WEEKLY COLUMN ON ADVENTURES IN LIVINGNESS. EVERY DAY INCIDENTS TURNED INSIDE OUT.
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“As a dancer and prancer at heart, my feet are my hands, and my hands are my heart.” 2014
As a child I understood in a subliminal fashion that my father was unlike other neighborhood fathers who left each day to go to the office. My father worked from his home-office in Bel Air, California, and hotels: The Beverly Wilshire Hotel, the Bel Air Hotel, The old Beverly Glen Terrace, and restaurants: La Dolca Vita, Matteos, Copa de Ora, Scandia, La Scala, Purinos, Chasens, and building lobby’s, parking lots, telephone booths, and race tracks. Sometimes he talked about a really big deal he was working on, and other times he said he was returning favors. The exchange of favors between my father and his associate friends was written about way before I came along, by Damon Runyon and Mark Hellinger.
Deals and favors is what I understood as my father’s business. This kind of business made him available to me during the day, while other father’s had left their homes to go to an office. From the outside looking in; we were a stylish Westside family, with colorful friends, members of Sinai Temple, and frequently seen in the company of established Doctor’s, Oilmen, and Attorney’s. My mother went door to door as a Red Cross Volunteer, and my father’s charity went to the United Jewish Federation Fund.
Our next door neighbors were movie actors: John Forsythe, Burt Lancaster, James Gardner and Peter Morton, the legendary Hard Rock Café founder. Peter was a few years older than I, and I loved his mess of tousled curly brown hair, and his gentle birch brown eyes, slanted into the curve of sadness. I waited for him on some mornings to walk me to the bus stop. I remember he looked after his little sister, and maybe I needed looking after too. The memory of his kindness is sealed. Most of the families in the circle had children, and it was only natural that we played together. At some point, all the kids quit meeting up at my house, and even my friends at Bellagio Elementary quit coming to our house.
In the foyer of our home, there was a wall mirror and wall mounted table. That is where my father kept his grey fedora and trench coat. I remember the times he dashed out of the house with the coat and hat.
“Daddy why are you wearing your coat and hat today; it’s not raining?”
“I have to be ready for anything little sweetheart. Daddy never knows what the weather will be like out there.” The answer was a riddle, like almost everything my father taught me. A simplistic statement on the surface, and a double down meaning hidden inside. That is how he communicated with me, and it had a purpose like everything else.
When I was five years old, my father took me out driving in his powder blue the Cadillac, and he made regular stops, to meet a guy about something, had the car serviced and washed, visit a friend, have the poodle bathed, and a stop at Schwab’s to see if there was any action. He loved to sing in the car, with all the windows rolled down, and his arm wrapped around the back of the leather seat. He was as relaxed driving his car as he was lounging at home on the sofa. He drove with one hand, while he sang,
“Que sera sera.” When I asked him what it meant, he said,
“Whatever will be will be, the future is not ours to see, Oue sera sera–that’s the song of life sweetheart.” He didn’t pay attention to stop signs, signals or fellow drivers; he perceived them as second in line. Once a policeman stopped us as we were driving out of Thurston Circle, and my father opened the car door, got out, and, moaned, “Oh my God, Oh God I’m having a heart attack!” I watched him, and yelled out “Daddy Daddy–what’s wrong,” but he kept howling. The policeman didn’t take notice at all. “I’m having a heart attack, let me go officer, I can’t breathe you SOB. You’re going to kill me!” By this time I was crying, and making a lot of noise in the front seat. The policeman then approached my father, and handed him a ticket, while my father continued to whale, “HEART ATTACK.” After the policeman drove away, my father got in the car, steely eyed, and swearing. “Stop crying. “Stop that right now! Can’t you see I’m all right? Daddy just pretended to have an attack. That stinking cop is always hanging around here. He should be ashamed of himself. Policemen have better things to do, then give tickets. ”
“ You’re not sick?” I mumbled.
“ No, of course not. Don’t tell your mother about this sweetheart, she doesn’t understand these things. Remember now what I told you, when I say something you listen, and don’t question it. I have reasons for the way I do things. ”
Adults try to deceive children with whispers, false identities, and lies, but a child has a superior emotional vision. From that day on, I was always watching my father closely to see if he was acting, or playing it straight.
