Category: RELATIONSHIPS

WRITING FROM YAHOO TO BOO HOO

~ LouLou ~ 1 Comment

ADVENTURES IN LIVINGNESS FALLS ON. An unusual time to be writing at four in the afternoon. The clouds drew me up to my writing desk, where layers of clouds forms teased me into believing it wasn’t hot and humid outside.  I decided to write the column.

I knew I shouldn’t write on my laptop because it is deconstructing. I can’t part with this laptop until I outline my next book. The sky drew me to the desk, and so I worked around internet outages.

I only had a few paragraphs from the afternoon, and when I returned to the column after dinner, the whole piece took another course, and I was writing not what I intended, but it was like sailing on a perfect course.   It was writing without the editor, meaning the inner editor that sometimes swoops down and cuts your nails off. I was writing about many things that happened. When I finished, I went to save the document and the laptop responded negatively. It vanished.  I thought about trying to recapture the column, trying to reinvent the stream of consciousness that seemed to be marathoning through my soul.

There were so many voices speaking all at once. I had to figure out how to connect the moment the leaves reminded me of Saratoga Springs,  and how we must place our print on the tablet, on the screen, and dismiss the reader who judges where writing takes us. Sometimes,  a reader knows me from the halcyon days, when my light was neon and my spirit a flame. They don’t want to see me now, draped in muted gray and hardship hardened. “Nobody loves you when you’re down and out.” Jimmy Cox 

 

GERMANY READERSHIP RISING THANK YOU GERMANY

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

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.

MOODY BLUES TUESDAY

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

           MATISSE

Writing somberly is parallel to writer’s block. It’s not a block, really, more like a resistance to engaging feelings.  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.  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 is 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. 

      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 I’ve 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, “ Henry Miller on Writing” “Whoever greatly suffers must be, I suppose a sublime combination of a sadist and masochist.’  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 sun disappeared 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. 

WRITING WITH NATURE

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

In one of my books on writing, I read that most writers face the demon in the middle of the novel. The beginning is a gallop, and 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.  I’ve finally accepted that my constant relocation, reinventing, and restlessness will not be solved. 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 stood out on the porch observing the peacefulness. The scenery of this street is a comforting, historical beauty that comes from the harmony of architecture and nature. The flow of villagers downtown is along two main two-lane streets; all the shops, services, and restaurants are a patchwork, and all the business owners know each other.  

I chose Sunday to shut down all communication with the mainland, take the longest bath I can stand, and write. I need a rest, like a chaise lounge on a spacious veranda with honeysuckle, wisteria, and lavender.  If you are an artist, the limit is not the sky; it’s everywhere. Nature’s artistry is a full-time exhibition in the Northeast. The view now is of tumbling clouds rolling over; they move slowly, like dough, across the road, while squirrels dart about.  Outdoors is where we see the best of life.

Bookviral

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

Our review……

A candid and enthralling memoir, CRADLE OF CRIME – A Daughter’s Tribute is the debut release from Luellen Smiley and it proves one of the most gripping and powerful books in its genre. Certainly no mean feat, given the swelling number of similarly themed offerings but Smiley does well to distinguish hers with painstaking research, a broad narrative sweep and intellectual grip to deliver a fascinating and revealing read, for the events it covers.

The storytelling isn’t redemptive with much of the most compelling material in this book being intensely personal but it is a very human story that dispels hype and myth and gives us a telling glimpse of a remarkable life. Weaving together several stories it makes a vivid and notable contribution to the mafia debate which invariably swings between the codes of honor and family values so often portrayed on the silver screen to a brutal criminal organization focused only on the accumulation of wealth. In contrast, Luellen finds a far more equitable balance in her reflections, and it makes for a genuine page-turner.

Extremely well written, fans of this ever popular genre will find CRADLE OF CRIME – A Daughter’s Tribute a fascinating read and it is recommended without reservation.

http://www.bookviral.com/cradle-of-crime-a…/4594052167

A BookViral review of CRADLE OF CRIME-A Daughter’s Tribute by Luellen Smiley

FRIENDS AND FONDNESS OF THE PAST

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

  I ‘m thinking about Loren, one of the most original characters in my life. He developed a vernacular unlike anyone I’ve met. It came from growing up in the hood of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Later exclusive Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood, and then returning to Santa Fe. Joined the upper class clientele as a chauffeur. His vernacular was impressive as it collated honesty, and a wit sharp as a razors edge. Loren visits three times a week at least. Snow means silence and hermitizing. I  can’t wait to open the door to Luxury Limo Loren and make him brunch.  We harmonize for hours; on tones of fretful fear, wicked secrets, confessions and laughter. The delicious crust of survival and our similarities.

If I write down the pleasantries surrounding my life, the blessings rise up and give me a softened comfort.  The sweet peace may vanish the next day, or be intercepted by the news, a wreck in the street, an unexpected phone call. The crossroads of everyday life comes and goes. Between all of these uncontrollable incidents we are writing stories that some day will be told in conversation, or written in journals and books. The essence of our changing lives is universal.

I LOVED

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

JOURNAL ON MEN

The insomnia of separation from a man’s shoulder bowed to my head, tweaks like stale bread. A mind that directs me when I am driving directionless and maps my journey, walks beside me, a guardian of my fragility, acutely conscious of our path. The voice that encourages and applauds my success rather than let it drip from jealousy or preoccupation.  How the laughter erupts in a moment of spontaneous passion. The gestures of him shaving and the modest vanity after I re-wardrobe him. Feeling his eyes in a crowd, undressing or admiring me, for some folly or expression.

The humor he finds in my misguided attempts to open bottles, and packages with a dull spoon, and figure out electronics.

How he will pardon and pamper my unwarranted fears of stalkers, sickness, rejection nightmares, and falling down the slippery wooden stairs.

