The throw of the dice this week lands on adventures in contemplation. Before the day begins to intersect with my solitude, I sit at my desk in a pre-dawn crystal of clarity. Only the light from a candle shines on a journal of hand written notes. I walked outside to asses the damage of a devilish storm that ravished the night. Leaves dropped from trees and the street is slick with the residue of the storm. Autumn is rising from dormancy; she is painting the leaves pumpkin and cranberry, while impregnating the atmosphere with the perfume of seasonal change. The inversion seeps into my pores.
While shopping at Whole Foods last week, for my first stockpile of chicken tortilla soup, I noticed expressions of contemplation on faces. Not in the choice of their groceries, but a characteristic of preparation for winter. Pumpkins, firewood and potted mums have replaced the outdoor display of flower baskets and lavender.  The silence will blanket time beyond the hours of sleep. This is when contemplation is given the freedom to spread over my thoughts and feelings. September marks the disrobing of summer; as if the float of festivities,  parties, and outdoor markets were moved into storage.
Last week was the beginning of the new Year on the Jewish Calendar, Rosh Hashanah. Unlike New Years for the traditional American, is a time of contemplation and reckoning of ones faults. We are asked to examine our behavior and plant new seeds of integrity from within.
“Another popular practice of the holiday is Tashlikh (“casting off”). We walk to flowing water, such as a creek or river, on the afternoon of the first day and empty our pockets into the river, symbolically casting off our sins. Small pieces of bread are commonly put in the pocket to cast off. This practice is not discussed in the Bible, but is a long-standing custom.” Excerpt from Wikipedia.
What I do is to take my emotional and physical wardrobe, and move it from the closet in my casita, to the upstairs storage closet. The skimpy and sexy finery are replaced with turtlenecks, leggings and wool. The emotional wardrobe, is pressed down to the fibers, so it can be studied. In this examination, the reflection of myself is not as important as it has been, the stubble of age has bitten me but not in a bitter way. It has burned down my childish selfishness, insistence of acknowledgment, intolerance of behavior unfamiliar to me, and detached me from the wayward choices made by our government. I used to work with the news turned on and the volume down.

This summer, beginning just after my adventure in Malibu with my friend Chantel, my grip on aloofness towards Santa Fe,  frustrations associated with publication, and narcissism dissipated. It is possible that one month in the company of Chantal, her vibrancy and generosity softened my reserve. In the last four months, I’ve at last given up tightening against the unmanageable forces that intersect with me, and meet the pleasures of humanity in nakedness. I stood in my doorway, shaded by trees and shrubbery, naked – simply to feel the sensation. In return for this placation of behavior, I was invited by my vacation rental guests into their gatherings and parties; a wedding couple and their twenty-five guests included me in their after party. We cajoled, roused, sang and danced until my neighbor, JD, shamed our festivity and ordered me to shut the party down. It was one-thirty in the morning. I wrapped my arm around his neck, and whispered, ‘Oh, you are so right; I will take care of it. Don’t worry.’ JD, a man with twenty- three civil complaints for noise ordinance disruption against the La Posada Resort across the street, replied ‘Well LouLou, if you don’t, I’ll have to call the police.’ I hugged him tighter, and said. “Of course you will, and you have every right.’ This is not the behavior that guided me last year. I returned to the party and made the announcement to the guests, who were by now leaning against the walls, drinking shots of whisky in bowls, and I said:
‘ Party to dawn kids, but keep your voices down.’ The lights went out at four-thirty in the morning. When I left the house, empty bottles, uneaten meals, flowers, shoes, and scarfs scattered everywhere. This disruption of my polished tidy home would have erupted me into a silent rage a year ago. After they checked-out, my new pal and assistant Marc, entered the house. Stepping over pillows, popcorn, sticky wood floors, and into a kitchen of stained counters and food crumbs; a counterfeit of my dear old hollering father shouted;  ‘ This is outrageous. They’ll pay for this!’
“ Stop. We were part of it. It was a wedding party. What did you expect?”

“What the heck is that? Marc said pointing to a clump of food stuck to the wall.
“ Looks like salsa and chips.” I said with a sponge in my hand. By the time we reached the rooms upstairs, I too was chuckling. Two days later the house  converted from slipshod to spotless.
The spell of silence has now been broken. The sidewalk blowers stir the leaves, doors open, the clatter of buffet trays wheeling down the street from the kitchen at La Posada pushed by employees in white jackets, swipe greetings, and converse in Spanish. My birds are screeching for more seeds, and the candle is just about burned out. The unknown outcome of our state of affairs in government and society has padded me with extra elasticity, tolerance, and love. Maybe our collective kindness will intercede with the poisonous bitterness and vengeance that titillates through the news.