Our nest is something we build on our own to give us
permission to explore, and then question, and we go back to our little nest,
and add a bit more certainty because the dinner was great, and the party lasted
longer than we thought, and someone smiled at you in a special way, and then it
rained.
Some thing happened last week; that chloroformed into a mirage, of the past
persons I inhabited, use to manage and direct with more certainty only because
I believed I had a lot of time… endless time.
After three years, eight months and four days, Rudy (AKA “Risky Torpedo”)my should have been brother, and former lover returned to Santa Fe. He pulled into the driveway in his VW Van with the cracked windshield, and his prehistoric dashboard collection of rattle-snake tails, and plastic toy reptiles, red rocks, and feathers.
“You’re not going to believe what happened.”
“Don’t tell me, the car broke down.”
“No, I fell asleep on the road.”
“Then what?”
“I checked into the Knights Motel for a few hours. I’m fine. He looked emaciated, lean as a cougar, and hungry as a wolf. My maternal instincts raged to nurse him.”
“Wow, the porch really needs paint. I’ll start tomorrow. “
“Don’t you want to take a few days off and hike, or dig for petroglyphs?”
“Hell no! I got a lot of work before our first guests arrive. When do the first guests arrive?”
“June 20.”
“Piece of cake.”
“Wait till you see the list.”
John, the man who has come closest to me since Daddy, barbequed that night, while Risky set his cowboy boots into the New Mexican soil, watched the clouds open like white envelopes, and acclimated himself to the home we used to share-as a perceived couple. I wondered what our neighbors at La Posada would be thinking, as the three of us, the we of me, congregate on the front porch around my mayhem, Rudy’s Hank Williams music, and John’s pacing during a phone conversation with his agent. The discourse and chaos of life is what draws us together, not the complacency.
Reconfiguring a gallery that we never really furnished as a home,into a first-class vacation rental for six to eight people, took up one entire spiral notepad. I saved the notepad, not because I will ever do this again because my passion for struggle, deconstruction, and chaos has passed. I noticed that about two weeks into the reconstruction.
At times I think I mine mayhem because our family home burnt when I was eight years old, and the impression it left was that everything can change between the time you get on the bus to go to school and when you come home.
Ann, my therapist back in the ‘90s suggested that the fire that burned our family home was why I became a transient mover, incessantly rearranged furniture, and loved hotels. I kept a list for years of all my addresses; by the time I was forty, I had moved forty-two times.
What you do if you convert your home into a vacation rental is remove any signs of personal stain, sentiment or residency. The catch-all is that that we are not moving. We are going to hide everything that identifies us.
By the third day of Risky’s arrival the worn paint on the porch went from sulking yellow to stormy grey. Buckets of paint and brushes were scattered like leaves, new light bulbs, tins of gold leaf paint, and tubes of caulking.
“Risky can’t you put your tools in one place?”
“No I cannot. I never have. Why would you even ask? You know this is how I work.
“I ask because you know I have to ask.”
Indoors, John was between rewriting a script, and agreeing to my yelps for help: “Would you help me move all the books to the dining table?” He didn’t just move them, he stacked them by subject. Then I boxed them, and painfully stacked them in the other closet, next to the boxes of albums, personal photos, journals, and Lanie’s dice collection that has grown to casino impressive numbers. A box of photographs marked 2003 was tempting me to peek inside. I lifted the lid, and landed on a photo of Rudy and I in Taos, perched on a boulder in the ski valley. Flashing images, not of where we were, but of who we were, who all of us were back then.
Then came the cartons of FBI and INS files; the beasts that entrap me. These boxes, filled with the answers to my family history, have been attached to me for seventeen years.
“Gee Loulou, why not pack a few dozen more: they’re not heavy enough. Do you know how many times I’ve moved these?”
Risky lugged the boxes down two flights of stairs to the basement, which he had to rearrange because my Vacation Rental advisor told us it wasn’t presentable. All this activity stirred a family of mice who turned up on the garden pathway, and zipped by me as I laid the platter of food on the outdoor dining table.
“The mice are not dead.” I told Risky over and over. Because he loves all creatures, he avoided the traps until the mice turned up in the flower beds while he was planting.
It’s the first time in several years since it’s taken six months to fill one Raika lined journal. And without my journal, I swell up, and then explode. The explosion comes in swift unmanageable bursts that once, during one of the manuscript box moves, the one marked “Rejection Letters,” allowed me to take a great deep breath, and drop the box squarely over the 2nd story landing.
“What happened?” John and Risky took giant steps towards the box, and then looking up at me, to see if more was coming, I replied, “Rejection letters.”
In one of the free tote bags that come with a purchase at Nordstroms, I dropped the books I would need, the ones that nourish my appetite for understanding: Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Joan Didion Lawrence Durrell, and the ones I have not read yet. I was able to pack fifteen books in the bag, which I imagined would go in the front seat of the car if we were driving or in the suitcase if I was flying. Where John and I would escape during the eight days our guests would live here, was still undetermined.
After the books came the wardrobe, shoes, cosmetics, toiletries, porcelain pets, fans, masks,
CD’s, DVD’s, and then my desk.
Within hours, my private writing room, and literary sanctuary for the last five years, was ransacked, broken down, like a theater set, and stored in stackable trays that I wheeled into the closet. “This feels very weird. It’s as if I’m stripping from the inside out.”
“What about the filing cabinet? Where does that go?”
Rudy was on the floor, attaching wheels to the cabinet, and I was in the closet, where the space was shrinking around me.
“LouLou, what about Cancun?” John yelled from another room.
“What about it?” I shouted from the closet floor, where I was organizing jewelry.
“I have a time share I can exchange. I’ve never been there.”
“It’s too late. Cancun is South Beach.”
