I thought the Writer’s Island prompt on Helen Hunt’s new movie rather serendipitous. I love Helen Hunt–except for the year there seemed to be only three actors–her, Kevin Spacey and Nic Cage
Then because writing this thoroughly depressed me and it’s cool and very windy out I wrote using the other prompt “outrageous.” But for me that’s commonplace.
She was expecting me to be married not divorced. She was expecting me to have children not be childless. She was expecting me to complete her. To be the one to live the life she could only dream of.

She refused to understand that the life I was living was one I had chosen. Unlike her I had degrees, and a life not centered around parents wants and wishes.

I didn’t just have desires, and dreams but plans and action. I had a professional career. One that had stopped being satisfying. I needed as much love as I could get from as many people who were willing to love me. I sort of understood that my semi-breakdown the year before and the resultant tests that typed me “learning disabled to the max” had knocked some life out of me.

Still I tried. Still I functioned. I wanted desperately to like her. I wanted desperately for her to like me. I didn’t act needy. That had never been my style. Neediness made and makes me uncomfortable. I might have acted the opposite. No guidebook told me what to do. I had no experience in matters such as this.

Unlike today there weren’t coaches who guided you through every step. My luck–to be a pioneer in the modern age. It’s a constant battle and I’m never truly sure why. It was the 80’s. Oh sweet beloved 80’s, so much of my life happened then. You weren’t sweet, really but beloved–even the horrible was good. I was young and pretty. Looks counted with everybody but her; she made it clear she didn’t like my looks. She refused to be seen in public with me. Not because I was ugly but because I was the image of her mother. But her mother was pretty and I was…..

She would find me selfish for running into and then out of her life. It wasn’t me she desired but some perfect creature I could never be nor aspired to be. She was the one who lived in a dream land

I had a choice. I didn’t have to call her “mother.” And so I didn’t.

The woman I called “ma” to be sort of snarky or “mommy” most of the time had that honor. And she was honored to love imperfect me.
Uh, dear email, radio, TV and more–since Easter I have been bombarded with Mother’s Day ads. The only mother I care about is dead; I have no children, and usually don’t care. But I spend a lot of time hanging out with and giving presents to other peoples children. I have gotten one present from one girl–ever and it was lovely, but Mother’s Day is a day I suppose I should sleep through.
People are looking at my apartment though it isn’t selling. I will take it off the market in June if nothing happens.
I just looked at my Technorati for the first time in many months. I have no screen shots of when I was a 2,500-5,7000 rated blogger, so who would believe it? Guess you had to be there.
Is this “outrageous” enough or is just me as usual?
I was never physically addicted to cigarettes. Basically I liked having them around and holding them and sometimes lighting them and sometimes smoking them. I would feel dirty and scuzzy if I gave into this urge but….. This is me with my parents when they were old and I had late 80’s hair as opposed to mid 80’s hair which was bigger. We had just had a Passover for about 40. It was to be our family’s last one but we didn’t know that then

Stumble it!

Am I the only person who thinks Gail Collins looks like Laura Bush but has great things to say anyway? This is about the Supreme Court and equal pay for women. When it comes to money, I can be called a feminist to the core. The most senior woman at a corp made less then the most junior man. McCain would–read the article. It did make me remember why I’m a Democrat

This article shook me to the core. I’m reprinting it here as it’s so unbelievable, yet so America in the millennium.

The PEN American Center, the literary organization committed to free expression, is honoring an American most people in this country have never read or even heard of: Laura Berg. She is a psychiatric nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital who was threatened with a sedition investigation after she wrote a letter to the editor denouncing the Bush administration’s bungling of Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq war.

That’s right, sedition: inciting rebellion against the government. We suppose nothing should surprise us in these days of government zealotry. But the horror and the shame of that witch hunt should shock everyone.

Ms. Berg identified herself as a V.A. nurse when, soon after Katrina’s horrors, she sent her impassioned letter to The Alibi, a paper in Albuquerque. “I am furious with the tragically misplaced priorities and criminal negligence of this government,” she wrote. “We need to wake up and get real here, and act forcefully to remove a government administration playing games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit.”