The outings gave me a chance to meet dozens of men and women who exaggerated their feelings for me with overt gestures that sometimes I recognized as an act. Picking out genuine friends developed into a sense I couldn’t necessarily ignore. It got in the way of my comfort around many of my father’s friends later on in life. Nothing seemed to please him more than to present me to his friends, and wait for their praise, “You’re lucky to have such a beautiful little girl, and so well behaved.” I remember this line because it is the same line I heard throughout adolescence. My behavior was conditional on my father’s mood. If I misbehaved, spoiled my dress, or broke something, it would ruin everything. My father would blame my mother, she would retreat from the living room, and I would be left alone. This was the second of the lessons, I learned very young, not to make any mistakes. One error can ruin your whole life, he told me on all the occasions that I erred.
Today, it’s not too surprising that I am ready to sit in the front seat with a man of choice, while he drives around and shows off his driving and leadership skills. It’s not that I just don’t get excited about driving myself, it is one of those childhood activities that evolved into a life long course of pleasure. I escaped working in offices in 1993 after ten years of tolerating the cubicle life, and I work out of my home office much like my father, only I am not involved in illegal activities, even though it seems everything is becoming illegal.
When now, I have finished this personal essay I began two years ago, I went looking for images. A photo of the house I grew up in at 11508 Thurston Circle popped up. Our home burned in the Bel Air fire in 1961, and so I peeked through the interior of the house that was built on the lot after Dad sold it. All post modern, nothing like ours, except this photograph I chose, the swimming pool he built, another childhood activity that evolved into a life pleasure. The house is listed for sale, $2,075,000. Dad bought our home for $50,000.
“ Mommy the door knocked.’ I said
“ Okay, let me get it.”
The valet reminded me of the munchens in Wizard of Oz, because of their berets, and tightly fitted double breasted coats. But it wasn’t the valet or room service, or anyone that I recognized.
“Lucille, darling is everything to your satisfaction?”
“Hello Jack. Yes the room, flowers, and fruit basket are so lovely. Thank You.”
by Ronzoni
It was the smiling big faced, former bouncer of the Copacabana New York whose name I knew only as Uncle Jack.
Jack was subtle as a semi-truck; and if the world was coming to an end, I’d follow Jack. He had fingers thick as sticks of dynamite and he squeezed my blubbery cheeks until they turned purple. I knew a cheek squeeze meant the person loved me, so Jack didn’t frighten me. I learned thirty years later it was Jack Entratter; a man of chest heavy bullying, dinosaur New York threats, and answered to Frank Costello. I don’t believe he pulled out the Casino movie style butcher chopping that we always see. I just think Jack did what Frank asked, and Frank didn’t randomly demand nail stripping, ball butchering violence you see in the movies. Remember it is a movie.
My mother dressed up with a fur wrap (they wore furs in Vegas) and dressed me in a Pixie Town ensemble that was so starched I couldn’t bend my arm, and we went to the Copa, for the dinner show. Ella Fitzgerald was the feature entertainer of the night. If I wasn’t in a room at La Posada tonight, listening to Tito Puente and Johnny Pacheco, tipping a glass of Chilean wine, without all my files, and notes, I could reference many things about that night. I rented the house for the twelve days of Christmas and I cannot access anything other than what I brought. I could go googling all night, but it is close to time to eat, and parlay my chances in the lobby, meeting and greeting, as I feel I should do, because hotels are the only socially invasive venues left. I greet everyone who knows how to walk without revealing their miserable or self congratulating lives. I really like people who keep their triumphs and sorrows until the second or third time we meet. I don’t like digesting four courses unless I ordered them.
Ella, came out on stage, and we were seated under her heaving breasts, the first row, the closeness was dressing room intimate. There were others at our table but they were sort of like faded ghosts after Ella started her fireworks. TO BE CONTINUED.
