Three days later: The door is locked now, it will pop open now and then, in my interior rearview mirror. My secret can only be revealed after mounds of trust have been sifted and sealed. The former LouLou trusted, effortlessly, so the truth is I cannot behave that way anymore. Or can I?
It is the most destabilizing force of emotion to accept I trusted someone who betrayed our thirty-five year “Huckleberry Friend” song. I don’t know how anyone else adapts to this. I’m kinda staring out the window, like a cat staring at an unreachable mouse. When I’m in this mood I listen to Bobby Darin and Tony Bennett, I’m a bleeding nostalgic. Photo Credit Philip Townsend. ” London in the Swinging Sixties.” 
LIFESTYLE
HOPSCOTCHING THE TRUTH
WHEN YOU TOUCH THE TRUTH: by thought, word of mouth, friend, or by a dream, however, it comes, and completely unexpectedly it is, the blessing is it came. 
When it is closure, to events and persons in those events, and if you examine your part, what you played, was it original or falsified, was it genuine, and was it worth it. Asking myself these questions, as the door, locked sealed and intendable, must be the abstraction of goodbye, delete, it’s over. My double vision, the child must behave for now, and let the adult lead me. I tell myself over and over, to keep that door closed, and look to now, the moments, they may starve me of imaginations and dreams, and that’s just what happens when a change has arrived at your doorstep. I do hate goodbyes, never have been an example of someone who moves on, like an octopus, my arms hang on to the best people, places, and homes in my life.
Three days later: The door is locked now, it will pop open now and then, in my interior rearview mirror. My secret can only be revealed after mounds of trust have been sifted and sealed. The former LouLou trusted, effortlessly, so the truth is I cannot behave that way anymore. Or can I?
It is the most destabilizing force of emotion to accept I trusted someone who betrayed our thirty-five year Huckleberry Friend trust. I don’t know how anyone else adapts to this. I’m kinda staring out the window, like a cat staring at an unreachable mouse. When I’m in this mood I listen to Bobby Darin and Tony Bennett, I’m a bleeding nostalgic.
AN EMOTIONAL ATTITUDE
Earlier today, I stopped into bring Blossom a gift, recently re
named from Christine as she reminds me of a flower. Her curly braided brown hair, pink lipstick, birch brown eyes, and flowing printed dress, just formed that image of a bouquet. She was leaning on the glass display of her boutique, (Amazing Finds, in the village of Ballston Spa) eyes wide and bonded to the glass
window.
( Downtown Ballston Spa, settled in 1771)
An instant greeting of, “How’d it go? You look happy. Was it painful?’
My bandaged nose, from surgery last week to remove cancer concerned her, as her flowery eyes turned into studied binoculars. Our conversation drifted into a dialogue about attitude. In the eight months, I’ve lived here and stopped to chat, like four times a week, Blossom has not once displayed melancholy or agitation. Instead, she draws me out of my moody anxiousness (I’m that way. Too emotional) and into laughter and joviality.
” You’re always so positive. How do you do it?” I asked.
” Here’s what I do, I will tell you. Every morning I wake up and write down whatever comes to mind– don’t even think about it, just listen to your thoughts. Write down five thoughts, then go back and cross off the negative ones.”
” Interesting. I journal.”
” That’s different– this works. I wake up grateful, no matter what shit is going on in my life.”
” I’m not that way. I’m too emotional about what happens in my life.”
” Why?”
” Wish I knew, I guess I’m a reactionary. I wish you knew me when I was really happy, content with my life.”
” Forget the past, you gotta let that go. You have it inside you now. I see it, even though you have a lot of obstacles, I know you’re a good person, and you got legs!
” Wish I had your breasts!
“Hah-hah! Listen I want you to do what I said, wake up with what you have and not what you don’t have. Love the purse too by the way.” We hugged and I trotted off, a bit of a dance to my step and a smile on my face. She touched my emotional gear, gave it a push, and into the night. Instead of arguing with myself that I should go out and meet people, mingle, laugh, my evening was music and film, emotions like floating musical notes until midnight.
Three days later, Dorian strikes and my head turned outward, the images on television seemed staged, the aerial footage presented an island of trash floating in dump water. How do they rebuild those miles of destruction? The emotions we have monitored from the comfort of our homes or wherever you happen to be are as one. News anchors drop bashing in the tidepool of politics, and sordid revolting details about Jeffrey Epstein, or the latest protest. I imagine every one of you is horrified, maybe slightly in shock to grasp the velocity of Mother Nature. Floridians are locked up like school children. My friends in Miami cling to one another, as the warnings are now so intensified, the fear detonated functioning life. I’ve never lived through a hurricane; a few tornadoes and my nerves were wiggling from those events. Life, when we come together in emotions is the hope that we can do it when we are not threatened.