Her superiors at the hospital soon alerted the Federal Bureau of Investigation and impounded her office computer, where she keeps the case files of war-scarred veterans she treats. Then she received an official warning in which a Veterans Affairs investigator intoned that her letter “potentially represents sedition.”

It took civil rights litigators and Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico to “act forcefully” in reminding the government of the Constitution and her right to free speech. The Department of Veterans Affairs retreated then finally apologized to the shaken Ms. Berg.

Even then, she noted, one superior told her it was preferred that she not identify herself as a V.A. nurse in any future letter writing. “And so I am saying I am a V.A. nurse,” Ms. Berg soon boomed out in a radio broadcast. “And some of my fire in writing this about Katrina and Iraq is from my experience as a V.A. nurse.” Thus declared Ms. Berg, well chosen to receive the new PEN/Katherine Anne Porter First Amendment Award.

•••••••••••••••••••••••
We need a president who will begin to undo the horrors of the past seven years. It’s more than a recession, a wrong war, the bungling of Katrina, Iraq and I will add 9/11. It’s the consistent undermining of our Constitution and its Amendments–the foundation upon which this country was formed.

More people would listen to Laura Berg if she identified herself as a VA nurse than if she didn’t. As bloggers we pat ourselves on the back for saying such profound things as “f–k Bush.” We believe we’re incredible for stating the obvious without putting our lives and/our careers on the line.

We’re not. Laura Berg is.

Stumble it!

I just cleaned my cpanel of all unnecessary junk and went from having a filled disk to having much space. Feel much better about blogging and life in general. There is something about a clutterless life
Lately I feel self-conscious blogging not to prompts. I had a post mapped out in my head about when I was a little girl my father would take us to a client who had “girly calenders” and other pin-ups hung up in the back of his store. I found them revolting. When I was a teenager I was much more verbal about my hatred. Then I discovered noir films and pulp fiction and had to begin liking them. The other night I saw a movie about Bettie Page that I had meant to see when it was out. It left me with many questions I can’t quite verbalize. With some exceptions, I’m not sure there’s room in the blogosphere for discussions like this. It seems so compartmentalized and theme centered. It no longer feels like home but I’m having problems with that concept also.
••••••••••••••••••••

Cooper has an amazing image that she lifted from somebody and I would have taken from Cooper but my custom WP blog doesn’t do images.

I need images. I’m going to a shagger’s parade tomorrow. A year ago I never heard of shag music, and now I live in its home.

I have been spending way too much time reading this real estate blog where it is to some peoples interest to talk up the death of the Manhattan real estate market. As I’m selling an apartment….I write long, nuanced and rational responses that I don’t post.

Why don’t I post them? I was a political blogger for two years and too quickly learned that people don’t want rational, nuanced comments. They want to play up their views or to be snarky and stupid.

I so much prefer discussions in real life with people who might not hold my views but understand the framework of an argument. I so much prefer people who have many interests, and aren’t hung up on one POV or one minor point.

I almost feel like posting my comments that I delete here but it feels snarky to remind people that Manhattan actually has a real estate market.

I priced my apartment too high and reduced the price. Does this mean I’m in defeat? No it means I always knew it was too high but when a person prices an apartment it’s not just between her and her realtors. It’s analogous to Freud’s theory of sex; that when you’re sleeping with a person it’s not just the two of you but all four of your parents are in bed or wherever with you. Personally I have never bought into that. But my parents had a “healthy” attitude about sex so.

When you have a desirable apartment in a good building, everybody you know becomes involved. Had I priced it at the price it’s at now I would have heard forever how the realtors and I were lazy. This has nothing to do with the comments I never left. Hell, they’re too personal to post on a board where I have a screenname nobody knows, so I’m not going to post them here.

Leaving Manhattan was the best decision I made since my decision to move back. Even then I wanted to leave the New York area but I had an elderly mother who I loved very much. If I write about my father more, he was easier to write about. On the surface my mother was a cute suburban housewife. Under the surface…..I’m trying to write about her for Mother’s Day and it’s so hard. She’s not somebody I can easily categorize. I can’t really write about life lessons my mother taught me. She taught me everything. I don’t want to reduce her to a series of cliches.

