My emotional tail is wagging; curled up in my desk chair, I feel almost as if I were born in this chair. Itโs cushioned me through a cyclone of adventures in livingness. Solitude will always be a puzzle because our lives, solo or mated, are perplexed by toomuch solitude or not enough.ย The editor I used before submitting to a publisher asked me, โWhy do you keep switching between past and present tense?โ I told her I donโt control that until Iโm in the final editing stage. My control over my writing is identical to how I liveโacting on impulse, expanding the mundane into a musical, feasting on all the emotions, and fabricating thorny Walter Mitty encounters. I donโt think of applying proven methods; I make up new ones.
Back to this plateau of solitude. Love what you have, and especially yourself, with all your flaws and regrets.ย Honor is more critical; be proud not just for yourself but because someone out there needs you. ย
Sometimes, solitude feels like a draft no matter how many sweaters Iย wear. There are not many soloists residing in the village, primarily second and third-generation families with dozens of members. ย Living unstructured is a discipline that threads some days easily; when it doesn’t, I must rein in my passion for daydreaming.ย Today, it is the island of Capri. A friend is there posting photographs, so maybe I need to stop watching other people live their dreams. Yes, thatโs it-take a reprieve from FB.
A passage from Anais Nin’s diary says, โBe careful not to enter the world with any need to seduce, charm, conquer what you do not want, only for the sake of approval. This is what causes the frozen moment before people and cuts all naturalness and trust. The real wonders of life lie in the depths. Exploring the depths for truth is the real wonder which the child and the artist know: magic and power lie in truth.โ
ย From my journal. Wecannot unlock our mysteries when surrounded by extroverted behavior.ย Over the years, the intensity of seeking solitude increased; shy in conversation, I turned to writing when I didnโt dare speak. Iโm waiting for some release and joy so I can change course and find a studio (In an undisclosed location for personal reasons). It is not happening. Life feels like a package I cannot unwrap.ย ย ย ย
That was only two hours ago, and instead of ruminating on impatience, my pattern transformed. I took a walk in a wind that blew the orange leaves in a choreographed dance, and watched.
Bohemian living was always in my dreams, having been raised in a perfectly pressed pinafore and seated on velvet and satin furniture.ย I am not really very gypsy like when it comes to home. Once upon a time, I lived out of one suitcase, but I have since been corrupted by the joy of controlling what comes into the house and finding a place for it. ย Loss of control. Once faced with this alarming epiphany, I vowed to give up control and accept the disorder and disruption.ย
What Iโve rediscovered is that without a lot of stuff to organize, the mind is free to think, more time to create,and effect essential decisions. ย Narcissism is sacrificed for more visceral makeup.ย Losing control is a replenishment of youthful spirit. Itโs free and painless.
YES, I AM LEAVING. SIX YEARS LATER. I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE 1 YEAR, BUT WHAT WE PLAN GOES INTO THE CIRCUMSTANCE BLENDER, AND I, MAYBE YOU, COME OUT SHREDDED, UNTIL WE LEARN HOW TO REMIX OUR CONDIMENTS FOR THE FUTURE. The year the village adopted my slogan, Village of Friends
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Six years ago, this week, I left my studio on Devon Ave, a shrink-wrapped space that forged me outdoors. I landed in Ballston Spa, NY, to save my home from foreclosure. I felt a contrast within and without. The without were the winters. Iโd not lived here since 2003, youthful adaptation overwhelmed the bitterness of winter. The within, my mind, heart, and spirit went through a seasonal transformation. Winters, the snowplowing season when I am on duty to ensure tenants and nieghbors can walk on my sidewalk(owners are reponsible in the village) without breaking a leg and then suing me. Writing is the dominant activity, between, cooking, checking the sump pumps, talking on the phone with friends three thousand miles away, and managing tenants. Once I learned the house was two months behind on the mortgage, turmoil, the servicers bounced me around with false information, misconduct and refused the full balance when I offered. Covid postponed the payments for a year, and so did the New York financial agency. I filed the complaint against PHH, and they pressured PPH to abort the foreclosure for another year. Almost all my income went to restoring the house, replacing mechanical parts, painting, and repairs.
