’ve learned how to repair house calamities; unscrew windows, seal up cracks, fix clogged drains, replace air vents, read the meters, and rejuvenate every wood board, handle, chair, and table with Old English Oil. As one pal commented on a visit to the house, ‘ It’s a perfect day for Old English! The winter forecast is blizzardy and full of warnings I haven’t experienced here; and how could I complain when half of Upstate New York is buried in SEVENTY INCHES of snow and no way out? At the end of the day, pleasure comes in the kitchen; my heart and spirit melt while stirring my weekly slumguillion stew while listening to Tony Bennett, Nat King Cole, and swing music.
Winter has in the past been a funnel that leads to writing.

Untitled manuscript- Pg 565.

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Excerpt from the new manuscript. No title yet.

Will-powered out of the house on a glory hallelujah day of ballet winds and buttercup sun. I walked along the bike path and observed the cyclists, and joggers, some still masked. Along the way, I smiled at passing strangers, and sometimes even a hello. How reviving to connect with strangers after two years of physical masks. Emotionally optimistic, a rare trajectory of nature and my life within. If nature can survive, why can’t I? What prevents us from launching new growth, mentally emotionally, and financially?

Let me take this day and bless it with hope, miles, and miles of hope and faith that I will land, plant new roots, and bloom.

CRYING OVER CRIME IN THE USA

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The safety pin that allows us to walkabout is gone. Lawlessness has landed, an alien from the dominion of hatred, frustration, anger, revenge, mental illness, and loneliness. Depraved directionless menacing strangers leap upon INNOCENTS and are EDITING THEIR PURSUIT OF LIFE. A mounting civil war that no one really calls out, is like lava spreading throughout our cities, suburbs, monuments, schools, hospitals, daycare centers, stores, and restaurants. Everywhere, even on the freeway drivers shoot at drivers.

My gang has stopped watching the news, I have cut down to news flashes, then mute, then maybe the evening news. Not a conversation that I have or overhear is about the crime crisis. Why is that?

WHY LIE

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When do we begin to lie about our life our feelings, our fears, our everything? I ask this because of simple observation, knowing when someone is not telling me their truth and I remain silent, it’s not my way to ask, why do you lie to me? My friends are not lying, it’s more like a social cultural mask. My wise father once told me ‘Tell them your sister or father just died, and they’ll respond, excellent because they do not want to hear your problems.’ But I do, I’ve always wanted to know the truth. Why should we shield our traumas and hardship, more than our triumphs and accomplishments? Do you know who does not lie? ART and SPORTS. That is why we listen to music, read books, go to galleries and museums, films, the theater, and ballet or other dance performances. I cannot comment on sports because I’m not a spectator although I do love basketball.

We, and I mean this in only a visceral sense, do not believe the politicians, news, social media, or advertisements. We want to, but deep in our inner truth, we know it is the manipulation of our individual thoughts. And that my friends is why I trust art to deepen my understanding of the human condition. Thank you to all the artists and athletes who share their pain and glory.

WHAT IS A LOVE STREAM

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TWO EMBANKMENTS WEDGED BETWEEN A STREAM

THAT RIPPLES THE UK TO THE USA.

WHAT FALLS BETWEEN THE MEANDERING

USHERS GENTLE WAVES, LOVING CARESSES

SMASHES WHEN THE WAVES ARE EVIDENT.

SOAR TO BRING THEIR STREAM TO REST

TO FIND THE BEST

BELIEVING EXIST AND DESTINY FLOW

THEY DON’T KNOW

IF THE STREAM WILL ENTWINE

ENSNARE OR EMBRACE

EMBANKMENTS MEANT TO SHOULDER

UNTIL THEY ‘VE FOUND EACH OTHER

WHERE WERE YOU ON 9/11 AND HOW DID YOU FEEL ON 9/12 2001 AND 9/12/2022???

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Paper deaths mounting in pages written

By authors and reporters

On the day of bloodshed twenty-one years after

The morning news

Around the world

That our Towers fell on innocence; walking, living, twirling the streets of Manhattan.