Sitting on the porch of Follies House in the wooded hillsides of Saratoga County, NY sealed in verdant shades, tickled by a tap of breeze, only enough to cause the slightest of tones, much like what I am listening to Little Girl Blue by Oscar Petersen. Anais wrote extensively about jazz writing when she lived in New York and frequented all the jazz clubs. So, with my emotions, the music, the serenity of East High Street on a Saturday, white butterflies and cotton ball clouds granulate into daydreaming, and neutrality.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
I tried Blossom’s idea and surprised to find that the negatives are not life-threatening, painful, or disastrous in any way. The positives are it is September in New York, my windows are newly cleaned, so I can see the leaves sprout into golden shades, nothing broke in the house this week, and my refrigerator is full. The essentials of livingness, a partner to warn me from misadventures, a working laptop and printer, friends phone call and texts, oh, and money for perfume and lipstick.
Yesterday I stopped in to see Blossom. ” Pick something out, I love your present. … here try this shawl. It looks like you.” 
WEST TO EAST-PART TWO
THE LAWN MOWERS.
I READ THAT GRASS GROWS AN INCH A WEEK IN THE NORTHEAST and so the neighbors mow once a week. Then they edge, weed wack, then they blow. Some are more finicky than others, I can see them from my bedroom window. Some wear expressions of an artist, intensely serious and meticulous, others mow in business suits on motorized stand-up mowers, and some mow with a visible resentment, an overly redundant but necessary chore in the Northeast.
I don’t mow, I hired a couple, Matt and Jessica. Matt mows with his legs wide apart, no gloves or sunglasses, no earplugs, and Jessica blows. She wears the blower mechanism on her back, her long tanned naturally sculpted arms maneuvering as if she was vacuuming the living room rug. I wait until they have almost finished to greet them on the porch.
” Life sucks,” Matt calls out to me with the motor still running.
” Yes, it does. What’s happened?”
” My daughter got into a car accident on prom night, seven thousand dollars later. He wipes his forehead of sweat.”
” Is she alright?”
“Another driver crashed into them. How’s it look, nice right?”
” Excellent.”
I invited them into the house, for a look at the furnishings I’m selling.”
” Wow, you love music and vinyl! I do too. Is that Mick Jagger in the photograph?”
I took that on to ruminate about my former Santa Fe Gallery of the music photography of the sixties, the Rolling Stones, Hendrix, Beatles, and as soon as my boasting sounded halfway boring, I shut up. I really don’t think my past is important to anyone but me unless they are photographers. I used to sneer at people who only talked about what they used to do. How life revisits you at sixty-something when the bragging projects have ceased.
” You own the house?”
” Half owner?”
” Where’s your other half?”
” Missing in action. It’s all up to me now.”
” That sucks. Listen, if you ever need advice about the Northeast, call me– I know everyone. You lived in Santa Fe right?”
” Yes, eleven years.”
” I hear it’s beautiful.”
” Well, it is, and it was, but I’m here now.”
” You going back? I mean why the hell stay here?”
” Maybe? I just don’t know.” Jessica tilted her head as women do when they see a falling sister.
” Okay, I like you, you’re a nice lady. We’re friends now.”
” Are we good enough friends that I postdate the check for three days?”
” Hell yes! I don’t need the money. Don’t even worry.” I walked into the music room and picked up a double album of Janis, still in the cover.
” You like Janis?”
They both said oh my God I love her. I gave them the album. That’s what friends do, reciprocate.
Matt and Jessica come every two or three weeks because I love grass. The wind blows it, the curve of it when it bends, just like I love long hair. One time I greeted them in my interview outfit, you know, buttons and high heels. Matt said something like, “Lose the scarf and fit in, or they will charge you double.”
If I knew how to manage the Northeast weather, sensibility and had a big family, I’d adopt a cat and get a New York drivers license.
2003 The Village Adopted my Slogan.
BLACKLIST- NETFLIX
The Blacklist | Netflix
netflix.com
NETFLIX- BLACKLIST-
Agent Keen and Reddington are educating me on how to fight evil and how to survive. All of my problems are theirs in some episode: mental torture, financial sabotage, abandonment, physical pain, betrayal, threats, and deceit. The only problem, is I am up till 3am watching it! In my humble movie mania opinion, this is the most outstanding drama-suspense-script perfect series. James Spader blows me away with his finesse in dialogue and authenticity. And how I wish to be more like Agent Keen, played superbly sincere by Megan Boone. There is a part of you in one of the characters, I’ll bet on that.
https://www.netflix.com/title/70281312
WEST LOS ANGELES TO EAST SARATOGA SPRINGS NY
A metallic sky is blowing the cotton ball clouds with the force of a lawn blower, a collage of sunflower leaves brush beauty in the windows of my home, and the act of observation becomes my pastime, here in the Northeast.
