I’ve been staying in a hotel during a short interim while I decide where to move.
While I am in the hotel observing guests, their mannerisms, conversations, and facial expressions, I have come to the conclusion that we are not only on a fiscal cliff, we are on a sinking shore of wet sand. I see guests who’ve come for gambling, visiting relatives, exploring Upstate NY, and lapping up a vacation as if it were their first. They are thirsty for living the essence of comfort, congeniality, and the aspirations of autumn. Shed the withered and welcome the wild. I see giddy faces and sluggish bodies weighted down by heavy tote bags. Some seem to shuffle like the very old or weak, from the pathway to the lobby. I was not excluded; by the time I checked into the hotel, my body was withered from having to move out of my home of twenty-five years. All I wanted to do was sink into a bed and hang the Do Not Disturb notice on the door. Several guests are annoyed by too much information, too many alerts, too many scandals, and too much uncertainty.The adventure of livingness has a trajectory marked by misadventures.
In reading the WordPress posts, I’ve discovered the Travel blogs are the ones that revive my interest in the world I haven’t seen. These are the ones I read because they spark my passion for travel, rather than comfort and complacency. The Mediterranean has been stirring in my imagination ever since I researched the coastal splendor of all those portside villages. Thanks to you, travel bloggers, I made the decision. This is the year for Italy. Now that it’s written, I must follow my word.
Writing feels rusty today. I plow deliberately through the blank mental soil to find a blade of substance in a week of tragedy and cultural chaos. In conversations with men and women about our fractured culture.
” It was never like this when I was growing up,” that is from a fifty-year-old,
” I won’t get on a plane, no way?” from a forty-year-old.
” I don’t talk about my views with anyone at work or out of work, except my family and friends.”
I replied, “Yes, we have to talk niceties, bland boring conversation. “
When I was growing up, there was more joking, laughter, and confessional conversation. I was thinking about my high school years; we talked a lot about emotions, our parents, our dreams, and our fears. I don’t recall restraining what was on my mind. Perhaps that is why the majority of the younger generation prefers social media friends, as they can be easily deleted or blocked. On my FB page and feed, not one follower or friend reveals their political views, including myself. Isn’t that so contrary to humanity? And political violence, I keep hearing we won’t tolerate that on the news, but we are tolerating it. Do we all need drones over our homes for security? An optimist would say, We can do better, and we will; a pessimist might say, I think it’s going to get worse, and a nihilist would say, Life isn’t worth fixing; it’s just worthless.
I canceled my utubetv cable account, because on most days anxiety is at full tank without the news. In this new state of freedom from home; maintenance, repairs, showings and tenants, time is on another clock.The one that ticks as a writer in progress who is dusting off the least truest of thoughts.
The order of this week is disorder. Not the trivial disorder of a closet, or a work in progress; this week is the unraveling of the self, which comes with separating from someone or something you love dearly. It is the subject of: poetry, theater, film, literature, dance, visual arts, and music — all forms of music from opera to rap. For all of you who have mothers and fathers close to death, and you don’t want them to leave.
Adults protect you from the brutality of death when you’re very young. They keep it behind locked phrases like ‘she had to go away to a better place; you’ll understand when you grow up.’The camouflage of death may go on indefinitely until one day, you are hit over the head with a block of ice, and it splits you right down the middle. You can see your guts spilling out, and everything is all out of order. Walking is an effort. Thinking clogs with the big question: Why? Why can’t we all stay here together and live forever?
Flashback to 1966 — I was very young, not so much in years, but when I was 13, my mental and emotional age was more like that of an 8-year-old. I don’t know if I was ADD or DDT because those acronyms were not in vogue yet.
My development was arrested because I was raised on a fantasia of false identities, fiction, and privilege. I thought we were prosperous, happy, and would live together forever. The fantasia of falseness was abruptly taken away on June 19, 1966. On that day, I saw for the first time my father weep uncontrollably. I was told my mother was in heaven. My father was seated on my mother’s avocado green sofa in our tidy mid-century apartment in Westwood. Nana — mother’s mother — was sitting on the sofa next to my father. Nana and Dad had reconciled for the period my mother was sick with cancer. They both were sobbing. I was not, I was in shock. There was nothing inside of me but resistance, a blockage of emotion that remained there for so many years.
