"Leaving New York"

"Geronimo" by Layla Edwards


Leaving New York
Wednesday April 13 2005


It wasn't a random choice to move to the southwestern desert. It began off in my dreams when I still lived in NYC. There were a series of dreams for a month or two. And when the dreams ended I had arrived in Tucson. Altho naturally I had no idea that is where my dreams were leading me. I did not expect to move.

I still remember the first dream.

In that dream I visited the palace of great glowing Goddess. The palace is where the Goddess dwelt. I didn't know whether it was in California, Arizona, or Nevada. I was vague about the Southwest when I lived in NYC. But it was somewhere in the Southwest.

At the time I didn't know the dream had anything to do with me, I woke up in the morning just lost in the glory of having spent the night with a Goddess in a palace in the glowing Southwest. I just felt so privileged and so blessed to have had that dream. I felt touched by the divine. But it was at the point when I was still writing down my dreams in a book each morning, and I remember now the dreams continued, nothing like the Goddess and being at her palace, but all having to do with being in California. I think in my dreams it was always California, but the CA of the Southwest.

These dreams continued as my NYC life fell down around me, and finally the definitive dreams began.

I dreamt I was at the candy store, Gem Spa. Originally an old NYC cigar store, which sold magazines, ice cream cones, and fountain drinks, on the corner of St Mark’s Place and 2nd Avenue, a few blocks from my apartment. And I ordered a chocolate egg cream. In my dream I said to myself “this is my last chocolate egg cream from Gem Spa.” Then I crossed 2nd Avenue to head home, and 2nd Avenue changed from a city block on the Lower East Side, to desert, heading steeply down to water down below, and I started to head into the desert.

That could have been an afternoon dream when I dozed off, or was the dream the night before.

Because the following night
I dreamt my big cousin Carl was in NYC from San Francisco, and he saw a beautiful Monet painting he wanted, it must have been “Water Lilies." He did not know if he should buy it, but I consulted with his mom, my aunt Esther, who was in Heaven, but in my dream she was available to consult. “Go for it” she said. So I said to Carl “go for it.” I told Carl “I am a great girl friday, I will bubble wrap your painting to death, insure it for a million dollars, and send it to you." So Carl decided to buy it.


That evening as I sat at my kitchen table with my life in smithereens again and I asked my Higher Self the old familiar question, “what should I do?” I didn't get the old familiar answer. The old familiar answer was always “Do nothing, I love you, calm down, have a cigarette, have a cup of coffee, have a piece of cake, have a second piece of cake, here let me pour a cup of coffee for you and cut you a piece of cake.”

This time the answer I got was “Move.”

“Move where?” I asked.

“Move to Tucson, your aunt is there, she can help you.”

“But what about all my stuff?”

“Just leave it behind” she said, “take your writing and your computer and that's all.”

“But how can we get there, we have a dog and no drivers license and no car?”

“Take the airplane, the airplane accepts dogs.”

“But how can I do it, if I can't even think about it?”

“Don't think about it,” she said, “just do it.”

So now I knew the decision was up to me. I was terrified to decide yes. But I did. And instantly I made the decision I knew it was the right decision. I was flooded with liberation. I knew I had decided to be free and I was free. In that instant I had left NYC. I hadn't arrived in the Southwest yet, but an old life ended, new one had begun.


July 4 2006 “Letting My Hair Down”

In my dream before I awoke this morning Franny and my aunt Celia were having conversation. It was intellectual conversation. They were both very intelligent and intellectual. Celia is the youngest of my father’s siblings. She is 12 years younger than my father, and 13 years younger than Esther, the eldest. Franny is Celia’s Tucson friend, a few years younger than she. Franny was also my first friend when I moved to Tucson. Because she found the apt. for her friend Celia's niece, me. And lived in the same apt. complex, and befriended me when we first arrived.

When I first decided to move to Tucson, I called my cousin Pete and asked him to find me an apt. which accepted dogs. My aunt Celia was in Tucson, her son Pete was in Tucson, and the youngest of her 4 children, Jimmy. Her other two children were living in California. I chose Pete, because when my dad was driving my aunt Esther and me back to Manhattan after a family gathering at his house, my dad and his sister gossiped in the front seat. All their concern was about their baby sister in Tucson. When her husband left her, they took over worrying about her and being in charge of her. It was the ‘60s, and they were very concerned about Celia’s report that her son Pete was now living with the Jesus freaks. My dad said “but they have a good record of getting kids off drugs.” And my aunt Esther said “but we don’t know Pete is on drugs.”

I was so young myself then that I had no judgment about my cousin Pete in Tucson living with the Jesus freaks. I merely thought it was interesting. But by the time I decided to leave NYC and move to Tucson, Jesus was a big part of my life. And it made me feel close to my cousin Pete in Tucson that he believed in Jesus, which is why I chose him to call and ask for help.

I confided that to Pete after I had been in Tucson for several months I told him why I chose him to call and ask for help. There was a long silence and finally he said, “that was an embarrassing episode in my life and I don’t believe in Jesus.” So much for having so much in common. But I guess it served its purpose. I needed to feel close to someone to ask for help.

It had made me feel close to Pete. And Pete had delivered help. He had found me an apt in apt complex called Willow Brook which accepted dogs, and which was the price I wanted to pay, $300 a month. But it fell thru because dog could not weigh over 33 pounds and Clio weighed 37 pounds. But I was immensely encouraged. Then I got phone call from Celia saying Pete had tried and not succeeded so he had turned the job over to her, and she had consulted apartment finders. “It is not easy to find apt in Tucson which accepts dogs.”

Then I got the phone call the apt had been found. I had asked for one bedroom for $300. I was sure I could not afford bigger apt. But Celia had found 2 bedroom for $330. “Great! take it!” I said. “Drive right over, put down the money and take it, I will send you money order for it.” And that is the apartment we moved into two weeks later.

It turned out Celia had been visiting her friend Franny and said to Franny “what I really want for my niece is an apartment like yours, Franny.” So Franny said “let’s go over to management and see if they have any.” And sure enough they had the two bedroom for $330. And when Celia called me, I said “grab it, drive over now and put the money down.” And Celia drove over and put the money down. And when she got back home she said “the apartment is yours.” And I said “great!” We had already started packing up all our stuff in boxes, but we now had an address to send them to.

And when we walked into our new Tucson apartment in the middle of the night two weeks later there was a note from Franny with a jar of salsa as a gift. The note gave helpful hints and welcomed us. Unfortunately Franny had forgotten how old-fashioned NYC is. We shivered at night in the Tucson apt. for a whole month before Franny showed us how to turn on the heat.

Back in NYC at around 5 o’clock on cold winter nights, you would hear the reassuring gurgle of the steam in the radiator. It meant the landlord had turned on the furnace. And at 5 PM in Tucson, when Sun went down and it turned ice cold, I listened for that reassuring gurgle but it never came. I had no idea there was a dial, which you could set at any temperature you want, and be as toasty warm as you wanted to be, and didn’t have to wait for the landlord to decide to give you heat.

Franny had walked with me a few mornings when I walked my dog. She was the only person I knew in Tucson, I was grateful to have her as a friend. Franny told me all about herself, and I did learn a lot about Franny’s life as a result, altho I could not absorb any of it at the time. She did say one very practical thing tho. She pointed to the mountains which were always in view, and said “that is north.” After that I stopped worrying I would get lost when I took my dog out in the morning, I knew I could always orient myself from the mountains.

When we were here 3 months we ran into troubles. And when Franny passed by, instead of hiding my troubles, I confided all of them to her. And a very remarkable thing happened. Because I had let down my hair, Franny let down her hair, we became very close. Before that I had been her best friend’s niece in her eyes, and she had been my aunt’s friend in my eyes. For both of us the other was an extension of Celia.

