YES, I AM LEAVING. SIX YEARS LATER. I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE 1 YEAR, BUT WHAT WE PLAN GOES INTO THE CIRCUMSTANCE BLENDER, AND I, MAYBE YOU, COME OUT SHREDDED, UNTIL WE LEARN HOW TO REMIX OUR CONDIMENTS FOR THE FUTURE. The year the village adopted my slogan, Village of Friends
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Six years ago, this week, I left my studio on Devon Ave, a shrink-wrapped space that forged me outdoors. I landed in Ballston Spa, NY, to save my home from foreclosure. I felt a contrast within and without. The without were the winters. I’d not lived here since 2003, youthful adaptation overwhelmed the bitterness of winter. The within, my mind, heart, and spirit went through a seasonal transformation. Winters, the snowplowing season when I am on duty to ensure tenants and nieghbors can walk on my sidewalk(owners are reponsible in the village) without breaking a leg and then suing me. Writing is the dominant activity, between, cooking, checking the sump pumps, talking on the phone with friends three thousand miles away, and managing tenants. Once I learned the house was two months behind on the mortgage, turmoil, the servicers bounced me around with false information, misconduct and refused the full balance when I offered. Covid postponed the payments for a year, and so did the New York financial agency. I filed the complaint against PHH, and they pressured PPH to abort the foreclosure for another year. Almost all my income went to restoring the house, replacing mechanical parts, painting, and repairs.
One day in February of 2020, a man knocked on my door and handed me the foreclosure documents. So began six years of legal research, interviewing attorneys, and defending myself against the predator, who sought to destroy my life, every angle of it. I can’t name this person; I’m in writing witness protection. Seriously.
It’s Christmas day, and the lobby of the hotel is empty. I think there are seven guests, and most of the cheerful staff are off. The sun broke through, so I’ll wander around the property. It’s 28 degrees, I adapted physically but not emotionally.
The throw of the dice this week lands on adventures in livingness; one day at a time. People with terminal illness, suffering from a shattered romance, a death of a friend, a natural disaster, always say the same thing; One day at a time.
Walking up Palace Avenue on a day spread with sunlight, and a continuum of power walkers, bikers and runners, passing by in whiffs of urgency, I took my time. I didn’t feel like flexing, just evaporating into the shadows, and the moving clouds. I walked by a little adobe, that once was a dump site for empty bottles, cartons, worn out furniture, and piles of wood. A year later, the yard is almost condominium clean. Just as I was passing the driveway, the little woman whom I’d seen walking up Palace with her bag of groceries, appeared like a gust of history in the driveway of her adobe casita. She wore her heavy blanket like coat and a bandanna on her head. Regardless of weather, she’s bundled up in the same woven Indian coat and long wool skirt. I stood next to her, a foot or so taller, and she unraveled history, without my prompting. She told me about the Martinez family, the Montoyas, and the Abeytas, all families she knew, all with streets named after them. Estelle asked me my name, and then took my hand in her weathered unyielding grip, ‘Oh I had an Aunt named Lucero, and we called her LouLou.’ She didn’t let go of my hand, and then she told me that the families, some names I’ve forgotten, bought homes on Palace in 1988 for $50,000, She shook her finger to demonstrate her point. ‘You know how many houses the Garcias bought? Five! Then they fixed them up and sold them.’
I could have stood there in the gravel driveway listening to Estelle all afternoon. She owns the oral history I love to record; but it is difficult to understand her, she talks with the speed of a southwest wind. We parted and I thought about the times in my life when the smallest of interactions elevates my spirit. In older people, who are not addicted to gadgets and distant intimacy, I’m reminded of how speed socializing has diminished the opportunity for a sidewalk chat.
Aside from her legal phantazmorphia, the house has critical repairs, so she is meeting with contractors, plumbers, electricians, and masonry companies to tend to one thing after another. As she reflects on all these repairs and sees her savings account drop by fifty percent, her demeanor is not as she expected; she feels a sense of reward for taking responsibility for the house and hertenants.