The Village of Ballston Spa.
When I used to sit on the stoop in front of my Westwood studio, it was the dogwalkers and gardeners, visitors and residents that my eyes laid on, with a backdrop of high rise two million dollar condominiums, with concrete terraces, usually vacant, that formed the view and from that, thoughts randomly trapped, wish I owned that, wish I had that car, wish I had that man. It is amusing, how one’s view can determine one’s thoughts.
West Los Angeles. 
On the street where I live now, homes are two hundred years old, or newly built to imitate the Victorian era. The automobile is sturdy, practical, and unwaxed. The way of this wonderment brings simplicity into my life. No need to dress up and fit in, it’s the opposite here, dress down to fit in, or like me, a combination. You are not watched, observed, questioned or complimented, because, well I don’t know the answer, not yet. This is the day after a storm. Half of a tree collapsed in my front yard.
The Polar Freeze had to arrive with me, and the test was not so much about the snow outdoors, it was how to stay warm indoors without running up my gas bill to five hundred a month. Luckily, I found my Irish wool sweater in the basement, that is so large I can wear three sweaters under it, then the leggings, knee-high woolen socks, hats, and gloves even indoors. My activity was limited to bringing the furniture from the attic, basement and unloading the UBox from Los Angeles. Boxes of books and china, photographs, records, and bric a brack from so much antiquing. Three months later the house was staged. I was left with a fractured elbow, but the scenery indoors plays a critical part in your emotional health, because it is too cold to play outdoors.
Most of my conversations came in Nomads, where I’d have a Cortado and some eggs, and talk with the owners who were also my tenants. I begged myself to interview them properly with a recorder, but I never did. They astounded my fictional idea of a millennial, not being general but based on what I observed in Los Angeles. In LA they don’t talk to adults unless you have a common bond; a tattoo or a protest sign. Nick and Alex have the play stations, all the tech knowledge of a Microsoft department, but, instead, they talked about literature, foreign films, and psychology. These are my subjects so if we began the conversation at eleven am, we finished at noon, minus the interruption of a customer. Many times, I’d ask for an explanation, and they’d answer without snickering or amusement. I recall one time I asked, ” Don’t you get tired of hearing adults say, you’ll understand when you get older (they are both nineteen years old) and Nick answered within a second, ‘No, because I know a lot they don’t. ‘Don’t forget I used the internet when I was five years old.’
The customers, mostly local residents, come solo or in large groups, families with toddlers, mothers and daughters, uncles, and nephews, everyone here that I met has a huge amount of family, which caused me some hesitation when asked, ‘you have family here, don’t you?’ After that question dozens of times, I thought maybe I should make one up. I’m not and never have been a believable liar.
The volume of their voices is another adjustment, not in a bad way, just a curiosity, they do not contain their vocal strength. Maybe it is a part of the heritage, just the New York way of conversing, but it is self-effacing genuine. I never detected a play on pretense or arrogance. Imagine how refreshing, like a gulp of spring water from a waterfall, after the playacting that overrides conversation in Los Angeles. To be continued.
Saratoga Spa Park.
THE DAY BENJAMIN SIEGEL DIED.
I was writing a lengthy portrayal of Ben Siegel one day and it occurred to me that he had become a major character in my life. He played a role that someone else should have; a noted author, journalist, or poet. Ben Siegel changed my history because I had to learn to love him. Learning to love him, meant erasing everything I had read or heard. It is said he was a ruthless killer, a savage, violent, and he loved to kill. I turned to look at a photograph of my mother in my room. I was told that she loved Ben and I believe that is true from a very credible family member.
Where once I believed my mother was naïve and uninformed about Ben; now I know this wasn’t the case. She knew. I‘ve read the news articles of the day, the FBI files, columns, and I’ve spoken to people who were there. My mother traveled by train to New York with my father, Ben, and Esta, his wife, and the FBI were in the next compartment! The night of the murder Esta gave my father all the jewelry Ben was wearing. Ben and Dad were like brothers. Today marks the seventy-second year since he was murdered. Do you know, at least three times a week, someone writes about Ben. Today it was the reopening of the Formosa Cafe in Hollywood where Dad and Ben parlayed the day’s bets and business. If I could have met one man it would be Benjamin
Siegel. 
Dad in Court.
