GASLIGHTING GRETA-JOURNAL NOTES FROM NEXT BOOK

“Today is postcard perfection, even now, with sunlight too harsh to look at, the trees with tongues hanging for water, and the dead plants in the garden. I think of the ocean, the look of the sea from watery suntanned eyes, in Malibu and Santa Monica or Del Mar beach, the splashing of waves around my shoulders as I sink beneath the surface. I’m going home to the flowered gardens and avenues of palm trees of Del Mar to see where and if I belong. I spend the days interviewing movers, making last-minute appointments, separating wardrobes, rummaging through my storage unit, and staring into an unknown future for the first time in thirty-five years without my partner.

SUPREME LOVE

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Podcast Episode: INSOMNIA OF SEPARATION-SARATOGA, NY

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MY FIRST PODCAST

Pip: There’s a site called Adventurers in Livingness, and that title is doing exactly the work it promises — no hedging, no irony, just a full commitment to the examined life.

Mara: LouLou’s writing here pulls from journal entries and a work-in-progress book, and today we’re sitting with one piece — the insomnia of separation, what it costs, and what it reaches for.

Pip: Let’s start with the 3 a.m. accounting.

Insomnia, Separation, and the Geometry of Longing

Mara: The post opens with a claim about emotional posture — that a fractured life shapes how we carry ourselves the same way physical posture does, and that the antidote isn’t neutrality but active love.

Pip: And the specific image that anchors it is the racetrack. She writes: “My heart is at the starting gate to love again, but the racetrack is missing.”

Mara: That’s the whole tension of the piece in one line. The readiness is there. The context for it isn’t. And what follows is an inventory of exactly what that missing context looked like — the particular textures of a particular partnership.

Pip: The list that comes next is where the writing earns its keep. It’s not abstract longing — it’s forensic. The shoulder a head bows to. The laughter that erupts in spontaneous passion. The man who finds humor in her attempts to open bottles with a dull spoon.

Mara: That specificity is the point. She’s not mourning a category of companionship. She’s mourning the precise choreography of one relationship — “feeling his eyes in a crowd, undressing or admiring me, for some folly or expression.”

Pip: Inventory as elegy. It’s a genuinely old form and she uses it without apology.

Mara: She brings in Henry Miller to close the emotional argument — from Henry Miller on Writing, the line: “Whoever greatly suffers must be, I suppose, a sublime combination of a sadist and masochist.” Her response to it is dry and immediate: “I think he’s looking at me.”

Pip: Self-recognition without self-pity. That’s a harder balance than it looks.

Mara: The piece ends in a different register entirely — outdoors at twenty degrees, three years of a doctor urging flu shots, her steady refusal, and his chuckle when she explains she hasn’t had a cold since 2012. It’s a side-step into the ordinary, and it lands as relief.

Pip: The body keeps its own ledger, separate from the heart’s.

Mara: What stays with me is that the piece refuses comfort without refusing warmth.

Pip: Longing that precise is its own kind of presence. More from this corner of livingness next time.

BOT BULLITS & CHATGPT

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MISADVENTURES OF TODAY… Job boards alerts for the JOB I am perfectly suited for, are in Tallahassee or Wichita and require AI experience, and about seven variables of programs written as unrecognizable anagrams. I am only in my fourth month of job searching digitally, days of in person interviews are akin to eight-hundred-page novels.

My resume is professionally edited, posted on all the legit job sites and about ten questionable ones. I write personal letters to the museums, galleries, foundations and event planning departments, no reply, or the feigned friendly formal answer, ‘Thank you for contacting us! We do appreciate your time. We’ve chosen another candidate.’ The algorithm cadets are pushing me in the slush pile. Can you blame me if at least one day a week I scream silently. The bot bounty hunters are shooting me. Set this aside and see my phone, the icons on the home page change weekly, by a phonebot, and google decided to sync five thousand laptop photos on my phone. Now when I have to scan for a return to Amazon because they sent me two fans instead of one, the scan is where?