I was a child of the fifties; when raising kids was easily defined. Mommy stayed home and made sure the kids didn’t burn the house down. Daddy went to an office to make money to pay for the house, and children waited until they were grown up to find out anything really useful. It was before the generation-gap was coined, or children knew how to be witty and sharp. In our air-tight neighborhood of Bel Air, Los Angeles, we were naïve, privileged, kids; bogged down with falling off bicycles, not being chosen for the school play, and bringing home the most candy at Halloween.
I believed in Santa Clause, the Easter bunny, and if I was good, Mommy would let me stay up and watch the Sunday night Variety Show.
America was threatened by the Russian Communists and Organized crime. Public enemy Number One was New York Mafia Boss, Frank Costello. Frank became super famous when he refused to testify on national television for Senator Estes Kefauver. The Kefauver Committee delivered explosive headlines between 1950 and 1951, as the government unveiled the hidden hand of the Mafia in the United States.
Adventures in Livingness
A sunrise of prosperity and a sunset on hardship.
In my home there is one large staircase window that faces east. Each morning before I descend the stairs I stop at the landing, to watch the day begin. The sun must rise past an assortment of tree limbs and trunks, and up over the hillside of the mountains. By the time I’ve had my coffee, the sun has risen above the obstructions. I am now jerked awake, like a slight nudge a parent might give you, ‘Come on–wake up! You have school.” The sunlight guides me through the morning, and argues with my disagreement of the days activity.
The moment the café took effect, I want to begin writing, but shameless sunlight in my eyes and the dance of the birds are tempting me to step outdoors. When you live in seasonal climate, days and nights lure you outside, like old lovers that you must see again. The gradual awakening unfolds layers of thoughts, beginning with the anxiety of the times. The impending hardship oozes out like a bad smell. Some mornings I cannot look at the newspaper, the headlines read like promotional movie advertisements, banks bankrupt, homes foreclosing, woman commits suicide, the shocking prick of national disasters is a surgical awakening.
There is no time to waste, no money to squander, it is a time of reduction and refusal. How can I not spend money today.
This is what brings me to the sunrise of prosperity, I have to keep studying the illumination of light, and I’ll move forward, and diffuse the chaos.
As the interruption of minor mishaps knock on my door, my head turns away from it. I’ve learned to erase the panic, and do what I have to do, and that is write.
Last week, while I was upstairs, prone on the sofa, figuring out a transition between two men, whom I love, someone came to the door, knocking, ringing the bell fiercely, oh what is that. I open the door,
“ Yes,”
“ Are you all right? I’m from the security company, your alarm isn’t connected. We came to check on you.”
I stood there with a dumber than dumb expression, and assured him I wasn’t held captive or about to throw myself out the window. When I returned to the desk, I kept seeing his expression, he really didn’t believe me. I turned the alarm off when Rudy left for San Diego. Real estate agents our showing our house because it’s up for lease. My mind is a closet of mafia memoir notes, and I can’t remember to close the refrigerator door.
Later in the day, if I haven’t ventured outdoors, I take a walk around the plaza, and muse over the herds of tourists, and search their expressions for interior moods. I don’t see panic and anxiety, I see relief; couples are rigid from ice and chill, and they shuffle in boots, directionless, gaping at the churches and adobe arches, they shoot photographs, standing in the middle of the street. Vacation is bliss in the middle of discontent.
When I return to my desk, it is time to print the days work. This is always a ritual of great expectation, filled with disappointments, surprise, and sometimes a whiff of elation. The sun has made it’s journey to the other side of the house, the back porch is like starched light, it burns the eyes and flesh, like hardship, the immediate effect is callous. There I sit and review the pages. The transition worked; the crawl from uncertainty to confidence broke through. Now is the time to slouch in the chair, close my eyes, and rewind a few scenes back.
Hardship is like the sun, unmerciful when it is met face to face, and transforming when we are protected. That translates to less spending and more creating.
While I am lounging in this beautifully historic old home, one track of time keeps appearing in my images. It is a time when space was limited, finances on a string as long as my finger, and uncertainty a nightmare that became a lullaby. It is that time again, nothing at all unfamiliar With the same resources I had then, all is well, the sunset can go down, and I can laugh because the adventure has risen above the circumstances.
SMILEY’S DICE Adventures in Livingness
Adventures in beginnings, starting over, and rewriting a story you’ve lived many years is the same as re-writing a story. It takes the same blind courage.