And ten minutes later, it was more of Mexico, and British Columbia, and I was separating half-written essays, with memos to the Mob Experience, and the heat came in waves from the hallway, but I couldn’t get out of the closet.
Later that afternoon, my browsing eye churned Craig’s listings, while John’s continuing efforts to find us an escape lingered in the hallway.
“How about Laguna Niguel?”
My finger landed on a posting, “Writer’s Cabin on 40 acres in San Cristobel, Taos where Aldous Huxley wrote Island.”
“John, I found a place! Let’s go tomorrow to check it out. This will be such an adventure! It’s next to a riding stable, and creeks, and trees… and DH Lawrence lived up the hill.”
As always, John replied: “Sure, why not?”
To be continued….
Free your mind and the rest will follow; the words from EnVogue’s latest release played all day on the radio. Every time I got in the car to hunt up real estate listings, I heard that song.
I worked in an industrial building along an industrial highway in San Diego. I shared a warehouse with twelve men, eleven of them tall, weight trained football on Sunday guys, who ate at expensive restaurants amongst a club of commercial real estate agents, where they’d be noticed. They were pretty decent guys, except the partners who each had severe a case of ego malnutrition and competed for attention like two tottlers. Greg was the only short one in the bunch, and he wore a rug, manicured his nails, and surfed on the weekends. He was always talking about his Karate black belt, and how he knocked guys out. He rarely laughed and when he did he sounded like a chirping bird. Greg used to give me his wife’s unworn clothes and waited in my living room while I tried them on. It was sort of strange, but he never played the trump card and asked for anything in return.
One day in the summer of 1992 I called the office secretary.
“Gail, I’m not coming in for awhile. Will you forward my calls to my home?”
“Are you all-right?”
“Oh yea. I’m fine.”
“What should I tell Sam?”
“Tell him I’m on leave of absence.”
I lived in a little cottage house in North Park. It was all white with a picket fence and a squared grass yard where my dog played. The front room was small but the carpeting was new, so I could curl up on the rug and watch the clouds from the windows.
I threw my nylons and navy pumps in the garbage, and folded the business suits into boxes. I knew I wasn’t going back, but where I was headed was a throw of the dice.
Mornings I ran through Balboa Park before the crowds arrived, and got to see the zoo keepers feeding the animals, and the actors going into The Old Globe Theater. I filled my senses with virgin light and morning silence, unfamiliar sensations to office workers living with florescent lighting and partition walls. In the afternoon I lounged around in sweats watching music videos, reading magazines and dancing.
I watched some new music videos, maybe EnVogue or Bobby Brown, and tried to imitate the hip-hop moves on the carpet. It was like watching a cat in the snow. I called all the dance schools, and no one was teaching hip-hop. I didn’t know back then my mother was a dancer; so this impulsive and implausible scheme to start a dance troupe startled me as much as everyone I told.
The last lease deal I did was for a group of soccer players from Jamaica. They needed a space to open a reggae dance club. They told me they’d called other agents and no one would take their business. I found a disheveled warehouse and struck a deal for them. They fixed up the warehouse themselves, with colored lights, and some tables, but Rockers was really about the dancing. I walked into the club one night, and they were all doing their part; greeting customers, spinning vinyl, and serving drinks. I danced with Leroy, the leader of the group, and watched him unfold from the waist down. He danced so low to the floor, he appeared boneless.
“Leroy, I’m going to start a dance troupe. You guys inspired me.”
“What kind of dance?’
“Hip-Hop and jazz funk.”
Leroy covered his mouth with one hand and laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“You’re a business woman; I didn’t know you was a dancer.”
“Well, I took lessons a long time ago.”
“Hip Hop?”
“No, Jazz. I’m going to find the dancers to teach. I know there out there.”
“Yea, they out there all right; lots of them.”
“Well see! I’d like to use your space, pay rent of course, when you’re not open.”
“Well that’s all right. You don’t need to pay me.”
I hugged him, and he shook his head. “I don’t think there’s much money in teaching hip-hop.” he said.
At the community college I posted a sign for dancers, and observed some classes. When I got the call from Piper, he asked me to come see him teach at the Church on University Avenue. I drove over one night, and found Piper in a little room upstairs, teaching Jazz Funk to one woman. He was tall and lanky with a smile that creased his whole jaw. He came over, shook my hand, and said, ‘How you doing? I’m Piper.’ He wore an immaculate shield of confidence that defied his nineteen years, and moved at the intersection of Michael Jackson and James Brown. The groove spiraled through his body.
“I’ll help you get it started; if you’re not a trained dancer you need help.”
So Piper and I met every week and finally landed on a group that incorporated Jazz-Funk, Hip-hop and Afro-Cuban. I named the company United Steps Dance Productions, and the Jammers were the hip-hop troupe.
I’ll never forget the look on the partner’s faces when I told them I was starting a multicultural dance troupe. They just stared at me blankly. Then within weeks all five of my unclosed lease deals were signed at the same time. I walked out with enough money to live six months. That was real security in my mind.
Piper and I held our first audition at Rockers. When I opened the doors that morning, dancers were already lined up outside. They came dressed in street clothes; wearing scarves, baseball caps, loose pants, and tank tops. I watched them leap, kick, split, and turn inside out for the job. I knew that I was in the right spot. One dancer walked out, stood still for a moment, and then leaped into a break-dance pop-lock routine that silenced the crowd. “Him Piper, definitely him.” He’s bad, yea he’s real bad.” At the end of the auditions, Piper mocked me.
“Lue, we can’t sign every dancer just cause they hip-hop. Anyone can do that.”
I can’t hip hop and it’s my company.”
“Yea, and you’re crazy. I swear, Lu you’re crazy.”
We agreed on pop-locker Vince-Master Jam, and Monique, a young Afro-Cuban dancer. That was the beginning.
