Thanks Thom for the words

“Mr Linky” is linking to this rather than this post

The Bronx, winter 1969

I don’t know where we are exactly. Some community with hills and old uncared for wood frame houses. Literally that’s what much of the Bronx looks like; the parts that aren’t all old apartment buildings in horrible condition, Riverdale, Country Club (the two very good areas) or Coop City the newish giant complex of buildings that all look exactly alike and unfortunately were built over Freedom Land–an amusement park on a map of the USA that I loved.

I’m not sure why I’m here either.  I convinced some friends to spend the night at Tricia Levy’s. She’s older than us.  Tough.   Shoots dope and hoops with equal vigor. She dropped out before I began the previous September.  Many of my school friends are drop outs.    Segal, student body president,  is in love with her.  He hates me for reasons I don’t understand.  He’s not with us.

Really I’m pissed at my off and on boyfriend, Noah, who set out to visit Tricia with some other friends that didn’t include me. I don’t understand why we break up every three weeks.  I found the secret to getting him back but I don’t share this info with anybody including myself.  It’s sort of subliminal.

We spend hours smoking dope.  Noah leaves with a few friends.  I stay with Jacy and Jake, her boyfriend, who I had convinced to come with me.  They go to sleep in a closet.  Jacy’s one of my crew of gorgeous girlfriends.  We all hang out with boys and happen to get along.  People type us girls as tight and I guess we’re as tight as any girls who only care about boys can be.

Noah’s best friend Henry who never smokes dope or does anything that wouldn’t be parent approved stays with me. I adore Henry who later I will hurt as I never hurt anybody before or since.  The guilt remains to this day.

The apartment has very little furniture but too much pop art consisting of straight lines, squiggly lines and neon for my taste.  I find a sleeping bag and get ready to go to sleep.  Henry takes a sleeping bag next to me.  Somebody hands me a glass of Kool Aid.  Too damn sweet but I’m thirsty so I drink the whole thing.

I wake up in the early morning.  The sun shimmers into the apartment.  The posters look immense.  Something’s wrong.  The lines are moving.  The colors are too bright. Everything’s moving. I feel as if I can’t stand or walk yet I do as well as I do normally.

I try telling Henry that something’s very wrong but I can barely talk.  Henry hates eating out, hates food really,  but for once in his life he wants to go to a restaurant.  I just want to go home and somehow convey that.

When I get back to school Segal finds me. He wants a full report on the night and morning.  I’m not sure how he knew I went to Tricia’s.   I’m better and beyond angry:

You want to know?  You really want to know?  I’m feeling the effect of Acid right now.  Acid that I didn’t f–king want.  Your f–king girlfriend. She gave me the Kool Aid.  I’m going to kill her.  Kill her if it’s the last thing I do.

Segal immediately becomes madder than hell at Tricia. He says he no longer loves her.  He falls in love or lust or something with me.  I let him take me out, take me to demonstrations in DC in his Jag, but I won’t sleep with him.  Never.

This is an excerpt that will expanded upon.

I was in the zoo at Grant Park, when a bee became at home between my fingers.  I frantically jerked my elbow and fingers.  The bee flew off but the stinger was inside me.

“CLo,” I screamed,  ” a bee bit me.”

She thought I was remarkably calm.  I was as I was in shock.

My finger felt rigid and hurt but I was breathing properly so we did touristy things.  OK I had never been in a Trader Joe’s before my trip to Atlanta.  That night we went with W to Piedmont Park where we saw The Eagles.  I began remembering different phases of my life–passing The Hotel California in Paris in my 20′s and wondering if the song had anything to do with that hotel–as The Memory Motel in Montauk inspired The Stones song–that was before I knew The Hotel California in Santa Monica.

I loved Miami Vice and always associate Glen Frey with it.  I had taken CLo’s sister and another friend to South Beach the year before and said “this will be the next big thing.”  They laughed.  I wish I had the courage to act on my beliefs–as in buying property.

