I rolled the dice this morning; got seven. This always lifts me UN-proportionately to
the triumph. What is a seven going to do? Nothing. The dice don’t do it; what happens Is
I believe it’s a lucky day; like the wind won’t knock down my outdoor writing arrangement,
and I’ll be able to write for hours, and not be interrupted by registered letters, construction noise coming
from the new Drury Hotel, or tenant complaints.
What we all treasure and wish we could stack up in a treasure chest is piles of peace from whatever our lives do to make us nervous, edgy, and cuffed. Or we stop the behavior which I think is more difficult.
If you’re a middle class, middle-aged person who expected to be retired in Costa Rica by now with a book and a bottle, then you have to rearrange the internal map.
I ‘ll never retire from writing; I hope one day I can live in my home again.
It was just 3 in the afternoon, and I’d returned from a trip to San Diego, and my body craved relaxation, but not in the house, where suitcases remained unpacked, and dishes to be washed. I walked down to La Fonda Hotel and sat at a table in the woodsy and old leather bar. The smell of tequila and chips permeates the room, so I flowed with the
ambiance and ordered guacamole and a margarita. Sipping slowly, I took notice of the other people around me; old men in Spanish colonial chairs staring into the hotel activity, the reception desk staff, fudging with room reservations, and the lovely waiter, who bowed each time he came to my table. I hadn’t planned on thinking about the script I’m working on, and just as I was unwinding my limbs from the plane ride and trip from Albuquerque, ideas started boiling up like bubbles about this script. I panicked because I didn’t have my journal, or even a pen. Ah! the gift shop.. …
” Do you have a writing pad?”
“What kind?”
“With lines.”
” We have a few.”
” I’m in a hurry, anything will do.”
” What’s the rush?”
” I’m a writer,”
” Oh, I get it.” The clerk rushed through the transaction, and as I was about to leave I remembered,
” And a pen.”
She handed me the one she was writing with, and off I went.
Seated with my tools, I scribbled the thoughts as fast as they entered my still sober self, and when I finished, I took to writing about my surroundings. Yes, this is a place to bar write. I’ve observed Sam Shepard in several places writing through a meal. He has the distinction of not being bothered, but if he is, he draws a line around his space with his power pupils, one glance, and you’re blown off his planet. Sam does not always position his power pupils to defer interruption, I’ve seen him put his pen down and engage the stranger. His eyes turn to a likeness of the Mustang horse, wild and waiting for tenderness.
You have to practice this art, because invariably someone will ask if you are a writer, if you are published, and then they tell you they want to be a writer too. I don’t have power pupils so I put on my head-set and if necessary place my phone to the ear, if I am in the middle of a superlative sentence that I cannot stop. You also have to monitor your drinking, because I’ve learned more than one glass, is not going to read like it did while you were drinking.
The diary my mother never wrote is from what I read in the FBI surveillance reports, newspaper articles and what my father told me. My mother’s emotion’s and thoughts erupt from years of research, intuition and imagination. When I was eleven she gave me a diary. I’ve been writing ever since. I wanted my daughter or son to understand who I was, in case I died young like her. Instead I became dedicated to writing not childbearing.
I think every mother should keep a diary for her children.
Manhattan, December 1944
I am dancing at the Copacabana Night club for the next few weeks. This tiny smoky club is filled with many interesting people. It’s different from any modeling job.
I’m tired after working all day and night, and then taking the train back home to West Orange. Some of the girls are staying at the Barbizon Hotel, so I may also if it’s not too expensive.
Last night, a group of men were seated in the front row. I didn’t know who they were, but this one stared at me all through the show. He sent a bouquet of long-stemmed roses backstage and asked me to meet him for a drink.
When I declined, he was very insistent, and so persuasive I gave in. Later on, I found out he was seated with Frank Costello, the gangster. His name is Allen, and he asked me to dine with him the following night. I hesitated again, and I’m not sure why. He made me laugh and entertained everyone at the table.
January 1944
A talent agent from Hollywood came to the Copa to see all of us dance. Mum is so excited she is already telling everyone in town, I hate when she does this.
Allen called and I agreed to dine with him. We went to El Morocco. He knows so many people. He says he’s in the film business, but there’s talk amongst the girls that he’s a gangster.
March 1944
I’m going to Hollywood for an audition. Swifty Lazar, the one that came to the Copa to see our show, said MGM is signing musical actors. They liked my photos. Allen lives in Hollywood, and is handling all the details. He’s become very interested in my career. It’s all so sudden. There isn’t time to think.
April 1944
I spent a week in Hollywood. Allen drove me all over the city, took me to Santa Monica to see the ocean, to the nightclubs on Sunset Boulevard, and Beverly Hills.
