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 From 10am to 3pm, Big and his wife, Fay, who is the Hulk, and one other helper removed like 50 worn, torn, outdated furnishings, and joked all the way: washing machine up ten stairs, heavy wooden furniture, three beds, I could not believe there strength and amusing jokes,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’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
ADVENTURES IN LIVINGNESS began with lightning and thunder. My bed braced against the window didn’t alarm me like when I first moved here, and the storms startled me with their voluminous sound. After five years, the fears of weather, creaking noises, bats, mice, or a running deer as I drive have sifted through the thread of experience. As the first attempt to accept relocation coming, I am unwinding with you, not at you, because you’re all closer to me than you think.
I begin late on Friday, watching a half-lit scene with descending sunlight, the other bathed in asphalt gray, the solid remains of this week’s punishing climate. Who cares about that after the news this week? I imagine every parent was stung in a way they may never have felt before. Everyone loves children, even those who didn’t have them, cherish their innocence and liberating emotions. I asked a friend, how it affected him, he replied, “ I didn’t know I can’t watch the news.”
“ You never watch the news?”
“ Some stuff on social media.”
“ The Mystic Camp tragedy didn’t come up?.”
“ No.. what happened?”. So I gave him some of the details, and when his expression turned dour, I stopped. Something another friend mentioned to me was Duty to Bare Witness, as we were talking about the Ukraine War. Some call it tragedy trolling, I suppose that’s another kind of news watching. Between the bubble wrap and boxing of what I think I’ll take, I listen to some news. I realize I’m not such an immoral person after listening to cantankerous battles on the hill.
This city is drowsily awaiting the start of the Saratoga Race Track today. It is a sacrosanct epic convergence of rich and poor, doused in jewels or leather neck chokers. I love loyalty, and this event dates back to the 1880’s. It’s the oldest race track in the country. When I had a press pass, and didn’t wait in lines to attend, interview, and observe the festivities, it just can’t be forgotten. I’m familiar with the groups that oppose horse racing, viewing it as a degenerate sport that harms both horses and gamblers. I understand that, considering my father was a gambler and horse lover, but it goes on for thousands who feel different. Can we not allow one to enjoy the other not?.
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Sifting through collectibles, I found my letter to Amtrak. Many years ago, I wrote to the executives at Amtrak with this idea: Give a writer a free ride for a long journey, and allow them to write about it. Then, engage reporters at the different stops to show up and give the writer a pass to visit the city or town and meet the nuances that no one knew about. I felt pressed to seek escape, ‘I’m going to live on Amtrak!’ The idea blossomed over some cabernet, and I lingered there in the kitchen, while I cooked up this idea, of riding Amtrak across America, while writing about subjects I choose from a long list, and develop it into a documentary, and a book. I realized how much effort it would take to launch and live this idea that was born in the kitchen over a bottle of cab. I spent the day researching and looking at the bedroom suites on Amtrak. I went to sleep imagining myself on the train, and the inherent comedy that would roll out, from living in a room the size of shoe box. I watched movies about trains, and started reading Paul Theroux’s The Old Patagonian Express. Del Mar, watching the Amtrak.
There I am on Amtrak, with a laptop and a recorder, strolling through the aisles, interviewing people, and then I’m in some unfamiliar city, hopping from one place to another, and writing in cafes and adventuring. The illusion became real, like a dream that represents reality. I do see myself on such an adventure. I must sculpt new routines, learn how to do the things I’m not used to doing. I wrote to Amtrak, and I did not get a response. Several years later, they invited a writer to do what I had suggested. As the day descends into afternoon, I am perched in between, clinging to the wisdom of my posse, whom I call on for solace, for answers, for encouragement, and you readers, who keep me adventuring in writing.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
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.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
“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.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
ADVENTURES IN LIVINGNESS FALLS ON. An unusual time to be writing at four in the afternoon. The clouds drew me up to my writing desk, where layers of clouds forms teased me into believing it wasn’t hot and humid outside. I decided to write the column.
I knew I shouldn’t write on my laptop because it is deconstructing. I can’t part with this laptop until I outline my next book. The sky drew me to the desk, and so I worked around internet outages.