The wonderful thing about that conversation with Franny at the table was how much we laughed about all our troubles. I said “come in Franny sit down, I’ll make us a cup of coffee.” And as soon as I poured the coffee, she said “Where’s Bill?” I said “Bill got drunk on his night job, and passed out. They didn’t know he was passed out from drinking, they called ambulance and took him to the hospital. Then Bill got home and for 3 days he raged at me ‘call up your family and have them find you an apartment in New York City, we’re going back.’ And I refused. Finally the neighbors called the cops on Bill. The cops took him to jail last night. This morning, Ron from apt. A4 and I went to the Pima County jail and picked Bill up when he was released. Then Ron told Bill about the Lark, a treatment center for free. Ron told Bill it is very nice there and they all have a lot of fun. So Bill said ‘OK I’m willing to go.’ So Ron drove him there. He will be there for two weeks. So that is why I am alone, and you can sit at kitchen table and we can talk to our hearts content.”

And I cracked up at everything I said. I laughed uproariously at every step of the misadventure, and especially laughed at the point when Bill was hauled off to jail. Of course none of this was funny while it was happening, the whole thing from beginning to end had been one long nightmare. But confiding it to sweet Franny across the table, and laughing my head off about it, was the sweetest experience in the world. I was girl who needed a friend. And Franny was willing to be my friend.

Obviously this changed the entire atmosphere between me and Franny. Instead of being the impressive niece, which is how Celia had billed me to her friend, of her impressive friend Celia, I was just a girl with problems up the bezum. My husband had just been taken off to jail the night before, I had spent the morning hanging out at Pima County jail waiting for him to be released. He had gotten drunk on his first Tucson job, passed out and taken to hospital. I was alone friendless and broke in Tucson. Franny and I drank coffee and laughed and laughed and laughed. We let our hair down about everything.

Then Bill, surprisingly walked in the door. I guess he didn’t like Lark, he didn’t find it so much fun. And Franny left. And phase two of our Tucson life began.

Bill said everyone at Lark was just like him, and one thing he learned from listening to them all, is Tucson is a place where it is very easy to start your own business. And that afternoon he and Ron started their business as handyman. And when Ron did not want to keep doing it, Bill started his own business as yard worker, which he did successfully and full-time until he started art school. Becoming an artist was Bill’s dream, and he decided to follow his dream. As Grant Lewi, my favorite astrologer, wrote, “One moves to New York to fulfill a dream, and one leaves New York to fulfill a greater dream.”

Sunday August 7 2005

"We buy the truck"

When we first moved to Tucson my cousin Pete had just bought himself a new compact truck. It was his first new car, all the others had been second hand. He liked having a new car so much that when we planned to buy a secondhand car and Pete was taking us around to lots, he found a brand new Isuzu compact truck on sale at the dealership for $7000 and suggested we buy it, which we did.


I don’t even think Bill was at home when Pete arrived with truck from the dealership. I got in the truck with him. We went back to dealership together, Pete took the truck for test drive with me in it, I consulted with my Higher Self, and I bought it. My aunt had told my father “Annie has to have good used car, send her 3 or 4 thousand,” so my dad had sent $5000 for good used car. And the truck Pete had found was $7000 so I had the money in the bank for it. So I just asked my Higher Self, and she said “go for it.” And Pete and I did the paper work with the dealership man, Greg. We became friends. And then Pete drove the truck home for me, since I don’t know how to drive.


By now Bill was back home. I didn’t know how to break the news to him. I wasn’t sure he would like it. He had his own ideas of what he wanted in a vehicle and this was not his idea. Plus he only knew how to drive automatic, he had just finished his driving lessons and passed his test, he was new driver.


So Pete was very surprised when the conversation was so desultory. Bill was talking about the Wildcats and I was going along with the flow of that conversation, how the team was doing, and then maybe the conversation had segued into food. And finally Pete looked at me aghast.

“Aren’t you going to tell him.”

And I said “O yeah right, Bill I just bought a brand new truck.”


Bill was stunned and Pete got on the phone to tell his girlfriend. He was thrilled at the deal he had worked out for me. He told his girlfriend all about it in the happy exited joyous way he had thought I would tell Bill.


We just sat there quietly while Pete told his girlfriend all about our new truck. That is how Bill found out all about it. Then Pete said “you will need insurance,” so he called his insurance, Farmer’s, but they wouldn’t give it to Bill, he is new driver. So he called Greg at dealership and Greg told him where we can go to get insurance if we are new driver.


And then Pete left to go home and Bill said “I don’t want it.” He said “I am a brand new driver, I don’t want a brand new shiny red truck, I will feel self conscious, I want what I planned, beat up old car, while I am still getting the feel for driving, and I don’t know how to do a stick shift.” So next day Greg from the dealership came over to teach Bill how to do the stick. And the day after that he had his driving teacher come over for another lesson and they did stick shift together, and after that Bill knew how to do the stick shift.

But he still didn’t want the fancy new red truck.

“Take it back” he said.

“I won’t” I said.


But it worked out. He started his yard working business and a pick up truck was very convenient for that. He loaded all his tools on it and yard working means when you finish the job you take all the weeds and branches you have trimmed to the dump. And he felt much more comfortable once it had turned into a work truck.


In retrospect I understand. I understand Bill’s feelings and why he didn’t want it. But I also see why his idea, we buy small old beat up sedan, was not a good idea. When we first got truck we didn’t know a month or two down the line, Bill would decide to open up yard working business and the truck was perfect for that. And having all this experience now of car trouble and huge car repair bills with the 2nd hand Chrysler 5th Avenue we bought 7 years later, it was smart to buy brand new truck which never had any car trouble at all.


That is the whole deal when you make a decision based on what your Higher Self tells you instead of going by your feelings. Your feelings only describe what makes you feel comfortable in the moment. But with our Higher Self a decision is made which takes in a much bigger picture. 12 years later I can see all the reasons why it was exactly the right vehicle for us. For 13 years it has served all our needs perfectly. Bill took perfect care of it and it still runs perfectly. And when we bought the house a year later we needed it to move our stuff plus all the things we bought for the house.


It caused a lot of commotion in our relationship that I tuned into my Higher Self 7 years before Bill did. Because I made all decisions based on her suggestions and the suggestions were never what we felt comfortable with at the time, but were always ways to renovate our life, to expand opportunity.

I had already formed the habit of going along with her suggestions, instead of my own feelings, for everything in my own life. I had discovered her suggestions all worked. I trusted her and them. But when it came to our life together, and I carried out her suggestions, I bought the new truck and I bought the house, Bill was extremely upset that I had gone ahead and done things which were the opposite of his feelings. He could not understand why I was acting how I was. And that I was unbudgeable about it. I couldn’t explain about my Higher Self, he wouldn’t have understood.


Fry's Supermarket


Sunday morning. Early. Sun has just risen over mountain. Desert is wet and dripping from big rain last night. Earth is moist and spongy. A sparrow hip hops on it. It is all woodsy fragrant now. But once our huge desert Sun has gained altitude and shines on my backyard the woodsy world will evaporate.


The rain was so big that when Bill and I returned home from supermarket yesterday evening we rode thru flooded streets. Bill was scared our truck would stall in the deep water and we were driving on major thoroughfare.


I let the woman on line at supermarket go ahead of me because she was just buying a small bottle of soda and I had a whole week’s shopping there. I had watched her go over to the case and select which beverage she wanted, and then she stood behind me. “Go ahead” I said, “you only have that and I have all this.” She gestured her thanks.

And then to my surprise I saw her entering her pin number. “Sorry” the checkout girl said, “it didn’t work, do it again.” After the machine would not accept 4 entries by her, checkout girl said “you are only allowed 4 tries.” So woman took out a huge wallet filled with credit cards, extracted a 20 dollar bill and received change. Then she gestured her thanks to all of us and left.