About half between forty and fifty years old, you hear people say, “It’s too late to start over,” It’s not true. I hope it never feels like that when I wake up. Just thinking about it makes me run in circles. Behavioral change is essential to living a full life. In the middle of the night I woke up as if it was morning. When I looked out the window, the moon was white as a laundered tablecloth, staring back at me. It said get up and write.
I retreated to my corner of the world, a tiny room bathed a blush pink and gold, and wrote from beneath the goose down comforter. The moon watched. Now that the lights and decorations are placed in the cartons, the wrapping and ribbon tossed away, a landfill of disturbing, distressing, and terrifying global news is dumped on us. I do not understand the external world of political and international power, wealth, and motivation.
I fled that world a long time ago when I learned that men who controlled the paths of others were dangerously self-serving. I recall my father sitting on that green velvet sofa, holding the remote in one hand and watching a news program. He turned it off and said to me, “Luellen, everything that goes on is fixed; you cannot hide your head in the sand and think otherwise.” I nodded my head in understanding, while internally I thought my father was suffering from his usual psychosis. Eventually I crossed over, and forfeited my interest in politics. The forces of evil have shattered that glass of indemnity.
This year is not about vapid resolutions catering to our comfort, it is about survival. It’s about transforming behavior and habits, excesses and denial. Doing it in a group, makes us feel less traumatized. Imagine, all the thousands of people paddling the same current; forcing back the mortgage lender, relinquishing precious possessions, driving a car with a shattered windshield, wearing coats without any down feathers left, and wondering when the pink slip will arrive. Alienation and neurosis are at the root of people’s aggression and discontent. It can lead to unexpected violence, and then to massacre and war. It is a collection neurosis that grows worse every year.
The inner world, where each of us faces a truth no one else knows, is ruptured. All I can think of is bringing a little bit of light to someone you know is in darkness.
Fifteen years ago, the summer of 1993, I was having lunch in a restaurant in Los Angeles. Across from me was the only other woman of importance in my father’s life, besides my mother, that I had known. Sandy Crosby, a leggy brunette with bark brown eyes, arched brows, and a showcase smile.
She always had a response that outwitted her opponent, including my father, who relied heavily on, ‘don’t be so smart.’ Half-way through the first course at Jimmy’s, she looked at me and grinned.
“You’re so much like your father.”
“I am?”
“Oh yes.”
“Your father loved living on the edge, he really did.”
I rested on that thought for a long time. I was temporarily living with a friend in Los Angeles. I lived out of a suitcase, with a broken down Cadillac, and a folder of resumes. My dad never lived out of a suitcase, or needed a resume to find a job. After he met Benny Siegel, he had multiple offers in organized crime.
What I discovered, is Dad didn’t truly settle down until he had to raise my sister and I. He was 56 years old when Mom died, and we were tossed into his lacquered bachelor pad in Hollywood. The same age I was two years ago.
Living on the edge is a term used to describe infinite lifestyles. The momentum, or ignition that fuels that lifestyle, is uncertainty. We live by impulse and imagination. Our plans are last minute, we never buy in bulk, and we are always dreaming of the voyage. We run from stationary life because at heart, we are gamblers.
This time, the edge is the very place I spent two years creating, the photography gallery and home in Santa Fe. Up until this winter, it operated as a gallery by appointment, while I polished my memoir proposal. After several months, I went to the edge and decided to convert the gallery into a vacation rental. I needed to roam; I longed to gather new material.
The winter climbed back into bed, and then spring ripped through the ground, and the roses and poppies bloomed. The memoir remained unpublished, and the house began to transform from gallery to a real home. The long uneventful winter punctured my prudent habit of writing, remaining secluded, and avoiding everything but the essentials. By May, I made a silent vow under a stream of sunlight, to enlist into the human race.
The reinvention resembled nature, like today. The day began with a feverish sky of culminating clouds, a long dreary silence, and an absence of light. The street was empty, just the valet from La Posada running to the garage to fetch the cars. They were bundled in winter coats, while the party rental truck loaded the furniture from last evening’s wedding. The storm struck with impetuous force. The valet’s ran with umbrellas, small children yelled for cover, and I took a seat on the back porch. Suddenly, the storm rescinded, and the sun burst through the cloud cover.