Tears are shed in buckets of smoke between the sheets of death

The men and women that died shine through the wicked divide

Of hatred and love

Flames of courage cape first responders, and unknown heroes

Photo by Iarlaith McNamara on Pexels.com

Beaming down every morning

On tables arranged by nations and religions

In the homes of Democrats and Republicans

United tears all of these years.

Months turn over on calendars

New episodes and reality shows

Graduation and separation

Replaced furnishings and

Sketches of a vacation

Events the rest of us chatter up in coffee houses

While the stories of nine-eleven lay today in the headlines

On newsstands

In the windows of memory

Never forget

THE MIDDLE OF LIFE

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I read in one of my books on writing that the middle of the novel is where most writers face the demon. The beginning is a gallop, the end is a relief, but the middle wiggles in and out of your grasp. The middle of our lives reflects this same obscurity.

The middle of a life span reflects all we have accomplished and all we have left incomplete. This is what they call a mid-life crisis. I get it every year. I’ve finally accepted that my constant relocating, reinventing, and being restless is not going to be solved. At the bottom of the restlessness is the fear of finding rest more enjoyable than movement. This flotation of comedy rotated around me last night while I was standing out on the porch observing the peacefulness. The scenery of Ballston Spa is a comforting, historical beauty that comes from the harmony of architecture and nature. The flow of villagers downtown is along two main two-lane streets, all the shops, services and restaurants are a patchwork, and all the business owners know each other.

All I can think of is where I should go next. This is wholly a village of ancestral families, with defensible adaptation to the severe climate, simplicity, and uncomplicated lives. My discomfort comes from trying to assimilate.

Many years ago, in the summer of 1987, I was seated in a café in Monaco, truly, and a man that I was traveling with told me, “You have to make a choice.” He embarked on a long discussion about choices we make in life and how everything depends on these choices: how you live and with whom, and what you do. He pointed out to me over my first really authentic Salad Niçoise that I was an oblivious example of a woman refusing to choose. I was more interested in the salad, the yachts, the casino around the corner, and the fact that I didn’t have an evening gown to wear to dinner. I listened without argument or insult, but I was disturbed by what he said. I didn’t understand completely, but he was older and had much experience and conviction. That conversation now fits into the mid-life crisis, the comedy of errors in my life, and maybe in yours, and just how much travesty we can ignore. For my fault, as it WAS, I did not want to sign, commit, or make final decisions. I wanted it all to be a temporary placement that allows me the freedom to change.

I have lost track of my European friend, but if he met me today, he would say, “You have not changed at all.” So that is why I was standing there in the darkness on the porch and laughing like a silly girl because it is true. I have not changed at all.

The choice facing us at mid-life is making a change now, risking losing all we have accomplished, compiled, and attached, or throwing the dice.

Beyond the obvious changes in activity, relationships, and scenery are the internal travels. They are not so easily engaged. You cannot wake up one day and say, “I ‘m off to become more compassionate, or more practical, or more generous.” These journeys are taken when other factors play into our lives, such as when we get sick, demoted, or experience a trauma.

It is a very subtle inconsistency. When I unplug all the voices and listen to the one that understands, that is when I write. The middle of the story and the middle of life is the same. We and our characters have to make a choice.

***

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FREE TO WRITE

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I think of the comforts of exhibiting my life on paper. It is not the act of writing with pen and paper moving along at a steady rhythm; it’s the activation of the heart and mind, collaborating to unravel the relevant from the irrelevant. To reach this state of matrimony a writer needs not a Tuscan Villa, or an English Castle, but experiences that flake off the skin, the mise en scene that shakes its relevance.

EXCERPT FROM MY NEXT BOOK. UNKNOWN TITLE

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Page 525. Terrified to post this but it is Sunday and I’m brave on Sunday. The book is fiction, first-person, and close third person so you’ll need a jogging suit to read. Based on true events.

Greta let the moment of the village rescue stay with her, like a new pet for as long as she could hold on to its beneficial ointment, away from what she calls her immersion into self. She gives me examples that illustrate her obsession with matching outfits in her closet.