I was young, and Miami Vice was a new type of show.  Glossy, showcased houses, a very hot actor (Don Johnson,) and great music.  “You belong to the city,” came from that show.  It was the first action series for the MTV generation and I guess I was part of the original MTV crowd.

Being a good New Yorker I was very familiar with Europe, the Eastern seaboard from The Cape and Boston to DC, then South Florida but had only been around the country several times.  I thought about this at the concert as I made a bucket lists of concerts I want to go to before I die or the group does.  My finger was throbbing.

The next day we went walking Piedmont Park and the surrounding areas–I think you can only learn a place on foot. It was weird that my body felt so stiff when we were continually walking.

That night I went to see one of my goddaughter’s–CLo’s daughter Thai who lives in CLo’s old loft, downtown.  CLo and W live in a stunning loft in Midtown.

Thai’s loft can only be compared to BUPPIE Friends.  She’s 40, her friends are all ages and in and out constantly.  We went to a Pan Asian food where you pick out the food and they cook it.  It’s a lot more adventurous than the Mongolian Grill in North Myrtle.

The thing about CLO, W, Thai and her assorted friends is that they’re all interesting.  Into books, politics, music, TV yes TV, all kinds of culture, good food and physical activity because it’s fun.  I so needed to be with people who care about the things I care about.

But by the time we got to dinner I was nauseous and I looked at my right hand.  It was all red and a third larger (all swollen than my left hand.)Thai gave me some Benadryl and the swelling went down.  It came back but is much better.  My body no longer feels stiff.

I was so happy to be in a city that wasn’t NY I never complained.  The only go to NY–Myrtle Beach, Myrtle Beach-NY, at least 20 times in the past three years curse is over.  I so needed to be around people from all over the world who aren’t suspicious of, even if just a bit, of people who don’t look or act exactly like them.   We all type people and I need “PBS lady,”  “former punk,”  “dark haired men with wry sardonic senses of humor,” “arty woman,”  “hippie dippie,” and more.  Oh I need to be accepted for me without reservation.  Here  I have to work too hard at being accepted and that’s never fun.

Especially for somebody who has spent much of her adult life being embraced by people, and still is by city people.  I can no longer be  quiet about my politics or agnostic but Jewish beliefs.  Yet it makes life so much easier.  But is it worth it?

I realize a lot of my focus on NLD the past year has been because I’ve been online too much.  I personally need  in person classes, book readings, and a whole lot of mental stimulation.And of course writing the book brings up all the bad stuff.  I think I can have that under control if I stay aware.

Oh I loved Atlanta and plan on going back frequently.  I’m not going to NY for any part of the Thanksgiving to New Years scene–I think.  I’ll be working on my book and I need a break from New York. I would love to see New York as a true tourist and just go too frequently. I know that is a problem many people would  love to have.

I probably will be posting excerpts or the sheet I thrashed out or threw out.

I had a facebook sticker of the Steven Colbert/Jon Stewart rally up.  A good friend here who should have known better asked if I was going to the Colbert march for anger.

I’m going to Jon Stewart’s rally tor sanity as I know first hand that sanity needs to be restored.  There’s way too much anger in this country.  I’m proud to be a Democrat in a Republican stronghold.  If you live in NY you have no excuse not to go as Ariana Huffington’s chartering free buses!!!!!!

I feel a zillion pounds lighter than I did last week.  And the bee inflammation is much better.  Itchy if you must know.

Yeah if you didn’t know it before I’m over 30.  Of course you knew it.  That’s why you read me.  Well it’s partially the reason.

I will never call readers “followers” which I learned last night is the new word for reader.  That’s really why you read me.  I don’t follow the pack. That’s not why you read me.  Well maybe a little.  I’m the anti-mommy blogger.  Not that there’s anything wrong with being a mommy.  I would just like some company to offer me free cleaning supplies since guess what?  I’m messier than five kids.  Not really but I clean a lot.

This isn’t a post.  I’m off to drink chocovine with CLo in my yard.  Post to follow

Thanks Thom for the 3WW words!

Summer seemed both too long and too short.  It was suddenly over with a drop or many drops of rain.  Four and a half inches so far.

