RESOLUTIONS OF THE WEEK.

January 13, 2024January 19, 2024 ~ LouLou ~ 2 Comments

My memoir, published in 2017, Cradle of Crime-A Daughter’s Tribute is old news to me. Not to Charlie. I met him as he was renovating a house across the street. I didn’t introduce myself as Luellen Smiley, just Luellen. I asked if he would take a look at my house for an estimate on painting. He was sweet, a mountain man with a long white beard and hunting boots. Last week, he texted me,” I read your book, my friend and I exchanged Goodreads suggestions, and I told him to read your book.” How did he connect me to my book? I didn’t ask, and now it piques my interest. I’d walk across the street and ask him, his truck is there, so is the ice, and I don’t feel like skating and falling on my butt.

Winter in upstate New York to a gal from Los Angeles is likened to living in the North Pole. Going on five years, my last, I’m not resentful and scouring, but I am not acclimated. Indoors I dress in sherpa from head to toe and wear those finger mittens. Today it is full-throttle rain showers. The street is vacated of traffic and the public, it’s a good day to work on my next book. On my desk are a few writing books, the favorites: Henry Miller on Writing, The Diaries of Anais Nin, and Albert Camus’s The Stranger. I haven’t bought a current book in years, the last one was Sam Shepard, The One Inside. I like Miller’s passage: ” The writer lives between the upper and lower worlds.: he takes the path in order eventually to become that path himself.”

Aging in my seventies delivered opening windows to restoring, rearranging, and repairing my persona, personally and in public. If you’ve read any of my essays, then you know explicit is the vortex that moves my thread. Restoring the brick-and-mortar of truth is at the forefront; the next layer is a confession of what I cannot speak in person to anyone, even my closest pals. The third is abstaining from too swift a pen; I’m always in a hurry: I prepare food quickly, walk as if I’m late for an engagement, and wash dishes with perfunctory interest. Everything when I think about it. I know why that is, my father. His shadow was always behind me as I went about my teenage activities at home, so I rushed to get out.

Last week, I stopped taking the powerful Lorzapam medication for neurotic anxiety. My heart raced when I opened an email from my attorney, when a stranger knocked at the door, or when I entered a public place alone. A new sideways rain shower just filled the window pane above my desk. Here is the fourth restorative: get outdoors! I don’t walk in snow or ice, but good old water rain, which I call God’s tears, is one of my favorite nature adventures.

Admittedly, my writing has granulated since moving here. It is tiny in thought and not always tied up neatly. My persona in public needs to be side by side with wine in a dining setting. What I contribute must be joyous and humorous because one of my favorite human activities is to evoke laughter and smiles. I broke away from my taverns and abstained from alcohol for a week. In the second week, visceral and bodily alarms have gone off. I’m lucid, motivated, and even decisive.

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.”

‘

LONERS, SOLO, RECLUSIVE, still human.

November 25, 2023November 25, 2023 ~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

Thanksgiving seeps into a day of light and dark, like a trajectory of blissful silence transitioning to watching the Macy’s Parade, then dancing around my bedroom to old-school hip-hop. Internally feeling more adept than last year, the solitude and absence of friends didn’t snake rattle me, 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. I’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.

DEL MAR, CA RECEIVES ME.

September 2, 2023September 2, 2023 ~ LouLou ~ 1 Comment

Living in Del Mar from 1982 – 1996 enriched my spirit, health, and distance running. Even though I’ve heard, you can’t go back, I’m striving to break that fact.

As children, our waiting depends on how long it takes Mom and Dad to finish what they’re doing and pay attention to our needs. It takes hold of us, like a fever, and we resort to nudging them, whining, even sobbing, If we are made to wait longer than we expected. During the school year, I waited all semester for the summer. In Los Angeles that meant it was hot enough to go swimming in the ocean.

When I lived in Hollywood, I rode two buses, to get to Santa Monica. The second bus dropped me off on Ocean Avenue, above Santa Monica Beach. I ran down the ramp that connects to Pacific Coast Highway and headed north to Sorrento Beach. I jumped into the sand running to find the place where my schoolmates clustered: in a caravan of towels, beach chairs, radios, and brown bag lunches. I couldn’t just run to the ocean, I had to sit and talk and have something cold to drink, and then I made myself wait until I couldn’t stand it any longer. Then I ran down to the shore, and embraced the waves, tumbling inside their grasp until I lost my breath, and floated into abandonment.

After I moved to Santa Fe I stopped thinking about the ocean, I had to remove the memories from my thoughts, so I could continue to experience this spark of New Mexico. The dry sage ocean of pink soil, and radiant blue sky that pinches your eyes when you’re driving, the sunlight, the warmth of a desert night, and the white snow on pink adobe rooftops. It had postcard perfection, even with fallen leaves spread like trash everywhere, the trees almost naked, and the dead plants in the garden. I tried not to think of the ocean, the look of the sea from watery suntanned eyelids, or from the bluff at Del Mar, or the splashing of waves around my shoulders as I tumbled beneath the surface.