Since I left Manhattan seven weeks ago I have been given a series of opportunties. I had unlimited energy when it didn’t benefit me; I have to get the motivation and energy back. Because the rest of the year is all about me, me and more me.

I do have a zen type feeling about my apartment. It needed to see me. I had staged it too well and took all the personality out so that anybody could picture herself there I bought it a flower box, flowers and arranged with somebody to keep refreshing the flowers.

The day before my meeting with the coop board, my bff’s daughter, Little Luce, then six, walked around the building touching it for luck. Now she’s seventeen and the next time I go back will be for her high school graduation. I didn’t dare ask her to touch the building again but somehow it came up and she’s going to….

Because I can’t wait to sell so I can buy here. For the first time in forever my life’s going to be doormen free. It feels so liberating.

Send out vibes, whatever. I need this new chapter of my life to go seamlessly.
•••••••••••
Actually it angers me that many people I know view this as a permanent vacation or “you’re too young….” I believe we’re given chances to remake our lives or make them better or live where we want.
I strongly believe that I was given a gift and had to leave Manhattan to make the most of it.
Life in New York is filled with tension. Once I thrived on that but it all became too much for me. I couldn’t help but overhear this cell conversation:
Hello Beautiful. Busy Busy. Can’t talk. Busy busy. Kiss kiss.
That’s not the mark of a successful person to me. It made me tense up–she was screaming so that everybody on that block of West End Avenue had to listen.
The hair salon I go to here–weekly–has a sign “please turn off your cells out of consideration for the other clients.” In New York nobody would listen to that. When I go to the salon there I listen to the sounds of 30 one way conversations. Everybody has to out important each other. The only acceptable answer to “how are you?” is “busy.” I began to yearn for the days when people had actual conversations with one another in salons, in stores, anywhere….

Stumble it!

Thanks Bone for always picking such amazing words. I know it ain’t easy.
Here’s a link to a great op-ed piece by Paul Auster about being 21 in the spring of 68 and looking forward to graduating and being drafted.
It goes with the story I began several weeks ago.

Dinah lived several blocks from the beach now. When she finally had the choice she found she didn’t want to live on the bustling beach. Once a month or so she rented a hotel room that faced the ocean, and soaked in the smells and sounds of the ocean. Every six weeks she went back to New York for non stop socializing. And doctors and dentists.

Dinah didn’t want to be a New York elitist; her boyfriend was the town police lieutenant who teased her about her elitism but loved it and never tried to invade the space she made between her and the rest of the world. He compared her to a wave that looked as though it was going to break big time but came in gently. Rarely they would discuss the many nuances in that sentence. He was a cop with a Master’s in American Lit. His thesis had been on Capote. Somehow she found all that out when he spotted her comparing coffee’s in Kroger’s. He didn’t ask too many questions about the past she had come to a small Southern beach town to break from.

Dinah came from the world of live in the moment. Here she reflected on the past when walking on the beach, oiling the banister in her robin blue Charleston type house, or placing shells on one of the canvases that sold for way too much money. Honestly she had no idea what she was doing. People reflected about her work and made too much out of it. She just enjoyed placing found objects on canvass and painting over them with milk paints she mixed herself.

Today she couldn’t get into her work at all. It felt so meaningless. Jordy, husband one to three out of six had a new CD out, and she really hadn’t meant to memorize it. She remembered the most banal things about Jordy. The first time they had married had been a joke. She was eighteen and he was nineteen, in 1969. When her parents found out they insisted on an annulment. She refused not because she wanted to be married to Jordy but because she didn’t want to do what her parents thought proper.

The divorce had happened six months later, in the Dominican Republic, after she had walked into their basement apartment in a house on the Long Island Sound and found Jordy in bed with a girl she was kind of friendly with. He insisted it was meaningless. Dinah believed in few things but one of the things she truly took seriously was fidelity.