She couldn’t focus.  Though her house had no mold–she had it checked constantly, and her eagle nose didn’t detect that horrid distinctive smell, her brain felt moldy.

She couldn’t focus so she attacked the kitchen.  She should have been happy when she looked at the almost bare counters, sink and scrubbed almost to perfection appliances.  But as she was finishing she could hear her father: “you missed a spot.  Do it over.”

Not fair she thought, not fair at all though she knew that if she had been young when diagnosed her father would have searched the world for answers.  He would have engulfed her in love; not pointed out all her weaknesses.  “So close to perfect. Try a bit more.”

I tried, I tried, she thought.

It was so much easier in her late teens, 20′s and 30′s.  First she drowned his words out. She claimed to have the longest adolescence in America. Though she worked and had an apartment somehow she managed to drag it out into sometime in her 40′s.

Somewhere in those years, she made herself indispensable to his life. Or she always had been and hadn’t noticed.  Members of her family were constantly in imminent danger.  It was her job to sort out the messes; to comfort them; to let them know that they saw too many mountains.  Her mother comforted her.  But then she became old, blind and frail.  It wasn’t fair.  No it wasn’t fair, but nobody says life’s supposed to be fair or easy.

She wondered what life would be like if she tampered with her memories?  Edited them just a bit so only the good ones stood out.  Or day dreamed a more perfect life?  That should be a book.  But she’s actually making progress on the one she began so long ago.  First she needed sun.  Copious amounts of sun.

My wisdom has grown damp like the rivers.

Incredible line by Doug Pascover I wish i wrote!  His poem was inspired by one by Langston Hughes

As always thanks Thom for the 3WW words

These words awaken something in me I would rather keep asleep right now.  I don’t usually read entries in 3WW before writing my own but I’ve always liked Linda Jacob’s poems and her submission this week brought back the sad season.  It’s OK; I can’t expect people to not talk about aging because it drives me crazy until 10/14 when magically it goes away.

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The old man walks out of his house and screams at me.  “You’re walking in my grass.  I keep telling you to stop.  I’m trying to grow grass and you’re ruining everything.  You, you walk too much.  Everyday I come out and tell you to leave.”

I would laugh as I walk this route once a week at the most. I’m walking in the middle of the gutter, and three cars are parked in his so called grass but my gait is off.  I’m almost limping and very self-conscious.

My gait is usually good but I’m tired and no shoes seem to fit properly. I was going to nudge them into a cute pair that seems to be a size too small–funny they fit yesterday.  Oh how my body ripens over night.

This town is all about appearances. Somehow I have passed the appearance test.  Probably because I have the most expensive teeth in America and smile at every opportunity. (Not the best teeth but the priciest.)

Sometimes when I pass people I know I nudge my mouth into the largest and most stupid of smiles, stand there with one hand up, and feel like a traffic monitor or live billboard.  In New York I can get away with a half smile, but not here.  The smile must ripen to take over my face.

I try the smile at the old man and he stops yelling but stands there with a bewildered look on his face.  I look at him more closely.

Then I think the old man might in actuality be younger than me and once again everything’s right with the world.

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Take back America.  Go to DC on 10/30 for Jon Stewart’s rally for sanity!!!!!  Just remember that Christine O’Donnell is a serious candidate, and that could get you there!!!!!

I would take this down. Needed to vent. But know it will live on in readers so….. A large part of me feels like an idiot for writing this. Spoiled. Not thinking about people who really have it tough. Self-obsessed. I need somebody to yell at me and tell me how horrible I am for writing this. But therein lies the problem…
I put the rest in draft as this was horrible and self-loathing and let’s just blame it on the heat. I’m sweating; not glistening and my face was sweating as I walked into the ocean –something that’s never happened to me before
My reality is that I’m an incurable optimist who thrashes too many things out for too long. I thought I was over that but moving and everything that’s happened in the past three years has brought too much to the surface.
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Then I walk four blocks to the beach, actually sit in the fierce gray/brown waves with teal teasing at the horizon and forget everything but how incredible the world is.