I was left in my father’s care. He was busy avoiding government subpoenas and running the Fontainebleau Hotel in Florida. He kept a command post on my emotions. He would not tolerate my grief, because he could not tolerate his own. So, I had to chin-up, chest out, walk up and down Doheny Drive in Hollywood where he lived and pretend I was going to be fine.
When I turned eighteen and left my father’s apartment, I was free to unravel my feelings for the first time. The emptiness was filled with confusion, anger, and drugs. If college was supposed to be my best years, then I missed that chapter. Looking back, the real leap to personal growth came at that time when I was left unattended to wander through life with my own eyes as guardian, and my heart as my compass. That is when I missed my mother the most. It was my fortune to have my father back in Los Angeles, throwing his weight around from a distance. He kept me under radar by having a friend’s son working in the admittance office of Sonoma State College.
I remember days when my mental attitude needed electric shock therapy. Miraculously, I did find my way home, and to the matter of my mother, and growing up with gangsters. From a wafer of stability, very slowly, I’ve built a nice lifeboat to keep me afloat. My screaming, cantankerous, and intimidating father who loved me beyond measure is in this imaginary boat, and my mother who loved with a silent gentle hand she gave to me whenever I needed assurance.
All I have to do is look at her photograph placed in every corner of my house, and I regain momentum in my lifeboat. When I am particularly insolvent with life’s measures, I recall the years she spent fighting cancer so she could continue to hold my hand. How can I disappoint such a woman? I cannot, and I know that with more certainty than I know anything.We all have a basement strength that rises up and balances us when we need it. Each time we cross that unpleasant road and say goodbye to our friends, our pets, our parents, or our siblings, we have to find our basement strength.
You can read poetry and essays, listen to opera or rap and find five-thousand ways of expressing the same painful stab of separation. If the comfort comes in just knowing — we all have that in common — then all you have to do is tap the shoulder of the person in front of you, and ask, “How did you handle it?”
Or as Henry Miller said, “All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience.”
ADVENTURESS IN LIVINGNESS this week ends with new directions in living. Before that happens, you have to get lost, detached, and miserable. It messes up your social life, your routines, your comfort, and your partner. I don’t have one, so it’s all up to me.
Men wonder why women change so often, why we are spirited unicorns one day, and mules the next. It comes from the universal need to roam, to feel new sensations and passions, and to find more things to love. Even our closets are overflowing with love: “I love those shoes, I love that coat.” We replace our wardrobes because we need more garments to love.
At the crossroads of some moment in time, I stopped loving material things, my reflection, and went looking for a deeper direction of sensation.
It started last year, when my life was tangled up in two projects that were not progressing. As long as someone didn’t raise the curtain on my imaginary life, I stayed right there, like a gearshift left in neutral. When failure and rejection continued to knock me on the shoulder, I welcomed the familiar knock and remained stationary.
The exact moment I decided to shift gears was a painful one. I let go of both projects that were obstructing my motion. I have extracted the nature of the projects because it really is irrelevant. After I let go, and watched those long-term efforts just dangle from boxes, notebooks, and letters of correspondence, the straight of my back curved. Where is my direction? Where are any of us going anyway, except away from that moment we have no control?
If I asked why this happened, and that happened, I was then distracted by some woman in the car next to me who was having more fun in her convertible talking on her cell phone. Routines were becoming burdens, and my favorite places of comfort were boring. Encouragement came from writing columns, reading letters, and those long, solitary road trips in the night. I felt like I was sleeping, but even in that state of detachment people were finding me, and shaking me up.
I remembered one of the faintest memories of my childhood. I cannot even recall the place I was, or who was there; most certainly, it was not my father and mother. We were camping out and I was in a sleeping bag on the hard gravel ground. It was so unfamiliar to me, the simplicity of the natural surroundings, the heavy black balm of tranquility, and the brightness of each star. I lied awake most of the night talking to my fellow campers, and at some point they said to go to sleep. I could not close my eyes. The adventure had swept me into a state of alertness, the kind that makes you feel extraterrestrial. That night must have taught me to welcome new adventures. Sometimes they have ruined months of my life, but most definitely, at the end, I sprung up with a new line of faith.
Again, I am leaving out particulars because it is not the direction I took or what I’ve chosen. After all, it could be anything. We all want to roam, and love, and find some nugget of truth at the end of the road. I think women need to roam more now than men.
ADVENTURES IN LIVINGNESS IS ON A HIKE. Not the physical kind that was once a weekly episode in New Mexico, these days I hike in my head, it’s as wobbly, uneven, rocky, and dangerous as a hike down the Gorge in Taos, NM.
