FREESTYLING SINGLE

THE GYPSY CHRONICLES – Day 10.

Scintillating in luxury and comfort is therapeutic if mastered with moderation. So, my second week here in the hotel, I opened the thruway to discerning tasks: a deep dive into publishing my book, rewriting the ending so art isn’t imitating life, but the other way around, searching for part-time employment, a seriously pragmatic approach to where to move, and writing my pop-up columns.

It is tremendously easy to write from this hotel room, without those damn barking dogs next to my home, the constant vibration and noise of mowers, blowers, and city works.

On my desk is Henry Miller’s book, On Writing, and every page moves the mental nerves in some way. “The writer lives between the upper and lower worlds: he takes the path in order eventually to become the path itself.” From living in isolation in my home, my tenants are cordial but reserved; I am now swept like a surfboard into a wave of public swells. It is their stories that come out of this experience.

I begin with the Casino, attached to the hotel lobby, and open at 11 am. Arrivals begin: gamblers shuffle inside, some in wheelchairs, younger men with speedy strides, couples, single women, a plethora of humanity in common, with one mission: to win. I take a seat at the bar, and eye wonder at the slot machines. I haven’t counted them, but the room for walking is limited. There is one machine with the motif of a bull, and when someone sits, the bull grumbles loudly, so I pull out my earplugs. I watched one man win, and after he left, other players who heard the winning clang took his seat. It is a popular machine.

The casino looks to be around eight thousand square feet, with seventeen hundred gambling options. The path to get back to the hotel, I have to navigate around and around. The first time, of course, I went in circles as my sense of direction is like a butterfly’s.

“ Excuse me, can you tell me the most direct way back to the hotel?”

“ Lost are you? Follow this carpet pattern, the one in the middle, and it will take you back.”

Off I trot, staring at the paisley pattern, through six different arenas to the hotel. I went outside and took a seat on the bench. A woman passed by and stopped, “ How are you?’

“Adapting, I’ve not been here but a few days.”

“ Oh, we’re just checking out. I can’t wait to get home to my Pomeranians. I have two. I rescued them, and they are my babies,” she continued, talking about the dogs. As she spoke, I noticed how immensely liberated she was in conversation, and how her hair matched her outfit. She smiled while talking.

“ I’ve seen you before. I noticed your style; you were wearing such a pretty outfit”, she said earnestly.

“ Well, thank you, and so are you.”

“ Are you alone? I think you are, but don’t let that get you down.”

“ I wasn’t ready for a very long time. I’m crossing over that mountain, only I’m not like you. I can’t approach people the way you just did.”

“ I used to be like that! Now I don’t care, and you shouldn’t either. God loves you, we are all his children, and we need to love each other.”

I let her go on and thought any minute she might bring out a bible or a cross and start praying for me.

“ I bet my husband is looking for me; he’ll be mad, not really, he’s used to it. We’ve been together forty-five years.

“ Remarkable. What’s your secret?”

“ Love, respect, and compromise, it’s really very simple. You’ll meet your honey, I feel it, you want that, don’t you?”

“Yes, when a man tells me everything is going to be okay, I settle down. I’m emotionally overweight.”

“You’re funny, see that is another quality that gets you through life.”

“ I see a man approaching, and she introduces her husband. He is tall, and emulates a calmness and contentment as he hedges into the conversation about going to Lake Placid.”

“ Have you been there?” he asked.

“ Years ago. It’s beautiful.”

“ I turned towards his wife. I didn’t get your name.”

“ Donetica, Italian, my friends call me Dee.”

“I’m Loulou, and thank you for stopping by my bench.”

She giggled, blew a kiss, and said in parting, “ I love you.”

As she left, a woman exited the hotel in a state of exhilaration.

“ It looks like you had a good day,” I said

“ Yes! I won eight hundred dollars. She swung her purse and skipped off.

Hmm, I wouldn’t mind winning at all, but I’m in enough ambiguity to play against those odds. To be continued.