On my knees praying this laptop continues to behave or I will scream outdoors and be reported within seconds by a resident because Solana Beach bodies seem to obey all the orders. I tend to test authority, like not renewing my driver’s license for two years, and lying to my Doctor about my state of mind, because he’ll advise therapy and I self-analyze myself about everything, so why hear it twice.

The new modest home serves me what I came him for, ocean breezes, quiet, and private, neighbors that seem to harmonize, we can just say hi, is ok. At the intersection where I live, athletic, toned, and tanned looking males and females run, jog, walk, bike the sidewalks and streets in identical outfits. Sort of like a stage play and it’s inspiring to see that health is the way to live, I just don’t remember that culture dominating when I lived here. What I don’t understand doesn’t bother me, it’s a curiously about moving back home and feeling misfitted. Those of you who know me, have heard me say this about every location I move.

The ocean breeze, fan blowing against the curtain panes, bougainvillea bushes that colorize my terrace, the phone calls from friends, and edits sent by my publisher tranquilize the BOTS AND BOOBOOS.

Misfitted and anxious for acknowledgement due to not having ten thousand followers or whatever is the number, an author’s marketing team (everything seems to be in teams) contacted me with an offer to represent my book, Cradle of Crime-A Daughters Tribute published in 2017. Here’s the first paragraph of the first email.

The idea at the heart of Cradle of Crime is one that I had never encountered framed quite this way before. A daughter’s journey into her father’s criminal past, beginning ten years after his death. Most memoirs about family secrets are written as reckonings, as confrontations with the truth, as attempts to understand how a parent’s hidden life shaped the child who was left behind. You wrote something different. You wrote a book that is not just about uncovering the past, it is about the impact of that uncovering on your own identity, about the humiliation, rage, shame, and acceptance that came with discovering that your father was Benjamin Bugsy Siegel’s best friend and business partner. And you built that entire idea around the truth that the secrets our parents keep are not just their own, they become ours, and that the work of understanding who we are often requires us to confront who they were, even when what we find is devastating. That reframe is everything.

Six emails later and digging through all the scam searches, I discovered BOT LITERARY HOAX. On my base she pitched me the marketing plan, without cost. Now I have a comprehensive skill set to use! Sample: Listopia, ARC team, enhanced keywords, categories, Amazon Ads, metadata overhaul, refresh, etc. I did not use any of these when I self-published. I thought about reporting them, No, they can hack me!

This week, another author marketing team contacted me with a similar, your story resonates with multiple markets you haven’t accessed. So, I decided to ask ChatGPT to run a check. One minute didn’t pass before this was returned. The opening sentence was, Luellen, I wouldn’t advise this company for Gaslighting Greta! BOT brilliance, he remembered from a previous question.

Absolutely. I can recreate the Michael Literary Team assessment we just did.

Michael Literary Team — Red Flag Report

Website: Michael Literary Team

Overall assessment: HIGH CAUTION.

I would not send them money, your complete manuscript, financial information, passwords, or other sensitive material until the company is independently verified. I would not call it definitively a scam based solely on the evidence, but there are enough warning signs that I would not treat it as a conventional, established literary agency without further verification.

Major red flags we identified

Multiple/near-duplicate domains
- There appears to be both a correctly spelled Michael Literary Team site and a misspelled “Micheal” version.
- This is unusual and raises questions about the history and ownership of the operation.
Changing personnel and biographies
- Names and positions appearing on the sites have inconsistencies.
- Some biographies have the feel of generalized/template-generated profiles rather than independently verifiable publishing-industry résumés.
Website/template errors
- We found repeated spelling, wording, and structural errors.
- There were also inconsistencies in company information.
Incomplete Chicago address
- The claimed Chicago presence did not provide the kind of easily verifiable business information you would expect from an established literary agency.
Very broad range of services
- The operation appears to offer an unusually wide combination of literary, publishing, marketing, cinematic, and related services.
- That isn’t proof of wrongdoing, but it warrants scrutiny.
Testimonials are difficult to independently verify
- Testimonials on a company’s own website aren’t strong evidence of legitimacy unless the authors and their publishing histories can be independently confirmed.
The Gavin Westbrook example
- We found outside discussion concerning a $1,000 package and a relatively small independent social footprint.
- This deserves additional verification before relying on the testimonial or client claims.
Weak independent footprint
- An established literary agency would normally leave a substantial trail outside its own websites: reputable publishing databases, established agents, publisher relationships, industry references, verifiable authors, rights sales, etc.