I had assumed she was a very poor woman, and when her card didn’t work I thought I would pay for her soda rather than her have to leave it behind. I still can’t figure out why she would try to pay for the soda with her pin number when she had twenty in her wallet.

I said to the checkout girl “why did she use her card when she had a twenty, would you ever do that?”

The checkout girl said “no.”

I said “no one does that.”

The checkout girl said “you’d be surprised.”

And then I realized she had seen every kind of peculiar behavior.

“I guess you’ve seen everything” I said.

“Yes” she said.

One of the items I had bought was Stouffer’s frozen lasagna. It had been on sale for half price. She picked it up and looked at it for a long time.

“Is it good?” she asked me.

I didn’t know how to answer. I said “well I used to live in Little Italy when I lived back in New York City, I know what good Italian food tastes like.”

As soon as I said “Little Italy” the young guy bagging my groceries looked up.

“I love Italian food” he said, it is the best.”

“Me too, Italian and Mexican.”

The checkout girl said that is her favorite too.

But he said “I am Mexican and I think Italian food is the best.”


I looked out and saw that it was pouring.

“Did you know it was raining?”

“Yes’ she said, and made a face.

I was so surprised.

In all my time in Tucson everyone unanimously and universally has greeted the advent of rain with jubilation. In fact this is the first time ever since I have been on the desert that I have been in a store and looked out the windows at checkout counter and saw rain coming down.

Rain is just not casual, frequent, random, on the desert. It only occurs during certain times of year and then only during certain times of day. We are in rainy season now and the rain arrives around 5 PM, and this is about the time I looked out the supermarket glass doors.

But it was still strange. I have never once walked out of the store into a parking lot with rain coming down.


And then we drove home thru flooded streets, it must have been raining the whole time I was in the supermarket.

Each time we passed a white truck I asked Bill “is that what Pete’s brand new truck looks like?”

Last week he told us he bought a brand new white full sized Ford truck that day.

I have two cousins in Tucson and when we first moved here the older one helped us a great deal for that first month when we needed so much help. After that we rarely saw him. But last summer at the swimming pool when all the lanes were taken and a man was standing there waiting I said “you can share with me” and he said “thank you.”

And after we each swam a lap or so he said “Annie.”

And I turned around.

He said “it’s your cousin Pete.”

I said “how did you recognize me?”

He said “it was your voice.”

And we chatted for 10 minutes in the lane.

A month later at another pool the same thing happened. I saw a man standing there when the lanes were filled and I called out “swim in here the lifeguards are letting us swim in the diving area.”

And again he called out “Annie.”

This time I figured out he was Pete much faster. I don’t know why I don’t recognize him. Then his girlfriend arrived and they swam together. We didn’t chat much that time.


I’m trying to remember what happened last week. This time it was middle of afternoon, not evening swim, the children were playing and diving in the children’s area. Bill and I were only grown ups going back and forth in lanes. A man arrived who I didn’t recognize at all but who instantly recognized me and Bill, and it was Pete again.

Right away I asked him all the questions that last time we had wished we had asked him.

“Do you still have your same truck” I asked.

“I bought myself the truck of my dreams,” he said, “but I am too self conscious to drive it. Does Bill want to buy it?”

“It is the truck of Bill’s dreams, but we don’t have the money for it now.”

“Ask your Higher Self how I can sell it,” he asked.

“OK I will.”

“I just want an old beat up truck that I don’t have to think twice about getting into.”

“Wonderful Girl at Swim Pool”

THE OWL by Layla Edwards

Thursday February 2 2006


I was swimming in my lane yesterday, pool was practically empty on such chilly morning, when Alice arrived, just the girl I wanted to see. “Alice” I said “I want to ask your advice about something.”


My friend Gina from internet sent me email asking me to buy her a silver and malachite pendant to go on a necklace, she will reimburse me. So when I saw Alice yesterday I said “my friend Gina wants a pendant which is malachite and silver.” Alice said “the gem show is in town, I will look for malachite and silver pendant for your friend.” She said the girl who made my necklace has been her friend for 30 years, she is an Indian and married to our State Senator. Alice said she used to make jewelry and she likes her own jewelry even better than her friend's.


And then without missing a beat, somehow what went on was the story of Alice’s whole life. No writer on earth could reproduce what Alice told me as we swam back and forth in the lanes. And she did not tell it in an orderly way. Apparently there were two main chapters but she kept saying one detail from one chapter and another detail from another chapter.



The first chapter, she was married to sound engineer in New York City. The sound studio was behind Lincoln Center. Alice thought it was owned by a famous singer, but someone told her it was really owned by Tammy who Alice never met. And Alice is outraged now that she heard Tammy is living as bag woman in Central Park. She thinks the sound studio was stolen from Tammy. All the stories of the sound studio era involve millions, mayhem, and even violence. Cars going after cars when they went to Jamaica, and her neck got broken. She and her husband broke up but they had a beautiful son together. Alice said she worked on 4 songs which were on the Hit Parade.



The next chapter is 25 years living in the Yucatan where she was kidnapped by a big Indian Chief and became his wife. Altho he was such a big Indian Chief, Alice was not his only wife, which was what upset her. They had beautiful son together too. Living with the Indians in the Yucatan is where Alice learned to speak Indian, to weave, and to make her own jewelry. She said she likes to be creative. “Most people want stones which are dull color and match, who wants that! it looks like string of pearls, I like vivid colors and odd shapes for stones.”



As far as I can make out there was violence in the Yucatan too. She got robbed there. She said “in Mexico if you yell out ‘help’ no one will come, but if you yell out ‘vagina’ everyone will come.” That tickled my funny bone. “Thanks for the useful info Alice, I will remember that when I get to Mexico, yell out vagina when I want help.” But she didn’t get my joke. She said how she had met an Indian there and he said “your vagina needs help, let me examine it.” That is what led her to explain how yelling out vagina is the way to get help in Mexico. She got concerned when I said “now I know what to do when I get to Mexico.” She said “you don’t know how handsome those Indians are, it is unbelievable, but they are Romeos, they will break your heart, you will be taken in by them.” I wasn’t worried about being taken in by handsome Indian Romeos, I have my Higher Self plus I am happy with Bill.



After long tales of mayhem and violence things began to settle down when she began to talk about raising her two sons. It sounds like she had a happy home with them even tho neither husband helped out. The son of the Yucatan Indian Chief lives in Tucson and is straight as anyone can be, wears designer clothes, drives a designer sports car, is married and has two kids. The son of the sound engineer lives in NYC. “His girlfriend is Puerto Rican but she won’t pick up her clothes or cook meals or clean the house.” “She sounds like me” I said to Alice, and Alice was shocked I am like that.



She can’t figure out why the son of the Indian Chief is such a neat freak. “I never raised my sons like that, we had happy relaxed home, he has one of those empty houses where everything is put away out of sight.” She said because she raised both sons without a father in the home they each think they are her father. When she told her New York son yesterday she put in the concrete to make a driveway, she got scolded. “Concrete attracts damp, mother, and beside you’re not supposed to be working with concrete.” “What damp!” she said to me, “we live on the desert, it is dry as a bone here.”



By now we were moving into normal life. Alice confided she watches television now. “I never watched television before” she said, “I don’t know what is happening to me.” “I like science fiction” she said. “I like ‘Matlock’ and ‘Murder She Wrote’” I said. And then Alice talked about the TV shows she watches. Alice confided she is looking for a boyfriend but wonders if she has a chance at 62. I said “Alice, my friend Helen who lives in Hawaii who has a solution to everything told me this.”