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FROM ORDINARY TO EXTRAORDINARY

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With every turn, right, left, or center, I observe novelty, unfamiliar faces, facades, and finery. The conversations that linger over the opulent surround sound lobby release a fusion of shouting and laughter. New Yorkers are not whisperers, and my annoying sensitivity to sound, forces me to go in and outside a dozen times a day. That is when I meet the guests, perched on benches and rocking chairs. In the six days I’ve been, here I’ve accumulated dozens of conversations, not just niceties but life stories expressed in thirty-minutes.

The first day of arrival began with a dining hallabaloo organized by the best broker, Scott Varley, who sold my home. At the table, Scott and his friends, who knew the bartender’s, waitress, restaurant manager, and a few guests at the bar, so our table became a Musso Frank sort of mise en scene. I, as usual, was punctuated with awe, as this is a new kind of adventure in livingness after Ballston Spa. Drinks arrived with the speed of a remote, and as we all filed in for the liberated moment, when we exhumed our true selves. Lynn, the woman next to me, was a beautiful, statuesque, stylish woman whose poised and confident aura emanated from her.

“ I hear Scott sold your home. Is that a good thing for you? It’s not always.”

“ Yes, a few days ago. Well, a paradox, I loved the home, a Victorian, but it was also most of my income.

“ What will you do now?”

“ About what?” She laughed and tilted her head back.

“ Where are you moving?”

“ I don’t know yet.” Her eyes widened, and she responded flatly.

“ You don’t know? You have to have some idea.”

“ It depends on the proceeds, an ex is involved, it’s too complicated over a martini, and all this talk. I can barely hear you. “

“ An ex is always involved. How long are you staying at the hotel?”

“ You’ll love this..

“ Don’t tell me, you don’t know. You’re adorable.”

“ Thank you, and I sense you are very strong.”

“ You bet I am.! She punctuated that with a fist to the table. “

The night zigzagged, with Lynn and Scott scurrying into the casino, while I remained, as casinos mean, the genes of my father may flare up. The bar was baritone loud and after what seemed four hours, I returned to my room, quite comfort, marvelous pillows unlike I’ve ever felt, “ I can’t fucking believe this.” To be continued

RELOCATION THERAPY

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ADVENTURES IN LIVINGNESS this week. I mentioned in a previous column, if there was a relocation therapist?, in jest, but then I was looking at my horoscope and entered relocation, and this came up.: It’s too late as I have my move-out date, August 31^st. I have no idea how to use this; my therapy has been chocolate, movies at night, and one day of rest. 62 boxes packed Relocation Chart, Relocation Astrology Online …

By relocating, you can move certain planets into particular house position to improve those parts of your life. Notification: Please, enter Latitude / Longitude …

- AstroCartography, Astro MapCurrent PlanetsRelocation ASC & Mc Finder

WRITER AND AGENT

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RELOCATION REVEALS THIS, A POETRY FOLDER FROM 2002

In that first blink

I recall the joy of breaking ink

That first line of verse

Applauded by the universe

Settled in paper

Dried thoughts

Scrapes of the heart

Before it tore me apart

The time has come

To where I want to belong

And sing the thoughts that live in my shed

Without the tone of agent’s breath

Blowing chagrin on my song.

JUNK REMOVAL JAZZED UP

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Junk Removal Day with the best people. First trip: 25 pieces taken. Second 25 pieces. Follies was a vacation rental, so multiply everything by 4. I am adding on, and Mr. Big says, “Okay, don’t worry. A few hundred.” SHELDRICK JUNK REMOVAL. From 10am to 3pm, Big and his wife, Fay, who is the Hulk, and one other helper removed like 50 worn, torn, outdated furnishings, and joked all the way: washing machine up ten stairs, heavy wooden furniture, three beds, I could not believe there strength and amusing jokes, going up and down 35 steps. Sometimes I choose right and this was one of them. Fay survived breast cancer, and Mr. Big several strokes and they worked like Olympians.