“ I decided to eliminate debt by consolidating outstanding balances into one low-interest payment; I didn’t use the air-conditioner, buy favorite foods, go to my favorite tavern, or purchase anything that didn’t get categorized as home repair. I even quibbled with my Physician about an in-person visit and asked for a Telemed visit.”‘
‘No, there would be no frivolous spending. This new style of surviving she called Anorexic Finance. When she relayed this to me, I high-fived her because I’ve never been in that position and thought it was commendable.
I used to sit on the stoop in front of my Los Angeles studio. The dog walkers, gardeners, and residents formed the stage, with a backdrop of high-rise, two-million-dollar condominiums and vacant concrete terraces. From that, thoughts randomly tapped: I wish I owned that, wish I had that car, wish I had that garden. It is amusing how one’s view can determine one’s thoughts.
In Ballston Spa,where I lived the last six years, homes are two-hundred years old, or newly built to emulate the Victorian era. The automobile is sturdy, practical, and unwaxed. The way of this wonderment brings simplicity into my life. There’s no need to dress up and fit in; it’s the opposite here, dress down to fit in, or, like me, a combination. I am omitted, observed, and questioned, because, well, I never learned the answer to that, until this moment. Locals love locals, and I have never been one.
Junk Removal Day with the best people. First trip: 25 pieces taken. Second 25 pieces. Follies was a vacation rental, so multiply everything by 4. I am adding on, and Mr. Big says, “Okay, don’t worry. A few hundred.” SHELDRICK JUNK REMOVAL. From 10am to 3pm, Big and his wife, Fay, who is the Hulk, and one other helper removed like 50 worn, torn, outdated furnishings, and joked all the way: washing machine up ten stairs, heavy wooden furniture, three beds, I could not believe there strength and amusing jokes, going up and down 35 steps. Sometimes I choose right and this was one of them. Fay survived breast cancer, and Mr. Big several strokes and they worked like Olympians.
I RECUSE MYSELF FROM NOISE, LOUD TALKERS, LOUD LAUGHTER, LOUD MACHINERY. I RECUSE MYSELF FROM CLUTTER, AS I DISASSEMBLE MY HOME, AND PLACE BOXES AND BUBBLE WRAP IN EVERY ROOM, SO I AM PREPARED TO PACK. I’M DOING BETTER THAN 2018 AND 2019, WHEN I DISASSEMBLED AND REASSEMBLED HOMES 5 TIMES. NOW I FEEL LIKE GIVING IT ALL AWAY, AND LEAVING WITH TWO SUITCASES. THE INCREDIBLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING, A FILM, BUT IT APPLIES TO MY STATE OF MIND. I LOVED COLLECTING EVERY ITEM, BOOK, RECORD, PRINT, BRIC-A-BRAC, AND FURNITURE I CHOSE. AT THAT MOMENT, I LOVED IT. BUT BREAKING UP WITH POSSESSIONS IS LIKE BREAKING A RELATIONSHIP. IT’S TIME, WHEN IT COMES, UNPREPARED, ANXIETY AND APPREHENSION TAKE AWAY SLEEPING SWEETLY AND WAKING UP SMILING. THE PASSAGE FROM ONE ERA TO THE NEXT TAKES WHAT I’M NOT SURE I HAVE, BUT MUST.
“Young woman sitting on the books and typing, toned image”
The world we are living is not familiar; everyday it erupts with an inconceivable corruption, acts of violence, and viciousness against humanity. It’s not the Italian roast coffee that wakes me up, it’s world news. I feel less and less a part of humanity and more like a wild creature chewing on an old bone. My outlook on social clubs, synagogue and church congregations, membership clubs, group classes, and let’s meet up organizing makes a lot of sense now. Especially if you don’t have children or a life mate. The temptation to retreat into a decorous world of fantasy is irresistible. Experience taught me that losing it, giving up, hugging the pillow with film noir on the screen will revive me. It may take two days or more, permitting freedom to indulge in the abstract absurdity, tragedy, and comedy of life available to me.Two days are up: six noir films: Sleeping Tiger, Dangerous Crossing, Ruthless, Finger of Guilt, Wicked, and Cast a Dark Shadow. All suspenseful meandering around themes of greed, deception, romance, uneven love, and forgiveness.