When Vince and I met, he told me he lived in Escondido.
“But that’s an hour away.”
“It’s cool, I’ll be here. Just give me the chance.”
Vince showed up twice a week at night for his class. Many times, we sat in the cold damp club, listening to music and Vince tried to teach me to pop-lock. I apologized for not having students and he looked at me, and said, “ Don’t worry Lue, will get it going on.”
Our first performance was at the Red Lion Hotel. I hired a video tech to record the performance. We got a free dinner and a hundred dollars. We had a good crowd, and everyone loved them. Afterwards in the dining room, they were talking, laughing and elbowing each other. Piper was ranting about Monique taking too much time, and Vince was telling Piper to chill because Monique was so good. I sat there just listening, with a big smile on my face.
The Jammers belonged to the no smoking, no drinking, no drugs group. For the first few months, they taught on tiled floors under a leaky roof, without any heat. But they kept coming back to teach and their dedication moved me to find a better location. We relocated to a well-heeled Health Club downtown San Diego and the classes filled up with students, dancers, and office workers searching for a new lunch. They came from all different races; Asian, White, Hispanic and Black. I danced with the classes and promoted our troupe. The Jammers laughed at my attempt to be a soul sister, and I laughed with them. We were reviewed by KPBS magazine, and a photographer took pictures of us and featured us in the magazine.
Searching for gigs proved to be an exasperating struggle. I called department stores, festival producers, shopping centers, nightclubs, hotels and everyone had the same line, “I don’t think hip-hop is right for our clientele.”
When I ran out of money I took a job managing a condominium project, where I lived rent free. After a time of observing the Jammers self expression, I asked myself, what is mine? I still refused to get on stage. Vince used to bawl me out because I made Piper introduce the group.
After two years Piper moved to Los Angeles to launch his dancing career, and I let Vince take the troupe where he wanted it to go. He turned it around, adding twelve dancers and broke more ground in San Diego. Monique developed into a serious stage actress and we all lost touch. They were the sparklers in my life; like that star you think you’ll never hold. I left the Jammers a different woman. They put the rhythm back in my spirit and soul.
When I recently located Vincent on an Actors website, I called him right away. He is a missing link in the chain of my life. Without that adventure, I might still be imitating the kind of business woman I wasn’t. We met in Los Angeles, and watched Vince perform in a club. He kept his vision and now acts on television and video. “ Lue, now you have to find Piper.”
It was Piper, who said to me one day after reading some of my poetry, “ Lu, you’re not a dancer. You’re a writer.”
Any dice to throw Email: folliesls@aol.com
“It has been a time of writing for me. The doctors have all decided that my crippled leg must be amputated. They cannot do it right away because the hospitals are so full. So, in the nights of glare I just cuss out the doctors for making me wait, and cuss out my leg for hurting. I have read Sarah Bernhardt and her superb gallantry and courage have comforted me.” From “Illumination & Night Glare” by Carson McCullers.
More on the adventure in expectations.
I wonder how all of us really accept this incongruity of life. If we experience continuous disappointment, our inner oars, the ones that carry us over the tidal waves, must be accessible so we can bash back at the unsettling news, the absence of truth, the winter storms, the lagging economy, the pain of puttering, and expectations unrealized.
At a window table of Il Piatto, a favorite Italian bistro in Santa Fe, my friend Baron, (www.fotobaron.com) John (no website) and I fervently discussed the state of the people. What we observe, think, fear, and ruminate over at home when the lights are out, the street silent as a meadow, and shadows from winds through the winter branches play like puppets on the walls.
“Baron, if something doesn’t break soon—I’m going to need anti-depressants, or heroin.”
“Have you ever tried it?”
“Heroin? No, never. I tried Prozac for a few weeks years ago. It was ineffective.”
“Look, things are tough everywhere; the shops are closing, and the restaurants empty– look around. This is weird. And where’s the god damn snow?”
“It’s in New York. Rudy was there for a few days.”
“What the hell for?”
“Court. And guess what? He flies across country on Monday, appears in court the next morning, and is asked, ‘Why are you here?’ So you can see Rudy standing there in a cotton zip-up jacket, his face flushed with snow and wind. The judge informs Rudy he didn’t have to come to court.”
“How’s business for you?” I asked.
“Terrible! I keep inventing new prints, new sizes, new shows, a book, you just gotta keep it going, LouLou.”
“I keep it going; but it is beginning to feel like neat little circles.”
John tipped his head, the tip of understanding between two writers whose fingers are bleeding, amongst a country of bloggers, Twitters, and Facebook fetish writing. We wait, as all writers and artists, and in these times, everyone must wait, until our soil is fertile, and the illumination returns.
“Any bites on the script?”
“Yes, we get them, and then you wait, you may wait two or three months to hear anything.”
“Let me explain,” John interjected. “ It’s because ninety-nine percent of the scripts submitted are passed on, and the reason for that is the executive of creative development puts his job on the line when he green lights a script, so it had better be good!”
“In the interim, I repurpose the house as a vacation rental.”
“Then where will you go?”
“I don’t know.”
“LouLou!”
We talked about Egypt, Fox News, CNN, Tunisia, mobsters, photographers, business strategy, and the next Gallery LouLou event, a work in progress. There is visceral nourishment when you congregate over the same obdurate situations. The singular frustration festering inside is softened when commingled. We lingered over coffee, still unloading the burdens of a questionable wintry month.
That night John and I rushed through the front door, seeking warmth. I was on my way upstairs when I noticed a man with long black hair seated at my porch table. I could see his whole upper body through the drapeless French windows. His hand seemed as close to the door knob as my fingers are to this laptop.
“JOHNNNNNNNNNNN, there’s a man on the porch!”
Five “hurry up’s” later, John came running into the living room.
He opened the front door and announced in his radio deep broadcast voice, “We’re closed.” John nodded several times, and closed the door.