I only had a few paragraphs from the afternoon, and when I returned to the column after dinner, the whole piece took another course, and I was writing not what I intended, but it was like sailing on a perfect course. It was writing without the editor, meaning the inner editor that sometimes swoops down and cuts your nails off. I was writing about many things that happened. When I finished, I went to save the document and the laptop responded negatively. It vanished. I thought about trying to recapture the column, trying to reinvent the stream of consciousness that seemed to be marathoning through my soul.
There were so many voices speaking all at once. I had to figure out how to connect the moment the leaves reminded me of Saratoga Springs, and how we must place our print on the tablet, on the screen, and dismiss the reader who judges where writing takes us. Sometimes, a reader knows me from the halcyon days, when my light was neon and my spirit a flame. They don’t want to see me now, draped in muted gray and hardship hardened. “Nobody loves you when you’re down and out.” Jimmy Cox
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
ADVENTURES IN LIVINGNESS IS ON A HIKE. Not the physical kind that was once a weekly episode in New Mexico, these days I hike in my head, it’s as wobbly, uneven, rocky, and dangerous as a hike down the Gorge in Taos, NM.
The path I’m hiking is set off by relocation, once the house sells, which is on the fingernail of being sold. Each morning as I wake to my dreamy bedroom, I am deranged by the thought of leaving twenty-five hundred square feet of Victorian victorious comfort.I will be downsizing to a six-hundred-square-foot studio. I used to love studios, but this house has drained that love, and now reality is staring me in the face, a word I despise as an admitted non-realist and dreamer. The path that follows this is where I am relocating to? Relocation is a trend, according to some minor research. Boomers move closer to their children. If you don’t have children or a partner to bring out the compass and use a methodical ruler to figure this equation out, it comes down to finance. That’s the ticker that keeps bringing me back to reality. I should not have left Del Mar, CA. Have you ever said that? It’s the inkblot on decisions when I thought everything I did would work out until it didn’t. And I’d turn the steering wheel back to where I belong. I do not belong here, and that’s not because of aversion or harsh judgment. It’s a marvel if you like three courses of simple conversation, activity, and entertainment. The weather and I do not get along, the summer is sticky, humid, and last week we were in double digits, one hundred. I spent a few days next to a non-effective window air conditioner with an ice washcloth on my head. In the winter, I’m in battle gear with four sweaters and shawls and all of that, not to mention the ice and snow that kept me frosty for months. You can take a girl out of Southern California, but she’ll come back.
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Borrowing from a post on FB, you spend the first thirty years of your life gathering possessions, and the next thirty years eliminating. I’m eliminating, sort of, I cruise by my ten boxes of books, and every day it’s on the list to tape them closed. Then there are all the antique figurines, gambling paraphernalia, décor from the vacation rental days, and I think at last count, fifty hanging prints. I don’t need to measure anything, this will not fit in a studio. Plus, I still have a storage unit in Santa Fe, filled with items I cannot remember. Is there such a thing as relocation therapy?
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
Photo by u041au0430u0440u0438u043du0430 u041au0430u0440u0436u0430u0432u0438u043du0430 on Pexels.com
I watch film noir with an admitted addiction. The grainy black and white stillness, the music scores, the cinematography satisfies more than current cinema . The message comes through, live gracious, selfless, forgiving, brave, and passionate? As I feel these thoughts streaming along, the one that stabs like a knife is passion. That visceral sensibility has driven me throughout my life: about men, mystery,adventure, accomplishment, art, music, dancing, unfamiliar places and faces, and café society rendezvous. A temporary grasp of glee. And when it ends, it goes like this.
Undisclosed strangers will walk in our paths. Cross our hearts and Tread on our minds
Uncertainly We traverse our heart’s discourse Shooting for dreams of undiscovered lands More weightless plans I don’t know if I can see ahead My steps, like pebbles, follow the rush in the river On the edge of the quiver
Skipping towards freedom In summer, rays of light Like a leaf, I break free from the branch,
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
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’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
In one of my books on writing, I read that most writers face the demon in the middle of the novel. The beginning is a gallop, and the end is a relief, but the middle wiggles in and out of your grasp. The middle of our lives reflects this same obscurity.