I wrote this for Redroom

It’s the first half-decent thing I have written since April.

I don’t believe a disability is an ability turned backwards or whatever that expression is. I have spent my life seeking help. I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands of dollars first my parents then I spent on therapists, testing and much more.

It reached the point where I would write people famed in various disciplines all dealing with either work or mental health or both. Anybody who knows me just a bit knows how hard it is for me to reach out. It’s much easier for me to help others. And I have had career success. It was I who always thought I could do much better even when my evaluations were near perfect.

They either ignored me or told me to find work in a sheltered workshop. I’m more educated than many of them and certainly write as well or better. The later (sheltered workshop) would have killed me and I know that.

So much was happening in my personal life it never occurred to me to look for jobs the normal way, or the way I had before my life became encased in tragedy and uh blogging which for awhile I thought would lead to so much. I had the stats, the readers, the writing–everything but I was “difficult,” not young and trendy. I didn’t blog about one subject. I did everything wrong and yet I created something wonderful and will always be grateful for this blog. I think I tell good stories.

I hope to have years more. While I truly don’t have a desire to write a memoir as I like writing in other forms more, I know that knowledge about non verbal learning disorder (NLD) is lacking. I aim to change that.

Many people with NLD have a difficult time conceptualizing order and I understand that’s what’s been holding me back. Understanding is just part of the solution though. So I found me a great editor!

The long hot summer continues and beginning Friday I will have a house filled with people for a week. I need them–Godchildren and significant others. I feel so lucky that people who are related to me through friendship actually want to visit me!
Comments are off here as once again this is a totally self-centered post.

Last fall I was asked what I was going to give up for boot camp, and health. I gave an appropriate answer.

Lil Red (a brunette that I call Lil Red for other reasons) said she was going to give up the tonic in her gin. She caught me trying not to laugh as everybody applauded. Had she said she was going to give up the gin I would have understood the applause. She doesn’t really drink that much and honey this is the South!
Thus began one of the best friendships I have ever had. She has me in committee after committee.

She’s from New Orleans and moved here for that most satisfactory and not reason–love man love. Tall Husband Suitor (THS) is worth it. I think they’ve made me part of the family!

On the Fourth in 09 I had a barbecue for friends from Atlanta. Then we went to the Cherry Grove fireworks, known as the best on the Grand Strand. This Fourth I went to a barbecue at Lil Red’s and THS’s. I’m not a meat eater but had two small pieces that were incredible and could have converted me if I didn’t spend half my time obsessing about food put into my body.(Have to work on that one.) Fortunately we decided not to go to the fireworks. They started an hour late and weren’t great or so everybody says.

I’m working on getting my mojo back. Moving from everything known and a giant support network that I did take for granted hasn’t been easy. I wasn’t feeling well in June. It wasn’t the weather but a confluence of things such as “this house is really nice. Now where is my city apartment.” I know the move will be worth it, in the long and short run, but will never take people for granted again..

Last night I went to a memorial service in a club. It’s not that I have spent my life wanting to go to memorial services, but yes I have wanted to go to one in a club. People were dancing,talking, crying, looking at slides, listening to music, and as always eating and drinking.

As I have a pivotal birthday in about eleven days, I’m thinking too much about everything that can go wrong–in life, death and everything in between.

This birthday’s making me wish I were a praying person. I’m not so all I can do is throw great thoughts everywhere and hope many good things–if I sound obtuse, well, the book won’t be. I finally understand, and am able to rectify, what’s been holding me back! Or I hope that last sentence is true. I hate being so Woody Allenish. I would settle for Seinfeld but I’m afraid he’s too optimistic for me. Then again…..

So, somewhere in the archives is a sorta transcript of a sorta actual conversation my mother and I had only using the word “so.” We could tell what the other was really saying from each so’s inflection. OK we were a bit extreme but we weren’t alone in using the word “so.”