“What were they doing?”
“Attempting to light your kerosene lamp.”
“Why?”
“They thought the porch was charming.”
A few days later, another man appeared on the porch, this one wandering back and forth. After all the times a wanderer has been loose on the porch, in the garden, at the front door asking where someone lived (they do that in Santa Fe), and then the night someone climbed on the porch and ripped off the Stratocaster guitar from the hook on the eaves (a rock n roll prop), I had to apply more caution than negligence. If someone wanted to assault me, my defense would be worthless. When all the girls started learning self-defense, and carrying tear gas in their purses, I started locking the doors. Though I am not expecting intruders and assaults, it feels like it is time to take responsibility for myself. The fear of being alone is more tormenting than loneliness.
“I brought the shot-gun. Are you ready to learn?”
“Yes.”
TO BE CONTINUED
It begins in San Francisco, in the late fifties, in the section of San Francisco known as outer mission. A pencil thin surfer wandered the streets visiting surfer pals; like Tambi, Minor Lo, and Da Fly.
One day his friend George suggested they go to Hawaii, and being of surfer consciousness, they left that afternoon. During this trip, the surfer went out seeking work, and discovered he didn’t have much to offer. The epiphany broadened into an apprenticeship as a carpenter on the mainland. After a few months of instruction, he was ready for the Contractors State Board exam. He passed the test, and returned to San Francisco to pick up the license.
About this time, he met Bill, a man who owned a home in Sea Cliff. Bill was often seen puttering about his house, attempting to fix things that he didn’t know how to fix. Bill and the surfer became friends. Bill was happy to hear that the young man was carving another wave in his life. Bill was a sort of western style renaissance man, who chose people because of character, leaving behind details like, age, occupation, and all the other things that divide us.
He invited the surfer into his home and asked him if he could make some alterations to the fireplace. The surfer complied and began his first job in the trade of carpentry. Bill and his family liked the surfer, and it was a mutual friendship. After the fireplace was finished, the surfer began another job and another and soon, if you wanted to find the surfer, you had to ask Bill.
The surfer lingered around San Francisco, and the years ripened the friendship between the surfer and Bill, his wife Martha, his three sons, Carl, Gavin, and Walter, and his daughter Wendy. Now the surfer was of the age that falls between peer and pupil, and all of his friends belonged to the surfing colony. Bill once told me that the surfer told the most astonishing stories, and that he was loved like a part of the family.
One day, the surfer decided to leave San Francisco, and follow his girlfriend to Santa Barbara, where she was studying at the University. This didn’t work out the way the surfer thought it would, and so he returned to San Francisco. He went back to the old neighborhood where Bill lived. It happened that Bill decided to move to San Diego, and so the surfer was waving goodbye. A few more years pass while the surfer hung around his surfer friends down at Kelly’s Cove, and watched the city of San Francisco from the lap of the pacific. When he needed money, he worked for Tambi, carrying his ladder, or stirring cement, and then returned to the stillness of floating with the ocean.
One day the surfer received a phone call from Bill, asking for the surfers help. Bill bought a home and business in La Jolla and both needed renovating. The surfer knew the area as he had surfed the Pacific from San Francisco to Ensenada. Bill asked the surfer if he would move down to La Jolla for a while. Naturally, the surfer accepted this offer, and so Bill flew the surfer down to La Jolla. He paid his expenses and gave him a key to an ocean front hotel room at Capri By the Sea. The surfer hung over the terrace of his new post, watching the Board Walk and thought he was the luckiest man in the world. Bill introduced the surfer around La Jolla, and he began working and meeting Bill’s friends. The time fell into one long sunrise to sunset, of work, companionship, and surfing.
Now, we take a giant leap forward to the summer of 2007 and to Colorado Springs. It would be the first time that I would meet Gavin, one of Bill’s sons. It had been many years since the surfer, whom you may have guessed by now, is my best friend, who goes by the name of Soaring Crow, had seen Gavin. I had heard about him for so many years, from Bill and Martha, and from Soaring Crow. Gavin was the travel writer; he covered ski resorts, ranches and rodeos.
We drove up a tree-lined street and parked in front of an unpretentious Victorian house. A man galloped down the walkway, he was tall and broad, with an easy grin, and mercurial eyes. Gavin brought us into his home and placed our luggage in his bedroom.
“You guys sleep here, the sheets are clean.”
“Where will you sleep?” I asked.
“I’ll sleep outside, I do all the time.”
The welcome was expansive, as if I was about to go on a Ferris wheel, or ski lift. SC and Gavin had seen one another at a family wedding years ago, but this was the first get together. I adore these inevitable reunions tied to our past, and so I sat on the edge and mused their fellowship. We filed into the den, where Gavin picked up a pair of electric guitars and the two strummed away the years inside surf tunes. I poured wine, and took photographs. After dinner, the room was familiar and quiet. Gavin showed us a picture of Bill dressed in western gear next to a horse.”
“I never knew he was a cowboy?” I said.
“Well, he was. He grew up around horses.”
“And you’re a cowboy too?”
“Used to be a cowboy, not anymore. Once a cowboy stops riding, he stops being a cowboy.”
“You sound just like Bill.” I said.
“Everyone says that.”
We lingered around the table until late in the night, and stories rolled out from the heart. Gavin’s rooms had exploded with his story telling tools, piles of black and white photography were stacked on the ground, books, and records and sporting equipment. He raked through a stack and handed me a photograph of a rodeo rider.
“ I love that photograph, it’s wonderful.” I said.
“ Take it, take any of them you want.”
The next morning, we had breakfast at the Broadmore Hotel, surrounded by gardens and river walks. I exuded small bites of Gavin’s adventures, as a freelance journalist, columnist for the Rocky Mountain News, and traveling with the Rodeo. He was the sparkling image of Bill, authentic and understated.