Part 2 — Connection to Susan Literary Team

This was particularly interesting.

We found evidence suggesting a substantial connection between Michael Literary Team and Susan Literary Team, including:

Emmanuel Carter appearing in connection with both.
Susan Cinematic appearing on the older/misspelled Michael site.
Susan Cinematic being associated with the Susan organization.
Similar website structures, services, Chicago references, and wording.
The Susan domain appearing to have been registered on March 21, 2026.
Similar language concerning a “bulk buyer strategy.”
Repeated copy/wording errors across the sites.

That does not, by itself, prove fraud. But the similarities make the relationship between these organizations an important issue to investigate.

Bottom line

My assessment was essentially:

HIGH CAUTION — do not pay until independently verified.

The evidence is strong enough that I would not recommend treating Michael Literary Team as a verified, traditional literary agency at this point.

And importantly, the 75–85% figure we discussed was a “do not pay until independently verified” risk assessment, not a mathematical probability that the company is fraudulent.

I HOPE YOU FOUND THIS HUMAN TOUCH HELPFUL!

STILL A MYSTERY WHO MURDERED BENJAMIN ” BUGSY” SIEGEL

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STILL A MYSTERY WHO SHOT BENJAMIN “BUGSY” SIEGEL .

JUNE 20,1947

Several years ago, I received an email from a reporter in Las Vegas. George Knapp had read some of my memoir posted on my website and asked for an exclusive interview. He asked about my father’s relationship with Ben Siegel “Bugsy” and what I knew about their friendship, and why Ben Siegel was shot. I declined the interview, but George persevered. Three weeks later I agreed to the interview, because my father was not there to stop me.

We met in Del Mar at the Inn Auberge. I showed up with a notepad to remind me what not to say, a photograph of my father when he was a producer for Cecil B. De Mille, and a borrowed calmness that comes when I am approaching an extremely anxious situation.

My first interview about Dad was not anything like I imagined. George approached the subject with respect, and I relaxed and began talking, and talking, and talking. The only time I hesitated was when he asked if I knew who killed Ben, and I had to answer swiftly, “I think Bush did it.” He was not too impressed with the answer; but it saved me from theorizing.

At the end of the interview, I walked out of the hotel without regret. I said what I felt should be told; that my father’s best friend was Ben Siegel. If he loved Ben and my mother loved Ben, than there is a lot more to “Bugsy” than what the public has been told. The interview aired on a Friday night, and my life was no different from before. George got a call from someone who claimed my father once told him, Virginia Hill’s brother was the shooter. It sounds like my father; he enjoyed sending people down the wrong path. He always said, “You don’t inherit friends,” and so I declined to remain friends with family members of his group, because I respected his orders, even after he died.

I doubt any of his mob friends are still alive today. Many people have claimed they knew my father, but in essence, what they mean is they met at Ciro’s, or had a game of cards, or went to the racetrack. My father’s only friends were connected to organized crime. I learned this when he died; three people showed up for the service. He warned me to keep away from reporters, and not to trust anyone. Still, strange incidents followed his death that I was unprepared to handle.

A man I’d never heard of called and informed me, ‘Your Dad and Ben buried a safe deposit box in downtown Los Angeles. You should look for the key, there may be a lot of cash.’ My father was not about to leave this world without telling me he had stashed money in a safe deposit box. I will bet every dollar on that.
Another man, posing as a friend, came to my aid offering help settling the estate. A few weeks later another man I had never heard of, placed a claim on the estate for an old gambling debt of $5,000. The two of them were conspiring. Had I known gambling debts are erased when the bettor dies, I would not have allowed my sister to sell his Patek Philippe diamond and ruby pocket watch, which I suspect belonged to Ben Siegel at one time. The end of my father’s life was as mysterious as when he was living. That is how he liked it, and that is how he lived it.