And to my shock, Alice, who had been lost for a solid hour in mayhem and violence and vagina and being kidnapped by big Indian chiefs in the Yucatan jungle, moved very close to me to hear every word about what my friend Helen said about finding a boyfriend when you are 62. I told Alice I had told my friend Helen I was extremely upset to notice that the woman Bush chose for the Supreme Court had lost all her prettiness and she was my age. And Helen said, “Anne last night ‘Hillside Blues’ was on, it was a rerun. The young man was arrested for stealing his aunt’s money. The young man said ‘why am I arrested, my 62 year old aunt has men in the house all the time, she put up a personal ad saying, if you want great sex call me up, the result is there are men in the house all the time, go ask them if they took her money.’ So the handsome young detective went to interview the aunt, then he had an affair with her, and then he married her.”



Alice was immensely relieved and happy to hear that. She said “I do go out with young men all the time but they grab my ass and my breasts and I don’t like that.” I said “there is no reason why they can’t behave like gentlemen, wait till you find the right guy.” “But I don’t like to go to bars” she said. “You never find anyone in a bar” I said. “I come here to the club and I haven’t met anyone here I like.” “Just be patient” I said. She said “I have no experience in picking the right man.”



I said “where did you grow up Alice?” She said “New York.” I said “I am from New York too, which part?” She said “our sound stage was right behind Lincoln Center.” I said “which part of New York did you grow up in, which high school did you go to?” She said “I was born in Syracuse.” I said “my mom came from Rochester.” She said “my grandfather had a department store there but it went out of business.” She said “my dad was Mayor.” “Mayor of what?” I asked. “Mayor of Syracuse and Rochester” and she named another town.



I said to Bill in the car “does Alice exaggerate?” “Why?” he said. “She said her dad was mayor of Syracuse and two other towns, you can’t be mayor of 3 towns all at once.” “Maybe it wasn’t all at once” he said.



“She said she did a 1000 hours of work for free for a man on his film at Tucson Access Studio and when she asked him to get her a container of coffee he said ‘I don’t owe you anything bitch,’ and she was so upset she went outside to have a cigarette. She said ‘don’t tell Bill I had a cigarette, he disapproves of smoking.’ I said ‘my Bill?’ she said ‘yes.’ I said ‘but I smoke a lot of cigarettes, when Bill wants a cigarette he comes to me, he only smokes 3 or 4, but I am internet addict and smoke all the time on the computer.’ She said ‘I didn’t know you smoked cigarettes Anne, OK I will admit to you I went outside and had a cigarette.’”



I said to Bill “I didn’t know you were one of those people who tell people to give up cigs when they admit they smoke cigs.” Bill went apoplectic in the car. “I never once mentioned cigarettes to Alice in the steam room. Where did she get that idea? Maybe she meant the other Bill, but the other Bill smokes cigars all the time and besides he isn’t like that. There is another Bill from New York City, he doesn’t like smoke, maybe Alice means him.”


Bill was so upset at hearing Alice said he disapproved of smoking and tries to make people stop, that he lost interest in whether Alice’s dad really was mayor of 3 cities. He kept returning to the smoking topic, trying to figure out where Alice got the idea. I was going to tell him Alice said if I ever need help in Mexico just yell out vagina, but Bill is Catholic, Catholics never find sex funny.

Afternoon at Alice's House

April 6 2005 Thursday

Alice got offered to do a series of shows on Access TV Tucson. First she planned to do it on bands, she had worked in the music business back in NYC, and she began asking the guys at our club if they had a band. Then she decided to switch it to women. So I told her I write short stories, but I don’t want to be on TV, I want someone else to read them. And Alice said fine.

When Ruthie was swimming in next lane from me I asked Ruthie if she would be willing to read my stories on Alice’s TV show. Ruthie said she loves to read out loud and she would be happy to do it, so I was overjoyed.

Ruthie works full time and the date which Alice had rented the studio at Access, Saturday, was the day Ruthie was helping her friend with huge yard sale. So we decided we would all go to Alice’s house on the previous Saturday, which was last Saturday, and Alice said she would ask her friend Roy to work the camera. Roy has his own show with Access, “The Roy Show,” but they take turns working the camera for each other. So Alice gave me and Ruthie instructions on how to get to her house.

Tucson is an odd town. Because you drive practically to Tucson Mall, which is the busiest part of all of Tucson, but before you get there, you make a right, and then another right, and then follow a dirt road till the end, and there is Alice’s house. And it is like a little house in the country. Completely quiet there, with doves and quail in her backyard. And a hawk who hangs around, and marches himself into Alice’s house and preens his feathers for her. Alice’s house is not like a suburban house, it is like a little house someone built themselves a long long time ago. And it is in an old part of Tucson, it was there way before the Tucson Mall was there, and way before Tucson had turned into thriving metropolis. It is also near Oracle Road because Oracle used to be the main drag back then, it is still is, which is why it is the busiest part of Tucson.

I didn’t see all of Alice’s house. I saw the little living room and the little kitchen. And next door to it, she had built a studio. When we arrived (Bill drove) we went into the living room, where Alice’s paintings in frames were wall-to-wall up on living room. They are great paintings with beautiful color. In a huge white gallery with enough space to set off each painting, it would be thrilling sight. Bill came in for just a few minutes and was excited to see her paintings. He did not stay. Two basketball championship games were on back-to-back that afternoon, and he was going to watch them at our swim club.

Roy was sitting and smoking a cigarette on chair by the couch. He looked like very nice man. So I lit a cigarette and sat down next to him. Ruthie rushed out of the room then because she said she is one of those people who doesn’t like smoke. Roy said “tell me about the story Ruthie is going to read.” And I said “it is an experience of mine.” When I said that, his eyes glazed over. But there was no way to describe the story, and beside he was going to hear it when Ruthie read it.

So Roy played two shows for us he did (two episodes of “The Roy Show”) so we could see what access shows look like. In the first one a woman dressed up in clothes she thought Emily Dickinson would wear and enacted a poem by Emily Dickinson. She didn’t read it from a page, she stood up and dramatized it. I found it very interesting. I know nothing at all about Emily Dickinson and was surprised to discover she was a bitch. Maybe that is too strong a word. As far as I could make out Emily was saying how much she enjoys freaking out the neighbors. I applauded when it was over, it was dramatic and held my interest.

The next show was Roy reading article from Tucson newspaper about a murder. Apparently a doctor who had 17 girlfriends was stabbed 13 times. The Medical Examiner could not determine when it was done within a 24 hour period. But the Prosecuting Attorney, who had someone on trial, insisted it was done during the one hour period he had the person on trial for. It appeared to have happened in a restaurant. It was quite confusing. It was Roy and Alice sitting at a table discussing it. And Alice pointed out “how did he know it took place during that one hour period.” I applauded when that show was over because it was so much fun watching Alice poke all those holes in the DA’s case.

Then we went into Alice’s studio where Ruthie was going to read my story. It began with Ruthie and Alice sitting together and talking, but each time it started Roy stopped the camera and said “move an inch to the right.” So each time they built up a head of steam, it was stopped. Finally Roy decided he got it right, but by then they just said two sentences to each other, and Alice stepped out of the frame and Ruthie read the story.

She did an OK job. It is hard when someone doesn’t know the story. As a writer you put in a lot of teeny details just to flesh it out. They are actually irrelevant but are what bring a story to life. Ruthie gave a lot of emphasis to all these teeny details, and they were meaningless. And some parts which had meaning, she didn’t get, so the meaning didn’t come across. But it was OK job. I felt if I wasn’t willing to do it myself, and Ruthie was willing to do it, that I was grateful Ruthie did it. And there were moments when the story did go along fine. “Good job, Ruthie” I said, and I meant it. I thought she did fine job. Both Alice and Roy were totally dismayed, and said “Ruthie, you better look at it, and see it for yourself.” Ruthie assumed she had done a terrible job. She said “I never saw myself on TV.” And she sat in front of the screen and looked at it. When it was over she said “I like it, I think I did fine.” She was surprised but I knew she had done fine job. So they said “do it again Ruthie, but this time don’t drop your voice so often.” I thought that was good direction. Dropping her voice didn’t work, it took energy out of the story. Ruthie said “Oh good! Direction! I want direction!”