THUNDER THOUGHTS ON WRITING,READERS,AMTRAK,AND RELOCATION

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ADVENTURES IN LIVINGNESS began with lightning and thunder. My bed braced against the window didn’t alarm me like when I first moved here, and the storms startled me with their voluminous sound. After five years, the fears of weather, creaking noises, bats, mice, or a running deer as I drive have sifted through the thread of experience. As the first attempt to accept relocation coming, I am unwinding with you, not at you, because you’re all closer to me than you think.

I begin late on Friday, watching a half-lit scene with descending sunlight, the other bathed in asphalt gray, the solid remains of this week’s punishing climate. Who cares about that after the news this week? I imagine every parent was stung in a way they may never have felt before. Everyone loves children, even those who didn’t have them, cherish their innocence and liberating emotions. I asked a friend, how it affected him, he replied, “ I didn’t know I can’t watch the news.”

“ You never watch the news?”

“ Some stuff on social media.”

“ The Mystic Camp tragedy didn’t come up?.”

“ No.. what happened?”. So I gave him some of the details, and when his expression turned dour, I stopped. Something another friend mentioned to me was Duty to Bare Witness, as we were talking about the Ukraine War. Some call it tragedy trolling, I suppose that’s another kind of news watching. Between the bubble wrap and boxing of what I think I’ll take, I listen to some news. I realize I’m not such an immoral person after listening to cantankerous battles on the hill.

This city is drowsily awaiting the start of the Saratoga Race Track today. It is a sacrosanct epic convergence of rich and poor, doused in jewels or leather neck chokers. I love loyalty, and this event dates back to the 1880’s. It’s the oldest race track in the country. When I had a press pass, and didn’t wait in lines to attend, interview, and observe the festivities, it just can’t be forgotten. I’m familiar with the groups that oppose horse racing, viewing it as a degenerate sport that harms both horses and gamblers. I understand that, considering my father was a gambler and horse lover, but it goes on for thousands who feel different. Can we not allow one to enjoy the other not?.

Sifting through collectibles, I found my letter to Amtrak. Many years ago, I wrote to the executives at Amtrak with this idea: Give a writer a free ride for a long journey, and allow them to write about it. Then, engage reporters at the different stops to show up and give the writer a pass to visit the city or town and meet the nuances that no one knew about. I felt pressed to seek escape, ‘I’m going to live on Amtrak!’ The idea blossomed over some cabernet, and I lingered there in the kitchen, while I cooked up this idea, of riding Amtrak across America, while writing about subjects I choose from a long list, and develop it into a documentary, and a book. I realized how much effort it would take to launch and live this idea that was born in the kitchen over a bottle of cab. I spent the day researching and looking at the bedroom suites on Amtrak. I went to sleep imagining myself on the train, and the inherent comedy that would roll out, from living in a room the size of shoe box. I watched movies about trains, and started reading Paul Theroux’s The Old Patagonian Express. Del Mar, watching the Amtrak.

There I am on Amtrak, with a laptop and a recorder, strolling through the aisles, interviewing people, and then I’m in some unfamiliar city, hopping from one place to another, and writing in cafes and adventuring. The illusion became real, like a dream that represents reality. I do see myself on such an adventure. I must sculpt new routines, learn how to do the things I’m not used to doing. I wrote to Amtrak, and I did not get a response. Several years later, they invited a writer to do what I had suggested. As the day descends into afternoon, I am perched in between, clinging to the wisdom of my posse, whom I call on for solace, for answers, for encouragement, and you readers, who keep me adventuring in writing.