The path I’m hiking is set off by relocation, once the house sells, which is on the fingernail of being sold. Each morning as I wake to my dreamy bedroom, I am deranged by the thought of leaving twenty-five hundred square feet of Victorian victorious comfort.I will be downsizing to a six-hundred-square-foot studio. I used to love studios, but this house has drained that love, and now reality is staring me in the face, a word I despise as an admitted non-realist and dreamer. The path that follows this is where I am relocating to? Relocation is a trend, according to some minor research. Boomers move closer to their children. If you don’t have children or a partner to bring out the compass and use a methodical ruler to figure this equation out, it comes down to finance. That’s the ticker that keeps bringing me back to reality. I should not have left Del Mar, CA. Have you ever said that? It’s the inkblot on decisions when I thought everything I did would work out until it didn’t. And I’d turn the steering wheel back to where I belong. I do not belong here, and that’s not because of aversion or harsh judgment. It’s a marvel if you like three courses of simple conversation, activity, and entertainment. The weather and I do not get along, the summer is sticky, humid, and last week we were in double digits, one hundred. I spent a few days next to a non-effective window air conditioner with an ice washcloth on my head. In the winter, I’m in battle gear with four sweaters and shawls and all of that, not to mention the ice and snow that kept me frosty for months. You can take a girl out of Southern California, but she’ll come back.
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Borrowing from a post on FB, you spend the first thirty years of your life gathering possessions, and the next thirty years eliminating. I’m eliminating, sort of, I cruise by my ten boxes of books, and every day it’s on the list to tape them closed. Then there are all the antique figurines, gambling paraphernalia, décor from the vacation rental days, and I think at last count, fifty hanging prints. I don’t need to measure anything, this will not fit in a studio. Plus, I still have a storage unit in Santa Fe, filled with items I cannot remember. Is there such a thing as relocation therapy?
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 stoodout 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.
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.
Silhouette of sounds: a whispering wind, the freight train blowing the sounds of its coming, Neil Young music, and the flutter of thoughts that sometimes feel like sounds.
The sky is building into a rainstorm, and watching its manifestation is dramatic—nature in motion. Although there are tasks to be threaded, I’ve chosen to retire from pesky vacuuming, wood polishing, laundry, unpacking my winter clothes, and preparing for winter. The clothes are trivial to the transformation of light, outdoor porch lounging, and then the trees. When they turn naked as skinned cucumbers or buds without flowers, I think a visceral adaptation occurs in all of us.
This week unfolded over Dad. The most honorable collector of Mafia artifacts bought some of father’s collection. Years ago, I sold them to the Mob Experience for their Museum in Las Vegas (bankrupt), and the owner resold them to Julian’s Estate Sales in Beverly Hills. I viewed the items for sale; imagine your phone book selling for sixteen hundred dollars and an album of photos taken by Dad’s doll in the thirties for, well, I forget the price. Anyway, Avi Bash of the Avi Bash Collection bought what was left. When he wrote to me, I felt immediate relief that he owned these moments Dad had kept all his life. He said,” Let me know if you want to see photos or anything else.” He’s a prince of a man. That was one slice of the week. When I checked my list today of my crossed-off tasks, it was not too impressive, but sometimes we can’t produce. As I said, I’m adapting from sunshine and warmth to seasonal change.
Digitally, I fixed a few troublesome changes Microsoft made to my documents and feeds.
It’s not me of years ago—driven, disciplined, empowered, and confident. Maybe it is not worth thinking about, not for me. I think more than I act these days. Everything we do in life needs revision. We are never through evolving into more thoughtful, loving, or wise human beings. Every day, there is an opportunity to leap into a saintly hood. It is the same with manuscripts; they get better.
The next adventure in livingness is one I have lived with all my life, moving. I would love to move, even to another part of town.
The dismantling of things gives me a twisted alignment to my life. The beginning is again: unpacking boxes, meeting new neighbors, sunsets, and cafes. If I am ever to rest in one address, I’m sure it will be a headstone and a plot of dirt. I have chosen to relocate because of an internal destiny.
These are the ones I know will happen with some certainty. The inner self concerns me and how it jumps from one dream to one nightmare. When I was thirty, I was afraid of getting married; when I was forty, I was scared of not having children. Now that I am seventy-one, I am fighting another fear: the fear of singleness. But I’ve always been a loner; it just didn’t scare me when I was young.
