AWAKENING TO AN UNFAMILIAR REALITY. Ten years and two months I’ve nested in one place. Where once the red white and blue lights twinkled on the house and along the spruce tree, music circulated a crowd of friends and neighbors on the porch, and we danced in the street. It’s all wrapped up in a journal, words that I can read if I wish to remember. I don’t. The past crawls up my spine like a spider trying to weave me into its web. 
SARATOGA SPRINGS 2012
Clarity, comfort, security, ambition and love are broken wings. I have to redesign how I think, calculate a direction that will return me to adventures in livingness.
SEASONAL AND SENSUAL OVERTURE TO REVERIE.
SUMMER is not a memory yet; my skin too sensitive, and my heart still attached to the moments. I’ve misplaced my journals and so I have to read my to-do list to recall the events. Let’s go back to June; well my head was bent like a candle wick in this memoir. By then I was into the first rewrite, the worst of the next ten. That first one is deceivingly promising, the chapters line up, the suspense tickled, and it was five-hundred pages. The first draft was actually two books, as I dared to try and run the 100 meter in two different directions.
I must have had some standout memories, but I don’ recall June being amusing. Writing about my deceased parents was not summer reading. A year had already passed since I began, and I was now at the last stretch. My sense of completion was annoying. I began to hate the word focus. My body ached for water, in any form, a pool, a river, and the ocean. June was also the month when rejection letters arrived. For a moment, I’d forgotten. Whoa! Stay away from LouLou, her nerves are visible! On the flip, it was also acceptance of those letters. I had to prove to myself that I could take it, and continue writing.
Outside my window, Palace Avenue raised to motorcycles, skateboarders, conversational bicycle riders, and families out for a walk. My concentration was beguiled. So I turned on the fan, the loud kind that screens the room in a hum. I tried to imagine as waves just after they have capitulated into bubbles.
Memorial weekend was gemstone sunlit of color and clarity. I’d decided to break and go to a party at La Posada. Yes, that was my first grasp of summer, the sudden appearance of flowers, greenness of the landscape, flowers, and light. I think it was warm enough to sit outdoors all night. We were not yet ready to kick and scream, it was more of a real memorial kind of party. For our troops who finally are reaching us through the news, the films, and the books.
Most every evening I’d walk across the street to La Posada, have a glass of wine while listening to the chattering guests, age-out themselves by immobilizing a very liberated and young spirit. It’s a beautiful sight. Most people in my experience, come to Santa Fe and strip 
down to vulnerable. They invite conversation and are genuinely interested. I am asked, ‘What’s it like living in Santa Fe?’ To be continued.
IT’S UNLIKE ANY OTHER CITY I’VE EXPERIENCE.D It’s called the city different, it is also the city difficult. She ( I see Santa Fe in the feminine gender) has to be treated gently. Her weather patterns resemble a menopausal woman,her stature demands respect, and she can be congenial and patient.
You can walk this city as if it were a neighborhood. If you do that consistently you’ll meet people, and get to know them. Unless you’re like me, a standoffish fast walker dazed by the outdoors.
If you’re dazed and illusional you can master this city very well, as the drowsy pace and cordiality allow freakish freedom. I ‘ve seen the liberating soul of Santa Fe, teenagers racing down the middle of a commercial street one foot on the skateboard, bad-ass bikers talking with bad-ass cops, women with parrots on their shoulder, dogs in baby carriages, cats in a bag, and women on horseback galloping up Palace Avenue.
At night you’ll see raging midnight ramblers dancing on the sidewalk, and all of this is appealing to an LA transplant. I have driven in my robe, danced in the street and broken the heels on most of my shoes because of the pot-holes. They are always working on a street, but never the sidewalks. I ‘ve been bounced out of the locals night-howl El Farol for accidently pushing a dancer, who knew the manager, who came running after me and took down my license plate.
