Uncertainty We traverse our heart’s discourse Shooting for dreams of undiscovered lands More weightless plans I don’t know if I can see ahead My steps, like pebbles,follow the rush in the river On the edge of aquiver
Skipping towards freedom In summer, rays of light Like a leaf, I break free from the branch
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.
ICE, SNOW, AND RAIN… MIX THOROUGHLY AND SERVE CHILLED
WINTER 2025 … BYE BYE
Winter in the Northeast is a door to the interior, not just physically living indoors; it’s a mental withdrawal from outdoor activity. Yes, some have adapted. I’ve seen men in shorts on a snowy day and women runners passing by my window on icy sidewalks. For many of us, I believe the winter is the time to ski in your head. Take a word puzzle section of all your experiences and ski down your mistakes, misjudgments, and behavior in all its rights and wrongs. A sort of sabbatical for the soul.
My car was stuck in the snow, and my eggplant pasta was stuck in cheese.
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.
SOLITUDE will always be a puzzle because our lives, solo or mated, are mystified by either too much or not enough solitude.
I contest what seems endless solitude with my Irish Russian temper, condemning irritants like: street noise, absence of friends, short-tempered customer service reps, world news, and mindless tasks. The fever dulled after the first ice, rain, and snow, and mindfulness triumphed. I imagined my basement of survival would sink. It did not. There is an inner exploration happening, unfolding like spreading new sheets on my bed, that solitude has befriended me all my life. In the best of times and the tedious. I have to find the frolic and follies in the world that I created. I have to laugh alone so I watch screwball comedies, seek humor of my irregularities; wearing a sweater inside out, pouring coffee into a wine glass for a cocktail, and chuckling up and down the staircase, because I keep forgetting where I left my phone. My head is elsewhere daydreaming. I’ve learned how to repair house calamities; unscrew windows, seal up cracks, fix clogged drains, replace air vents, read the meters, and rejuvenate every wood board, handle, chair, and table with Old English Oil. As one pal commented on a visit to the house, ‘ It’s a perfect day for Old English! The winter forecast is blizzardy and full of warnings I haven’t experienced here; and how can I complain when half of Upstate New York is buried in ten feet of snow. The end of the day pleasure comes in the kitchen; my heart and spirit melt while stirring my weekly gumbo, stew, or casserole while listening to Tony Bennett, Nat King Cole, and swing music. Winter is a funnel that strips the trees and branches and lets us see through the forest and ourselves.
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.
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.
SUN, a goose-bumpy joy and celebration. That’s what I love about my education here: the first class you must take is weather management. I’ve destroyed dozens of artistic bric a brac by leaving them on the farm table on the porch, forgot to shop for groceries when a storm was approaching, and ran out of salt. I drove through town, taking photos at the red lights; the scenery is like Little Women, dressed differently but still rather swarthy in their determination to survive. Now some men, probably like the fourth or tenth generation, bear the strength by wearing a T-shirt or shorts. The other day, after a snowstorm, I noticed a man crossing the street in shorts, a long white beard, and working boots. That’s an EXACT badass around here.
Beguine the Beguine is on the record player, and I’m swinging around the music room, elated with the energy that forced me to dance, turn off the mind entirely. Total bliss. Dance has been with me since as far back as I can remember, the answer to a mood change, without drugs or alcohol.
In a current of unexpected life moves, I floated towards the Pacific Ocean and landed along the fragile, factious Santa Monica Mountains to Malibu.
The salty seaweed smell of the ocean streams through my car, driving down the Pacific Coast highway on my way to buy groceries.Vintage Marketis new to Malibu, and clerks are giddy about their jobs. They may be aspiring actors or former actors.