One day in February of 2020, a man knocked on my door and handed me the foreclosure documents. So began six years of legal research, interviewing attorneys, and defending myself against the predator, who sought to destroy my life, every angle of it. I canโt name this person; Iโm in writing witness protection. Seriously.
Itโs Christmas day, and the lobby of the hotel is empty. I think there are seven guests, and most of the cheerful staff are off. The sun broke through, so I’ll wander around the property. It’s 28 degrees, I adapted physically but not emotionally.
The throw of the dice this week lands on adventures in livingness; one day at a time. People with terminal illness, suffering from a shattered romance, a death of a friend, a natural disaster, always say the same thing; One day at a time.
Walking up Palace Avenue on a day spread with sunlight, and a continuum of power walkers, bikers and runners, passing by in whiffs of urgency, I took my time. I didnโt feel like flexing, just evaporating into the shadows, and the moving clouds. I walked by a little adobe, that once was a dump site for empty bottles, cartons, worn out furniture, and piles of wood. A year later, the yard is almost condominium clean. Just as I was passing the driveway, the little woman whom Iโd seen walking up Palace with her bag of groceries, appeared like a gust of history in the driveway of her adobe casita. She wore her heavy blanket like coat and a bandanna on her head. Regardless of weather, sheโs bundled up in the same woven Indian coat and long wool skirt. I stood next to her, a foot or so taller, and she unraveled history, without my prompting. She told me about the Martinez family, the Montoyas, and the Abeytas, all families she knew, all with streets named after them. Estelle asked me my name, and then took my hand in her weathered unyielding grip, โOh I had an Aunt named Lucero, and we called her LouLou.โ She didnโt let go of my hand, and then she told me that the families, some names Iโve forgotten, bought homes on Palace in 1988 for $50,000, She shook her finger to demonstrate her point. โYou know how many houses the Garcias bought? Five! Then they fixed them up and sold them.โ
I could have stood there in the gravel driveway listening to Estelle all afternoon. She owns the oral history I love to record; but it is difficult to understand her, she talks with the speed of a southwest wind. We parted and I thought about the times in my life when the smallest of interactions elevates my spirit. In older people, who are not addicted to gadgets and distant intimacy, I’m reminded of how speed socializing has diminished the opportunity for a sidewalk chat.
ย Winter announced! First ladylike snow because I can still wear my loafers and jeans.ย
I say this as politely as possible: Government stay away from my Genie. The annoyance of conflicting orders robs me of my Aladdin (magic moments). Mental sedation is needed while I edit my next book. I’ve been advised to delete 40,000 words from the 141,780 manuscript. Over three days I deleted 2300 words. My new friend Rose, says, ‘Chop chop, you can do it!” ย
I feel like time is stained with interior stoplights, obstructions, and restrictions, within and without. ย What happens is subtle, but when so much time is spent on soulless activities, life loses its Aladdin.ย Even if youโre sitting on the beach at Turk and Caicos, dining al fresco with perfectly agreeable friends, and swirling in jets of aromatic succulents, I think our souls ache for simple genuine, honesty. ย
Writing feels rusty today. I plow deliberately through the blank mental soil to find a blade of substance in a week of tragedy and cultural chaos. In conversations with men and women about our fractured culture.
” It was never like this when I was growing up,” that is from a fifty-year-old,
” I won’t get on a plane, no way?” from a forty-year-old.
” I don’t talk about my views with anyone at work or out of work, except my family and friends.”
I replied, “Yes, we have to talk niceties, bland boring conversation. “
When I was growing up, there was more joking, laughter, and confessional conversation. I was thinking about my high school years; we talked a lot about emotions, our parents, our dreams, and our fears. I don’t recall restraining what was on my mind. Perhaps that is why the majority of the younger generation prefers social media friends, as they can be easily deleted or blocked. On my FB page and feed, not one follower or friend reveals their political views, including myself. Isn’t that so contrary to humanity? And political violence, I keep hearing we won’t tolerate that on the news, but we are tolerating it. Do we all need drones over our homes for security? An optimist would say, We can do better, and we will; a pessimist might say, I think it’s going to get worse, and a nihilist would say, Life isn’t worth fixing; it’s just worthless.