I had to wait until my father was in his seventies to go to the racetrack with him. He took me to Santa Anita, we sat in the clubhouse, and he watched the track from behind tinted dark sunglasses. He was quiet and observant. He watched me eat and then handed me a twenty-dollar bill to bet on the Exacta. He told me how to bet and which horses to bet. I walked away from the cashier thinking I would be a big winner. Instead, I walked away a big loser. This was a setup, he picked the losing horses, so I’d get the lesson ” Even your old Dad loses at the track, remember that.’ There wasn’t anything exciting about going to the track, he made sure of that. I suppose he was concerned, that I had inherited a taste for betting. Lucky for me; I discovered Dad’s gambling didn’t pay off. When he was with Siegel in the forties, controlling the wire service he’d bet up to $50,000 in one day. And lose it on the next gamble. I don’t bet on sports, or gamble in casinos. I do gamble on life, and aim for the outlandish, improbable questionable odds.

Photo: Leaving Beverly Hills Police Department day after the murder.

LIVING AS A LONER.MINIMAL MAYHEM LIFESTYLE-OCEAN, SKY, SUNLIGHT WONDER.

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FEEL, THINK, AND REACT. Tumbling through all the transitory advice forces me to examine more closely whom to believe. I’ve never been a leader, nor a follower, I walk in between, trying to pave a pathway to peace of mind. Maybe that is unattainable as I am in a cultural, political, medical, financial, and socially reimagined world. It reminds me of being a teenager when life was questionable, and confusion was like a stinging bee we couldn’t swap away. So, in my senior year in high school I started writing in a notepad. Gradually, almost supernaturally I withdrew from my gang, and spent the weekends in a Cafe with adults, or in the library. The loner label pleated my pants.

Loners were portrayed in film, books, and art as mysterious, untouchable icons. They even became romanticized as people of superior cerebral awareness. I’ve met and gained friendships with several over the last few decades. It may be that loners have thin skin, they absorb the ethereal and reality, so in many situations the absorption is too weighty and the loner cuts loose before the party is over, cancels at the last minute, and doesn’t answer the phone. Talking, engaging, evaporating into another person feels herculean for me sometimes.

Does isolation relate to the intensification of rancorous physical assaults in streets and shops, which is my pestering pursuit today. Are all these perpetrators unloving, and live amongst the unloved? People are shot because their hamburger wasn’t properly served on time, or they have a different opinion. I was living in Los Angeles in 2018, and one day driving down Pico Blvd I noticed a sign, “Walk in Anger Management.” Maybe we need to convert a few drive-thru food diners to Anger Management centers. It sounds amusing. If I was financially able, I’d open one in every major city.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THIS CULTURE is unimaginable for a woman who grew up in the Love and Peace generation, or even into the eighties and nineties. We didn’t shoot one another, maybe a fist fight, or a shouting match, but not murder in cold blood. Could this macabre movement be abated by friends who love you more when you are gentle and kind? It cannot be that simple, or could it? When I used to rage about some occurrence that tattered me personally, Dodger would come to me and say,

‘Greta put your guns down,’ that always made me laugh, and then we’d talk out what triggered my fury.

THE COMFORT OF EXHIBITING 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 doesn’t need a Tuscan Villa or an English Castle, but experiences that flake off the skin and shake out relevance. What I’ve rediscovered is that without a lot of stuff to organize, the mind is free to think, more time to create and effect essential decisions. Narcissism is sacrificed and replaced with more visceral makeup. Minimalist living has erased my past, and that is as transforming as day to night.

PUZZLE OF SOLITUDE will always be a puzzle because our lives, solo or mated, are puzzled by too much solitude, or not enough. 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 that I created. I have to laugh alone, so I watch screwball comedies, seek humor in my irregularities; wearing a sweater inside out, pouring coffee into a wine glass for a cocktail, and chuckling when I keep forgetting where I left my phone. Laughing at myself is a funnel that leads to writing.

MINIMAL MAYHEM LIFESTYLE-OCEAN, SKY, SUNLIGHT WONDER.