The man whose balance evens my wrinkles.

Let’s the light into my eyes.

Opens my shell with wonder and tenderness.  

POP-UP POEM

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

He pushed her on a swing, so high she touched the sky, viewed the world through his eyes, lived for a time without lies, then as mystically as he appeared, he let go of the swing, and she fell on her wing, broken but with the will to begin again. A broken heart hasn’t stopped her from loving him.

For ten days, just thinking of her spoken words, how they made their way to his ears and returned the sounds she so wanted to hear. When he stopped contacting her, she wiped her tears as some people find love at the core of their fears.

ENDING THE MEMORIES

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

NOVEMBER 2021                                                                        

MAXFIELD PARRISH

     MONTHS LATER ON THIS DAY, she closed the shutters to him and alchemized from a cocoon to a butterfly beneath a circle of friends in tune.  She removed the photos, gifts, and letters and put them in a box to reminisce later. Talking out loud, “She takes just like a woman, but she will not break like a little girl.” No more hours fanning the past; on this day, my view is spanning.”  She sat peacefully by the fire into the night and let her broken wing sing as she watched the wood turn to gold.  

RELIC OF REBELLION

~ LouLou ~ 5 Comments

BEFORE I think about how to respond to a stranger, I feel them; the gestures, expressions, tone of voice, movement, conversation, mannerisms, and eyes. I acknowledge feelings first, then I think.

ISADORA DUNCAN

When I’m driving, I feel sprite or gloom. I feel a twirl of sensory perception from the drivers’ faces and witness the joyous reciprocal ink of friendship between shopkeepers, cops and dining customers, city workers, and service technicians trying to fix satellites and cables in a village with inconsistent infrastructure.

SOME of my principles are unsupported by experience, but more with GROWING UP WITH GANGSTERS training that I cannot erase.   My theme is unbalanced; I take the extreme path instead of the path with arrows.  It is why writing settles my sea-saw.  As I sit in my antique wooden chair looking out, feeling Saturday’s silence beneath a blanket of blue sky and radiant sunshine, a tiny thread of peace realigns a week of political profanity, war, and death, but they got Sinwar!   The sedate and quiet surroundings relieve my spinning head, and I just continue to sit and not fidget.  

I’VE observed the village people; some appear to drag their bodies rather than hotfoot. I wonder if all the global Google news has weighed us down.  Teens signal youth’s fascination with experience, newness, and expectation.The exchange of human voices as pedestrians walk along the street, I’ve noticed that New Yorkers speak in voluminous pitch. I can hear their voices from my bedroom on the third floor with closed windows. Humanity is our background symphony, along with the crows, lawnmowers, power saws, blowers, and racing cars.  This street is part of my theme;  a juxtaposition of historic homes and modern toys. I am a 21st-century flapper clinging to the roar of independence, self-expression, and breaking the rules.  If we feel the chord of festivity,  we should not hold back.  I am going out now to see if  I can feel more.   

Sunday October 20, 

I walked out to the porch and slouched against a pillar to feel warmed by the sun. My dermatologist advised that I should not stay longer than ten minutes, even with fifty UV protection. Today is family day and a car show in the village. I experienced it two years ago, so I remain at home; listening to the geese go south for the winter and feeling solitude. It’s like a branchless tree, a storm without an umbrella, a garden without flowers, and a home without company. Oh, snap out of it. Go to Henry’s Tavern and watch the game with men losing their cool. They get insanely raucous s over football.

WHY I ASK? AND THEN THE ANSWER.

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

Why can the leaves turn lemon, plum, and tangerine? Why does the sky allow storms to shake up its translucent surface? Why can nature reinvent momentarily with wind, rain, hurricanes, and earthquakes? Why can’t I change the colors of my mood? I get daily messages from an Instagram member named Asad—inspiring, and he circulates around the themes of mood, attitude, loneliness, and inner strength. All of these have toppled my life since I can remember. I’m more taciturn than most people perceive. I can display a mannequin of poise and joy, but if you remove the surface, beneath is a conundrum of self-doubt, second-guessing, punishment, and fear. What’s even more destabilizing is I actually think I’m alone.

Last week, I observed the cashier’s facial expression and gestures at the Stop-& Go, which alerted me to her distress. I was buying a Cadbury chocolate bar after reading that chocolate is mood-changing, not just the hip-hop of energy; it can change your mood.

” I read that chocolate helps with depression, and these dreary dark days don’t help,” I admitted.

” Oh, I know. I used to be a registered nurse,” she said, facing me squarely into my eyes. I noticed a lot of cashiers don’t do that anymore.

” I suffer with anxiety and depression so I had to quit. I can mix up a Cadbury bar with a Snickers but not with medication.”

” I have the same as you, it’s changed my life as well. ” I looked at her name tag, without my glasses.

” You’re name is America? She laughed and her smile emerged.

“No, underneath, Dolores.”

” Thank you for listening to me,” I said

” Thank you, customers rarely acknowledge us.”

We don’t want pity or empathy; we all need recognition, and not in a text!

HELL HELENE

~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

The embryo of thought. Sometimes, it is negligible,  as is life.  I am the puzzle maker. Every time I try to carve the right size square, I fall off the board and have more material to write about!  The puzzle is so vast that it covers our lifetime and the pieces are the choices and non-choices that fit into themes.  We are all a puzzle.

My life is like a melody, a Gershwin tune. As a dancer and prancer at heart, I feel and think with movement of mind. Today, on a translucent composite of sunshine and clouds, my heart is on the people surviving Hurricane Helene. Climate, warnings, rescue efforts, and the stories of human sacrifice to save lives will analyze this puzzle of devastation. All of those risking their own lives to save strangers are my heroes. One hero saves one life. Just imagine.