The Rain came, Dylan is singing, and I’m planning risotto pasta for the night.
I just finished another Denzel Washington film, Man on Fire. DW is my actor of the week, so I watch all his films. An alert popped up, another mass shooting, this time in Kentucky. I wanted to delete my last column.. It’s not what is breaking me apart; personal threads seem vacuous. What I’m escaping in writing and films are mass shootings and unbearable violence. It’s not one every few months; it’s every day. Yes, cure Cancer and all other physical diseases, BUT CONCENTRATE ON CRIME, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. MENTAL ILLNESS.
Achievement knocked down the barrier of fear. It feels like lifting off from ground level; I am floating like I used to be in the swimming pool, and I am only at my desk reading the news from my attorney. From one beginning to an ending, five years later, after tedious research, unscrambling legal language, and searching for the meaning behind the case references, this journey is over. I won the lawsuit against the bank that attempted toforeclose on my home and Dodger, my ex-partner of thirty-five years, who, for still unknown reasons, pursued the foreclosure.
Agape, eyes widened, nerves settled like snowflakes; the joy of achievement cannot be understated. During this phantasmagoria, life beyond research, consulting with foreclosure agencies, banking laws, and regulations, I detached from my passion for adventure, creativity, parades, parties, and socializing; I sat alone, and resilience shadowed, then enflamed like a log of fire, encapsulated into a daily doctrine. Music by Ennio Morricone, blue note Jazz, the everchanging scenery of seasons, phone conversations with friends who released ambers of comfort, confidence, and advice, and TCM films nuzzled my fatigue.
Some days, I remained in bed, staring at my Icart Ladies of Leisure prints, or sat by my favorite window seat and studied clouds, birds, and leaves. The blossom of tenacity grew into a tree trunk and taught me the art of persistence and emotional strength, which were missing links in my character.
Achievement in fine-tuning relationships, setting down the needle gently instead of plummeting riffs and arguments. In the present, as you all know, if you read the news, our culture has replaced argument and debate with assault and violence. I digress; renewed confidence in my aptitude to fight battles, disputes, and disappointments without Dodger is as solid as concrete.
The next episodic internal journey is regaining my passion for opening the door to interaction with strangers and discovering newness in that engine of life.I hope this admission reaches others who are experiencing depriving themselves of love within and without.
SILHOUETTE of a Taos night out in 2006. It begins with the sunset—a bubble-gum pink sash that swirls like taffy just above the distant hillside. The transcending forms and colors in the sky distract me; they silence me, keeping me from turning on the television or answering the phone.
The sunset has settled into my routine. I watch it from the roof garden over our Adobe Home and Gallery every night. In the midst of dressing to attend an art auction at the Millicent Rogers Museum, the sun has vanished. The sky turns Taos blue; a luminous oil pigment canvas blue that appears like an endless tunnel you can walk through. As I descend the staircase and cross over the ménage of piles shoved in a corner to allow SC to paint, I think, “This is going to be my home. I’m still here” Adventures in Livingness
In the courtyard where new flagstone has been laid, and a mud ditch blocks the exit, Rudy hitches me on his back and carries me out the side entrance through Tony Abeyta’s yard. Tony’s yard is piled with sand from our flagstone project, and my high-heeled black suede shoes are not at all practical for crossing New Mexican dunes. This is how the evening begins. Out in the parking lot, we circle around once and stop in Robert’s gallery. He has offered me his turquoise squash seed necklace to wear at the auction. The necklace is from Turkey, and sells for $1,800. Millicent Rogers events always attract women with extravagant jewelry, and Robert knows I have no such possessions. He hands me the necklace and says, have fun.
At times like this, I can forget the faces and routines I lived in Solana Beach and feel swept into a labyrinth of unfamiliar vignettes. There are two police cars in the rear of the parking lot, the church looms like a fortress of wet mud, and SC is listening to The Band CD we picked up in Santa Fe. I slide into the car, ensuring my shoes don’t fill with gravel.
There is very little street light along the desert road, and cars approach you at disarming speeds. For newcomers, the pale yellow line that separates oncoming traffic, roaming animals, hitchhikers, leather-clad bikers, and abandoned pets is of no comfort or value. Boundaries and civilities between people are vague, and sometimes, conversations elope into poetry.