My emancipation back into the flow of mixing strangers and friends was alchemy to the house. Now it’s a home; to cook, entertain, and fill with music, laughter and conversation. I can see the faces of the people I’ve met, imagine the next meeting, and anticipate the next outing. The windows and doors are opened, the people who pass by look in. I was cooking dinner one night this week, and noticed a man peeking in the window. He looked like Harrison Ford, just back from the Lost Arch.
“ Is this a museum?” he asked when I went to the door.
“ No. It’s a gallery, a home. Well come in, and take a look around.”
Opening the door to a stranger returned the affirmation that impulse socializing is still possible in the banal and sterile world of FACEBOO. You don’t have to be a teenager to recognize a good time, but you need to be an adult to recognize a good fellow.
Some of us lone roamers cannot reverse the inclination to retreat from life; because we find too much confusion, agitation and adversity in the world. Between all of those elements, there are treasures waiting to be discovered: opportunity collaboration, adventure, and most of all companionship.
Even though the comfort of this home has replenished my spirit and temporarily produced a yawn of security, I am preparing to go to the edge. Though I imagine it is another place of endearment, another address, and another gamble, it may be the inner voyage that will transcend.
When I tell people we’re renting the house, they ask me where will you go?
I don’t know yet. Sandy was right; I am like my father. The edge I picked wasn’t a green felt jungle of dice and chips, it’s an artists’ life.
Any dice to throw Email: folliesls@aol.com
Two months ago I bought a crate of flowers to plant. After setting the plant to rest, I had a vivid recollection of Nana; my Mother’s mother.
Nana was a petite woman, with long graying hair she pinned into a perfect French twist, a cute Irish nose, and a giggling smile. When I was growing up she lived with her second husband, we called Poppop, in a spacious California ranch house in Sherman Oaks, also known as San Fernando Valley. We visited her weekly, staying over one or two nights. Nana was always waiting for us to arrive. She greeted us at the door, she had something cooking, fresh candy in crystal dishes, and in the morning, she fried bacon and the aroma woke me and got me running downstairs. She scrambled eggs with lots of butter, and served it with Irish soda bread. It never occurred to me that these weekly trips were the cultural mix-up of my Russian Irish heritage. This was Nana’s only opportunity to spoon-feed us our Irish roots. At home with father, bacon and butter were prohibited, and bread came in the form of a bagel. The food was only one part of the adventure. Nana’s home was filled with antiques, family treasures, and her garden was a masterful collection of east and west coast varieties.
After Nana had all her errands and household chores finished, she changed into slacks, flat shoes, and a straw hat and went outside to the garden. I would follow Nana while my Mother remained indoors; most likely talking on the phone with some degree of privacy. In the garden, Nana would trim, cut, and arrange her flowers. I kneeled down beside her and watched, while she talked. Nana had the gift of gab, and her thoughts poured out without my interruption. Between sentences, she would insert a self-effacing joke, regarding her silly hat, or her short legs. Her hands were swollen from arthritis, and she rubbed them from time to time, but she did not complain. As I planted my garden, these visions of Nana remained and grew more studied and complete. I had a memory of being assigned a school project to plant something in the garden. By this time, my Mother had moved us to an apartment and we didn’t have our own garden. I went to Nana’s and she helped me plant some variety of flowers I cannot recall. Each week I’d return to see how my plant was doing. Some time after the assignment ended and we were walking in the yard, I looked to see how my plant was surviving. It had been replaced. I asked Nana what happened.
“Oh honey I hope you won’t be mad at me, but the little flower died, so I planted a new one. It’s my fault; I didn’t look after it properly.”
Nana taught me the things my mother didn’t have the time to teach; like cooking, cutting flowers and arranging them, making coffee, and setting the table. She made all these chores enjoyable, and I loved to follow her around the house and watch her change the beds, and prop up pillows, and fold the guest towels. It never occurred to me until now, that I adopted her domesticity; the sublime gratification of adorning a home for the comfort of family and friends.