After breakfast, we drove to the Valley of the Gods.
Gavin jumped out of the car and trotted ( he does not ever walk) to a spot overlooking the rugged insubordinate Valley.
“ This is where part of Bill rests, the other part is in the ocean, isn’t that neat.”
“ You can visit him all the time.”
“ Yep, I do.”
The throw of the dice this week lands on redefining one kind of relationship for another. It’s also called the breakup. The words are familiar to most of us. How we get there is unfamiliar. The exact path each of us takes towards intimacy, and then away from it, is custom-made.
What brings two strangers together at 25 years old is attic material at 55. The physical appearance and satisfaction meanders over the dips and dives. All the quarrels, hardships, and difficult compromises are either dropped, or repeated without sustained anger and outrage. The arguments begin and end within 24 hours. There is a journey between a couple and neither one knows the final destination. For some it is an 8 week affair, others an eternal matrimony, and then there are couples who must battle the journey all the way. For some unknown reason, two people love unevenly. With every other aspect of life in perfect order, the scenery, replenishment of necessities, even absence of tragic disorder, this couple will never find peace. They are unmatched where it counts the most. They are staring at opposite corners, refreshed by different tastes, and feel almost nothing that the other person feels, with the exception of the feeling they have of comfort and trust. After 25 years, you know where the rumbles and ridges are, and you know how to handle them.
You even get accustomed to the battles, and what defenses you can use. The drama though draining has a certain appeal, in that it is familiar. When the truth rises above the camouflage, you cannot mop it off. It interferes with the loveliness of a yellowed summer moon, or a morning so beautiful that you want to hold it in your hand. It is like walking with lead in your shoes, and you freeze the lightness in your heart. With this burden, you cannot balance all the other misadventures in life.
When I was 29, my wings had just been released. I was alone, without any family around me, and I took the least familiar flight, and moved from my home in Los Angeles to Del Mar. It is beyond the mist of golden memories, it truly was the most unforgettable 6 months of my life. I had to rebuild everything from scratch, and in the process, I was building myself, step by step. That kind of work is irreplaceable, even the most adventurous of travel does not compare to rebuilding your life.
Now, is not much different from back in 1983, only I am not alone. I feel the same yearning for self-discovery. A breakup does not erode the love, companionship and trust of a 25-year friendship. With all those foundations in mint condition, you should be able to take on the new journey you have missed.
But! It is delayed for the reason that attachment is beyond emotional; it affects financial, social, and business survival. One by one solutions can be created. Sometime circumstances of life create them for you. Whenever I am stagnate, and unable to make a move, I have to think of my mother’s life.
I rose at 3:00 AM to turn the heat on, pick up my writing journal, and discern the week’s theme.
The house is unfamiliar at this time, as it is my first middle of the night experience here. I wonder for a moment if I should boil water for tea or coffee, and settle on decaf. Alice and Bugsy follow my footsteps, circle their feeding table, and then begin to cat play. Bugsy gallops around in circles and Alice watches. Their presence kindles the stark rooms. While the water boils, I step outside to the porch I hear the distant sound of pounding surf and sit down to listen. The moon is shaved from the fullness of the previous night, and reflects my own disposition.
The street is hollowed like a tunnel, the light of day is shining in some other distant country, and the sky is appears tinted with primer. Somewhere someone is dressing for work, breathing by the tick of the clock until he must report for work.
The draft of sleep lingers in my eyes, and my feet shuffle on the cold tiles, while I grind the beans and think through the remains of the week. There are themes to our lives. Sometimes a year, sometimes one single day launches the theme, or it may just tumble into our path unexpected and replace whatever we were holding on to dearly, and deliver something unpleasant, like sickness, or separation. The sensations leading up to my theme jilted my creativity, and the pages I wrote were jammed with contradictions, maybe they still are.
Thoughts begin to form and ruminate, what is important? The theme of my week began when I was informed a Frog’s member I knew only slightly died very suddenly. From that day on, conversations, books, and televisions shaped the theme.
I see what is in front of me, and I am dissatisfied with the surroundings. The temperature, color, textures and placement of furnishings is flawed, and I have abated good temperament, creativity, and affection. I have tried to replace my incompleteness with substitutes: new shoes, scarves, and half a dozen books. Ah Hah! I have caught the intruder, the inconsequential arrangememt of new stuff.
Several more incidents aided my awakening. One came while reading Mark Twain’s “Following the Equator, A Journey Around the World.” It is a first person narrative of his lecturing trip on a sea voyage around the world bound for Australia and New Zealand. His diary pages are as powerful as water sprung from a fire hydrant; and I flowed into the adventure with him. A few days later while I was vacillating between reading and watching television I channeled onto a movie, “Shadows Over Tuscany.” Harvey Keitel emerged as a familiar character; a writer who has stopped writing. Along with the added irony of his resplendent surroundings in a villa over Tuscany, he still could not write.
I have settled into a corner of the sofa by the light, and now Alice is purring into my robe. Writing with pen is so different from keyboard, journaling is always with pen, but columns are on the keyboard. The next incident occurred in conversation with a woman who relayed her elated experience from meditating. She asked me about my own source. I understood that to mean what tranquilizes all the peripheral complaints, mental pains and wounds that lie dormant or at least manageable. Without thinking of the tormented hours, I thought of the comforts of exhibiting my life on paper.
The shallowness of that answer makes me uncomfortable. I return to the porch for one more gulp of landscape that I share with the stars.
The street is unfamiliar, a temporary scene like a bus stop, and I am merely waiting to move on. The neighbors are strangers, and stories do not blossom here. My desk is sealed into a corner of the bedroom, and too small to stack all my photographs, books, notepads, and dice mementos.