So many of us are loners, the serious kind, that have to be rigged out of our nests. Luckily I live on a commercial street and have no choice but to be commercially friendly. After nine years, my seasonal behavior is obvious: sprite in summer, blissful in fall, giddy in spring, and withdrawan in winter. I’ve learned patience, understanding, and adopted a mixture of cultural traditions. I’m close to fifty percent certain I’ll miss Santa Fe terribly when I do leave.
Has living in Santa Fe given me more than I’ve given back? Yes, it has and that’s why when I’m asked what’s it like living in Santa Fe, I try to reveal the blessings here and not the bullshit. 
There are reasons to quit and more reasons not to. The one reason that hovers above all is that everything we do in life needs revision. We are never through evolving into more thoughtful, loving, or wise human beings. Every day there is an opportunity to revise your valor and conviction.
Revising the position you sit, walk, talk, judge, form opinions, contribute to your home, friends, partners, and discovering what you’ve learned, dreamed, and mastered, is your novel. How to write a chapter when you feel caught; trapped by decisions that are outdated. Antiquities of a former persona.
Changes in life are like photographic images. Looking at old photographs and what I see is someone else. Some are recalled with approval and others are works that led me astray. I’m not alone. Life is a runaway that we have to catch for ourselves.
The puzzle is how to live, where to live, and for whom. It is the same with manuscripts; they improve with each revision.
All of them. I mean all ages, classes, genders, and sexes. Single people must be brave; they do not have a partner to hold on to when THE LIGHTS GO OUT. The eye of the United States Government knows we are single. Why are we not included in your speeches, legislation, and laws?
?
THE SNOW SEDATED the choppy feeling in my stomach, the conjecture of discovering why my father was wired with anxiety. His whole life was a chase scene: arrest him, convict him, send him to Russia, and never pull the tap from his apartment, or the FBI guys from his tail.
Me, Diane Friedman and Cindy Frisch.
Now there is a wash over my interpretation of his obsessive, protective, paranoia, distrust, and interrogation of my friends. I wonder if those gals I grew up with knew about Dad from their parents’. I relied heavily on the open arms of my friend’s families. They’re remembered more than my teachers: The Blair’s, Bourne’s, Both Friedman’s, Frisch’s, Hoffman’s, Pindler’s, Saunders, Schwadel’s, Taubman’s, and the Tefkin’s. Hope I didn’t leave anyone out. I left out the Berman’s and the Crosby’s.
THE DIARY OF ANAIS NIN VOLUME SIX 1955-1966
“All of Paris is caressable, La ville caresse, la ville caressante, with its outer life all grace and wit, at heart a mystic lover, a philosopher, a man of taste. In its ancient decor, it is always youthful because its source of life is inner, and always renewed. The past is so vivid that it fills the streets. It is full. the magic of its unity and harmony of colors and textures and styles. When there were contrasts, they were contrasts between medieval somberness and modern gaiety. “
I watched coverage today in Paris from an online British station. It is important to me. More important than writing or dressing or going out. The journalists were sympathetic, the interviews soulful, the images–silencing. I don’t believe prayers are enough. President Hollande declared war.
Last night I watched a French film, Lola, before I heard the news. This was a film of Paris as golden and grainy as autumn. I thought I must go to Paris. Today I still must go to Paris. 
DAYDREAMING
When I watch my wild birds, I daydream of their freedom.
When I listen to Wes Montgomery I dream of Brazil, and riding on a float at Mardi Gras, just once, with a feather hat, and dressed like Rita Hayworth.
When I sit at my desk and look at my mother’s photograph, I dream of the lunch we never had, and the lunch we did have, in Bullock’s Garden Room, watching the fashion show and discovering tuna salads.
When I lie in bed at night I dream of him, whomever he is, wherever he is, and his strong shoulder cupped around my head, watching an old Cagney movie.
When I shovel snow I dream of California, of old Del Mar and running along the shore barefoot. When I walk along Palace Avenue in Santa Fe, I dream of walking in Brooklyn, or 5th Avenue at about 6 pm, when everyone pours into the street, a fountain of limbs and accessories.