The plants did not blossom, the jasmine, roses, and other varieties all wilted and turned brown, but the parties, soirees, dinners and moments of solitude are bloosoming.
The throw of the dice this week falls on the sunrise of hardship, for all of us.
In my home there is one staircase window that faces east. Each morning before I descend the stairs I stop at the landing, to watch the day begin. The sun must rise above an assortment of tree limbs and trunks, and up over the mountains. By the time I’ve had my coffee, the sun has risen above these obstructions. I am now jerked awake, like a slight nudge a parent might give you, ‘Come on–wake up! You have school.”
I begin writing, but that shameless sunlight in my eyes and the dance of the birds are tempting me to step outdoors. When you live in seasonal climate, summer days and nights lure you out of your wits; why stay inside when there’s moonlight, a sage brush breeze, and merriment across the street.
The gradual awakening unfolds layers of thoughts, beginning with the anxiety of the times. The impending hardship of thousands, my friends, and neighbors, oozes out like a bad smell. Everyone seems to be slanting in new directions; some are going home where they came from, others take on another job, or moving out and leasing their homes.
Some mornings I can’t even look at the newspaper. The headlines read like Sunday’s promotional movie advertisements: BANKRUPT, FORECLOSURE, and SUICIDE. The shocking prick of national disaster is a surgical awakening of a disease untreated. There’s no time to waste, no money to squander, it is a time of reduction and refusal.
As minor calamities knock on my door, and creditors calling from India, I turn my head to the sunlight and resume what I have to do, and that is write. If you know me, then you know I’ve vanished. It’s the only way I can work, and I’m standing on my head happy that I have the solitude to do it.
Last week while I was upstairs, prone on the sofa figuring out a transition between two scenes, someone knocked at the door. Then they fiercely rang the bell. Oh what it is now I thought.
“Yes,” I asked the man standing outside. He stared at me while twirling a toothpick in his mouth.
“Are you all right? I’m from Safeguard Security we haven’t had any signal on your alarm. We came to check on you.”
I stood there expressionless. I assured him I wasn’t held captive or about to throw myself out the window, but he didn’t seem convinced, he lingered and kept looking over my shoulder. I hastily sent him on his way, and returned to the desk. I’d been rude; I didn’t even thank the guy. This is some kind of message, next time he’ll slam the door in my face.
Later in the day, if I haven’t ventured outdoors yet, I take a walk around the Plaza, and muse over the herds of tourists. I look for revealing expressions and conversations. I didn’t see panic and anxiety, I observed relief. Couples shuffled together, maybe holding hands, dragging shopping bags, and aiming directionless for a new snapshot. They stand gaping at the churches and shoot photographs while standing in the middle of the street. Vacation is bliss in the middle of discontent.
When I return to my desk, it is time to print the days work. This is always a ritual of great expectation, filled with disappointments, surprise, and sometimes a whiff of elation.
By now the sun has made its journey to the other side of the house. The back porch is like starched light, it burns the eyes and flesh, the immediate effect is callous. Now is the time to slouch in the chair, close my eyes, and rewind a few scenes back.
Hardship is like the sun, unmerciful when it is met face to face, and transforming when we are protected. The sunlight is absorbed into our bodies; the effect is invigorating when taken in increments. The light changes the color of the world, we see things differently, and so it is with hardship, we feel intensely, our senses are sharpened, and we appreciate the treats more so than in times of prosperity.
It all translates into less spending and more creating.
While I lounge in this old house, one track of time keeps re-appearing. It was when my living space was limited to one tiny room, finances on a string as long as my finger and uncertainty a nightmare that turned into a lullaby. It is that time again; and what we all must do is keep the adventures above the circumstances. Any dice to throw:
The throw of the dice this week lands on an adventure with D.H. Lawrence.
Our affair began in the winter of 1970, when the film “Women in Love” was released.
“ Let’s go see this movie, Alan Bates is in it.” Lizzie, and I were madly in love with Alan Bates. Neither one of us had read the book, or had much knowledge of D.H. It was a film that explored sexual relations that interested us, and it was filmed in England. Back in Junior High Lizzie sang musical songs while I taped her on a recorder. Now in High School, she was singing Hey Jude, and I was reading the words from the record album.