So Ruthie did it again. Roy’s cellphone rang in middle. It was just 5 musical notes, but he had her do that whole part again. And when it was over I realized Ruthie had left out one part which changed the meaning of what came next. And I would have liked that part to be done again. But Roy said “the light has changed, and there is not enough film left.”

So the 3 of them got stoned on pot. And got into an hour long argument. I think Roy did not like it that the two women were talking to each other and ignoring him. Because as soon as he finished putting his camera away he said something very inflammatory. He said “Alice left the country and lived in Mexico for 25 years and then came back and she should not have been allowed back and had her citizenship taken away from her. Because for 25 years all her productive work had gone to Mexico not to USA.”

I thought the idea was ludicrous, and especially senseless since clearly Roy and Alice are friends and collaborate together. How can Roy say Alice should not have been allowed to return home when he enjoys collaborating with Alice artistically now. He is saying something he does not mean. But both girls really went for it. They got in passionate argument and their feelings got involved. After that all Roy did was land more incendiary bombs, and the girls went for it like a shot. And by the time we went in to eat, Ruthie refused to talk to Roy.

We sat at Alice’s round table in kitchen, even tho it had been so nice sitting outside her studio on steps in sunshine as Sun was going down. It was totally nice sitting there under the sky except for the senseless argument going on around me. Alice’s house was like those tenement apartments back in East Village in Manhattan. Maybe that is why it felt so comfortable and familiar. Her house is very homey. We sat at round table in her kitchen and ate Alice’s delicious food and fresh arguments started up again. And then Ruthie drove me back to the club where I was to meet Bill.

In the car ride back to club, Ruthie had a lot to say about Roy. I think Roy was attracted to Ruthie, and Ruthie said she had made it clear to him she was not interested. I had found it funny that Roy had joined Access TV because his friends had told him it was a way to meet hot young babes. Roy is 44. But clearly Roy would never have carried on this way with both Alice and Ruthie (who are my age) if he didn’t want both of them. And when Ruthie had said something about Janey coming, Roy was on it like a flash. “Who is Janey? Why didn’t you bring Janey!” Seems to me Roy likes Alice, he likes her friend Ruthie, and he wanted Ruthie’s friend Janey to meet too.

The next day I got phone call from Alice saying Roy had acted so obnoxious after we left she had to send him home. And also he told her if she doesn’t have sex with him, he won’t give her the videotape he made of Ruthie’s reading, and she had said “I am not a whore.”


So now we all have to meet Friday at the TV studio and do it again. Even tho Ruthie only has 20 minutes because it is her lunch hour.

Nina Wilner

OCEAN by Layla Edwards

Friday May 25 2007

I dreamt about Nina Wilner last night. In my dream I was so happy to see her. She looked beautiful. I was overjoyed to see her and be with her. There were other people there, and I introduced them all to Nina. I said she was my best friend. I couldn’t remember whether I was 7 or 8, I decided on 8, “she was my best friend when I was 8, she came to my 8 year old birthday party, we used to ice skate together,” I told everyone. “We had pompoms on our figure skates” I told someone. In the dream the photo of Nina in my scrapbook, at my 9 year old birthday party, Nina and my other 3 best friends all together, was clear in front of my eyes. Nina in the middle, so vivid. In fact I don’t remember who else was in the photo, for me it was always Nina. I guess the other girls were the girls in my building, who I played with all the time. Playing with Nina was special, she did not live where I lived.


Now that I am awake, and remembering my dream, but also remembering Nina and our friendship, everything is the same as it was in the dream. I still don’t quite remember whether I was 7 or 8 when we first became best friends, but I would still go for 8. I can still see that photo in my scrapbook in front of my eyes. Everything is the same, except for the pompoms on our ice skates. That is true, we both had those big red wool pompoms on our ice skates that we made ourselves. However I remembered that in my dream, I wouldn’t have remembered it now if it had not been in my dream.


I had bought the photo album at Saks 5th Avenue when I was in my mid-twenties. Never in my whole entire life would I have bought an expensive fancy leather photo album at Saks 5th Avenue, if I had not been stoned on pot. I have no idea now why I was walking along 5th Avenue stoned on pot. It was not something I typically did. Either I stayed in the house when I was stoned, and thought about astrology, and made diagrams to help me, or I walked along the streets of my own neighborhood, the East Village. I did not take the subway up to 57th Street and stroll along 5th Avenue.



However I was strolling along 5th Avenue stoned on pot, and I did walk into Saks Fifth Avenue stoned, a very expensive store I had never been in. And on one of the first counters where you enter, was this black leather very expensive photo album, and I liked it and I bought it. It was completely out of the usual for me, because all I spent money on was clothes. If I had decided I wanted a photo album I would have gone to Woolworth’s and bought a cheapie one. But I had never wanted a photo album, all my photos were stuffed at the bottom of the bottom drawer of my dresser.



Of course having made this extravagant purchase, I came home, got out all my photos, and placed them in the album. It was huge leather-padded luxurious and fancy. Oddly enough, looking back on it, I think it was one of the best purchases I ever made. I never would have had the incentive to actually put all my photos in an album, if I had just bought a cheapie one from Woolworth’s, but of course with Saks Fifth Avenue photo album, you put all your pictures in right away. You use it. And it displayed them all beautifully and kept them safe. And for a long time I had the joy, whenever I wanted to look at the photos, of getting out the beautiful album, and looking at all the photos, put in with care, and nicely set up there.



And that is where I always saw the photo of Nina at my 8th birthday party. My dad took the photo. He took all the photos in my album. He was an amateur photographer and loved to photograph. He was also a brilliant photographer, all the photos were filled with life. He always had his camera with him, so it was more than pics at my birthday party. After I played punchball or stickball with my friends Myrna, Jane, and Carol, in the tiny little park behind my building, I guess on weekends my mom would send down sandwiches for all of us. We'd sit on the little bench and eat them. How my father happened to be there with his camera one time I don’t know, maybe he brought down the sandwiches.


The photo wouldn’t mean anything to anyone else, 4 little girls bent over their sandwiches, in their punchball playing clothes. My friend Diane sitting next to us in the dress she always wore, I have no idea why her mom dressed her in dresses, it meant she never played any rough and tumble games with us, maybe she was “steady ender” if we played jump rope. Also at the end was my brother, because he hung around with us when he wasn’t playing with his own friends. It is a good snapshot because it captures our whole life of play back then, altho all we are doing is eating our sandwiches. But for me, I looked at the photo and see our whole life of play in that tiny little playground, where we played Chinese Handball for hours on end, Asses Up at the end of Chinese Handball, punch ball, stick ball, and Skelsy, also Catcher Flies Up.



The end of the photo album was as unexpected as its beginning. I bought it on impulse stoned on 5th Avenue, it was one of the very few things I took with me to Tucson. 6 months after we moved to Tucson I found “A Course In Miracles” in the public library here and began reading it. After renewing it 4 times I bought it, it became my whole life. It took me a whole year to read the 1000 page Text and then another year to do the 365 Lessons in the Workbook, one lesson a day was the rule. After I finished the Text and before I started the Workbook, I was completely convinced of what he was teaching, that the past doesn’t exist, that the past never happened. I really wanted to believe that because there had been troubles in the years before we left NYC for Tucson, and the idea that the troubles could be gotten rid of, and replaced with a clean slate, was all I wanted with all my heart.