It’s like a dream. I love the city, and MGM has offered me a contract. Again, Allen is helping me make decisions and understand the film business. I don’t know what he does, but he carries a lot of cash. He gets very disturbed when I question him. I met his friend Benjamin Siegel. They are both so handsome and get anything they want.
Summer 1944
We are moving out to California next month. Allen found an apartment in Beverly Hills for us, near where sister Pat can go to High School. She’s so excited. One of the models told me Ben Siegel is a gangster. I wish Allen would open up to me more.
When we moved, our new apartment was on a beautiful street. The apartment is smaller than home, and Mum misses her garden, but she seems happy. She found a Church she likes. She is going to learn to drive.
I have already learned to drive and am saving for a car. Allen knows someone who sells cars, and said he can get me a very good deal. Sometimes, I don’t hear from him for a week, and then he shows up on the studio set with presents.
Allen, Ben and George Raft were arrested for bookmaking. George called and said it wasn’t like the papers wrote, and that Allen would call me when he could.
I’m not to discuss this with anyone. I hid the paper from Mum.
George took me out to dinner. He wants me to be in a movie with him called Nocturne. He’s very fond of Allen and said not to believe what I read in the papers.
Next week we begin filming “Ziegfeld Follies.” Fred Astaire is magnificent to watch. Life is spinning. There is no time to read, or even think. Everyone in Hollywood wants to be a star. I still daydream of going to college one day.
November 1944
I am in love with Allen. There is no turning back. He is Jewish, and his family lives in Winnipeg, Canada. He won’t talk of them, but said he loved his mother.
I wonder so often about his life, but I cannot ask questions. Maybe one day he’ll trust me more. He’s suspicious of everyone. He said he’s going to marry me when his life settles down.
Paris beauty salon (Photo credit: adrian, acediscovery)
In the salon, Wendy, who sees me coming in and senses my mood, whipped out a particularly inviting greeting.
” What’s happening laaaaady?”
” Turning the page on another year. OMG- how did I get to be this age?” Screening my head for imperfections , she stroked my shoulder.
” You don’t need hi-lights, and you look terrific.
” That’s not enough, I haven’t planned well.
” You’re an artist, you create..
” You sure I don’t need hi-lights
” No, you look fab-u-lous.”
Two women in the salon, the conversation cuts through all of our individuality, and ends up in the center, of our tribal understanding, our sensitivities, and insecurities.
Morning comes after two cups of French Press. I sit here at the desk, peeking out the glass door to the shady side of the street. I do not know where I will be living, what I will be doing, or who I will be doing it with next month. Uncertainly, I move in and out of situations and get swept up in my ideas and fantasies. I buy and sell, make and remake, move-in, move-out, leave homes, careers, friends and relationships. I move out of comfort
art nouveau dome of light (Photo credit: e³°°°)
and into uncertainty because it feels more like home moving than staying in one place.
I have to put the words on the paper and look at it to make it real.
Raising a family, sprouting barriers and responsibilities might have changed me, but I didn’t. I’m unchanged in some ways, still running through the hallways of the hotels, gardens, and neighborhoods. Do you know what I mean?
East Palace Avenue Santa Fe (Photo credit: paigeh)
SMILEY’S DICE-ADVENTURES IN LIVINGNESS
By:Luellen Smiley
SANTA FE,NM.
I’m sitting outside in a flowerless garden because no matter how many flowers I plant, they only last one season, if that long. The garden is erupting out of its winter coat, and lime green leaves, plants, and stalks will have to do for now. The sky that seals me in is licked with revisionary hope. The kind that comes back laundered and fresh after a chosen recess from believing in the possibility of a preferred life correction.
Behind the garden, a neighbor is drumming a soft tribal beat, and on Palace Avenue the choir is singing inside the Episcopal Church on Palace Avenue. Between these distinctive tastes, there are sparrows fluttering from fan to nest to fountain. The chattering sounds like; ‘here she comes, don’t come over here, get out of my nest, watch out for that fat crow.’
It’s a mind drift, to be caught in such UN-structured beauty, away from the manuscripts, remotes, doors, and phones. It’s like being on an island out here. Everything we bring into our experience can be revised; a work of art, a way of speaking, thinking, portraying yourself, your way of loving, or lusting, and we all know about appearance, because our society shoves it down our throat.
Look at the possibilities in revising our patterns of behavior. What we accepted twenty years ago doesn’t mean it’s carved in our organs. We can transmute. The interior life needs lifting and tightening, just as our mind and muscles do. You won’t find any immediate remedy, or advertisements, or books on the subject because we’re consumers of products that change and revise only the visible tangibles. I wonder if I traded in my eleven year old Land Rover for a new one if I’d be really happy, and for how long? Or if I flew to Los Angeles and bought cartons of antiques, hats, and perfume if I would be grinning from ear to ear.