It’s a great big wide wide world if you leave the doors open. Now that the house has sold, I am fortunate that all those years studying real estate and proving myself by placing money in the boss’s pocket, trickled into my life. The first triplex I bought was in 2002, the one that sold, The Follies House. The rent provided income and paid the mortgage. For my Gen X and Millennial pals, I say this: buy a duplex somewhere you want to live.
I’m feeling overwhelmed as I go through this four-story unit and decide what to keep, give away, and sell. Perplexed as I go through boxes of journals dating back to 1996. I assume I won’t live to preview them for new stories, but I sill feel a sense of belonging to them. I have learned after selling a dozen furnishings that once they are gone, it takes about a week to stop lamenting the loss.
Writing somberly is parallel to writer’s block. It’s not a block, really, more like a resistance to engaging feelings. If I place all the options on a puzzle board, this leads to the center. A fractured life impacts emotional posture and is not unlike physical posture. We slump or stand tall. We love instead of neutralizing, we are inspired instead of stagnant, we romance our passions, and we live to love. My heart is at the starting gate to love again, but the racetrack is missing. I’m undercover! I watch Blacklist or some foreign film in the evening. Most weekdays, I’m circulating between finance, selling furnishings online, shoveling snow, and researching acronyms because the news uses them so often.
The vortex of discontent is a punctured life.The windows of my home reflect the splendor of nature that plays all day long in the winter. I’m spending more time watching sky stage plays: clouds still, clouds moving, colliding, changing colors, sculpted into aberrations of animals and faces, than cognitive thinking. My collection of records and CDs accompanies the scenery. When I’m sorrowful, I listen to Ennio Morricone; when I need a lift, Vivaldi, Sundays it is Turandot or some other Opera. When I’m a go-go girl, Swing, Salsa, or The Stones, when I feel alone, Sarah Vaughn, Nancy Wilson, and Etta James, for writing inspiration Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and Annie Lenox.
I don’t see any remedy commercials for a fractured heart. By tomorrow, the despair could vanish, like the rain that puddled us for the last two weeks.Everything I’ve experienced is good in the beginning. So, to begin, I will listen to Begin the Beguine.
“Begin the Beguine” is a popular song written by Cole Porter. Porter composed the song between Kalabahi, Indonesia, and Fiji during a 1935 Pacific cruise aboard Cunard’s ocean liner Franconia. In October 1935, it was introduced by June Knight in the Broadway musical Jubilee, produced at the Imperial Theater.
Henry miller writes in his book, “ Henry Miller on Writing” “Whoever greatly suffers must be, I suppose a sublime combination of a sadist and masochist.’ I suppose that a few of my friends have aligned me as such, and now that I write this, as in all writing, answers blink at you, and then the soul receives them like a wafer of wonder.Perhaps I am, but where that evolved and manifested, I have no time to think about it because the sun is out. I must sit in my newly designed sunroom, a small book library alcove that receives the sun at noon. When I returned with my phone to snap a photograph, the sundisappeared like a footprint in the sky. Every moment needs attention. It’s twenty degrees outdoors. I am modestly adjusted and receive a thousand weekly warnings to get a flu shot. My doctor has tried persuading me to get a flu shot for three years. I responded that I’d never had the flu and that my last cold was in 2012. He chuckled and asked the next question.
I shot this today with impetuous acceptance of more snow. I swept the stairs, removed branches, listened to music, and smiled. It will be my last winter in this quixotic, charming, historic village that taught me not to complain, instead to make it understandable.
My Favorite home must be sold. After twenty-four years, Letting go is going slow, packing, and viewing my possessions and antiques. Today, I found a matchbook in perfect condition from the Stork Club, playbills, and musical sheets. I wish I hadn’t opened my steamer trunk; it’s like looking at another woman.