I decided to take my precious photo album with all my precious photos and throw it in the garbage can outside, to be taken to the dump. It took a lot for me to do that because I loved the album. I loved the photos my father had taken. There were photos in there before memory really began for me, of me and my best friend Francis on the swings in Old Forge beach. And beautiful photos of my father and mother, so young and beautiful, when they visited Miami before I was born. Photos of me and my first best friend Betsy in our snowsuits, she had that pink pretty woolen coat with leggings, in Central Park and Riverside Drive, and even one of me kissing her. And one of my father giving me my bottle, you don’t see me, just my father, dressed so nicely leaning over the beautiful high English carriage he had bought my mom when I was born, so it would be easy on her back. There is Leon on Riverside Drive leaning over the beautiful carriage, and maybe you see the bottle. I am not sure if you see baby Annie, my mother took the photo and she does not have my father’s flair for composition.



But I was adamant. Believing what he said in “A Course In Miracles” was my salvation, my way out. I wanted more than anything else in the world for the past to not have happened, and to have all my recent troubles disappear. I wanted fresh new sparkling clean slate, a present with no past. I couldn’t think of any way to put my money where my mouth was, but to consign my beautiful photo album to the garbage dump. And I did it. I felt like acting on it I would make it happen.



I met Nina because both our moms sent us to the same Shula in Forest Park. I don’t know why my mom sent me to that Shula. The reason she gave me, “I want you to know that there are other parents who think the way me and daddy do,” may be the real reason, or may be not. I guess I did ask my mom the reason for everything she did. Altho that surprises me now. I have no memory of ever asking her “why?” about anything, except for the time when she refused to let me go back to Catholic Church summer school when I was 4 years old and I really really really wanted to go back. “Why can’t I go!” I kept saying, “why can’t I go!” “Because we're Jewish, that’s a different religion,” she kept saying. “So what!” I said, “so what!” I said. “We're Jewish it’s a different religion” she kept saying. I didn’t understand her answer but she wouldn’t back down, I was not allowed back. I have no memory of ever asking her “why?” about anything else, unless it was something I wanted with all my heart, she wouldn’t let me have it, “why can’t I have it?”



Maybe I asked “why do I have to go to shula on Sunday mornings?” (Shula is Jewish Sunday school, I went to school all week, I liked having Saturday and Sunday just for play.) And she said “because I want you to see that daddy and I are not the only people who think the way we do.” My parents were socialists, and she was right, no one in my class and no one in my building, their parents were not like my parents, they did not spend the weekends giving out leaflets, or standing on the corner collecting signatures to petitions. And I knew my parents’ ideas were different from the ideas of other parents, because I was warned repeatedly not to say a word to anyone (it was the McCarthy era).



But I had zero desire to give up playing on Sunday mornings to go to Jewish school in order to find out other kids had parents like mine. I accepted my parents were different. It seemed normal to me my parents were different. And in fact it wasn’t their ideas that bothered me (the difference in their ideas). What embarrassed me is they went bicycle riding with their tennis racquets to Kissena Park on the High Holy Days, when everyone else’s parents stood on the corner in their fanciest clothes and women wore their mink stoles. I guess I thought if my parents were not going to observe the High Holy Days, and I didn’t think there was any reason why they should, they should not embarrass me by letting everyone (I guess by this I meant my friends) see them in their Bermuda shorts either. They should stand on the street corner too, in a mink stole which she did not possess, and join the discussion about how not one drop of food went down their mouth all day. Which wasn’t true of course. My mother had served us all the same breakfast she always served when it wasn’t a school day, pork sausages and scrambled eggs, orange juice and toast and cream cheese. I had no problem that our family ate this when you’re not supposed to touch food or water, but it should be a secret, and my mother and father should put on their fanciest clothes and stand on the corner with everyone else and say how they did not eat a thing. And if they weren’t going to do that, they should hide out, not parade on their bicycle with their tennis racquet as they took off for Kissena Park.



Maybe my mother sent me to shula because she had been sent to shula as a kid in Rochester. Her father was a socialist. I don’t know if her big brother and big sister were sent to shula, but little Marion was. Her grandfather (not a socialist) had a Hebrew School (to prepare boys for their Bar Mitzvah) and Gus and Annie were sent to that. But baby Marion was too little for Grandpa’s Hebrew School, so maybe when she got older, her dad sent her to Shula instead.



The Shula I was sent to was in the area of Forest Park, so we drove thru the endless most beautiful park in the world. That drive was incredible. It went on forever. In Autumn the leaves were all changing, I never experienced so much beauty, I loved that drive. I guess during the week it was a private school in Queens, and they rented it out on Sundays for the shula.



We sat in one of their classrooms, maybe it was a kindergarten classroom, we sat on such little chairs, and the toys were all around in cubbies colorfully painted. And the woman in charge of the Shula hung out in the principal’s office, Miriam. However her son always acted up in Shula, so she had to come into our room and tell her son to stop acting up, but he refused to stop acting up. Irving would sit at the head of the table, they pushed all the little tables together, so we sat around it, with Irving at the head and he taught us Jewish history. Then he got up and Martin sat down and we were taught how to read and write Yiddish.



Jewish history was interesting. It turns out that everyone was always trying to kill all the Jews. So all the stories were how about first-- they were all strange names, interchangeable in my mind-- first the Assyrians tried to kill all the Jews, but the Jews saved themselves, then the Babylonians tried to kill all the Jews, but they saved themselves. The names were all like that. The only story which was interesting, even tho the theme was identical to the rest, was the Purim story, because that featured a beautiful young woman, which is the only thing which interested me. Her name was Esther, which of course resonated for me because of my aunt Esther, and there was a beauty contest and the king chose her to be queen and she was Jewish, so of course when they tried to kill the Jews again, beautiful Queen Esther saved the Jews. Remarkably it made no impression on me that everyone was always trying to kill the Jews, that that is what Jewish history is, I could care less, I only cared about how beautiful Queen Esther was.



Then Martin came in and we got out our notebooks and first we learned how to say the alphabet in Yiddish, and we learned how to say “ich bin a maidel, du bist a yingel” (I am a girl, you are a boy). And we learned the Yiddish word for notebook, and for pen, and for read. And we learned how to write in Yiddish “I write with my pen, I write in my notebook, I read my book.” And that is all we learned. We didn’t spend much time learning during the reading and writing Yiddish class because of Miriam’s son acting up. That was very dramatic and took up a lot of time. And culminated with Martin going to the principal’s office and bringing in Miriam. Who would yell at her son to stop acting up, and he wasn’t afraid of his mother, and he acted up more while she was yelling at him. However as a result of all this my mother found out Miriam’s husband was an optometrist, so when I could not read the bottom two lines of the eye chart in 6th grade “line up to read the eye-chart,” she took me to Miriam’s husband to get glasses for reading the board and for going to the movies.



However I think it was at shula that I met Nina Wilner, that has always been my impression of where I met Nina. Altho it seems to me, my mother must have mentioned to Jane Pollock’s mother, Celia-- no! I bet I told Jane, my best friend who lived in the apartment above us, that I was being sent to Jewish Sunday school to learn Jewish history and how to read and write Yiddish, and Jane told her mother “Annie is going to Jewish School to learn Yiddish” and Celia must have asked Marion “where is the Jewish school? how much does it cost? I want Jane to learn Jewish history and how to write and read and speak Yiddish too.” And my mother was boxed in. She didn’t want to tell Celia it is socialist shula for the children of communists. So since the price was cheap enough, Celia decided Jane would go too, and my mother drove both me and Jane and picked me and Jane up when it was over. And fortunately Celia never found out it was socialist shula for children of communists. They didn’t teach any socialism or communism, it was strictly Jewish history, and how to read and write and speak Yiddish. So Jane and I had sat together and had a great time when Miriam’s son acted up, and Martin could not control him, and then Miriam was brought in and she couldn’t control him either, that was really the high point of the morning. Altho I always loved learning and loved to learn what I did there, it was just that it did not compare to playing, which is more fun. Yes I do think Nina showed up, so then it was Nina, me, and Jane. But the reason I became best friends with Nina is because my father was best friends with Nina's mother from “the party.”