I waited, as I did as a teenager, for that time to come in the fall of 2010, so I could return to the sea. I stood at the water’s edge in Del Mar, it was like summer without all the kids screaming, barking dogs, volleyball and paddle board games, lifeguards thrashing the beach in their jeeps shouting, ‘no dogs off the leashes, no glassware, and no surfing today’. They were missing, and so were the parade of beach runners, and surfers. In fact, I was the only one swimming, on that first day at the beach. Before I went into the water, I reclined on a big black boulder and faced the sea, letting my eyes wander amongst the scenes of the beach on a Tuesday afternoon. In front of me was an older man with graying hair, in a beach chair reading. He must be retired, he looked perfected adapted to his spot about five feet from the shoreline. I thought about retirement, and how I still cannot come to grips with spending my days on park benches or in cafes watching younger men and women live. There was one swimmer, on a bogeyboard, he was far out, and floating along, and I wished I’d brought mine with me, but it was in Rudy’s van. The last time I used it was when I lived in Solana Beach in 1997. I also wished I had a new bathing suit, because the one I was wearing was too loose, and the neck straps were tied together in a knot so I could swim without losing my top. The sun baked my body, and I let it without abatement, without shading my limbs or wearing a hat, just enough sunscreen to keep the rays from trotting over my lily-white skin. I closed my eyes and when I opened them, the waiting suddenly felt so imperial, so much so that I began to think about waiting as an aphrodisiac or something like a good cocktail that you have to make last for hours, while you wait for that moment that makes you feel immortal, childlike, and emancipated.

I felt the beach flies, and the tang of salt water on my lips, and when the seagulls swarmed above the water’s surface, like so many beads of a necklace, I thought, that this is about the most beautiful day I could have, and it’s all because I WAITED. I didn’t give up on the ocean, or my place in it, or believing that I would have my day in the sand, under a faded denim blue sky, with cotton ball clouds floating above me. I baked until the sweat drenched my pours, and then I raised myself up and walked slowly to the edge of the water. The surf made tiny breaks not enough to shatter my body warmth and I felt the first sting of the water on my feet, and then my knees., I submerged and found that the best way to celebrate this day was to keep flopping backward on top of each wave as it crashed, and I did this for a dozen rounds, until I felt giddy, submissive, and dented with the surf. That waiting thing again, meant something that I should write about because all of us are waiting for the election, the economy to recover, wars to end, streets to be safe and our real estate to be worth something again. We are all waiting for this big change so we can feel secure and optimistic about the future. There is something useful about waiting, something predisposed, that gives us the support and substance we need, so when the waiting is over, and we are all flush with optimism again, it will feel like the first time. It will overwhelm us with power and joy, like the ocean.

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THE ARC OF WAITING

August 22, 2023August 22, 2023 ~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

There was one swimmer, on a bogey board, he was far out, and floating along, and I wished I’d brought mine with me, but it was in Rudy’s van. The last time I used it was when I lived in Solana Beach in 1997. I also wished I had a new bathing suit, because the one I was wearing was too loose, and the neck straps were tied together in a knot so I could swim without losing my top. The sun baked my body, and I let it without abatement, without shading my limbs or wearing a hat, just enough sunscreen to keep the rays from trotting over my lily-white skin. I closed my eyes and when I opened them, the waiting suddenly felt so imperial, so much so that I began to think about waiting as an aphrodisiac or something like a good cocktail that you have to make last for hours, while you wait for that moment that makes you feel immortal, childlike, and emancipated.

ADVENTURES IN SOLITUDE

August 14, 2023August 15, 2023 ~ 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. It’s cushioned me through a cyclone of adventures in livingness.

This piece of writing was handwritten on a tablet back in late January. I’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 don’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. Sometimes, solitude feels like a draft, and no matter how many sweaters I 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.

THE ART OF LOVE

July 21, 2023August 31, 2023 ~ LouLou ~ 2 Comments

Nicholas Ray (Photo credit: www_ukberri_net)

THIS WEEK LANDS ON poets, writers, musicians, photographers, directors, visual artists, composers, choreographers, actors and the untitled and unrecognized that squeeze in between. Kipling, Salinger ( my all-time favorite) The Rolling Stones, Mozart, Chopin, Opera, Salsa, Beatles, Stieglitz, Nicholas Ray, Kandinsky, Johnny Mercer, Martha Graham Balanchine, and James Dean. I left out about seventy-five of my favorites.

Composition VI (1913) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)They were all lovers before they were artists.

OUR ARTISTS IN HEART travel mentally and physically through life with all the windows open; awaiting a sight, sound, or feeling that draws them to their art. The feelings are what count on our life ledger. I have to thank Billy, my first love at fifteen. He was an artist of music, Gothic charcoal sketches, comic humor, and life. He opened my window to the arts.

That life ledger is always in the red because an appetite of feelings, and emotions eventually depreciates the spirit. Some of us rise above, and the flow of printed green paper comforts that spirit, but emotions continue to dominate all the success.

I have to write this in short sequence, as I am moving between a rigid reckoning of a forever ending TO ONE MY LOVES.

To be continued later.