Daydreaming unlike night dreaming where we are flying, conquering, or battling some inner masked trauma, illuminates where we want to be, and who we want to be, and if you take it seriously, how to get there. The medicine of daydreaming is unmatched by books, health food, vitamins, yoga, religion, mind altering experiences, it’s the essence of who we are, it defines our reality.
Mostly these days, I daydream
m of finishing the longest work-in progress book and as my pal Blair says, finish and move on with your life. For those of you who know me, when the time comes for a diligent writing routine, the act is outwardly selfish. Engagements canceled, phone is not answered, and my email correspondence drops off. If a trauma settles in my mind while I’m writing, the rhythm dissipates. Avoidance of the temptations that can draw me away from the work; men, my gal pals problems, Rudy falling off the ladder, and a vacant income.
As I assemble my columns, government transcripts, book excerpts, and emotions into a page of writing what is different this time is I know what belongs and what doesn’t. The worst part of writing for me is vacillating, that mind twist of indecision. It is like the indecision of moving, or breaking up, or taking a different outlook, one you’ve never even considered before.
The world we are living is not familiar; everyday it erupts with an inconceivable corruption, act 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 the humanity and more like a wild creature that is fighting for the past. My outlook on social clubs, synagogue and church congregations, group classes, and all that 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 your own world of fantasy is irresistible. My next thread will be on the single life, I can claim expertise in that!
Last night a stranger in a sports jacket, silver hair, and polished shoes sat beside me at the Staub House. He struck a conversation and within fifteen minutes he said, ” I’m going to the Chamber Music Concert series tonight and next week I go to three operas. ” My interior dialogue is assessing him; he’s very presentable, wears glasses well, and loves the arts. Maybe he will invite me. We continue chatting and then suddenly he switches tenses; it is no longer I, now it is we don’t live in Colorado in the winter, we have a house in Tuscon.
After a few travel stories he says,” I have an extra ticket for tonight. Would you like to go? I’m meeting some friends afterward at the Compound.” A second of hesitation on my part, as this is the temptation I was talking about.
” I’d have to change and you’re running late.”
” I guess you’re right. Will you be here tomorrow night?”
” Maybe.”
What’s interesting today looking back, is that he didn’t even lie about being married or involved long-term. Men use to lie about that didn’t they? I mean what’s so unusual about having a tryst with a married man today? Daydreaming is not indecisive or dishonest. Maybe one of the most genuine of vices.
http://www.positivelypresent.com
In a current of unexpected waves I floated towards the Pacific Ocean, and landed along the anfractuous Santa Monica Mountains. Malibu where exotic fish are silhouettes behind glass aquariums perched on sand dunes or in swank foreign carriers has bitten my interest to understand how an exotic lives. 
The salty seaweed smell of the ocean streams through my car, driving down Pacific coast highway on my way to buy groceries. Vintage Market is new to Malibu, and clerks are giddy about their jobs. They may be aspiring actors or were aspiring actors. I walk in and get a phone call that I’d been waiting for so, I set my cart down on a shelf and took the call. During the half hour call, my eyes were fluttering through the scene: tanned surfers, affluent college students, and diamond rich men and women of age, that don’t check their bank balance. Because of this, expressions are chilled as fine wines, and smiles are polite or radiating. They are a content population of 13,000, median home price is $901,000, and the median income household is $127,000. Here in Malibu every thing looks different from Santa Fe: The staging of ‘was in the business, am in the business, or want to be in the business,’ surfaces and dominates the scenery.
They are beautiful-the young teenagers who surf and paddle are true blondes, the blue eyes scintillating pools of water, young women are saddled onto 6” platforms, and then there are the stand-out power people, who will not acknowledge anyone, and expect everyone to acknowledge them. Tucked in the mountains, are extraordinary artists who live off the grid the way most people prefer to live in Santa Fe.
I am learning slowly and still hiding out at Chantal’s. Where I am living, two miles up from PCH off a dirt road, behind a gate, there are Bohemians, artists, home-office screenwriters, producers, and famous heirs of recognizable movie stars.