I’m having a hard time focusing on my memoir and I can’t blame 92 degrees at 7PM. Actually that I can–weather like this makes me hyper. It’s good for house projects. Don’t ask. And don’t ask about my need to drink seltzer with ginger powder. That was an integral part of a post I threw out and means absolutely nothing in this one. Oh the vanity of the long time blogger.

No I have been going through a crisis of “my birthday’s in a month and a few weeks and I haven’t accomplished anything important with my life.” It’s a pivotal birthday. One that makes 50 look like a walk in the park.

I fear that I’m becoming old and my experiences aren’t relevant anymore. That the gist of the stories buried within these pages are sooo yesterday.

I understand why I’m going through this and a lot of it has to do with being burnt. I thought it was almost four years ago that I found out about non verbal learning disorder (nld) but it’s only been going on three years. The same year I decided it was time to get out of Dodge, renovated to sell, sold, bought a house, renovated, lost a lot of my resources, and well….It finally hit me this past month….

I no longer live in Manhattan. As crazy as it made me it was my identity. If I accomplished nothing with my life I was a great New Yorker. Yesterday I saw an ad for menupages and almost began to cry. I consulted it as if it were the bible. With menupages you didn’t need to have ten restaurants on speed dial though of course I did.

It’s different here. I couldn’t really serve my Anna Nicole Smith Trailer Park Dinner, that later became the Anna Nicole Smith Memorial Trailer Park Dinner. I no longer eat hamburgers, wouldn’t serve on the styrofoam containers, and people here are a bit more politically correct in someways or at least more material in very strange ways. The Anna Nicole Smith Memorial Trailer Park Dinner wouldn’t be funny.

OK honestly only Rafe found it funny. Lucia was aghast that I would serve company on styrofoam, but I would use company napkins. Made of paper yet pretty.

Now I use real plates, and cloth napkins and it’s better for the environment but I’m beginning to feel that we’re doomed anyway so why….

I didn’t use these things often in New York as I owned neither a dishwasher nor a washer/dryer. I don’t miss that part. No not at all. Though I’ve been trying to find a clothes line and can’t find one at Wal Mart. I might have to go online. It will be so nice to have clothes dried outdoors.

I like it here. I certainly like being able to walk to the beach when I want or not walk to the beach and read in one of my decks. I like the friends I have made and the friends who are coming.

But Pia doesn’t live in New York anymore, has done absolutely nothing of worth with her life, and was already an adult when her parents, who had children late for then, were her age.

For somebody who has done nothing of worth with my life I’ve done a lot in the past three years and am so mentally fatigued I can’t tell when I’m writing something good or not. This is a half pity party. Half just the truth. I don’t use “so,” on my own. I use “just.” I’m going to stop that. Just as soon as I find what’s left of my mind.

I want to write fiction as I love it but feel a memoir has a much better chance of being published. I’m just so over myself

I didn’t mean this to sound so sad.  I’m attempting to do my taxes for the first time totally by myself.  They’re complicated.  My damn accountant was angry at me last year for sending him my audit during tax season.  Well duh that’s when I got it and it was due 30 days later.  He let it sit for months.  The tax thing is complicating everything in my life right now.  My Dad was a CPA who would have never been angry at a client for….My dad died suddenly at the end of this month 19 years ago.  These couple of weeks always make me sad and trying to do taxes, uh!!!!!

I fear that someday, not soon I hope, I will die and not leave a legacy; no permanent marker, except for a headstone in Mount Hebron Cemetery that reminds the world I was here once.

People will argue that is selfish to want to be remembered.  That if I wanted to be remembered I should have had children for parents did something important.  But not all children are worthy of being remembered by their parents and parents, sometimes, very sadly, outlive children.

Then of course there’s the career legacy.  As somebody who has had three and a half careers, a bunch of newspaper articles published and a five and a half year old blog, I can be remembered for knowing that one career wasn’t enough for a lifetime long before that was fashionable to think.  But many other people can lay claim to that thought also.

They can’t all lay claim to saying some of the things I have said in this blog at the time I did, and I made sure to put in original thoughts. In the 70′s and 80′s before the era of instant communication and social networking,  my sister claimed a New York Times reporter was following me around recording my every thought.  For I would say something and a month or three later an article would be in The Times with the very same thought and/or lines.