I remember sitting in the balcony of the Beverly Wilshire Theater, leaning forward in my seat as I longed, with adolescent fixation, to be inside the story. I wanted to live in a studio like Gudren’s( the part played by Glenda Jackson) and toast my bread in front of fireplace and paint all day. Gudren was the artist terrified of being tamed. Her sister Ursula, who personified Lawrence’s wife Frieda, wished to make her life within a man’s.
“Your Gudren, and I’m Ursula,” Lizzie claimed with clairvoyant assurance.
” No, I’m not all Gudren.” I protested.
” You are– you’ll see.” Within a year, Lizzie would be in-love in London, creating a life around a man, and I would be an art student at Sonoma State College.
But on that lazy matinee afternoon, we gasped, and squeezed each other’s hands, during particular erotic scenes that shocked our sensibility. It was an awakening, of the abstraction of relationships. We’d discovered that friendships were not as they seemed, and that love did not always have a happy ending. It woke me to what possibilities lay ahead, and turned a defining fold in my growth. Would I end up like Gudren? At times the thought haunted me.
Over the last thirty years, I’ve watched the film every time it screened on television. It was the benchmark of my youth, just before I wandered off into relationships with artists and bohemian living. Several years ago I purchased a copy. I was convinced there was something I’d missed.
Summer 2006 Taos, NM
I move to Taos and Rudy gives me “Birds, Beast’s & Flowers” a collection of poems written by D.H. during his stay in Taos. I journey out to Del Monte Ranch where D.H. and Frieda lived on and off for several years. The ranch keepers took us on a private tour; oral and on foot. I yearned to learn more. Several days later I walked down the portal of Ranchos Plaza to see what new treasure books Robert had in his shop.
“What do you have by D.H. Robert?”
“Kangaroo, and Lorenzo in Search of The Sun,” it’s a biography about DH.
“I’ll take them.”
They were placed on the bookshelf in the bedroom and remained there unread. By now, I’d seen the famous stained glass window D.H. painted in Mabel Dodge’s bathroom in Taos, and the sketchings on display at the La Fonda Hotel. Still, I had not read any of his novels.
Winter 2008. Santa Fe.
The down blanket is wrapped tightly around my shoulders on a snowy night. I take “Lorenzo in Search of the Sun” off the shelf and begin to read. The book begins with his adventure in Taormina.
“I am so thankful to be back in the South, beyond the Straits of Messina, in the shadow of Etna, and with Ionian Sea in front: the lovely, lovely dawn-sea where the sun does nothing but rise toward Greece.”
This first excerpt leads me to chisel the cobwebs of memory to the summer of 1972. I left my sister in Barcelona, with a Spanish- lover, and took a solo journey to Sicily. I don’t recall what precipitated my quest; but the warnings and discouragement from my sister, and fellow travelers didn’t obstruct my vision. I had to go to Sicily. It turned out to be the bittersweet part of my European summer. An Italian hotelier rescued me, and put me up for a few weeks in his Taormina hotel; like he did with all the lost American hippie girls.
Every night this winter, I huddled inside and read a few pages of the book, savoring them as I would a chocolate souffle. These descriptions of Italy, Mexico, and Taos infiltrated that clamping cold. D.H mentions the Model T Lizzie in his chapters on the El Monte Ranch in Taos. I am reminded of my trip to the ranch.
This is an excerpt of the column I wrote about my visit to ranch in 2006.
D.H and his wife Frieda moved to the Ranch in 1924. Imagine that journey–there was no road to the Ranch, that came much later. They must have hiked up the hill or gone on horseback. The ranch includes a small barn, and two cabins; they chose the larger Homesteader’s Cabin. It is so organic, as if spun together by weeds and timber chips, but actually is a mixture of pine logs, mud, straw and water. The Homesteader was a man named John Craig. He claimed this property in the 1880’s, and built the cabins with the surrounding Ponderosa pine. The pueblo Indians helped D.H restore the cabin and he moved in during the summer of 1924.