The middle of a life span reflects all we have accomplished and all we have left incomplete. This is what they call a mid-life crisis. I get it every year. I’ve finally accepted that my constant relocation, reinventing, and restlessness will not be solved. At the bottom of the restlessness is the fear of finding rest more enjoyable than movement. This flotation of comedy rotated around me last night while I stoodout on the porch observing the peacefulness. The scenery of this street is a comforting, historical beauty that comes from the harmony of architecture and nature. The flow of villagers downtown is along two main two-lane streets; all the shops, services, and restaurants are a patchwork, and all the business owners know each other.
I chose Sunday to shut down all communication with the mainland, take the longest bath I can stand, and write. I need a rest, like a chaise lounge on a spacious veranda with honeysuckle, wisteria, and lavender. If you are an artist, the limit is not the sky; it’s everywhere. Nature’s artistry is a full-time exhibition in the Northeast. The view now is of tumbling clouds rolling over; they move slowly, like dough, across the road, while squirrels dart about. Outdoors is where we see the best of life.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
I ‘m thinking about Loren, one of the most original characters in my life. He developed a vernacular unlike anyone I’ve met. It came from growing up in the hood of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Later exclusive Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood, and then returning to Santa Fe. Joined the upper class clientele as a chauffeur. His vernacular was impressive as it collated honesty, and a wit sharp as a razors edge. Loren visits three times a week at least. Snow means silence and hermitizing. I can’t wait to open the door to Luxury Limo Loren and make him brunch. We harmonize for hours; on tones of fretful fear, wicked secrets, confessions and laughter. The delicious crust of survival and our similarities.
If I write down the pleasantries surrounding my life, the blessings rise up and give me a softened comfort. The sweet peace may vanish the next day, or be intercepted by the news, a wreck in the street, an unexpected phone call. The crossroads of everyday life comes and goes. Between all of these uncontrollable incidents we are writing stories that some day will be told in conversation, or written in journals and books. The essence of our changing lives is universal.
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
Uncertainty We traverse our heart’s discourse Shooting for dreams of undiscovered lands More weightless plans I don’t know if I can see ahead My steps, like pebbles,follow the rush in the river On the edge of aquiver
Skipping towards freedom In summer, rays of light Like a leaf, I break free from the branch
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
The long list is what you started as a youth or maybe later. It represents one of those adventures you must do before you die. The list you started without even knowing you were making plans for your future. This list does not have to be in writing, keyed in a smartphone, or posted in Outlook. The long list is about shocking the sensibilities: habits, norms, routines, and coming back unharmed. It is an exceptional journey, and we visualize it while waiting for a flight at the airport, waiting in line for a new driver’s license, or the light turning green. All of the things that we monitor in our lives, like the need to have a cavity filled, updating your platform, passwords, or checking the coolant level, are multiplying, and that short list is so long that we rarely have time to consider the long list. If at random I selected ten long list entries they’d read like this: Safari, Lombardi Italy, Greece, a cruise on the Cunard, a gallery of my own, a husband, a dog and cat, and a place that is quiet, like a ranch. The short list, fix the broken window in my bedroom, fix the roof and ceiling in the guest room, get the three non-working electrcial outlets fixed, the dishwasher, garbage disposal, stage the attic and basement cleaned out, and relocating to a place I’ve not named. 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 desired.
Waiting too long to start an adventure on the long list is what happened to me two weeks ago. I waited twenty years. The journal entry was written in 1986 after visiting Santa Fe, New Mexico, for the first time. It was the weekend of the Burning of Zozobra. I read about it in the visitor guide and saw pictures of the paper Mache statue standing thirty feet tall. The mystical ritual of the burning of Zozobra is intended to wash away all our grief and sorrow that builds up each year, and so they call him Old Man Gloom. I missed the event that first time, and I made the following dozen visits for business and pleasure. Some years, I was within days of seeing Zozobra, but I left because someone was expecting me, or I ran out of money. After twenty years, Zozobra became a symbolic representation of what I must control.