I canceled my utubetv cable account, because on most days anxiety is at full tank without the news. ย In this new state of freedom from home; maintenance, repairs, showings and tenants, time is on another clock.The one that ticks as a writer in progress who is dusting off the least truest of thoughts. ย ย ย ย
Scintillating in luxury and comfort is therapeutic if mastered with moderation. So, my second week here in the hotel, I opened the thruway to discerning tasks: a deep dive into publishing my book, rewriting the ending so art isnโt imitating life, but the other way around, searching for part-time employment, a seriously pragmatic approach to where to move, and writing my pop-up columns.
It is tremendously easy to write from this hotel room, without those damn barking dogs next to my home, the constant vibration and noise of mowers, blowers, and city works.
On my desk is Henry Millerโs book, On Writing, and every page moves the mental nerves in some way. โThe writer lives between the upper and lower worlds: he takes the path in order eventually to become the path itself.โ From living in isolation in my home, my tenants are cordial but reserved; I am now swept like a surfboard into a wave of public swells. It is their stories that come out of this experience.
I begin with the Casino, attached to the hotel lobby, and open at 11 am. Arrivals begin: gamblers shuffle inside, some in wheelchairs, younger men with speedy strides, couples, single women, a plethora of humanity in common, with one mission: to win. I take a seat at the bar, and eye wonder at the slot machines. I havenโt counted them, but the room for walking is limited. There is one machine with the motif of a bull, and when someone sits, the bull grumbles loudly, so I pull out my earplugs. I watched one man win, and after he left, other players who heard the winning clang took his seat. It is a popular machine.
The casino looks to be around eight thousand square feet, with seventeen hundred gambling options. The path to get back to the hotel, I have to navigate around and around. The first time, of course, I went in circles as my sense of direction is like a butterfly’s.
โ Excuse me, can you tell me the most direct way back to the hotel?โ
โ Lost are you? Follow this carpet pattern, the one in the middle, and it will take you back.โ
Off I trot, staring at the paisley pattern, through six different arenas to the hotel. I went outside and took a seat on the bench. A woman passed by and stopped, โ How are you?โ
โAdapting, Iโve not been here but a few days.โ
โ Oh, weโre just checking out. I canโt wait to get home to my Pomeranians. I have two. I rescued them, and they are my babies,” she continued, talking about the dogs. As she spoke, I noticed how immensely liberated she was in conversation, and how her hair matched her outfit. She smiled while talking.
โ Iโve seen you before. I noticed your style; you were wearing such a pretty outfit”, she said earnestly.
โ Well, thank you, and so are you.โ
โ Are you alone? I think you are, but donโt let that get you down.โ
โ I wasnโt ready for a very long time. I’m crossing over that mountain, only Iโm not like you. I canโt approach people the way you just did.โ
โ I used to be like that! Now I donโt care, and you shouldnโt either. God loves you, we are all his children, and we need to love each other.โ
I let her go on and thought any minute she might bring out a bible or a cross and start praying for me.
โ I bet my husband is looking for me; heโll be mad, not really, heโs used to it. Weโve been together forty-five years.
โ Remarkable. Whatโs your secret?โ
โ Love, respect, and compromise, itโs really very simple. You’ll meet your honey, I feel it, you want that, donโt you?โ
โYes, when a man tells me everything is going to be okay, I settle down. Iโm emotionally overweight.โ
โYouโre funny, see that is another quality that gets you through life.โ
โ I see a man approaching, and she introduces her husband. He is tall, and emulates a calmness and contentment as he hedges into the conversation about going to Lake Placid.โย
โ Have you been there?โ he asked.
โ Years ago. Itโs beautiful.โ
โ I turned towards his wife. I didnโt get your name.โ
โ Donetica, Italian, my friends call me Dee.โ
โI’m Loulou, and thank you for stopping by my bench.โ
She giggled, blew a kiss, and said in parting, โ I love you.โ
As she left, a woman exited the hotel in a state of exhilaration.
โ It looks like you had a good day,โ I said
โ Yes!ย I won eight hundred dollars. She swung her purse and skipped off. ย
Hmm, I wouldnโt mind winning at all, but Iโm in enough ambiguity to play against those odds. To be continued.