I walk in and get a phone call that I’d been waiting for so, I set my cart down on a shelf and took the call. During the half-hour conversation, my eyes were fluttering through the scene: tanned surfers, affluent college students, and diamond-rich men and women of age that don’t check their bank balances. Because of this, expressions are chilled as fine wines, and smiles are sublime or radiating. They are a mostly content population of 13,000. The median home price is $901,000, and the median income household is $127,000. Here in Malibu every thing looks different from Santa Fe: The staging of ‘was in the business, am in the business, or want to be in the business,’ surfaces and dominates the scenery.
They are beautiful-the young teenagers who surf and paddle are true blondes, the blue eyes scintillating pools of water, young women are saddled onto 6” platforms, and then there are the stand-out power people, who will not acknowledge anyone, and expect everyone to acknowledge them. Tucked in the mountains, are extraordinary artists who live off the grid the way most people prefer to live in Santa Fe. I am learning slowly and still hiding out at Chantal’s, where I am living, two miles up from PCH off Malibu Canyon Road, behind a gate. Bohemians, artists, home-office screenwriters, producers, and famous heirs of recognizable movie stars live there.
In the last hour, I walked down the road in the hands of sloping hillsides, horse ranches, and signature homes behind walls as high as the palm trees, built to withstand the typhoons of nature and mankind. In thedaylight a swirl of rain and clouds, it was as if I was in Ireland, walking along a road in Kilkenny. I roped in my imagination and returned to the mountains, which will teach me how far to go, how to duck a racing motorcycle car, or confront a coyote or a snake. A full transcendental moon dipped into the black-out mountain evening, and has cured me of interior turmoil for the time being. This is part of adventures in livingness in what locals call the bu. Chantal’s artistic compound of eight cottages and seventeen acres burned to chips in the Woolsey Fire. One night with Chantal and Neighbors.
Today, as the Bu, Palisades, and five other fires demolish humanity’s lives, I am grateful I was able to return to my childhood memories in Malibu for one summer in 2017.My family home burned in the Bel Air fire in 1961… No WATER.SAVE THEM THIS TIME, LA, AND DON’T LIE TO THEM.
It is the Kentucky Derby and Cinco De Mayo weekend at La Posada. Kristen from the hotel said I should go; it would be fun. She’s a feisty young woman with clear, penetrating blue eyes and silky brown hair. Youth dances in her expressions; other times, it wilts from being locked down to an indoor job. She’s an adventurer who camps out in Belize and South America. Now, she’s talking about Antigua.
I walked out to the courtyard to see what was going on. The tables weren’t set up yet, but the Donkey stood idly and annoyed at the other end of the yard. I don’t know why they bring him, maybe for the kids. In the bar, a few guests were watching the Derby. The elan of race anticipation is shining like a light. I ordered a Mint Julep, and the guys were all watching as Dude whipped it up with finesse.
“ How is it?” Dude asked without needing any approval.
“ Magical. Who are you betting on? Greta asked.
“I want a Titty Tut, something nasty.”
“ Oh, stop that. You do it too much.” She replied.
“ Not nearly enough! Okay, here’s my horse—Promises Fulfilled. Oh yes, that’s mine.”
“ Everything you say is a metaphor for sex.”
“ You bet it is.” Who’s your pick?”
“ My prick is Justify.”
“Hah, see, now you get it.”
I sipped my drink and wandered around the lobby, stopping to greet Jackie, Monserrat, and Danielle. They don’t know what their smiles and caring comments do for me. I must tell them more often.
“ I don’t know what I’d do without all of you.”To be continued.
I shot this today with impetuous acceptance of more snow. I swept the stairs, removed branches, listened to music, and smiled. It will be my last winter in this quixotic, charming, historic village that taught me not to complain, instead to make it understandable.
Adventures in livingness aren’t just about extroversion, what we say, how we behave, or how we respond. More importantly, they are about our inner changes when life demands that from us. No one hears what threads are spoken in our heads, the ones that are flawed from indecisiveness, the ones that have been molded from things long past, the new threads that are unfamiliar, and the ones we need to rip out entirely.
ADVENTURERS IN SINGLE LIVINGNESS 