I had no faith in myself then.  No belief that I could write for such a newspaper or write an entire book.

Now I’m not sure I can market myself properly.  Just writing this seems so egotistical.  Yet what are most bloggers, Facebookers, and Twitterers doing but trying to make a mark on the world so that they will leave a legacy?  A lot of money is good too.

I have friends who will be remembered for their careers.  Their writing. Their wit.  Their skill and talents in other areas.  And their spouses, kids, grandkids and I’m beginning to feel very small in statute.  I want what they have.  I can’t have the kids and grandkids, that’s impossible and probably not the adoring spouse, but the career….Of course I’m convinced I’m becoming demented so I probably have about two good writing months left…..

For awhile I think I thought I could leave a legacy as a blogger.  It was different three, four years ago.  When you were known, many bloggers knew you.  There weren’t thousands of different groups all competing for bloggers and fame.  There was competitiveness, of course, everything is.  But we knew we were in the earlier days of something bigger then ourselves something that could change communication.  Then came Twitter.   It’s all too much for me.

Friends are having grandchildren.  I’m glad for them, so excited sometimes you have no idea, but a bit sad for me as I will never know that feeling.

My book is that most egotistical of genres, a memoir, but I do think I have a more interesting than most story to tell. One I won’t go into here as everybody who reads this blog knows it.  If you know me through Facebook you don’t really know it.

You don’t know that I’m much more than a collection of symptoms.  Hey, I met John Gotti and lived to talk about it.  That will always be one of my favorite stories sick as it is and it’s very sick.  It’s me, girl who couldn’t keep her Marilyn dress from doing a Marilyn.  In my memories I have short blond hair, and big red lips.  In reality I had long red hair done 40′s style or maybe I had cut it recently to just shoulder length with volume but not big–it was the last year of the 80′s.  My lips might have been red but they were never big.

That’s not one of my best stories just one of my favorites.  I don’t know what my best stories are.  I have no way of judging my own work.  I no longer have any semblance of a site meter so I have no way of gauging what pages are peoples favorites.

I did that on purpose.  The whole get-to-love-me-through-social-media frenzy sickened me.  I had come early to the party.  Too early as I didn’t realize I was supposed to have a plan, enough energy to spend the hours I wasn’t exercising or writing on social media activities.  I had done that with blogging solely because I’m obsessive and I was burnt out as I burn out of everything.

I’m vain.  Oh so vain I think the story of not knowing I had non verbal learning disorder and living anyway is a good story.  I spent my late teen, 20′s and 30′s being adorable, looking like a generic soap star, and I worked hard.  I confused my bosses who couldn’t understand that the spacey klutzy but adorable girl did such complex excellent work.

Then I broke down.  Though I did brilliantly in social work school I don’t think my work ever equaled the work I did in my 20′s to 37.  Maybe it was the medication.  More likely it was still not knowing what was wrong with me and being more aware since I broke down, had the testing, and found out I was supposed to be incapable of just about everything.  I had always believed in myself before underneath it all.  Always believed that tomorrow I would understand more.  Tomorrow there would be magical answers.

The answers weren’t magical.  There was some relief in knowing at first but then there was anger.  I’m still working it out.  And that’s the problem.  A book needs a happy or tragic ending and I don’t plan on giving it a tragic ending.  I want the happy one.

My life is good.  Very good.  But is buying, all on my own without help from one person, a house, and almost gut renovating it a good enough ending?  Even if girl has problems that should preclude her from being proud of this?

Is girl coming to a city where she knew almost anybody at a stage in life when almot nobody moves except unhappily for a job or for grandchildren, and forging a life for herself, a happy ending?

Actually now that I read the above two paragraphs I realize that it’s just as happy an ending as girl meets boy.  This hasn’t been Ozzie & Harriet’s world for sometime.

Or maybe I’m being defensive.  And what I think are accomplishments are nothing important really.