I posted a column on Sunday, The Mind Hike. When I checked my stats, it was rising like a new sun, and hit a record-breaking 127 views! That has not happened since I published my book in 2017. I did not optimize the column or take any steps to increase readership. Today it is up to 126. Whomever you are, thank you so very much for reading my columns.
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 donโt 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. Thatโs the ticker that keeps bringing me back to reality. I should not have left Del Mar, CA. Have you ever said that? Itโs the inkblot on decisions when I thought everything I did would work out until it didnโt. And Iโd turn the steering wheel back to where I belong.ย I do not belong here, and thatโs not because of aversion or harsh judgment. Itโs a marvel if you like three courses of simple conversation, activity, and entertainment. ย ย 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, Iโm 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 sheโll 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. Iโm eliminating, sort of, I cruise by my ten boxes of books, and every day itโs on the list to tape them closed. Then there are all the antique figurines, gambling paraphernalia, dรฉcor from the vacation rental days, and I think at last count, fifty hanging prints. I donโt 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?
Writing somberly is parallel to writer’s block. It’s not a block, really, more like a resistance to engaging feelings. ย 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. ย 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 isย 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.ย
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 Iโve 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, โ Henry Miller on Writingโ โWhoever greatly suffers must be, I suppose a sublime combination of a sadist and masochist.โ 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 walked into Century City Club Equinox, almost inserting myself into the spotless transparent glass door. Three young women at the counter, beaming youth in front of black walls that seem to suck me in.
โIโm here for the tour.โ A suited man in a large, rather luxurious office greets me with so much reserve and robotic gestures that I feel like running out. I was led through a scintillating voluminous space, enveloped in floor-to-ceiling glass, streamed with sunlight and views of Westwood. The members, women attired in matching voluptuous outfits and personal trainers, lean as lions tossing funny equipment to the client, fastidious housekeepers, sterilizing and vacuuming in trendy uniforms. It was as if I were watching a film production.
The treadmill cycle area was a bit crowded, and not one person didnโt have a headset on, staring at the screen of choice. The bathrooms were hotel accessorized, and even pumps were filled with Kiehl products. There was a steam room, make-up area, showers, all the necessities, and a few women were blowing their hair, all beautiful.
More rooms, a snack bar, shopping, pulsating music, and a closer look at the guests.
โ This is as upscale as you can get; youโll love it, and you’ll meet important people, Iโm sure.โ
I listened to his closing argument and watched the bodies bend like pretzels as personal trainers raised and stretched their heads, arms, and legs. Bodies bounced, climbed ropes, did flips, and hung upside down, like a circus act. After the close, a condescending smirk, that I read as, join, or go hang out with the losers at 24-hour fitness.
He handed me the contract, and I read it over. The cost was more than Iโve ever spent. The way I looked at it was a place to work out and meet new people, although my instinct was that these were not my people. I signed and walked out feeling dizzy again. I stopped in a shoe store to look at what women were wearing. The salesgirl kept complimenting me, and showing me shoes that she loved, and before I knew it, she sold me what I didnโt come in to buy, high-top lace-up pink workout sneakers. Leaving the Century City Satellite, beyond the construction and traffic, I raced home to recuperate. Whatโs happened to me after living in a village in New Mexico, is that too much stimulation is now exasperating.
I walked to Equinox for my first workout, hopped on the treadmill with weights, and tried to look perfectly comfortable, but I wasnโt.ย The vibe and everything about this ballroom of a gym seemed rehearsed. Maybe Iโm too observant, trying too hard to fit in. I noticed so much in that hour. The workout is also a sort of performance, just a shade of competition between men and their weights, women straddling rubber balls, yoga mats, bench presses, and only a handful look like they need it. Men and women occupy the treadmill room; without expressions, they seem to live inside themselves. There is no conversation; it feels more like a convent. There is no hi, hey, or smile. I asked a trainer, โItโs not very social here. Why is that?โ โ These are the highest paid executives, lawyers, agents, actors, and they donโt come in to socialize–they are only here to do the work-out.โ Great move, Greta. Iโm paying three hundred a month to be invisible.
ADVENTURERS IN SINGLE LIVINGNESS 
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