SILHOUETTE of a Taos night out in 2006. It begins with the sunset—a bubble-gum pink sash that swirls like taffy just above the distant hillside. The transcending forms and colors in the sky distract me; they silence me, keeping me from turning on the television or answering the phone.
The sunset has settled into my routine. I watch it from the roof garden over our Adobe Home and Gallery every night. In the midst of dressing to attend an art auction at the Millicent Rogers Museum, the sun has vanished. The sky turns Taos blue; a luminous oil pigment canvas blue that appears like an endless tunnel you can walk through. As I descend the staircase and cross over the ménage of piles shoved in a corner to allow SC to paint, I think, “This is going to be my home. I’m still here” Adventures in Livingness
In the courtyard where new flagstone has been laid, and a mud ditch blocks the exit, Rudy hitches me on his back and carries me out the side entrance through Tony Abeyta’s yard. Tony’s yard is piled with sand from our flagstone project, and my high-heeled black suede shoes are not at all practical for crossing New Mexican dunes. This is how the evening begins. Out in the parking lot, we circle around once and stop in Robert’s gallery. He has offered me his turquoise squash seed necklace to wear at the auction. The necklace is from Turkey, and sells for $1,800. Millicent Rogers events always attract women with extravagant jewelry, and Robert knows I have no such possessions. He hands me the necklace and says, have fun.
At times like this, I can forget the faces and routines I lived in Solana Beach and feel swept into a labyrinth of unfamiliar vignettes. There are two police cars in the rear of the parking lot, the church looms like a fortress of wet mud, and SC is listening to The Band CD we picked up in Santa Fe. I slide into the car, ensuring my shoes don’t fill with gravel.
There is very little street light along the desert road, and cars approach you at disarming speeds. For newcomers, the pale yellow line that separates oncoming traffic, roaming animals, hitchhikers, leather-clad bikers, and abandoned pets is of no comfort or value. Boundaries and civilities between people are vague, and sometimes, conversations elope into poetry.
At the Millicent Rogers Museum, the director, Jill, who is there to welcome each guest, greets us at the carved wooden doors. This museum was once a home, like most museums in Taos.Each room is an envelope of Native American jewelry, ceramics, paintings, weaving, textiles, and metalwork sealed with Millicent Rogers’s ethereal presence. By coming to Taos and bridging her New York chic with southwestern individuality, she set global trends in fashion, art, and living. he museum collection includes some of her designs that evolved from her residency in the desert. She moved here in 1947 and died here in 1953. Although she could have chosen anywhere in the world to live, she settled in the unaltered, surreal lunar beauty of Taos.
I wandered through the tightly packed rooms, alternately viewing the guest’s attire and jewelry. The woven wraps, belts, and hats worn by men and women form a collage of individual expression. Almost everyone seems to attract attention by the texture and color of his or her attire. It is a festive traditional look, with southwestern accessories paired with jeans or silk dresses. If you come to Taos, look for a belt buckle, one piece of Native American jewelry, and one piece of art.
When the auction was announced, I admired the same etching as the woman next to me. She remarked that the artist was also the teacher of one of her children. I learned that Ellen had six children and 11 grandchildren. She was petite with curly blonde hair, and I liked her instantly. I told her I was a writer.
“So am I,” she answered.
Rather than talk about her work, she began talking about her daughter, who is also a writer.
“I’m so lucky–all my children and grandchildren are creative and artistic.”
It was obvious that her life was a garden of earthly delights and that she had raised many roses. When the auction began, she vanished, and I quickly viewed the art before returning to the two etchings. They were both sold.
As I was walking out, I bumped into Ellen. She was clutching the etchings.
“So, you bought them,” I said.
“Oh, yes, I had to have them.”
She left me with a beaming smile and a closing remark I often hear: “Welcome to Taos.”
I love hearing that so much I don’t want to stop saying, I just moved here. After the auction, we stopped in Marco’s Downtown Bistro, where we joined an improvisational party. It started when Marco introduced us to his friends, Pablo and Joan, who were visiting from Santa Fe.