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My Follies House Bedroom

SPACIAL dimensions define a lifestyle. I walked into a room of four hundred and fifty square feet, and begin designing a new nest, where I could rest, write, and regain a root. I brought two suitcases, a box of paperwork, and my laptop. In a tote bag: one coffee cup, a fork, knife, spoon, one bowl one plate, a wine opener, a razor knife, and two scissors.

That was one week ago, today I have a room of Amazon: a, bistro table, two chairs, one bedside table, one dresser, and a free-standing shelf for the bathroom. I’ve never seen a bathroom without a hook, a shelf, a few rods, it’s like a prison bathroom. All of this is what I’ve named experimental living. I have a 16ft POD in a lot in Saratoga Springs, and to transport twenty years of collections and spend months separating, what goes to storage and what I can use made no sense one sleepless night. I’ll leave it there until I am positively positive I’m staying here. I know you are out there, the gypsy wanderers, the unsettled, the ones whose address changes like the seasons.

Choosing to buy furnishings online is cost-effective. If I go into a consignment shop or furniture store, I’ll pull out the credit cards that I’ve sworn off like I have going out in the sun without SPF seventy. This is all the first layer of experimenting with a lifestyle that I lived when I was hey nineteen not seventy-three. Am I proving something to myself? Probably, I deny convention, and ultra comfort because then I wouldn’t think, I’d lay around and be satisfied.

Bedroom, living room, dining room and entry

” The writer lives between the upper and lower worlds, he takes the path in order eventually to become that path itself.” Henry Miller.

I am digging into something unknown, it’s as if someone has taken charge over my decisions and I just met her. Fragments of who I was in Santa Fe, or Saratoga, pop up in the annoying half wall mirror that invades my privacy. I intend to buy a lovely Asian or Moroccan divider to hide myself. I wish there was a mirror to my emotions, so I know what I am hiding, and refusing to face off with. I made a note yesterday in my journal,

‘ I’ve always been a misfit.’ Where I am now, is a succession of experimenting with the unknown, at an age when my peers are in the known.

Just took another walk outdoors, one of ten to twelve every day, to remove the scenery of too heavy unopened boxes, that Simon, my assembler will turn into furniture Friday. He is Russian, and was one of the lucky ones to leave, two weeks before the war began. He can assemble twenty-five pieces in a NY minute.

The outdoors, familiar from twenty years ago, with a whipping gentle wind, sun, joggers, walkers, skateboarders, and surfers pass along, and I feel a newly planted root.

Daughter of mob boss reveals insight into infamous unsolved murder

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https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.com/crime-desk/article-15678303/amp/allen-smiley-bugsy-siegel-mob-murder-unsolved-daughter.html

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS INTERVIEW PUBLISHED TODAY. ELIOT FORCE HAS THE FORCE AND FINESSE TO WRITE A TRUE ACCOUNT OF AN INTERVIEW. THANK YOU ELIOT!!

EDITING OUR PATHS

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There are reasons to quit and more reasons not to. The one reason that hovers above all is that 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 revise your valor and conviction.

Revising the position you walk, talk, judge, form opinions, contribute to your home, friends, and partners. Discovering what you’ve learned, dreamed, and mastered is your novel. Just as writing a new chapter when the knot tightens, and you are trapped by decisions that are outdated. Antiquities of a former persona.

Changes in life are like undeveloped photographic images, blurred. Mentally, the angles don’t fit, like schedules, routines, and commitments. Returning to former lifestyles and looking at old photographs, what I see is someone else.

This week, I walked into Scripps Clinic for laboratory testing. The last time was 2012, when I was with a former boyfriend. J was all encompassing, all consuming, generous, intelligent, outgoing, and he had to be near me like a new pet. I lasted a year, the obsession of closeness suffocated my spirit and my writing.