In the last two weeks my head feels lighter, and my heart is not aching for the Thinker, or my sunken red room where I dreamt of moving to Malibu. What I began twenty years ago is my primary act of indulgence; completion of my book, “Growing Up with Gangsters.”
In the last hour I walked down the road in the hands of sloping hillsides, horse ranches, and signature homes behind walls as high as the palm trees, built to withstand the typhoons of mankind. In daylight swirl of rain and clouds, it was as if I was in Ireland, walking along a road in Kilkenny, and then I roped in my imagination and returned to the mountains here, that will teach me how far to go, how to duck a car, or confront a coyote or a snake.
A full transcendental moon dipped into the black-out mountain evening, and has cured me of interior turmoil for the time being. This is part of adventures in livingness in what locals call the bu. TO BE CONTINUED
WORLD VISION
By Luellen Smiley
I made a list of the horrors, corruption, and confusion that dismantled the ordinary into extraordinary. The notebook is on top of my desk, on top of the entire works-in rewrite documents. All the other tributes to my success or failure are stored mentally; I have to look and hear the world. I am addicted to news alerts, commentaries, panels, and interviews. Along with the experts and analysts I listen to, my own voice and opinions are exploding.
I am not Charlie, Kayla, or Kyle’s wife. I am a writer of interior battles. My writing has never steered towards Politics. It is a freeway I never understood; a freeway my father told me at a young age was not to be trusted. A subject I avoided in college, and a topic that fumbled my thinking during my young adulthood rap sessions.
How faraway those years grow everyday. We chanted peace and love, in our kooky outfits, and our imaginative minds. I was full with Lennon, Dylan and Joni.
How much longer can I remain silent? There is a blockade of conversation about politics; it goes up like a digital wall, as soon as I meet a stranger. I was in La Posada Hotel the night the terrorists captured the Kosher Deli and Coffee House. I went to record by hand, the reactions of people I pick out very impulsively. A sort of lightning rod hits when I go into public and select my conversations. I may meet someone I have to write about.
No one had time to really absorb the truth of this historical moment. We may read, or watch the news, shake our heads, and then tuck our children into bed. I feel that our lives our complicated more with finances than any other single threat. Most of us just want to take a vacation. So what can they expect of us. Do we have a voice? Do we have a fax number to the Administration? Sometimes I dream of one representative in every state of the Union grabbing the microphone, and all digital devices, and shouting out, “Stop the war Republicans and Democrats! IMAGINE IF WE WERE UNITED… JUST A LITTLE.
After I published this last story, I spoke with White Zen, my palgal in Santa Fe. She said the last paragraph of the story made her cry. Juxtaposed between the writers Zen of exporting such feeling, and the sadness we both shared. White Zen had a Thinker too. I guess there are more of them than I knew.
Having had six true loves in my life, who impregnated me with knowledge generosity, and loyalty is what made me so unprepared for the Thinker. He does resemble Macedonio; the first man to peel off the woman in me. They both have charisma, mystery, and good dark looks, Macedonio is dead now, and the memories of him still glisten; like the day in Golden Gate Park under the cherry blossom tree.
What I miss most, is the giggling, dancing, folly-maker that the Thinker pulled out of me as If I were a puppet. He called me Puppet because that’s how he saw me. I’ve got to get my Jojo by tomorrow. I love Thanksgiving as a day with admissions of selfishness and greed. I need to be washed away into thanks that I am here with a mouthful full of food, and a napkin.
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 Travel Journalist!
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
Style, Books and Life with Hermione Flavia.
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER / IGNORANCE IS BLISS - YOU DECIDE
Author of the Avery Shepard Detective Mystery Series
For Readers and Writers
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
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 Travel Journalist!
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
Style, Books and Life with Hermione Flavia.
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER / IGNORANCE IS BLISS - YOU DECIDE
Author of the Avery Shepard Detective Mystery Series
For Readers and Writers
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
ADVENTURERS IN SINGLE LIVINGNESS 