She would picture Jordy in bed with that girl over and over again. She tried to ignore him her Sophomore Year but wherever Dinah went, Jordy went. When she thought she was almost in love with Kent, the golden boy, they went to a school dance. Like all dances it had an absurd name: The End of the World.

Jordy’s group wasn’t supposed to be playing but they substituted for another popular Long Island college/bar band. Jordy sang four new songs she knew he wrote for her, and then “Dinah with the dancing eyes,” the song that was going to make him famous.

“Stop,” she thought. “I can’t love a man who writes beautiful songs about me. What else is there? What do we have in common? Why am I going to break up with Kent tonight?”

Because, just because.

Somebody took a picture of Dinah staring at Jordy and somehow he was reflected through her eyes. The picture would be on the album cover. If every picture tells a story that picture told more than either Dinah or Jordy could consciously process.

The draft had ended. Jordy had a high lottery number. Dinah wouldn’t marry Jordy again for three years, but she could drop out of college with him and go on his first tour.

The End of The World dance had been the beginning of Dinah’s real life.

Stumble it!

I lived in New York during 9/11. A big part of the reason I’m leaving is because of everything that happened after. I don’t want to rehash it now but people who have read Courting for years know about my personal tragedy a month later and the help I couldn’t find.

Hillary Clinton was an influential senator who could have done much to alleviate the suffering. Not just the counseling I sought, but she could have helped New York get its promised aid in a timely manner. Montana needed it more. I can never forget her for forgetting about the city she claims to represent. I can’t stand the people who choose to overlook that.

So would Hillary be good in an emergency? Only if it suits her needs.

Here’s a post my nephew of choice Kenny Butler wrote. Kenny represents the successful Black professional family man. I’m proud to have posted it and to link to it now.

OBAMA BRINGS REASON AND INTELLECT. OBAMA BRINGS HOPE. OBAMA CARES ABOUT ALL PEOPLE. HE IS ALL PEOPLE. FOR THE FIRST TIME WE HAVE A CANDIDATE WHO UNDERSTANDS BOTH THE BLACK AND WHITE WORLD. OBAMA ISN’T A MACHINE CANDIDATE.

IF G-D FORBID SOMETHING ON THE SCALE OF 9/11 OR KATRINA HAPPENS I HAVE FAITH THAT OBAMA WILL BE THERE FOR ALL OF US. NOT JUST THE CHOSEN FEW.

Stumble it!

This went into private though didn’t say that last night–nor did I touch anything to make it so. I need a design company to retweak Courting and another hosting company

The most exciting part of my day today, Monday was walking past The David Letterman Show twice and pretending that he came out to discover my brilliance and my Southern/New York beauty and put me on the show as an added guest. A girl can dream.
Until I sell my apartment, this will be my legal address. I’m coming back at the end of June, and suspect I will be coming to New York often even after I sell. New York runs through my blood as no place else ever could.

Spirit Air was only a half hour late. For Spirit that’s like being two hours early. At the Myrtle Beach Airport they had a display of banned cigarette lighters. Many looked just like guns. It was scary to think of what could happen if somebody took one out…I had never seen anything like them before. Hey I think Aim Flames look like guns–but these looked like the real thing.

Lucia and Rafe my two BFF’s came over. Lucia wanted to scream about how much she loved my hair but as Rafe was my hairstylist for so many years….Even he had to admit it looks great. We went shopping at Fairway at ten PM. It was much more crowded than any store I have been in, in North Myrtle during prime shopping hours. Thursday night I loved the exhilaration though I know that will wear thin. I bought sushi for breakfast. Sushi is one food I will never eat in North Myrtle–OK, it was brown rice, smoked salmon sushi but still–I wouldn’t buy any fresh fish that I wouldn’t eat within an hour or two. I did sample it when I came back home. Bought rough cut oatmeal as I can’t find it anywhere in North Myrtle. Rough cut oatmeal makes oatmeal into a truly divine experience. Have to buy hot wasabi peas and a few other things. Have a feeling I’m going to be buying many things over the Internet.