After the appointment, I looked across the street at Torrey Pines Science & Research Park, where I was appointed Marketing and Leasing Director in 1986 over 150,000 square feet of vacant space. I visualized myself taking clients, Qualcomm, and the Jonas Salk Institute through the newly built office buildings. My confidence was slightly off when scientists asked questions about the mechanics and cable routes, but I loved that job. My boss was the most intelligent developer I’d met; he carved me into a broad thinker, allowed my off-the-chart ideas and proposals to progress. Tears welled because the memory was enflamed by my long-distance running days up Torrey Pines hillside. I doubt I’d be running today, maybe scuffling. Life is a runway that we have to steer for ourselves. If we allow others to take the wheel, we are not authentic. No one is steering my wheel, and I have hit a lot of potholes and assholes along the way.

The puzzle is how to live, where to live, and for whom. It is the same with manuscripts; they improve with each revision.

THE LISTS OF LIFE

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WHAT ARE THESE LISTS... the long list is the list you started as a youth, without even knowing you were making plans for your future. This is the list that does not have to be in writing, keyed in on a phone, Outlook, or posted on the calendar.

The long list is about cutting out, shocking the system, and coming back unharmed. It is an exceptional sensation of adventure we visualize while waiting for a flight at the airport, for the neighbor to turn off the leaf blower, for the light to turn green.

All of the things we monitor in our lives, like the need to have a cavity filled or checking the coolant level, are multiplying, and that short list is so long we rarely have time to consider the long list. None of those items will make any difference in ten years, not one.

The short list is a big obstacle in the way of the long list. By the time we get to the long list, we may be crippled by fear, turned into a sofa shouting grumpy cynic or, worse than all the above, we may have forgotten what we wanted.

Waiting too long to start an adventure on the long list is staring me in the face. Then I realize, I’m in it!

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

KITCHEN TABLE TALK IN SANTA FE NEW MEXICO-2013

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SMILEY’S DICE-ADVENTURES IN LIVINGNESS

White Wolf introduced himself to me when he worked Valet at La Posada Resort. He was the kool one with enough style and manners to attract attention. I learned he also provided private airport transportation and luxury limo service. A trip to Albany, New York was on my schedule, so I asked White Wolf if he’d drive me to the Albuquerque Airport. When I told him my flight left at 6:30 AM, he didn’t flinch, ‘I’ll be at your house at 4:00 AM with Starbucks-what’s your drink?’

He showed up, loaded the car, asked me to select my own music, and off we went. I felt like I was riding with James Bond; smooth shifts, minor breaks, all the time engaging me in conversation. The combination relieved my pre-boarding stress and woke me up. From then on, I chose White Wolf’sairport service. When he picked me up from Albuquerque, he had Fiji water, Travel & Leisure Magazine, chewing gum, and he played Vic Damone. ‘Chill, sit back, tell me all about the trip.’

At my kitchen counter, on a twenty-below morning, White Wolf leaned back against a bar stool too petite for a swarthy 6’ 4” man. His Johnson & Johnson silky blond hair is swept back, and I want to touch it, but we don’t play with physical affections. White Wolf’s forty, looks thirty, and thinks like he served an attitude and values apprenticeship under a wise guru. He’s on a break; from plowing snow at Albertsons, the Yoga Center, and private homes. This is before he reports for work at Geronimo Restaurant, where he not only parks the cars, but walks the ladies indoors, keeps the Zapata’s outdoors, and directs traffic on Canyon Road until midnight. He’s wearing a sheet white Polo turtleneck and black slacks, his day look, and I’m about to serve pesto, prosciutto and feta cheese frittata for late breakfast.

White Wolf is sipping a sixteen-once Chai and unwinding his broad shoulders in a circular motion as he considers current consciousness of Santa Fe.

“It’s a different kind of materialism. You really want it but you can’t have it. The most simple things; a toaster, a new phone, pinion wood–cause we’re cold–it’s so cold! The guy in front of the Homeless Shelter was near frozen when I drove by to drop off a bundle of clothes. Why is it so cold? Even the valet has to wear BMW beanies. These are some funny times.”

“What’s so funny about not having money?” I smirked.

White Wolf breaks into a full-body laughing recess. His sailor-blue eyes are just slightly turned up when he laughs. This transmits his effortless, humorous pitch on life.

“It’s different,” I said. ” I mean everything feels unfamiliar.”