It’s a bedroom she converted into a dressing room. There’s a single bed against one wall, a cabinet where she stores the winter boots, and an eight-drawer French nouveau dresser and mirror. She sits on a chair facing the windows so she can watch the trees live through sun, wind, rain, and snow. Across from the chair is the bed. She diligently arranged her summer pastel skinny jeans on the bed, and next to that row she arranged the T-shirts, camisoles, and shorts. It’s quite practical considering Greta as she has admitted to me half a dozen times, that she was born without common sense or practicality. At the base of the bed, she lined up her shoes, the slip-ons, the flats, the pumps stuffed with tissue paper to preserve their shape, and the wedges. After a breach of sanity, she goes into this room and visualizes outfits and color matching like someone might play chess. ‘ It does have a purpose, this way I visualize without wrangling with hangers and you know it just takes too much time when you’re in a closet.

‘”These days I look at them as if they belonged to someone else, I mean the red suede with gold heels that I wore on a New Year’s Eve of gaiety and not since, the black velvet pumps that always make me feel dainty and light. What care I give to all these garments when in the other part of the house, Dodger was descending into a financial coma.”

Greta did not acknowledge the few months before his departure that he was riddled with abject unfulfilling tasks, bills, and construction jobs that no longer fed him purpose and accomplishment. She did not notice that his slacking posture on the front porch, head lowered and staring out without any body movement was a sign, she in fact despised it and walked away. In the last few months, all of this seemed to rise up like a curtain before a play, in a theater and she witnessed his insolence and his silent howl for help.

The irony of her activity is that she doesn’t go to the events that she plans on going to wear the outfits.

THE CHIMES IN OUR LIVES

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You see a chime, the moment it responds to a breeze, the sound is beautiful, like Chopin’s Nocturne 1. Sounds that accompany a descending light mist, or setting sun, but the chime improvises its sounds and movements when a vivacious wind girdles its ether. This abstraction reminds me of sensitivity. It can be soft and gentle, nurturing to the souls of those less peaceful, but when the velocity of attack hits, sensitivity is a walloping eruption of rage, drifting on uncontrollable. I’ve been punitively and cordially of being too sensitive. There are more good reasons to alter my sensitivity than not to, but the one reason that hovers above all else is that everything we do, feel and act in life needs revision. We should never stop evolving into more thoughtful, loving, or wise human beings. Every day, there is an opportunity to leap into saintly hood. It is the same with my writing it can be better.

The next adventure is closing in on me as foreclosure is over the June horizon. The dismantling of possessions brings me some sort of twisted alignment to my life. Picking and choosing what to pack, eliminating what Dodger and I bought together, and vacillating over treasures that are now more weight than worth. If I am ever to rest in one address, I’m sure it will be a headstone and a plot of dirt. I chose a destiny to relocate, and so the highway off-ramp will evolve, I just have to be patient.

It is the inner self that concerns me, and how I will adjust and adapt to leaving my favorite house. When I was thirty, I was afraid of getting married, and when I was forty, I was afraid of not having children. Now that I am sixty-nine, I have a fear that once was my chant, the idea of moving.

The word coddiwomple is English slang, defined as “to travel in a purposeful manner towards a vague destination”. If you are anything like me you may be coddiwompling your way through life, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

LOVE FOR HISTORIC VICTORIAN HOMES

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Looks like an open dragon mouth, in a way it is. Follies House is begging for a brace. The horrors and hahas of owning a 137-year-old home. We’ve had twenty-two years of sustainable wood, but this year is the end of luck. A dear and wise friend once told me this, ” Don’t love what doesn’t love you back.” As a woman of insatiable imagination and impracticability, I do love her. So I spent a few weeks interviewing masonry contractors. The first four said this, ” I wouldn’t park your car under there.”
“What? The carport is going to collapse?”
“It could.”
” And that costs?
” Fifteen thousand at minimum.”
” What about a temporary fix.”
” Too much liability. Sorry, mam.”