RAINY DAY REMEMBRANCE

July 2, 2023 ~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

Published in The Saratogian April 1, 2001

With last names like Smiley and Funk, you know there’s bound to be something creative going on in the imaginations of this Ballston Spa duo. The couple, both natives of San Diego, Calif., purchased a house at 63 East High St. last May. Luellen Smiley and Rudy Funk have turned a once-ramshackle 1860’s structure, now known as The Follies House, into three furnished apartments oozing with zany charm. Smiley’s brochure touts the place as a “playful vacation residence designed to inspire.” On the wide front porch, a sign offers visitors “Free Records,” paying homage to one apartment’s main decorative inspiration: classic stage musicals. Called the Broadway suite, its walls are adorned with record covers, programs, ballet slippers and even a dance costume. There are dice on the end tables, a life-sized poster of Humphrey Bogart, colorful paper parasols and peacock feathers. For tenants who bring their own films, there’s a projector screen and, tucked into an alcove, a working Victrola. Vintage Broadway memorabilia is everywhere. Then there’s the nearly ceiling-height replica of a bass guitar. “This was actually a costume someone wore,” said Smiley, pointing out the head and arm holes. “These are the kinds of things we like, the really unusual and unheard of.” Growing up in California, Smiley aspired to be a dancer and maintained an interest in the arts.

In recent years, she became keen on the idea of renovating and decorating an older home, although the village of Ballston Spa was not first on her list. “When we first came here, I wanted to be in Saratoga, and when I drove through Ballston Spa I said, ‘I’d never want to live here,”‘ Smiley said. “But then we rented here, and I didn’t want to go back on the road. We loved this street. We think this village is really starting to happen.” The couple went to work feverishly last spring to ready the apartments in time for the track season. While not a bed and breakfast, the apartments are designed for temporary tenants — people new to the area or vacationers. Smiley’s off-season rates are $800 a month for the Broadway Suite and $700 for the Boomers Pad. The one-bedroom Boomers Pad is designed with vintage ’50s and ’60s furniture. Smiley said she and Funk combed area antique shops, including those in the village, for many of the offbeat pieces, including the vinyl records and oversized pink sofa. The house’s history mirrors the eclectic style the couple has brought to the home. “It was built by a man actually named Dr. Doolittle as a wedding present for his daughter,” Smiley said. “You can see the little touches everywhere. There are butterflies and sun rays carved into the woodworking and doorknobs. It’s a love house. It was built with love.” Smiley said she and Funk have combed files at Brookside History Center looking for old photographs of the house in order to decide what color to repaint the facade. “The exterior of the house is next on our list, and while we haven’t located any photographs, we’re thinking pastels,” Smiley said. “Inside, we used a lot of pistachio and pink.” While Funk commutes to and from California for business purposes, the pair weathered their first winter this year, relying on the kindness of neighbors for jobs like snow-blowing. “We’ve never seen winters like this,” Smiley said. “I’m from the other side of the world. But this is a very supportive community. That’s one of the things we love about the village.”

Smiley has immersed herself in the closely-knit community, joining the Ballston Spa Business & Professional Association, the local chamber of commerce, and helping promote an upcoming Art Walk. The Follies House recently was given a beautification award for significant improvements during the past year. In her brochure for potential tenants, Smiley points out area highlights including the Saratoga Performing Arts Center and destinations within the village, such as the museums, the glassworks studio, Art Ink., and the new gallery and loft spaces on Low Street. Smiley said she also recommends people take a stroll along East High Street, a historic district known for its Victorian homes. “I’ve seen little villages, big villages — but what I see here is the most beautiful village,” Smiley said. “The potential is here. There’s a sense of magic here and the transformation will happen. I’m certain of that.”

Cari Scribner

ON THE SOLO STREET OF DREAMS

July 1, 2023July 1, 2023 ~ 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.

HONESTY-REMEMBER

June 10, 2023June 10, 2023 ~ 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 she’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.

POP-UP FRIDAY FOLLIES

May 19, 2023May 23, 2023 ~ LouLou

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

April 15, 2023June 1, 2023 ~ 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. It’s not too late to feel grateful, fortunate, and lucky to have lived so many acts of my choice.

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5Carolyn Gootgeld-Levine, Erika Marie Schwalbach and 3 others

April 6, 2023April 11, 2023 ~ LouLou ~ 2 Comments

POP-UP THOUGHT ON A RAINY THURSDAY.

Direction is a choice; move back home, move near your children, move for a job, but in my case, I move because my act in Saratoga will come to a close. I’m like a blank space between two paragraphs; it sounds like freedom, no commitments other than being the best I can be. Starting over in a new location is about redesigning within.

I’m still a nomad, searching for adventuresinlivingness. As I lay my head down on my pillow, the interim is asking me to be peaceful, faithful, and confident. It’s about time!

Reminds me of when I went off to college, a liberating extension of those early days when belonging to things didn’t matter, life mattered. If you are single and without children, this is the knife that we must slice into a piece we accept, or no peace will lull us to sleep.

ON THE ROAD FROM SOMEWHERE TO SOMEWHERE, I CAN’T REMEMBER. MAYBE SANTA FE TO SAN DIEGO.