On Friday I began walking down Broadway looking for a certain mani/pedi place. The weather was incredible. When I passed Gray’s Papaya, I began tearing up–will take pictures and begin a photo blog to show you why. The thing is I can’t deal with the smell of hot dogs and have never actually been in a Gray’s. If I get a drink somebody has to buy me one. I was getting over an allergy induced migraine–my allergies are much better near the beach. But Gray’s symbolizes real New York to me, and my sinuses were clogged so I didn’t smell anything. Just stood there and teared and teared for my heart belongs here. Continue Reading »

Stumble it!

I’m not participating in 3WW this week as I’m going to New York to see friends and family and eat too much food I wouldn’t usually eat as it’s Passover and my sister is a great cook.

I hope to have news about my apartment soon.

I will say that if Obama is an elitist, then I’m____. He said what many of us say and/or think including people of faith. I used to say I would give people the Second Amendment if they would give me The First Amendment but…..The First is being slowly and not so slowly tampered with while the Second remains intact.

Boston Legal was incredible tonight. Nantucket, the Island, wanted permission to make a nuclear bomb. To truly over simplify they wanted to show that because of the present admin, every country has permission to make one–which means the country can use one The Judge was really incensed as Pakistan probably has one and that’s the country Bin Laden is probably hiding in. Of course he couldn’t grant Nantucket permission. My personal favorite line was “who will save us? The Vineyard?” I guess I am a Northerner.

Meanwhile, Shirley’s (Candice Bergen) father has end stage dementia. She had to go to court to get an order to let him have a morphine drip. Again this is a bare outline. Alan (James Spader) did a brilliant summation and talked about his best friend Denny (William Shatner) who has the very early signs. Someday Alan will have to make decisions about Denny–who unknown to Alan was watching the summation.

I have worked with many people with all different stages of dementia. I have also worked with people who were about to die yet they couldn’t get hospice care which would have allowed them a morphine drip. I have screamed at nurses and doctors.

The nursing home argued that this would set a bad precedent as so many teens and middle aged people try to kill themselves. Alan said it should be done on a case by case basis.

I disagree. Every person who is considered “terminal” and is or might be in dire pain–they argued that Shirley’s father was too far gone to feel pain–she said his agitation showed that he feels pain–should be allowed to have morphine drips. If they become addicted, so? The slight fallacy with her argument is that people with mid dementia become agitated simply because they are so confused.

I cried watching Shirley. She talked about what a great man her father had been. Now he was a shell. I have always said the greatest gift my father gave our family was dying within five days of having a stroke.

He died over Passover, his favorite holiday. My father discovered religion when we went to a seder in Mobile, when I was fourteen.

Now I live in North Myrtle Beach only it feels so North. Everybody is from somewhere else. I spoke to a woman from the Jewish Center, who invited me for a seder though I’m not really a believer. I thought that was very nice. Especially since I told her so–but many Jews aren’t. It’s a cultural thing for me.

She told me that if I just go 20 minutes South from here I will be in the real South. Maybe, baby.

Stumble it!

First please read me in The New York Social Diary.

It was a bright and windy day. I was wearing two or three year old MBT sandals with sport socks for the fashionable nerd lowest part of the body look; Gloria Vanderbilt jeans–we go back to the 70’s, just washed and looked pressed; a pumpkin spandex and cotton Talbot’s tee. I was also wearing a jean jacket though I know they’re so yesterday and Kate Spade sunglasses. I was carrying two insulated nylon bags as food shopping was involved. Though many of my friends make fun of my love of MBT’s, they stop when they try them on–and if they can afford them buy a pair. My hair is Southern blond highlight; my nails just have clear polish but are perfectly manicured–Southern–got over my fear of going into a Southern nail place.

The overly long clothes description is essential to the story. I walk. I am a New Yorker. New Yorkers think nothing of walking 60-100 blocks just because.

But I no longer live in New York. I live in North Myrtle Beach.

There are walking trails here. There is the beach. And yes I feel grateful to live near the beach. But this area is very beautiful and sometimes I need to walk into housing developments, around parks, on Route 17 and Main Street. Main Street’s kind of funky. It has overpriced boutiques, restaurants, a shag shop and a store called “Two Blondes.” Route 17 isn’t beautiful but it has many stores and is the same Route 17 that’s in upstate New York. It’s the North-South Route 66 though so much less famous.