This is why on the weekends, when we didn’t drive over to visit our cousins, we would drive over to Nina’s house instead, so Marion and Leon could visit Nina’s mother and father, and I went to Nina’s room and played with Nina. Or we went outside to play jump rope with Nina’s friends.



To explain how much I loved Nina, you’d have to include how much I loved her house, her street, her neighborhood. I lived in an apartment in a housing project, a huge housing project, it stretched for miles in all directions. And right next to it was another housing project, huge, which stretched for miles. And all of this was built on a swamp in Flushing. I don’t think there were any trees at all, just these new housing projects and new shopping centers. There was nothing here for me, for my little girl’s passion for beauty, and for mystery too. Altho I had a great childhood there it was a flat dull world to look at.



But where Nina lived was heaven for me. We rode for a long time till we came to some old part of Queens, it was all old houses, with slender, tree-shaded streets, curving roads, little roads, so many trees, all dark and shady and wonderful; and houses, houses are so much more interesting than identical apartments. I loved Nina’s neighborhood, I loved Nina’s house, and what I loved most of all was going with Nina outside to the little little street with trees all around us, and playing jump-rope with her friends. It is where I learned how to jump in backwards. We had a ball till night fell and I couldn’t see the rope. And on Nina’s 11th birthday party, Nina had a girls and boys party, and I had the ecstasy of playing Spin-the-Bottle and Post Office which I loved. It’s possible the party even took place in the evening. Nina, for me, was a girl made out of treats.


All treats happened when I was with Nina, and especially at Nina’s house, it was a world of treats which I didn’t have in Electchester. Of course we had great jump rope in Electchester too. We played it in one of the parking lots behind the building we lived in, and because of the projects, we had a lot more kids. There was a very long line when we played “Contest”, which is the most fun game in the world, and I was always the leader for it. That was great jump-rope! But there was nothing sweeter than jump-rope with Nina and her friends, in all that prettiness and sweetness of her neighborhood, it just made it such a treat.



I am sure mainly I went ice skating with Jane. First we would ice skake to our hearts content, we had our own ice skates. And then buy pizza and soft ice cream at the concession. Then when we finished ice skating, we would rent roller skates and play on the roller rink. But sometimes I went ice skating with Nina, she liked to ice skate too, and Nina was more special to me than Jane, because I didn’t see her as often, Jane I took for granted, Nina was special.



Maybe my mother was nice enough to drive all the way to Nina’s house to pick up Nina, or maybe Nina’s father brought her. I just remember waiting on the line to get in with Nina with our ice skates around our neck. In the dream all that came out about Nina was going ice skating with her, that we both put red pompoms on our ice skates together, and that she came to my 8th birthday party. Maybe I learned about pompoms from Nina and then Jane and I made them for our ice skates. It is logical I would learn them from Nina because all treats derived from Nina.


The game I played with Nina when we were in the house was “Sense and Nonsense” which was based on a tv show then. But we would skip all the other senses, touch smell sight etc and go right to “taste” which meant we went to Nina’s kitchen and ate all the delicious food which she always had in her kitchen.


And one Christmas her parents invited our family over for Christmas dinner. My parents rebelled against the Jewish religion too but they don’t go so far as to have Christmas dinner. It was the only Christmas dinner I ever had as a child. Sadie, Nina’s mother was named Sadie, my father liked her a lot. And Nina had a little sister too, I forget her name, but she hung around with us.


Then Nina’s parents bought a ranch style house in Long Island, near Jones Beach, we visited once or twice but it ended the friendship, because I never saw Nina after that. And maybe never even thought about her after that, till I began going to the Paradox in the East Village, a macrobiotic restaurant, and there was a guy there who sold belts on a rack, I remember that because when I began to date Bill he bought one of the belts. His name was Jonathan. Jonathan and I became friends, he was quite attractive, and he told me he was dating Nina Wilner. “Nina Wilner!” I said. “Nina Wilner” he said. “I know Nina Wilner” I said, “where does she live?” “On 11th Street.” “On 11th Street!” I said, “take me to her!”


And he took me over to an East Village tenement apartment on 11th Street and there was Nina all grown up now, a young woman with very long hair, she always had long hair, even in that photo of her at my birthday party she had her long hair. And I said “Jonathan is cute,” and she said she doesn’t really go for him, so I said “can I go out with him,” and she said “fine.” But I think I just had one date with Jonathan, if it was even a date. Because Bill became my boyfriend instead, and has been ever since.


I saw Nina about 10 times after that. She and I were both school teachers, her school was near Columbia. I remember telling her as we were walking along First Avenue together “I have decided to give up shoplifting” and Nina said she shoplifts all the time, and the problem is she shoplifts in the same stores where the kids in her class shoplift.



I guess Nina and I didn’t really stay friends, we drifted apart. There wasn’t anything to hold us together now, nothing was happening between us. It was kind of like the shell of a seed, the left-over shell; once the seed has sprouted and turned into a beautiful flower, the beautiful flower was our friendship back then, and finding each other now was just the left-over shell, we had outgrown our friendship. Altho there was a taken-for-granted warmth and intimacy, it was accepted between us we loved each other, but we didn’t click in any way, it seemed a little empty.


Then Bill moved in with me, we began our life together. I quit school teaching and began working part time in various places, first at the Museum for Lew Irizarri again, then at the Museum Shop downstairs, and then for a Wall Street newspaper. And maybe it was towards the late ‘70s that someone who knew Nina and me (but who would? maybe Abbie Cohen) said “Nina is living in California now and she is the girlfriend of the guy who started Esalon.” It was some famous name from the '60s and I was surprised Nina was with a guy who was our parents’ age, also that some famous guy in CA our parents’ age chose Nina for his girlfriend. I couldn’t understand it. I just thought Nina and I sure went different ways, here I am with Bill in my East Village apartment, and she is out in California with a much older man, whose name everyone knows because he started Esalon or something like that, something very California ....

And I guess you could say that was my last contact with Nina, till she showed up so beautiful and happy and glowing in my dream last night.

Love, Anne

"My first summer camp"

painting by Felix Pasilis (Pacifica, CA)

Sunday September 2, 2006

“My first summer camp”

The night sky above the dark trees is just subtly lighter than the trees, so I guess dawn is about to break sometime soon. I can see the outline of the dark trees.

I got snail mail from my friend Basha back in New York City and when I opened it up, it was an article from the NY Times Book Review about Nora Ephron’s new book of personal essays about her life. It was so much fun to read. I have not read anything in newsprint for so long. It was so much fun that someone had selected out something they thought you would enjoy reading, and to sit at dining table with soda on ice when I got back from swim pool and read it.

Basha and I met when we both had just turned 30. I had just started writing then. I had been writing for almost a year and I remember when we went to the Museum of Modern Art together and had lunch in their sculpture garden, I asked Basha if she wanted to hear one of my stories. I had just written one and I wanted to try it out. I read it to her at our table in the sculpture garden.

It was about the first camp I had gone to when I was 12 years old. And the interesting thing about that camp I discovered when I wrote the story, was it had no rules, no rules at all. This didn’t seem remarkable to me when I was 12 years old, it seemed utterly natural for me to be in a place with no rules at all. It was my first time away from home, I was there for the month of July. There was even a cattle pond for swimming, the camp took place in a rundown farm in Vermont, and there were no rules about swimming either. Anyone could go to the "lake" and go for a swim by themself whenever they felt like it. There was no lifeguard. There were no activities you had to go to. Activities were available if you wanted to go. A range of them. The girls in my bunk went to no activities. They stayed in the bunk and played Jacks. But I went to archery, I liked that. I didn’t know why they stayed in the bunk and played Jacks instead of going to activities, but I knew they looked down on me for going to activities.