It is not the act of writing with pen and paper moving along at a steady rhythm; it’s the activation of the heart and mind, collaborating to unravel the relevant from the irrelevant. To reach this state of matrimony a writer needs not a Tuscan Villa, or a Moorish Castle, but experiences that flake off the skin, or recall of the experience that gives it relevance. A story is flickering at my source, asking to be written and I’m avoiding the introduction. Fear is shining like a spotlight on one end, and insecurity is the temperature that stifles my pen. It is not the cold tiled floor, and cramped desk.
I wrote a novel in a 99 square feet room that SC and I shared for a year and a half.
If I continue to roam around the task of writing this story, the intensity of irritation will escalate, my neck and shoulders will not loosen, my walk will be feigned, my smile forced, my heart longing for padding, my ego striving for recognition in the wrong places, and my soul roaming the hallways at 3:00 in the morning.
My spineless spirit that sends me out shopping for shoes, scarves, and earrings will finally halt. I will return to shopping for inspiration, courage and confidence that I can write the story. folliesls@aol.com
JIM MARSHALL AT THE OPENING OF GALLERY LOULOU TAOS. 2006
“Americas ‘true romantics will be the jazz musicians and jazz writers, living by their lyrical emotions, senses.”
From The Diary of Anais Nin volume Six.”
The throw of the dice this week lands on mysteries of character. We all have our closet of masks that we reach for when we need to camouflage our fear, insecurity, disdain, or judgment.
I wore a mask the day I went to pick up Jim Marshall at the Albuquerque airport. I didn’t want to appear unprepared, inexperienced, or effusive. As soon as I recognized Jim taking his last step off the escalator, my mask cracked. I ran to him, hugged him, and clichés poured out of my mouth: I’m so happy to see you, how was the flight, welcome to New Mexico. He nodded, smiled with closed lips, and asked,
“How long does it take to get to Taos?”
“An hour and a half.” Jim’s lips tightened.
In the car, Rudy and I whisked up conversation, but the results were drippy. Jim stared out at the window. We were in the valley of lunar like scrub rush, broken down sheds, and absentee human life.
“WHERE THE FUCK ARE WE?” Jim growled
“We’re almost there, another half-hour.”
“WHERE THE FUCK ARE THE PEOPLE?”
I tried, unsuccessfully to assure Jim, there were lots of people in Taos. I read his mind; why did he make the decision to exhibit his iconic rock and roll photography in a gallery in boon-dust Taos. How much longer before he can unwind with a scotch, and call home for a taste of civility. Who are these morons driving this car anyway?
Inside the B & B suite we’d rented for Jim, I breezed across to the adobe terrace, and opened the curtains, “You like it?”
“THERE’S NO FUCKING HAIR DRYER?”
“You can borrow mine.”
“Are you hungry Jim?”
“No.”
“I have a bottle of your favorite scotch.” He picked it up, and looked for a glass. I ran to the bathroom and brought him a glass.
“See you tomorrow. “ He growled.
“What time?”
“I’ll call.”
The next day, I waited for Jim’s call. Instead I heard from Dave Brolan, Jim’s operator to the world; friend, translator, mediator and stabilizer.
“Dave, is Jim all right?”
“He’ll be all right. He’s tired and cranky. He’ll be fine tomorrow night.
“What can I do anything?”
“No, just take care of your opening business. I take care of Jim.”
I sighed deeply, and returned to the chaotic events preceding the grand opening of our gallery. Jim agreed to exhibit along with Baron Wolman and Michael Zagaris, because they hadn’t been together in a long time. I was about to ease-drop on history, with three distinguished rock and roll photographers.
My heart raced ahead of me, until 6 o’clock when Jim and Dave walked into the gallery.
“How are you Jim?” I followed behind him as he viewed the exhibition.
“Looks good.” He said. Then he was swallowed up into a crowd of guests. He stood patiently for photographs, greeted strangers with a boyish smile and brotherly handshake. He sat down at my desk and began to sign books for a tickly line of buyers. I filled his glass with scotch and he said, “Thanks sweetheart.” My heart returned to my chest. The evening transcended into a kinetic overture of rock n roll music, reminiscing of the sixties, and feverish excitement. Around midnight, after being the center of 250 to 300 Taosaneos, Jim said, “Let’s eat.” It was snowing and pitch black outside.
Our party of seven charged in and rearranged the vibe of the banal atmosphere. Once inside the dining room Michael Z, was exhibiting impersonations of Jim, while we all laughed. Marshall didn’t twitch, or sneer; he accepted being the force of raucous laughter.
A young professional looking man approached our table.
“I apologize for interrupting. When I got to the opening, you all were leaving. I’m really sorry I missed it; I’m a huge fan of your work Jim.
“How did you know we were here? I interrupted.
“I followed you.” He said.
“Join us.”
That night and the next three nights, Jim was host to a crowd of fans that followed him around. I watched the mystery of his character, revealed, untouched, in focus, on what the photographs brought back to him. He was anointed by their admiration, without becoming inflated.
At the airport, Jim took me into his arms, “You did good LouLou.”
Two Years later.
I am in Santa Fe, and my social life is Camus strange. While I try to sell my photographs and write, my life is stifled by the absence of friends and parties. Jim called one afternoon.
“Loulou, my friends just moved to Santa Fe. Take down their number and call them.”
I called these new friends of Jim’s, and a week later, a man drove up, and leaped out of his car.
“Hi LouLou, I’m Jock.” He sat down, but his spirit was an unbolted kinetic burst of energy.
“I brought this for you.” He handed me a beautifully hand crafted book of his Cuban Series photographs.
A month or so later, I received a party invitation from Jock and his wife, Annaliese. The evening was lyrical, as friends circulated between the portals, while Jock mixed molita’s and Annaliese served Cuban food. That night, I was introduced to their friends. Now, a year later, I consider them my friends.