The dim, glowing melon adobe walls of the bistro, Marco hugging everyone, Joan’s melodious, high-pitched laughter, Pablo telling jokes, Rudy laughing, and then Philip arriving to tell stories crossed over from strangers in a bistro to a fast-rolling film. The conversation and laughter surfed breathlessly from one person to another.
Joan remarked, “My fifteen minutes. This is the best for me. The first time you meet someone, you’re both talking without effort. It’s so perfect.”
We closed the bistro past midnight. Marco had gone home. Joan decided to stay at a friend’s house. Philip agreed to drive to Santa Fe the next day, and we took Tylenol before bed.
Not every night out in Taos is like Joan’s fifteen minutes, but chances are you will have something to write home about. The beginning of Gallery LouLou Taos, NM
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In the mood for pasta tonight, a few hits of green chili to flavor fest the marina, shrimp, garlic, and heaps of asiago cheese, yes sounds good. One step into the kitchen, and there on the electric stove burner is a mouse … I screamed, did you hear me? Then I stomped my feet and it lowered back into the passageway.
” I need emergency treatment, you won’t believe what I just saw,” The receptionist at Pest Control, replied, it sounded like she may be smiling.
” What?”
” A mouse found his way up to the stovetop grill, I mean not all the way, half his body was visible! ” She chuckled, for a full minute.
” I’m more afraid of mice than bears, foxes, or anything. I know it sounds irrational but I didn’t grow up here. “
” Well, let’s get you scheduled… let’s see now, we can get there on Thursday next week.”
” I cannot go in the kitchen..”
” Gee, I am sorry. I noticed that we were there in March of this year.”
“Yes, nine-hundred dollars here! You won’t charge me for this next visit.”
” Well, let me see what I can do.”
Enter, Gary, with a toolbox, and a howdy doody kind of introduction. He appeared as interested in ridding mice as I do shoveling snow. He’s going to retire soon, he says as he pokes around the kitchen, points to the openings, talks some more about retiring, and applies a bit of killer foam behind the stove.
He sets a few traps in the basement as I watch and snap photos.
” Are there any dead ones in the traps from last time?”
” Sure, I see two.”
“Okay, I’ll be upstairs.”
I covered all the stovetop grills with pot tops, ordered disinfectant, and covered every counter with paper towels. I went out to dinner for the next week, feeding on grilled sandwiches and soup. More sightings and drips of mouse visits provoked a second call to Family Pest. They sent out another treatment expert. Gary shuffled in, forty years younger than the previous technician.
My friend JoMarie who is Martha Stewart without a TV show told me to place pine cones dressed with cinnamon. So I listened.
” Mice are difficult, they slip through a fingernail-wide opening.”
“Well, then let’s foam up all those fingernails.”
” I’ll set some traps downstairs. I will move the stove out and see if there is an opening.”
He pulled it out, and alas, a five-by-five opening into the basement.
“ I have to have this blocked off right?”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea, we don’t do that.”
” I figured.”
The next call went to a carpenter, he showed up and hammered in sheetrock as he talked about his six kids. He is twenty-four, I tried to do the math, maybe it’s a sympathy card. He agreed to take care of five more repairs in the house and charged me modestly.
A week later after three canceled appointments I crossed his name off the list and explored more carpenters on the web. This will be the seventh I called. Paul showed up, speaking amicably, obliging, harp-like voice and, ready to work. That was two weeks ago, he said he had a bad cold. I’ve read about Lazy Girl Jobs, but carpenters and handymen? Half the population in my village are in the trades so I’m miffed. Utube is not going to teach me how to drywall ceilings, replace a window, box in a pipe, or bring down heavy antique furniture from the attic down thirty stairs without falling down, and most likely on a mouse.
I’m an elf who spends her days writing, translating legal documents, and fussing over the unfixed. I’d rather be monitoring sunshine, waves, surfers, and seagulls… until then, home away from home are adventures in livingness. DEL MAR, CA.
ADVENTURERS IN SINGLE LIVINGNESS 