I was walking for hours. It was one of the first days where the weather was beautiful. I felt almost on vacation. My fears about living here were fading.

I was plotting stories, and truly getting a lot of work done–in my head but writers do work in their heads, and I think best when walking.

I was at the end of Main Street about to cross to go to Kroger’s when a man in a road workers uniform and holding a sign said something to me. I was a little befuddled as it was Sunday and I didn’t see any road work. Then I realized he was holding the sign to direct non-existent traffic into the mega church parking lot

I made sure I only said “no, thank you,” and not “no, thanks, maybe some other time,” as I really don’t want to be converted, and I leave no room for that possibility. He could have been inviting for coffee for all I knew as he was looking me up and down but not in a sleazy way. I smiled. I’m sure he didn’t hear me as we were four lanes away from each other and I have a soft voice in the best of times.
Some of you know my smile is worth the net worth of a tiny country. It’s perfect in its imperfection and I smile constantly. I also look horrible if I don’t.

I shopped in Kroger’s. Nobody fainted when I said I wanted to bag my groceries in my own bag. I walked through a few housing developments and found my way back to Main Street where I became so engrossed in looking at stores, the sky and how it reflected the beach I didn’t turn on my street but walked almost to the end. This is where it became weird.

A man got off his bike. I realized he was the same man I had seen at the mega church and began to say hello when he said:
Are you alright?
I have no idea what he’s talking about and begin mentally checking myself out. My mouth was parched. I had forgotten my water bottle and finished the water I bought sometime earlier.
Yes thank you.
No are you really alright?
Yes why?
I saw you walking before and here you are again.
I like to walk.
Do you have any place to go?
Hello do I look like a homeless person? I suppose he thought I had all my worldly goods in the insulated bag, and the Nike nylon bag I carry instead of a pocketbook when I’m not going to see people or for an appointment.

For some reason I didn’t say that or sound angry. I asked him what about me made him think that I was homeless.
You’re walking.
I wasn’t aware that’s illegal.
He repeated that because he saw me walk so many places he knew I must have no place to go.

If he had just turned it into a joke and said “it’s so rare to see somebody walk here,” I would have laughed and felt better but I guess that’s what we do in New York. Or I do.

I guess I was the one who was supposed to turn it into a joke or thank him profusely for caring or said my name and counted backwards from 100 by sevens (a dementia test,) but I’m sort of vain and have never been taken for a bag lady before.

I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable but I was convinced two policemen were going to come any second and arrest me for vagrancy. Logically I knew I have excellent ID, a platinum Amex, a bank/debit card and a cell, though I wasn’t sure how the cell would help me–it does have a lawyer programed in–helpfully with the word “lawyer.”

I was convinced that despite all this evidence of stability, and house keys, easily found in my jean pockets, I was going to be arrested for walking.

The man walked away, and got back on his bike. So bike reading is OK; walking isn’t. Have to remember the rules.

I walked home more than slightly humiliated. As soon as I got in I went to a mirror and inspected myself for signs of a homeless person. My lipstick–lip gloss–slightly pink was still on. I looked like a normal person.

I was doing what should be encouraged–walking with groceries that weren’t in plastic bags–and did weigh enough to be considered weight exercises. Sometimes I walk to the IGA in Cherry Grove, miles from my house in Crescent Beach, and walk back laden with groceries on the beach and even in the water. It impresses my friends.

I have found the exercise/weight program that I love and actually works and I think it’s illegal as it consists of walking with packages.

It’s April, the green month, and here in North Myrtle Beach, greenest city in the South I read, somebody stopped me for the high crime and misdemeanor of walking.

I go out walking after midnight…I stop to see a weeping willow….I go out walking after midnight

Stumble it!

I wrote this several years ago for my blog. The New York Social Diary just published it and I thank them. It’s a Pia and daddy with some mommy thrown in post.