“Yeah, it’s okay to feel,” White Wolf said. “Things are rattling around. That’s why the Gorge Bridge felt so stable the day I drove up to Taos. I think it’s the most stable thing in my life right now! Hah.”

I had placed the frittata in front of White Wolf, but he hadn’t touched it yet. Even when he’s starved; he lets the food sit there and cool off. I’ve never seen a man not eat when food is placed in front of him. I was already biting into the frittata; relishing a real meal.

I found a momentary silent inlet and asked him if the food was cool enough. White Wolf looked down, touched it with his index finger, and then his appetite fired off. After a few pensive moments, as if he were saying grace, he took a proper bite. He takes the food seriously, intensely. He’ll make a remarkable husband for some woman. He talks a lot about marriage, and the songs he’ll sing to his bride’s mother the day of the wedding. He confides in me uninhibitedly, as if we were two teenagers, cutting class. I feel youthful when he’s in the house; the absence of masks, emotional camouflage, and exaggeration is how I remember adolescence.

“What’d you say Wednesday was–on your new schedule?” he asked.

“Wednesday… I forgot since you showed up. I know! It’s Gallery LouLou marketing.”

“We have to give out two cards a week. I want you to pass out two every day.”

I nodded my head, ” I will, 2013 is just not the year to buy art in a vacation rental during the winter.”

“Geronimo has been slow, no A-list celebrity types, no mothers and daughters; cause the daughters don’t want to come here anymore.”

“Neither do single men, I interrupted. And if they do, they’re from Los Alamos. Can you see me with a scientist or an engineer? I’d make them crazy.”

“Listen–someone asks you out for an Ecco latte, don’t be a bitch. Just do it! You reverse sweat it. If he’s a jerk, Deebo him.” Deebo is the guy who shows up late, and should have been on time. His quip is unabashed, and he handles himself like Sean Penn; smoking and all smiles while he reverses blame.

“Can we change the subject?” I said.

“No! I want to know why you’re not even trying to hook up?”

“Because I’m convinced the man I want isn’t in Santa Fe. The ones I’ve met are looking for a caretaker, a fly-fishing partner, or a biker. Look, there are two types of men: one loves a woman because she’s not a man, and the other one seeks a mother who he can bash around.”

“I want to rat those guys out–like the ones that pinch and don’t tip. Give a name to that.”

“ Listen to this; the newly coined slogan for New Mexico is Truth.” I said.

“ Truth. About what?”

“ Exactly! What truth are they referring to? How bout’ the naked truth? Picture a Native American woman out in the arroyo in a leather crop top, her black hair elevated in strands by the wind, dust on her cheekbones. New Mexico is naked, isn’t it?” I asked.

“It’s isolated. If you can afford to come to Santa Fe and not blow your brains out, or go broke, you deserve to be here. Right?” He is smiling. Even the painful truths, are reformed as tests of endurance rather than complaints. He developed his own poetic rap dialogue that I suppose comes from growing up in two cultures: one in the hood, and the other in the wealthiest homes in Santa Fe.

“ Then it’s a good place for you. Like your friend that takes her poodle to Hospice. I really respect her for that. That’s what she’s doing with Santa Fe.” He said.

“What do you do with Santa Fe?” I asked.

“I’m the union organizer for luxury limo drivers. Like, iron your shirt and shine your shoes, have CD’s in the car, and water. You know–like this is New Mexico but we can spell Burberry. On the weekends I’m the ladies traffic controller!”

“ What is that?”

“At the clubs. Some of the guys are okay, all suited up, hoping for a dance, but some are like, I’ll buy you a cocktail if I can follow you home. Someone has to protect them. Ladies can’t drive home cause they’ve cocktailed all night, or they can’t find their car keys, or they want to impress their friends with the Viking chauffeur. It’s chill; they’re good girls during the day.”

The morning turned into afternoon, and I was cleaning dishes, and watching the birds from the kitchen window. Every hour or so I stop responding to White Wolf, and let him talk. I can feel the rush of his life; how he sprints from limo driver, to Geronimo valet, then to Albuquerque, the gym, and his family. People who live intensely engaged in a variety of relationships; stir their surroundings like a human wind. Every time White Wolf leaves, I’m bouncing through the living room and dancing.