At the Millicent Rogers Museum, the director, Jill, who is there to welcome each guest, greets us at the carved wooden doors. This museum was once a home, like most museums in Taos.Each room is an envelope of Native American jewelry, ceramics, paintings, weaving, textiles, and metalwork sealed with Millicent Rogers’s ethereal presence. By coming to Taos and bridging her New York chic with southwestern individuality, she set global trends in fashion, art, and living. he museum collection includes some of her designs that evolved from her residency in the desert. She moved here in 1947 and died here in 1953. Although she could have chosen anywhere in the world to live, she settled in the unaltered, surreal lunar beauty of Taos.
I wandered through the tightly packed rooms, alternately viewing the guest’s attire and jewelry. The woven wraps, belts, and hats worn by men and women form a collage of individual expression. Almost everyone seems to attract attention by the texture and color of his or her attire. It is a festive traditional look, with southwestern accessories paired with jeans or silk dresses. If you come to Taos, look for a belt buckle, one piece of Native American jewelry, and one piece of art.
When the auction was announced, I admired the same etching as the woman next to me. She remarked that the artist was also the teacher of one of her children. I learned that Ellen had six children and 11 grandchildren. She was petite with curly blonde hair, and I liked her instantly. I told her I was a writer.
“So am I,” she answered.
Rather than talk about her work, she began talking about her daughter, who is also a writer.
“I’m so lucky–all my children and grandchildren are creative and artistic.”
It was obvious that her life was a garden of earthly delights and that she had raised many roses. When the auction began, she vanished, and I quickly viewed the art before returning to the two etchings. They were both sold.
As I was walking out, I bumped into Ellen. She was clutching the etchings.
“So, you bought them,” I said.
“Oh, yes, I had to have them.”
She left me with a beaming smile and a closing remark I often hear: “Welcome to Taos.”
I love hearing that so much I don’t want to stop saying, I just moved here. After the auction, we stopped in Marco’s Downtown Bistro, where we joined an improvisational party. It started when Marco introduced us to his friends, Pablo and Joan, who were visiting from Santa Fe.
The dim, glowing melon adobe walls of the bistro, Marco hugging everyone, Joan’s melodious, high-pitched laughter, Pablo telling jokes, Rudy laughing, and then Philip arriving to tell stories crossed over from strangers in a bistro to a fast-rolling film. The conversation and laughter surfed breathlessly from one person to another.
Joan remarked, “My fifteen minutes. This is the best for me. The first time you meet someone, you’re both talking without effort. It’s so perfect.”
We closed the bistro past midnight. Marco had gone home. Joan decided to stay at a friend’s house. Philip agreed to drive to Santa Fe the next day, and we took Tylenol before bed.
Not every night out in Taos is like Joan’s fifteen minutes, but chances are you will have something to write home about. The beginning of Gallery LouLou Taos, NM
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My memoir, published in 2017, Cradle of Crime-A Daughter’s Tribute is old news to me. Not to Charlie. I met him as he was renovating a house across the street. I didn’t introduce myself as Luellen Smiley, just Luellen. I asked if he would take a look at myhouse for an estimate on painting. He was sweet, a mountain man with a long white beard and hunting boots. Last week, he texted me,” I read your book, my friend and I exchanged Goodreads suggestions, and I told him to read your book.” How did he connect me to my book? I didn’t ask, and now it piques my interest. I’d walk across the street and ask him, his truck is there, so is the ice, and I don’t feel like skating and falling on my butt.
Winter in upstate New York to a gal from Los Angeles is likened to living in the North Pole. Going on five years, my last, I’m not resentful and scouring, but I am not acclimated. Indoors I dress in sherpa from head to toe and wear those finger mittens. Today it is full-throttle rain showers. The street is vacated of traffic and the public, it’s a good day to work on my next book. On my desk area few writing books, the favorites: Henry Miller on Writing, The Diaries of Anais Nin, and Albert Camus’s The Stranger. I haven’t bought a current book in years, the last one was Sam Shepard, The One Inside. I like Miller’s passage: ” The writer lives between the upper and lower worlds.: he takes the path in order eventually to become that path himself.”
Aging in my seventies delivered opening windows to restoring, rearranging, and repairing my persona, personally and in public. If you’ve read any of my essays, then you know explicit is the vortex that moves my thread. Restoring the brick-and-mortar of truth is at the forefront; the next layer is a confession of what I cannot speak in person to anyone, even my closest pals. The third is abstaining from too swift a pen; I’m always in a hurry: I prepare food quickly, walk as if I’m late for an engagement, and wash dishes with perfunctory interest. Everything when I think about it. I know why that is, my father. His shadow was always behind me as I went about myteenage activities at home, so I rushed to get out.