This September of 2006, nothing would stop me from seeing Zozobra. Dodger and I drove down from Taos to Santa Fe late on the afternoon of September 8, and checked into the La Fonda Hotel. This is where I stayed on my first visit to Santa Fe. The anchor of the Plaza and all that happens outside eventually flows inside and settles beneath the cathedral viega ceilings of the hotel lobby. As we arrived on Fiesta weekend, the traditional celebration culminated in a juxtaposition of historical events, cultural exhibitions, parades, handshaking, hugging and margarita’s tipping from arms air born. La Fonda opened its doors to the entire population of New Mexico. .
You can sit on an old Spanish colonial leather chair , sip a tangy margarita and watch the fiesta kick off right in the lobby. The procession of costumed soldiers replicating the Spanish conquistadors marched through the lobby while Dodger and I were checking in. From here, I wandered over to the Concierge Desk and shouted, over the roaring and singing, about dinner reservations. Nancy, the concierge, made reservations, handed me maps and numbers, and turned us loose. That first night we stood under an umbrella in a downpour and watched the Opening Ceremonies in the Plaza, and later hopped in a Pedi cab to Ristra, where we dined on appetizers at the bar and I watched the activity with my notebook stare. I love being inside a strange room full of people, to me it is like starting a new book. I make up stories about the people, or if I am feeling brave, invade someone’s privacy to find what they are about. The diners were too removed, so we left and returned to the Plaza. In a few hours, I would be descending the far side of town to meet Zozobra. Twenty years had passed, and the moment was finally here. I was wearing my new cowboy boots and seated on the Palace Patio, looking into the sheets of rain that soaked all the out-door booths.
“ Are you ready to trek in the rain little mama?”
“ Yes, finally, trust me this time, you will love it. Do you have your earplugs?” Dodger has tinnitus and is implacable about loud noise.
“ Yep. Hope it’s better than trekking in the rain to see Funny Cide race.”
“ You hated it didn’t you?
“ I hated carrying that thirty-pound tote with all your junk.”
We walked about a half-mile in the rain, Dodger moved in stern choreographed steps to avoid the mud. “Damn, these are brand new boots. I’m going back to the hotel and change”
“ Cowboy boots are supposed to be worn looking. You can go to Lucchese tomorrow and have them polished.”
“ No, I just paid five hundred dollars woman, f I’ll bring you another pair in your closet.”
“ We won’t get the same place and you’ll never find me, I wander. So, just suck it up tough rugged warrior of earth, land and sea?”
“ Oh, all right, but I’m not happy.”
“ Look, there’s Zozobra!” Dodger stood in stillness, eyes wide as marbles.
My head was soaked cause I’d forgotten the umbrella and Dodger harmonized a lot of cuss words as we reached the front gates. Gangs and families, children, old timers in costume, scurried to reach the event’s standing front row. As we trudged through the rain, I noticed a crescent of anticipation that united everyone on the path. When we reached the arena, we looked down at the muddy slope as teenagers, mothers and strollers, slid down the hill to the front gates. I envied their loyalty to Zozobra. I was within a hundred feet of the stage, I could not remove myself from the unified adulation for Zozobra. As a ritual to burning the curses of life, people bring letters, photos, rejected elements of a personal tragedy and place them in the circle before the fire light. The crowd had expanded into a gyrating crush of participants, swaying back and forth, cheering the appearance of Zozobra, as he rocked back and forth in flames of fire. A convergence of strange mystical wailing, and an encore of audience howls ignite the lighting of firecrackers that set Zozobra in flames.
What I saw was the burning to the ground and the howls from the musicians that accompanied his death. That happens if you let the long list precede the short one. Dodger stopped grumbling when we returned to the hotel and exclaimed to guests, “We saw Zozobra!”
I’ve written in the genre of Creative Nonfiction, integrating the events through dialogue, journal entries, and a third-person narrative. Within three locations, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, and Saratoga Springs, NY. Greta (me) exposes the mutilation gaslighting abuse inflicts on her emotions, psychology, mental and physical health, and her finances.
LUELLEN SMILEY ADVENTURERS IN LIVINGNESS 