CHAOS IN NOISE CLUTTER & RELOCATION

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I RECUSE MYSELF FROM NOISE, LOUD TALKERS, LOUD LAUGHTER, LOUD MACHINERY. I RECUSE MYSELF FROM CLUTTER, AS I DISASSEMBLE MY HOME, AND PLACE BOXES AND BUBBLE WRAP IN EVERY ROOM, SO I AM PREPARED TO PACK. I’M DOING BETTER THAN 2018 AND 2019, WHEN I DISASSEMBLED AND REASSEMBLED HOMES 5 TIMES. NOW I FEEL LIKE GIVING IT ALL AWAY, AND LEAVING WITH TWO SUITCASES. THE INCREDIBLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING, A FILM, BUT IT APPLIES TO MY STATE OF MIND. I LOVED COLLECTING EVERY ITEM, BOOK, RECORD, PRINT, BRIC-A-BRAC, AND FURNITURE I CHOSE. AT THAT MOMENT, I LOVED IT. BUT BREAKING UP WITH POSSESSIONS IS LIKE BREAKING A RELATIONSHIP. IT’S TIME, WHEN IT COMES, UNPREPARED, ANXIETY AND APPREHENSION TAKE AWAY SLEEPING SWEETLY AND WAKING UP SMILING. THE PASSAGE FROM ONE ERA TO THE NEXT TAKES WHAT I’M NOT SURE I HAVE, BUT MUST.

DODGER’S BASEMENT STORAGE.

RELOCATION REALITY

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“Young woman sitting on the books and typing, toned image”

The world we are living is not familiar; everyday it erupts with an inconceivable corruption, acts 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 humanity and more like a wild creature chewing on an old bone. My outlook on social clubs, synagogue and church congregations, membership clubs, group classes, and 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 a decorous world of fantasy is irresistible. Experience taught me that losing it, giving up, hugging the pillow with film noir on the screen will revive me. It may take two days or more, permitting freedom to indulge in the abstract absurdity, tragedy, and comedy of life available to me. Two days are up: six noir films: Sleeping Tiger, Dangerous Crossing, Ruthless, Finger of Guilt, Wicked, and Cast a Dark Shadow. All suspenseful meandering around themes of greed, deception, romance, uneven love, and forgiveness.

It’s a great big wide wide world if you leave the doors open. Now that the house has sold, I am fortunate that all those years studying real estate and proving myself by placing money in the boss’s pocket, trickled into my life. The first triplex I bought was in 2002, the one that sold, The Follies House. The rent provided income and paid the mortgage. For my Gen X and Millennial pals, I say this: buy a duplex somewhere you want to live.

I’m feeling overwhelmed as I go through this four-story unit and decide what to keep, give away, and sell. Perplexed as I go through boxes of journals dating back to 1996. I assume I won’t live to preview them for new stories, but I sill feel a sense of belonging to them. I have learned after selling a dozen furnishings that once they are gone, it takes about a week to stop lamenting the loss.

GERMANY READERSHIP RISING THANK YOU GERMANY

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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

May 21, 2025May 24, 2025 ~ 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

May 15, 2025May 18, 2025 ~ 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.

March 15, 2025March 15, 2025 ~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

The subject pierced me yesterday morning and came from Anais Nin, a passage in her diary.
“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”
― Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934.

Today, the first in several months that the atmosphere is ripe with thought, and has brought me back to the writing of the moment. The delivery trucks have not opened their doors, and dropped their ramps, the garbage trucks have already passed, and the traffic is so slight as it is Sunday.

Spring is brushing nature with a varnish of subdued sunshine. I sit at my desk and listen. I hear some cheerful shouting on the sidewalk, a horn breaks the sanctuary, and then a sparrow lands on the terrace, and we watch each other. I breathe deep, close my eyes, and feel my oatmeal breakfast thumping in my belly.

The stream of consciousness is threaded into the deeper blanket of anxiousness. I am in the circle of chaos that seeps into everyday activities. Tempers are flaring, rousing combative street encounters. Business owners and employees are jumping ship everywhere. People are relocating, selling possessions, or using succulent lips and breasts to lure men for financial support. We are all edgy.