There was an emotional drama for me at that camp because I had only gone there because I wanted to be with Lenore. My best friend from babyhood, Lenore, went every single summer and raved about it all the time, and told me I had to go, it is so wonderful. And finally the summer I was 12, I asked my parents, and they said you can go for the month of July. And my father sent off the check for 80 dollars, and duffle bag was located, and my mother wrote my name with black indelible ink on strips of fabric and sewed it on all the clothes I was taking to camp. They sent a list, two pairs of shorts, two long pants, bathing suit, two tops, etc.

And then the great day came, and my parents took me to Grand Central Station where everyone was lined up for the train taking them to camp. And we found the line for the train to take me to camp. And there was Lenore. And on the train ride I sat next to her. Altho the seat was turned around so she could sit with her other friends from camp. So there was 4 of us sitting together. And when we got there I took the top bunk above Lenore. And after that Lenore never spoke to me again for the rest of her life. That train ride up to camp was the last time I sat next to her. The great love of my life since I had been a baby, we had learned how to walk together, ended on that train ride up to camp, where I sat on one side of Lenore and her best friends from camp sat on the other side.

I did not measure up.

I didn’t realize it on the train ride. I was so excited and thrilled and loved every instant of what was happening around me, already I loved camp. And it took a while for it to dawn on me at camp too. Altho as you can imagine Lenore quickly changed her bed. Sairy Anne arrived and I slept above Sairy Anne, Lenore moved as far away from me as she could get. She was totally embarrassed to be associated with me. I don’t know how it dawned on me. I guess I would find myself alone with her, and for first time in my life find myself uncomfortable with her and tongue-tied. She was giving every impression of not liking me and not wanting to be with me. And after a while I stopped trying.

It was a new world to me, this world of the clique, and some were in it, and some were not. And clearly Lenore was one of the top girls in the clique. She wasn’t the leader, but she was totally accepted in it, she was part of it. The bunk had 12 girls, not every girl was in the clique, altho most of them came year after year like Lenore. I’d guess 5 girls were in the clique, everyone else was excluded. But that is what a pecking order is. There is the leader of the clique, the rest of the clique is her accolades. And the rest of us are nothing. I had not made the transformation to teen-ager yet. My mind was still child’s mind. So I found it highly amusing I was nothing and the clique was everything. Not amused so much as interesting. I was in a new world, it was a brand new adventure, and I loved everything about my brand new adventure. That there was a clique and I was nothing, was just another interesting thing about this new adventure.

I was upset about losing Lenore, and I don’t think I accepted it. I accepted it that at camp she would have nothing to do with me, but I would not believe our friendship was over. I think I assumed back in the city it would return. Because I think I began a diary the following year, it only had 3 entries in it, and one of them was about Lenore. I wrote “something is wrong in our friendship.” I was disturbed and trying to understand it. The idea that Lenore had changed her feelings for me was incomprehensible. Because it was my very first experience of anyone changing their feelings towards me. I didn’t know such a thing happened. I just assumed when you love someone you love them forever, that that is the nature of love, that the joy of your heart is always the joy of your heart.

I wasn’t bothered about the clique excluding me, altho I knew it made a difference to Lenore, that this is why she wouldn’t talk to me at camp. I had zero feelings about the clique on my own. The idea of a clique is that they are infinitely desirable and superior to the rest of us. And there were girls in my bunk who saw them that way, and were very upset they were excluded from the clique, but I didn’t get it. “Why are you so upset?” I said. “Because they won’t let me in the clique.” “We'll just form our own clique” I said, trying to be helpful.

There were 4 of them. It was on the stairwell. They were all upset about being excluded from the clique, they were commiserating. There were tears. If they wanted to be in a clique so badly, I thought we should form our own. But of course it upset them when I said that. Because they were so upset they were hanging out with someone who was so out of it, she didn’t even know not being allowed in the clique was fate worse than death. After that even those who were excluded from the clique refused to talk to me. I was bottom of the barrel.

I could have been one with the ones unhappy about not being in the clique if only I had known I was supposed to be unhappy. So the clique stayed in the bunk instead of going to activities and played Jacks. And the ones excluded from the clique hung out on the staircase and cried. And I went to archery, and started to get good at it. I was having a ball at camp.

I even had a ball at social activities. On Friday nights there was dance at the Sugar House. It had been a working farm, that is where the maple syrup used to be made. The Friday night party at the Sugar House meant the girls would all sit on chairs next to each other, and the boys would choose which one they wanted to ask to dance. I thought this was a lot of fun. The boys would walk up and down trying to decide who they wanted to choose. I giggled to the girl next to me “it’s as if we are the candy in the candy store, and they are trying to decide which one they want.” The girl moved her chair away from me. It bothered the girls not in the clique very much that they were never chosen, only the girls in the clique were chosen. But I just thought it was a new fun game at camp, being the candy in the candy store. I could care less whether I was chosen or not, I just liked being in the game.

Of course there were great games at that camp else I would not have loved it so much. “Capture The White Flag” was an ecstasy, an adventure game in fields and woods, I loved it. And “Nose Bag Dramatics,” which we played in the barn was a lot of fun too. And on “Amateur Talent Night,” I was the only one from my bunk who volunteered. I got up and threw myself all over the stage in my own interpretative modern dance. I made it up. I thought I did great. I had no idea that for “Amateur Talent Night” you were supposed to have talent, and be up there and demonstrate your talent. I thought it was for anyone who wanted to do anything on the stage. The faces on the girls from my bunk when I finished and went back to my place were a sight. You never saw so much disgust in one place. It did not dim my enthusiasm, I overlooked it. “Why don’t you get up and do something, it’s fun” I told them.

When we went huckleberry picking in the field, the counselor let us take off our clothes and pick berries in our underpants. When we went to the stream to wash our clothes we were allowed to wash our clothes naked and swim in the stream. It was a great camp. I had a great time. One night we all waited till we had been in bed, and counselors were coming around on O.D. to check on us, and then we all ran away. And I hid in the baseball field. And it was so exciting when the counselor found me and flashed his flashlight on me. I had lain there breathless in the dark when I saw the flashlight in the distance. I think that was the highest adventure of all.

Altho it was fun putting on a dress and being driven in the truck to Marlboro for a square dance. I loved square dancing.

On Visiting Day in the middle of the summer all the parents drove up from New York, and my parents drove from our summer house in Adirondacks to pick me up and take me back to Old Forge. “I had a wonderful time at camp, next year I want to go for two months” I said. “As soon as we get back to NYC Daddy,” I said, “you write out the check for two months.”

It was the last summer of my innocence. After that I descended into image. Ego got whole control of my mind. And it took “A Course In Miracles,” when I was in Tucson, to give me back my innocence.

As soon as we got back to NYC my father, per my request, did send off the check for two months. But the owner of the camp, an old man, wrote instead of having camp this summer he and his wife are going on a trip to Mexico and are inviting some of the girls in the oldest bunk to go, and I am one of the ones invited. I remembered the owner of the camp, he seemed like a nice man. His wife didn’t like me. But of course he did not see me thru the eyes of the 12 year old girls in my bunk, all he saw was the joyous happy girl.

I said to my father “I don’t want to go to Mexico, I want to go to camp, find another one then.” And so another one was found for me. This one was run by two teachers and it was all rules. But I was 13 when I arrived, I was a different person. I knew that all that mattered in life was being popular and having a boyfriend and I turned myself inside out to accomplish it.....