I called Jim after the party.
“I called to thank you.”
“What for baby?”
“For introducing me to Jock and Annaliese. Now I have friends.” Jim chuckled.
Jim passed away March 23, 2010. He was a romantic and lived by lyrical emotions and senses.
San Diego was still into rage and rock and roll. The people I was calling for gigs didn’t know Hip-Hop yet. That was too bad, because we were having the greatestexperience of our life. When I ran out of money I took a job managing a condominium project, where I lived rent free and had weekends and evenings for Jammers. After a time of observing their self expression, I asked myself, where is mine? I still refused to get on stage, Vince used to bawl me out because I made Piper introduce the group. We were good for each other, the three of us. After two years Piper moved to Los Angeles to launch his career, he had showmanship in the way he held his hands. Vince took over the troupe and added twelve more dancers. These two young men, they were the sparklers in my life, like that star you think you’ll never hold. When I left the Jammers I was a different woman. They put the rhythm back in my spirit, and faith into my soul. I mean there are things a business career will never offer, you have to go into the arts for this kind of stuff.
Free yourmind and the rest will follow, the words from EnVogue’s latest release became a sort of mantra.
It was a decision that came at a moment when everything else stopped making sense, except my happiness. I tossed out the two-piece suits, and turned off the world outside. Insulated in my tiny North Park bungalow, I merged into music and dance. During the hottest of summer days I was seated cross legged on the worn carpeting watching MTV and flipping through magazines.
Imploded with music videos, magazines, and dancing; Hip-Hop was the most exhilarating choreography around. I watched the music videos over and over. When I searched the yellow pages for dance classes; no one was offering Hip-Hop. With that, I thought why can’t I be the founder of a dance troupe?
I needed to find the dancers to suit my concept of integrating jazz funk, hip-hop, and Afro-Cuban into a collage workshop.
Piper Jo was the first dancer to join. He came at me with everything he had; talent, faith, intelligence, and belief in this crazy white chick who wanted to hip-hop. Piper played Miles Davis, emulated jazz-funk, and moved like Michael Jackson. He was twenty years old and this was his first teaching job. When I asked him who taught him to dance he answered;
“Michael Jackson and James Brown. I danced in my living room every day. My mother couldn’t get me out of the house. God blessed me with this gift, and I want to share it. So if you put me in your dance troupe I guarantee, you won’t be sorry. NO, you won’t.”
At our first audition Piper said, “How you expect to pick dancers, if you don’t know what to look for. I swear Lue, you are crazy. But don’t worry, I’ll show you. And don’t be picking every guy out there cause he can Hip-Hop, there’s nothing to that. We want dancers with classical training.” He was right.
“Vince Master Jam” was a former break-dancer and studied classical dance. Vince was the coolest; he sat back and waited for his chance, unhurried, relaxed, but when the music came on, he flipped everyone out. He was thirty. Both of them belonged to the no smoking, no drinking, no drugs, group
At that first audition I wanted to select half of the thirty some dancers that showed up. They came dressed in street clothes, wearing scarves and bandannas. I watched them leap, kick, split and turn inside out for the job. I knew that I was in the right spot. Then we added Monique, a startling beauty with Afro-Cuban dance training, and a perpetual attitude of carefreeness.
For the first few months, the Jammers taught classes under a leaky roof, on a tiled floor, without any heat. Piper rode a bus from the other side of town to get to the building. Vince drove an hour each way to teach one class at night. The first few months no one showed up for Vince’s Hip-Hop class. But he kept coming back every week. When I apologized, he said, “ That’s okay Lue. We get it going on, they’ll show up soon– I’m sure.”
They did show up and we moved into a well positioned Health Club downtown San Diego. The classes filled up with students, dancers, and working women looking for a new challenge. They came from all different races; Asian, White, Hispanic and Black. I danced with the classes and promoted our troupe. They laughed at my attempt to be a soul sister, and I laughed with them. We were reviewed by KPBS magazine, and a photographer took photographs of us and featured the Jammers in the magazine. People began to think I knew what I was doing. The Jammers thought I could take them places. I pictured them on the front page of Variety, the problem was I was too early.
WHERE TO BEGIN THIS STORY OF A FATHER THAT I ONLY CAME TO UNDERSTAND BY READING HIS FBI FILES, BOOKS ABOUT MOB HISTORY WRITTEN BY LAW ENFORCEMENT AND COLLEGE PROFESSORS, AND DOCUMENTARIES PRODUCED BY FOES OF MY FATHER.
My last year with Dad was 1981. Naïve, and unconcerned with where I was headed, or how I’d get there if I figured it out, I was spinning around in an executive chair; waiting for the big hand on the black and white office clock to set me free. Time didn’t pass; I hauled it over my head, in my bland windowless office, under florescent glare. I was trouble shooting for an ambitious group of USC guys as they gobbled up all of Los Angeles real estate. Without any real sense of survival or independence, my life was in the hands of my father.
“Meyer’s coming to see me; haven’t seen the little guy in twenty-five years.” Dad said during a commercial break.
“Meyer Lansky?” I asked as casually as he’d spoken.
“Who else?”
“Why did you two wait so long?”
“It’s no concern of yours; he’s my friend, not yours.” I was twenty-nine years old and still verbally handcuffed.
The three of us went out to dinner, and while the two of them spoke in clipped short wave syndicate code, I noticed that neither one of them looked at all happy. It was rare to catch my father in public with a friend, without raucous laughter, and storytelling. My attempt to revive the dinner conversation with my own humor,returned two sets of silent eyeball commands to resist speaking.