I begin with revising the way I experience Santa Fe. I’ve lived on the outskirts, like a storm that blew in and is waiting to blow out. It seems my storm is here for now, and so I let go of the criticism and intolerances. Beginning with my favorite activity, dancing, I returned to El Farol, my chosen dance hall hullabaloo, then to La Posada across the street and mingled with an assorted group of locals, guests, and actors, (who were real as pippin apples)spent a day cruzing the ghostly town of Madrid to experience the cinematic sparseness, and walked up and down Canyon Road one morning before the shops opened, and was greeted half a dozen times by strangers out walking, uniquely different in attire, disposition and stride. I love that about Santa Fe. You don’t conform, it’s a religion here!
My homework for the next few weeks is revising the interior doors of emotion, and the exterior doors of expression. I’ve set aside the memoir, (did I mention I started that again) after a publisher suggested major rewrites and editing. I mean you have to know when to give up because you’re not going to make the team. I’m a six page essayist. If you get me into one hundred and fifty pages, I march all over the globe and lose the reader.
You guys are smart. You know all of this; I’m just learning. I am a case of insufferable arrested development. If I felt my age, which most of you know, I’d be looking at retirement brochures. Instead I’m planning on breaking into new territory. Its a joke between my dreamer self and my inner critic, but I’m not listening to the critic.
Today I swiveled in my desk chair trying to write the column I thought I was going to write. In between gazing out the window at sky scenery, I made oatmeal cookies, watched the birds, took care of business, had a hair cut, plucked at paragraphs from Anais Nin, and danced on the treadmill. The column didn’t come out of a conscious thought wave; it just rose up, after I typed the words, the throw of the dice. The odds were I’d find my way from there.
My dad the gambler, who laid a bet on everything from sports, horses, gaming, to the Academy Awards and elections, taught me many valuable lessons. He actually told me once, ‘Take a chance for heavens sake! Go out and get arrested.’ He knew the odds of that, which is why he dared me. Life corrections begin with edits, then revisions, and then you have a new story!
Just back from a road trip, stops in Flagstaff, Anza, San Diego, stay in Del Mar, visit Jimmy in Palm Springs, Palm Desert, unstructured impulses guiding
me. And now I have to format things, I’m not good at, but I have the content. I’ll draw a double yellow, double yellow line, between the pages, and try to make them all line up. WROTE A LOT OF DOUBLE YELLOW LINE PAGES.
It’s time; to go free-style-I am leaving Saturday-to sit on my beach blanket at Torrey Pines, looking to find the shells and the riptide, then I will go to LA and and drift along Sunset Blvd, and then Santa Barbara, all by train and then ………… short term non-commit-mental.
I read in one of my books on writing that the middle of the novel is where most writers face the demon. The beginning is a gallop, 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. This year it is more comical. I’ve finally accepted that my constant relocating, reinventing, and being restless are not going to be solved. I am going to keep doing these. 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 was standing out on the porch observing the peacefulness. The scenery of Santa Fe is a comforting, ethereal beauty that comes at all times of the day and night, and the flow of people is integrated and festive. All I could think of was where I should go next. The discomfort of mid-life comes from trying to assimilate what you have and what you want.
Many years ago, in the summer of 1987, I was seated in a café in Monaco, truly, and a man that I was traveling with told me, “You have to make a choice.” He embarked on a long discussion about choices we make in life and how everything depends on these choices: how you live and with whom, and what you do. He pointed out to me over my first really authentic Salad Niçoise that I was an oblivious example of a woman refusing to choose. I was more interested in the salad, the yachts, the casino around the corner, and the fact that I didn’t have an evening gown to wear to dinner. I listened without argument or insult, but I was disturbed by what he said. I didn’t understand completely, but he was older and had much experience and conviction. That conversation now fits into the mid-life crisis, the comedy of errors in my life, and maybe in yours, and just how much travesty we can ignore. For my fault, as it is, I do not want to sign, commit, or make final decisions. I want it all to be a temporary placement that allows me the freedom to change.
I have lost track of my European friend, but if he met me today, he would say, “You have not changed at all.” So that is why I was standing there in the darkness on the porch and laughing like a silly girl, because it is true. I have not changed at all.
The choice facing us at mid-life is making a change now, risking losing all we have accomplished, compiled, and attached, or throwing the dice.
Beyond the obvious changes in activity, relationships, and scenery are the internal travels. They are not so easily booked. You cannot wake up one day and say, “I ‘m off to become more compassionate, or more practical, or more generous.” These journeys are taken when other factors play into our lives, such as when we get sick, demoted, or experience a trauma.
It is a very subtle inconsistency. When I unplug all the voices and listen to the one that understands, that is when I write. The middle of the story and the middle of life are the same. We and our characters have to make a choice.
ADVENTURERS IN LIVINGNESS 