Last week, I stopped taking the powerful Lorzapam medication for neurotic anxiety. My heart raced when I opened an email from my attorney, when a stranger knocked at the door, or when I entered a public place alone. A new sideways rain shower just filled the window pane above my desk. Here is the fourth restorative: get outdoors! I don’t walk in snow or ice, but good old water rain, which I call God’s tears, is one of my favorite nature adventures.
Admittedly, my writing has granulated since moving here. It is tiny in thought and not always tied up neatly. My persona in public needs to be side by side with wine in a dining setting. What I contribute must be joyous and humorous because one of my favorite human activities is to evoke laughter and smiles. I broke away from my taverns and abstained from alcohol for a week. In the second week, visceral and bodily alarms have gone off. I’m lucid, motivated, andeven decisive.
From Anais Nin Diaries 1939-1944.
“I respond to intensity, but I also like reflection to follow action, for then understanding is born, and understanding prepares me for the next act.”
Sunlight seeps through the glass window and tickles the silk flowers, autumn leaves left over from the last street clean-up, lay flat and lifeless.
The street is silent this weekend, the neighbors with three high-pitched voluminous barking dogs are gone, and I notice my shoulders softened from the daily dose of their irritation. The neighbors are tucked indoors, avoiding the freezing atmospheric clutch of winter. In the village, it is Shop Local weekend so I took a walk and stopped at one of the gift shops. A mirage of unrelated items from chocolate bars to errings, tai die dresses, and scented candles crusaded side by side. The owner repeated her lines, ‘ I represent eighty-one New York artists so if you have any questions, no question is refused.’ Feeling brave I asked, What is the meaning of life?’ The result was not what I expected, she did not respond, and the other shoppers, maybe two chuckled. Time to move on.
Rarely do I run into anyone I know, my circle here is a half-circle of acquaintances. The next stop is the Social Club where my curious humor is appreciated.
” Jackie! She just started a few weeks ago. At first interaction, this twenty-something woman avoided conversation, not even a smile. After a few sips of a Manhattan, I pulled out my mini perfume sample.
” Do you like this?” she sniffed, I watched.
” Oh, I love this, What kind?“
” Tom Ford Noir.”
“I Love Tom Ford, he’s so expensive.“
That’s why I buy the body spray, sixteen ounces, forty dollars. I’d rather turn the heat down than go without perfume.”
At that moment, we leaped into gal pals. The Social Club serves up exotic cocktails, irresistible tacos, and an assortment of soups and salads, my kind of table setting. Horace the Bar Manager wears a beret and is always somewhat distracted by his list of duties. He moves behind a narrow back bar pathway as if he is power walking, and always greets me with a genuine ‘How are you LouLou!’.
I meet a cluster of female bar-friendly women, who invite me into their festive fiasco of celebration for one reason or another. We may never see each other again, but the moments count. Sometimes we exchange emails or phone numbers. The adverse effects of alcohol are sometimes diminished for undiluted expression.
I’m learning to understand upstate New Yorkers, their resilience to extreme climate, limited source of funds, pragmatic decisions, family comes first foundation, and quizzical curiosity when they learn I moved from San Diego to purchase a Victorian rental property in Ballston Spa, ‘ Why did you do that?’ I answered, ‘ I fell in love with the quaintness and the house.’ Still visibly unconvinced, I wonder if they think I’m in hiding or avoiding some criminal offense. I’ve not met one person from San Diego, Los Angeles, or Santa Fe, NM in three years. Maybe if I dressed in Pendleton or Northface, I wouldn’t stand out.
On another night, in desperate craving for French Fries, I stopped at Henry’s Pub. The man next to me opened the conversation,
“You’re not from here are you?”
” What gave me away?”
” The way you dress, it’s a nice jacket.”
” I just wear what’s in the closet, urban clothes I suppose.”
” That’s cool. Where are you from?”
” Los Angeles.“
” I’ve never been there, I’m planning a trip to Hawaii, my first time.” He outlined a history of why now, breaking up with his girlfriend, and then he jump-started into a conversation about needing a haircut. This went on for some time, although he was almost shaved. Then he went onto his beard. I listened attentively, imitating interest because he needed to talk, and I knew that feeling so well. Sometimes conversation is not what we need but what the other person needs.
ADVENTURERS IN LIVINGNESS 
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