When I tuned into the conversation he was recounting his day in ardent animation. His laughter echoes, almost like he’s singing a song, and it lasts a long time.

“I don’t mind giving back to our greedy city tax roll. I feed the meters at the Lensic; that quarter made a difference. Huh?”… more laughter and he repeats, ‘we’re down to quarters.’

“Those meter guys were writing tickets like, here take that, and then on to the next car. Don’t bother coming back to Santa Fe, and it’s the weekend! That’s the barometer of my city—-hurry hurry write that ticket. Once it’s done it’s done.” Suddenly he stands, positioning his legs a few feet apart, he leans over, picks up his keys, and his phone.

“Come on let’s go for a quick creep.”

“A what?”

“Cruise the plaza, get you outdoors, come on it’ll make you feel better.”

“I’m not dressed for outdoors..”

“Put on a pair of low brow boots, and a jacket. Not fashioning this afternoon. You won’t even get out of the car. Come on.”

I listened because White Wolf is definitive in decisions. He doesn’t waver back and forth or want to argue. I rushed upstairs, zipped up my boots and grabbed a down jacket. He was standing by the window.

“We have twenty-minutes.” He said pointing to his watch.

We hopped into his silver VW GTI and he told me to pick a CD. I shuffled through the stack, while he backed out. Just then I noticed a car pull out across Palace Avenue.

“Wolf! Watch out!”

“I got it.” He leaned back, shot eyeball calmness to me and asked what CD I wanted to hear. He didn’t scold me for my alarm and doubt. After that I knew my caution was unnecessary. You learn a lot about a man by his driving. It’s a graph of his responsiveness, confidence, and how he handles sudden movement. White Wolf cruised over the icy asphalt and into the empty Plaza, all white and brown like a two envelopes sitting side by side. He was now slouching back, one hand on the wheel, messing with something in the open compartment, and driving 15 mph. There weren’t a lot of cars, but I had the feeling White Wolf didn’t care if there was someone behind us. We drove past Santa Fe Dry Goods, and he stopped, “Empty– that’s sad. No one buying fuzzy boots or hats.”

He drove by every shop and looked in, as if he was monitoring shopping trends. His eyes swept the streets, the alleyways, and I mimicked him, because I knew this was for me. We went slow as a couple of tired horses, so the eyes could bring in the unknown: a homeless man on a corner, the Indian woman selling jewelry, the Mideastern jewelers smoking cigarettes, and a few locals trotting back to work from a break. I looked up to the sky and found a patch of blue, and pointed it out to White Wolf,” and he turned to me and said, “I’m happy you noticed.”

“It’s two o’clock already,” I said.

“How’d it get to be two o’clock?” White Wolf kept the engine at crawl speed all the way back to the house. “You have to go to Santa Fe Spa–at least go see people! And go after six.” I nodded my head as I got out of the car, went inside, turned on the Rolling Stones, and danced.

Gallery Hendrix film concert in the garage for his exhibition.

SOLITUDE & IRREGULAR IMPULSES

Featured ~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

My emotional tail is wagging; curled up in my desk chair, I feel almost as if I were born in this chair. It’s cushioned me through a cyclone of adventures in livingness. Solitude will always be a puzzle because our lives, solo or mated, are perplexed by too much solitude or not enough. The editor I used before submitting to a publisher asked me, “Why do you keep switching between past and present tense?” I told her I don’t control that until I’m in the final editing stage. 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 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 and regrets. Honor is more critical; be proud not just for yourself but because someone out there needs you.

Sometimes, solitude feels like a draft no matter how many sweaters I wear. There are not many soloists residing in the village, primarily second and third-generation families with dozens of members. Living unstructured is a discipline that threads some days easily; when it doesn’t, I must rein in my passion for daydreaming. Today, it is the island of Capri. A friend is there posting photographs, so maybe I need to stop watching other people live their dreams. Yes, that’s it-take a reprieve from FB.