Five interviews later talking to a man whose been in the business thirty years, ” I cannot restore the entire job, is there a temporary fix?”
“Well, we could bring in a platform plank to hold it up.”
” How much would that cost?”
“Twenty-five hundred tops. You should really let us remove the foundation above it, that’s rotted and sinking. Is there a room above it?”
“Yes, a bedroom in my unit. How much would that cost?”
” Between ten thousand and fifteen. We have to get in there and see how much water damage.”
” No, I can’t do that, no impossible.”
” I understand. I’ll do the temporary fix, the house is so gorgeous, and I’ve seen them all.”
” Thank you, I have tenants and have to be responsible for their safety.”
” Would you like to see the bedroom?”
” I’m in a rush.” I smiled a lot and walked up the stairs and opened the front door so he could see.
“Wow, this is incredible.” Once he was in the house he was in love and granted me a discount of five hundred dollars. Do you know why? He said he’d love to be a part of her history after he’s gone. Historic homes are leaving our country, replaced by what he called tinderboxes that only last thirty years.

DAY 60 FOR USA-FOR UKRAINE IT IS SURVIVAL.

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I looked at the list. The list looks back at me; trivial, trite, redundant, so I turn on the news. The sky has taken the bail, the air is earnest spring, clouds and impending rain like a suspense novel you just started reading.

The list is still in front of me. Call the bank for the fourth time this week. Their new and highly improved website refuses to give me access. Find the copy of the passport application I just submitted. Next, pack up winter clothes and replace them with spring-summer. This obligation irritated me until late afternoon, and then in one swift harmonious leap, I packed up the winter clothes and removed them from my eyesight. Then, I heard a breeze, a solid applicable one that needed to blow through the winter staleness. I opened all the doors and windows that I can open, and let the house breathe. I’ve been quarantined since a week ago Saturday with Covid. It was not as agonizing as I’d imagined. Two days of annoying muscle and nerve pain, and flopping over four or five times a day to sleep. Today, I will use my energy to cross off the mindless tasks.

Next on the list, are estimates on the spring cleanup of five hundred or more dead stalks, leaves, bushes, etc to make Follies ready for spring. Internal conversation goes like this, I should do it myself, save the hundreds they will charge, but where do I empty all the leaves? The village has rules about placing leaves on the street. Too physical, back to the list.

Submissions for publication, are the most tedious and necessary acts if you are a writer. Nope, not in the mood for that. So I took a drive along a country road, with the top down, and listened to Joe Bataan, a waist-twisting Salsa boogaloo disco singer. I turned around after fifteen minutes, even Joe cannot spring my spirit to life.

My relationship with the world is not dependent on what happens to me. It is with Ukraine. My heartbeat is in slow motion as I watch the latest news feed from Zelensky. He is holding a press conference this Saturday. It lasted two hours or more. As the camera scanned the packed room of reporters; expressions rooted in awe, admiration, eagerness, and razor-sharp comprehension I thought, they resemble a child’s face the first time a book is read aloud. Within the hour’s conference, a news blip surfaced. Blinken and Austin will meet with Zelensky in Kyiv on Sunday. My suspicion is they were watching.

As I sat down to dinner, I thought of the announcement earlier that day, “One loaf of bread fed forty people in a bomb shelter. How do we live within the torture, death, and starvation? How do we get up and laugh or enjoy an outing? For me, I have not found a way.

UKRAINEACOUST – PUTIN=HITLER

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We can pay to go into space, text unlimitedly to avoid, a phone call, we can avoid meeting because we have too many social media reply’s waiting. We can upload, download, delete and save in a second. We can install security alarms, and electronic remotes to open and close our appliances, and electricity. We can drive a car without hands-on, we can buy a private plane, an armored car, bodyguards, and we can remain anonymous by creating a false identity… What we are not doing is improving our behavior, our own personal evolution as humans. Our civility is most recently televised as the Chris Rock, Will Smith slap. I’m sixty-eight and have watched the Oscars, so I remember what they gave the audience- humble sweet, amusing award-winner speeches, not a political coma, or reprisal for a joke. If Chris did not know the sensitivity of Jada for suffering from alopecia, ( and she is gorgeous with or without). After the slap Chris said something like, this will be the most-watched television show. WHAT? Is that all there is to our humanity; attention, vanity, and ratings?

As time grabs our life without us evening knowing it, one day we may wake up and say, I don’t have that much time left, what should I do? If you are single without children then the options are galactic, unless you live in Ukraine. The war bleeds in my veins, sometimes I feel nausea from the videos, and other times enraged that this was not prevented. The best news of the day is that Russia is expelled from the Human Rights Council. Pause, just today? I am half-Ukrainian. My father, grandfather etc, were Ukrainians. I’ve always thought and said I am half Russian, as noted on Dad’s papers. But I am not Russian, excuse my blind spot.

