SMILEY’S DICE – Page 3 – ADVENTURERS IN LIVINGNESS

At three in the morning the walls of reality merge with dreams, timelessness, restlessness, and an alertness of unspoken needs.

What I think of at three in the morning is never the same at ten o’ clock in the morning. The labyrinth of safety, colliding with the unknown, seems to be the most innocent of emotions. It is also a time that springs bright eyed realizations, recognitions, and a time when our mirrors move toward us. I see my looks fading. All I ever wanted was to see myself as pretty as my mother was.

The wind is sudden as it whips through the spruce tree outside my window.

I get up and wander downstairs, listening to the wood floors crackle at my footstep. I walk outdoors onto the back porch. The wind is like a mirror to me. This sound, so clear and unmixed in Santa Fe, brings me back to the years in Hollywood. The nights my father went out allowing me the freedom to explore outside. I would run down Doheny Drive to Santa Monica Boulevard and just keep running. It was on those windy Santa Ana nights that I’d run the longest.

I was running because the need to express something was bulging through my body. Back then I didn’t keep a journal at home. My father had discovered it and then questioned me about everything I’d written.

This night is like that, only I don’t feel like running, I am listening to the sound of the chime and the wind. I am thinking of the music of Charles Lloyd, and the shadows that look like people, and the clouds that appear to have message, and how everything is different when you are alone.

I dine without pause and usually finish before I’ve even wiped my mouth. I have extended conversations with the cats, Bugsy and Alice, and moments are elongated. I sit down at the counter and this wind and chime continues to circulate the house. It is an announcement- it is expectant of spring. I jotted down some notes and knew what I wished to write about today.

April is expectant- there is expectancy everywhere you look. The buds on the stark tree limbs are about to bloom, the birds have evacuated their nests and begin singing early in the morning, and insects eject themselves from their hidden corners. I don’t know what spring is like for a man, I’ve never asked any man, but I am going to tell you what spring is like for one woman. The essence of spring is sensuous, and for a woman it is an overture.

We strip down the layers of clothing; replacing socks with sandals, and sweaters with t-shirts. When I hear birds and watch them in the trees, I think of babies, and innocence. There are flowers about to shoot through the heavy clasp of winter dormancy, and when they do, the colors remind me to replace all the black pants and turtlenecks with pastel shades of peach and blue.

The sunlight radiates through my skin and warms every thing. My heart feels like it has been through a tune up. My body wants to dowse in sea water, and to eat less, and to run up canyon road, and listen to music, and dine al fresco, and get pedicures. Men, do notice your woman’s new pedicure, it will make her very happy. All of this preparation is to tune up the romantic notes, and to get YOUR ATTENTION. It is time to bring you out of the garage, or wherever you go in spring, and to notice that we are blooming. This is what I felt the night I heard the Charles Lloyd Quartet; I heard him blooming.

Surprise us with flowers, a new hat, or a picnic on the banks of the Rio Grande. Spring is time to redirect your attention to woman because we are at our best in spring. Our attention is on our surroundings; we will want to buy flowers, and baskets and new cushions for the patio furniture. We change our lipstick color, comb our hair different, and we look for new ways of expressing how good we feel.

Today I see cherry blossoms in my neighbors’ yard. They remind me of

a day in April at Golden Gate Park. Then I feel young again, like I was in the park that day, when I was in love with a man who would prove to be one of the great adventures of my life.

If you live in Santa Fe then you understand when I say-hurry up spring and start undressing.

“Is there any feeling in a woman stronger than curiosity? Fancy seeing, knowing, touching what one has dreamed about. What would a woman not do for that? Once a woman’s eager curiosity is aroused, she will be guilty of any folly, commit any imprudence, venture upon anything, and recoil from nothing.”

Guy De Maupassant, “An Adventure in Paris.”

My responsibility as a writer is to assure people taking a chance in life is the only way to live, and so … I throw the dice.

The throw of the dice this week lands on adventures in waiting.

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

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

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

I waited, like I did as a teenager, for that summer to come, so I could return to the sea. Last week, I stood at the water’s edge in Del Mar, it was like summer without all the kids playing ball and screaming, running of the dogs, and lifeguards thrashing the beach in their jeeps shouting, no dogs off the leashes, no glassware, and no surfing today. They were missing in September, and so were the caravan of beach runners, families, radios, volleyball players, and lifeguards. In fact, I was the only one swimming, on that first day at the beach.

Before I went into the water, I reclined on a big black boulder and faced the sea, and let my eyes wander amongst the scenes of the beach on a Tuesday afternoon. In front of me was an older man with graying hair, in a Walmart beach chair reading. He must be retired, he looked perfected adapt to his spot about five feet from the shoreline. I thought about that Dennis Hopper commercial, about retirement, and how I still cannot come to grips with retirement, and spending my days on park benches or in cafes watching younger men and women live.

There was one swimmer, on a bogey board, he was far out, and floating along, and I wished I’d brought mine with me, but it was in Dodger’s van, and the last time I used it was when I lived in Solana Beach. I also wished I had a new bathing suit, because the one I was wearing was ripped, and the neck straps were tied together in a knot so I could swim without losing my top.

The sun baked my body, and I let it without abatement, without shading my limbs or wearing a hat, just enough sunscreen to keep the rays from trotting over my skin. I closed my eyes and when I opened them, this is when the waiting business suddenly felt so important, so much so that I began to think about waiting as an aphrodisiac or something like a good cocktail that you have to make last for an hour, you wait for that moment that makes you feel immortal, childlike, and emancipated into softness.

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