I thought about this man sitting under the majestic beauty of the pines, and writing all day long. The plateau of silence that envelopes this ranch is every writer’s dream. Here he wrote some of his Taos poetry, “Birds, Beast’s & Flowers” he finished “St. Mawr,” a short novel, the novel “David,” and parts of “The Plumed Serpent.” D.H didn’t know how to type; he left that task to Dorothy Brett, the artist that accompanied D.H and Frieda. D.H invited Dorothy and several other friends to join him in Taos after his first visit in early 1924. He was creating a Utopian society, he named Rananim. Brett was the only artist to accept the offer.
I took a few photographs and then we trotted back to the entrance. Just as we were getting into the Van, a car pulled up. A woman got out, and called out a hello from across the way. I yelled back that we were just leaving, and she yelled even louder, “I can’t hear you – I’m almost deaf.” I got out of the car and went to meet her halfway. Immediately taken with her pioneering eyes, and up at dawn spirit, I yelled to Rudy to get out of the car.
“ I’m Mary and that’s Al over there, we’re the caretakers. Al’s been here 50 years.” I nodded to Al, standing a few feet behind her, watching us with a tinge of curiosity. I noticed his eyes, the color of faded denim, squirming with stories. I tried not to ask too many questions too quickly; Al was tired from a long journey so he took a seat on the porch.
“ Open up the cabin for them Mary.” He called out.
Mary nodded and led us up the path to the D.H. cabin.
Along the way, she talked about the ranch. There is a society named the Friend’s of D.H. Lawrence in Taos, and they want to build a big commercial visitor center on the ranch. Mary and Al think this is a bad idea, because the pines and silence are so happy, why mess up a beautiful memorial. If you saw the ranch, you’d agree that a visitor center will look like a spaceship in this territory of natural beauty. Mary opened the door to the cabin and showed us around. The first thing I noticed was the typewriter.
“ Is that where he typed? ” (She gave me printed literature that fills in the information I know now.)
“ Nope,– but that’s the typewriter Dorothy typed on.” The cabin is well maintained, simple and authentic. After we examined everything Mary led us back to Al. We gathered around the porch and Al talked about the road that he cleared to the ranch, the typewriter he dug out of the dump, and the time he drove out from Chicago in his Tin Lizzie. Rudy turned to the Model T in the parking lot.
” You drove that out here?” He asked.
” Naw, that’s my brother’s. We‘re going to get it workin’ soon. Go on in and take a look.” Rudy jogged over and got inside. I took photographs of him, and Al watched.
” That’s how D.H. and Frieda got around Taos, they’s was great cars.”
Mary took me aside and told me that she was throwing a party for Al in a few weeks, and that we’d be welcome. It would be Al’s 90th birthday. I glanced over at him, petting his dog and looking very content. I didn’t think he heard us, but he did. “ I’ll be here until I’m 100.” We exchanged good wishes, and many waves before leaving that afternoon.
Was Al’s brother Gotzsche, who D.H. writes about and who toured them around in his Lizzie? Further in my reading, I discovered that Gudren, personified the author Katherine Mansfield. I became more keenly acquainted with Katherine in Saratoga Springs, when I attended a reading of her short stories at Yaddo Arts Colony.
D.H. is a puzzle that continues to zigzag around my “adventures in livingness.” He is also the author of that slogan. I found the saying in Anais Nin writings, but in fact I think its origin is with Lawrence.
Any dice to throw Email: folliesls@aol.com
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Entertainment website · Marketing agency · Advertising agency 🎧⽣👠💋
The inner voice where gaps of expression are liberated.
Funny Blogs With A Hint Of Personal Development
Become a Story Hunter!
It's just banter
Larry Harnisch Reflects on L.A. History
Escaping reality or facing reality.
Saratoga Springs, New York - Arthur Gonick, Editor
Space, Travel, Technology, 3D Printing, Energy, Writing
Live Your Dreams Don`t Dream Your Life
Even a bad guy can have redeeming qualities
Books and Lifestyle with Hermione Flavia.
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER / IGNORANCE IS BLISS - YOU DECIDE
Author of the Avery Shepard Detective Mystery Series
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Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
ADVENTURERS IN LIVINGNESS 