The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me. Ayn Rand.

ONE MONTH OF UKRAINE’S DEATH & DESTRUCTION

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MARCH 24,

December 24, 1943, From the Diary of Ann Frank

“I’ve asked myself again and again whether it wouldn’t have been better if we hadn’t gone into hiding; if we were dead now and didn’t have to go through this misery, especially so that the others could be spared the burden. But we all shrink from this thought. We still love life, we haven’t yet forgotten the voice of nature, and we keep hoping, hoping for…everything.”

July 6, 1944, From the Diary of Ann Frank

“It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”

I am not comparing the Holocaust to Putin’s genocide, what I am comparing is humanity,. It’s evil and it’s virtue.

A non-profit Humanitarian Relief Aid Van bringing medicine, food, water, and clothing was pulled over by The Russian Army. Fifteen volunteers were removed and brought into custody. The news reported the destination, punishment, and length of stay are unknown. Imagine…. I cannot because I’m fearful when I get on a plane. This is one that was reported. People from all over the world, literally, have abandoned their own lives, families, and work to fill the emptiness, starvation, pain, and fear in Ukraine. One of these valiants is a Doctor, and he left his practice in the Midwest to save patients in Ukraine. A fairly new organization, SAVEOURALLIES. ORG, was contacted about a journalist who suffered extensive injuries was rescued by this organization and returned to the USA for treatment. He is recovering. We will hear his story when he is ready to speak.

One-quarter of the forty million that escaped Ukrain are now homeless. Today the government announced we will accept one hundred thousand refugees. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? We accept over two hundred thousand refugee immigrants a month from all over the world at the southern border, how does that figure on the side of fair?

Another puzzling decision by the government was in taking Iran off the terrorist list. I haven’t heard any reporter asking that question at a Press House briefing, I’m waiting for an explanation.

The Mayor of Kyiv, an ex-pro boxer is on the street of his city, surveying the damage. His face is wide, with dominant features that remind me of a face made in clay, hardened, seriously angry without the visible expression, said “ Act now.” And to paraphrase, as the camera shifts to the burning buildings behind him, and the grounds of rubble, he says this, “You can see on your television what’s happening. We need help.”

In Russia, over ten thousand peaceful, young protestors were forcibly taken into custody after the soldiers shot rifles within several feet of the crowd as they scattered running in all directions. They know the consequences; jail time, fines, interrogation, but they don’t know the details and I imagine each prisoner is penalized in different ways.

The spokesperson for Putin said this on camera, “ If there is a threat to our country we will use nuclear war.” Stalin starved four million people, Hitler tortured till death six million Jews and thousands of sympathetic accomplices.

Today the official statement from the White House declared Putin had committed war crimes, but ” IT’S UNDER INVESTIGATION, IT’S AN ONGOING PROCESS AND, WE ARE COLLECTING THE EVIDENCE.” Okay, shoot me if I’m wrong. We need more than a thousand innocent people: children, mothers’ fathers’, grandparents, buried in dirt pits because the funeral homes are completely full, that doesn’t count as evidence?

The latest poll on the USA population opinion revealed that seventy-five percent of us are worried about NUCLEAR WAR.

THINKING UKRAINE

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MARCH 20,2022

I WANT TO BLAME SOMEONE, to take my anger, rage, and sorrow and give it direction. Of course, it is Putin, but why wasn’t Ukraine prepared. I read that seventy thousand troops landed on the border in April. If applied to myself, when that red dot on my nose appeared, instead of going then to the Dermatologist, I waited and waited. A year later, they had to dig out cancer and left me with a noticeable scarred nose. Preemptive, proactive measures could have been, should have been installed, and why not? If it’s true that Zelenskyy asked for NATO SUPPORT in April, why didn’t they listen?

I watch the sky tonight on my porch, clustered clouds, and anticipatory rain; no smoke, fires, explosions, or sirens. GOD BLESS OUR PEACE AND PLEASE SAVE UKRAINE.