MizBohemia one of my best blogging friends and best friends is back blogging. We were going to make a raucous at BlogHer this summer since it’s in San Francisco but I can’t make a plan past next Thursday–literally I’m supposed to go to NY for five days for Passover and to catch up with too many people

1300 Iraqi soldiers and police refused to fight in the Basra Offensive. Why are we there?

The great unrequited love of my life Frank Rich has an article about Iraq and Standard Operating Procedure. For some reason it made me homesick. I know one reason is that we consider it our responsibility to see every movie about issues no matter how painful.

I’m probably moving to a very large complex that’s like a city within a city. It has tons of walking and bike paths, three full golf courses, many pools. I’m doing it as I have already met people who live there and are hungry for intellectual stimulation and apparently I somehow provide that.
It has three restaurants and a too cute for me shopping center, with more restaurants and two well known clubs. I’m going to be renting a condo for six months and after I sell and see if I like it here, I have a friend who works for the home company so I can buy, a townhouse, at a discounted price and negotiate more discounts. I can’t believe I’m going to be living in a resort but…it has it own cabana with showers at the beach, and is walking distance from it, I tried the walk the other day and it was lovely.

I haven’t told the people I have met about this blog, and will probably ask my friends when they begin to come in May not to. It’s not the immensely popular blog it was that overtook my life. I need to reclaim my old identity.

I have many plans and just outlined ideas for articles I can write and probably now sell. It might be easier to write about New York from a distance and I will probably be going back every six weeks for five days or so.

The post below this is some fresh fiction and I mean fresh

Stumble it!

The words come from Bone. This is 3WW
This is part of a much longer piece I have been writing in my head while walking, with the words added. I really need to get a new tape recorder but first I need to find someplace to live for six months. My apartment still hasn’t sold. Wrote a post and accidentally deleted it!

The ocean was changing from winter gray to summer teal. Dinah could see infinite blues and greens that were best viewed from her sunglasses. The colors reminded her of her eyes. Some people thought she had deep blue eyes; others swore her eyes were emerald and still other people thought them violet. Like the ocean they changed with the sky, storm and turbulence.

As she walked she threw a stone into the deceptively calm ocean and watched the tiny ripples. She didn’t know why she began to think about the men in her life. None of them had understood Dinah’s need for the ocean. They could breath without salt air, sand, and ocean waves. She never really got that.

Dinah thought back to her first day of college in 1968. She had been walking past the theatre when five boys came out and said hello. One captured her heart immediately. He was the boy she had seen in her dreams forever.

She couldn’t remember what Jordy said to her to make her laugh so much. He could have said anything and she would have laughed. She finally met somebody who could peer past her ever changing eye color deep into her soul.

The next few months were a blur of sex, pot and anti-VietNam activities. Unlike most people they knew they didn’t do acid but mescaline. The edges weren’t as hard. Everything was funny.

One day, deep under the influence of drugs, they got into a VW bus with three of Jordy’s best friends and no particular destination in mind. They only really cared about leaving New York for the restaurants off the Jersey Turnpike.

They got points for knowing the life story of each person a restaurant was named for. Only Dinah knew Clara Barton; but she was a girl and the boys said it didn’t count. They continued the argument as they found themselves driving across America.

They would backtrack when Jordy would remember a friend he wanted to see. Often he could talk the friend into joining them. Dinah never wondered why the other guys who took turns driving would always listen to him. Later she wouldn’t be able to give examples of his charisma, but she constantly found herself drawn into it.

When they arrived in Vegas it only seemed right that they get married in one of the wedding chapels. They had picked up four of Jordy’s old friends on the way and three new ones. Dinah felt as if she were marrying a mob.

It was the first of their three marriages and divorces. Later she would realize that Jordy had planned on stopping in Vegas the whole time.

They celebrated their honeymoon with at least 25 people in the Haight, and saw Janis Joplin one night at the real Filmore.

Dinah didn’t really have any friends outside of Jordy’s circle. The girls in school, torn between wanting to be independent and finding true love envied her. She wanted to tell them she wasn’t worth envying but something always stopped her.

Stumble it!