Several months later I received a call from Dad asking me to come over to his apartment, he had collapsed on the bathroom floor. When I arrived, he pleaded for me to stay close by. “I’ll be all right in a few minutes; I just need to catch my breath. ” I sat outside the bathroom door biting my nails, and waited, like our dog Spice, for my orders. For the first time in my life, he was weaker than I, and my turmoil centered on that unfamiliar reversal of roles.
“Daddy, you should go to the hospital, I’m calling the ambulance.”
“Nope, no ambulance, I’m not going to the hospital, hang up the phone right now.” I pried the bathroom door open, and crouched down on the floor to hold him in my arms. It was the first time I’d held him like that, he felt so heavy and warm. When his eyes closed I called the ambulance and waited. Two attendants arrived, and immediately took his pulse. “Why didn’t you call sooner, within minutes he would have died?”
“ I couldn’t–you don’t understand, he wouldn’t let me. ” They grimaced at me, and removed him from my arms. Over the next few weeks I learned only that he had a failing liver. The mirage of doctors and nurses flowing in and out of his room, assured me that this was just a temporary set back. Soon he would be back at his favorite table at the Bistro Gardens, dining with young aspiring starlets.
When you love someone whose life is draining into illness, even their hollering and gripe is a relief. For the first time in my life, my father did not frighten me. I don’t know if it was because he was vulnerable, and dependent on me for comfort. But the feeling was ecstasy, the feeling of being inside his world, and not excluded.
“Imagine sending nurses in my room at six in the morning. Boy did I give them hell. They won’t soon forget the name Allen Smiley. They’re not treating me like a social service case. “ His voice came back and the salty blue color of his eyes. I took my father home, and sat on the crushed blue velvet sofa while he made his phone calls.
” Say what’s up buddy, what can I do for you? I’m tougher than you think; my daughter and I are going for a walk later. What can I do for you? When are you going to Vegas? Yea, I see all right, don’t worry about a thing, no I’ll handle it, I insist now, don’t argue with a sick man, you rascal. Don’t send flowers yet, send champagne!”
Within a few weeks, my father was back at his favorite table at the Bistro Gardens wearing tinted shades. His passion for the company of females, was reciprocal, they loved him. He sent them flowers, and picked up their checks. He could wave his magic wand of favors at the studios, or for concert tickets, and the chips rolled. He kept up that pace for six months.
All my life he had made things happen for me, now it was my turn. I collected the telephone messages, walked the dog, and cleaned up the house. It was strange, to putter amongst my father’s things. I opened drawers cautiously, thinking he may have alarms on things. He had a pile of papers stacked on his desk, and unopened mail. His personal toiletries were still in immaculate order, his brushes, and collection of colognes. A heavy sadness, presided over the room. I noticed he was reading “Honor Thy Father.”
During his sickness, he presented a man only slightly off balance. He continued to camouflage his liver failure, like he’d masked his identity all his life. I recognized the anguish in his eyes, but I had to pretend it wasn’t there.
My character changed overnight. I did not hesitate over minor decisions, cower if he yelled, or hide inside myself. Something in him was now part of me. We were fighting together. One afternoon we took a walk in Holmby Park.
“What matter’s in life is that you don’t allow people to walk over you, see. No one looks out for your best interest, except your old father. You’ll see, it won’t be so easy without me.”
“Daddy, don’t talk like that, come on.”
“Why not, I’m telling you the way it is, what do you want, for me to lie to you? Everyone else will lie to you! Now, I’ve told you that I’m donating my body to USC Medical center. I already have it arranged.”
“Daddy, I’m not listening. Don’t talk to me about that,” tears welled.
“You must listen little sweetheart. There’s no expense for you to be burdened with. I wish I put more away for you, but I’ve always told you, haven’t I….that I spent everything I made. I only hoped that things would have changed…. be that as it may, you won’t have any expense.”
Smiley’s Dice Adventures in livingness
The throw of the dice this week lands on the adventures in the making. How could I have known 15 years ago?
Back then I had but a finger-bowl of resources, a blue chair, a desk, and a typewriter. Everyday I wrote into the flame of discovery looking for my mother. My notebooks were sketches of this woman I never knew. The absence of the most ordinary information, like where she grew up in Newark, what sort of neighborhood, what her father did for a living, what schools, she attended, and later on, what experiences she had modeling in New York. The closest I got was by reading John Robert Powers book about the modeling agency he started in 1923. He assigned unemployed Broadway talent to his agency to be photographed for corporate campaign advertising. According to John he was the innovator of the modeling agency concept- beautiful women and men will sell products to the public, the public never would have thought of buying.
I found her name in the index, Lucille Casey. She joined the agency when she was 16 years old. John groomed the models; and assigned disciplinary perfection in dialect, manners, appearance, character, and intellect. Powers Girls married anyone they wanted. They were invited to all the important society events, they were given card Blanche at the Stork Club, and the Morocco and they were transported to celebratory city functions. They met men of all means, character, and class.
After I read the book, I thought about what my father used to say, “ Your mother could have had any man in the world, but she picked me. Don’t you make the same mistake.”
That is a complex summons for a teenage to understand.
I sat in the blue chair and waited for the flares of information to come down to earth. After two years, I had very little to build a full page. My mother’s history was lost, her friends had vanished, or would not talk to me. She did not leave a diary. Her photo album as a model was all I had. What could I see in those eyes, and smile? Perfection. I gave up the search, and switched over to my father. The government documented his daily activities, and what they didn’t hear or see, was exploited in newspapers, documentaries, and books.
There was one woman who was alive, that knew intimate details of my mother, because I had met her, and she made it known to me she knew. That was Meyer Lansky’s wife, who went by the name Teddy. Women have a distinctive look when they are withholding secrets. Teddy always had that look when she brought up my mother. I told her I was writing about my father and mother and she said, “Let them rest in peace.” I didn’t take her advice.
into a mirage, of the past
ADVENTURERS IN LIVINGNESS 