ZIGZAGGIN WITH D.H. LAWRENCE

The throw of the dice this week lands on an adventure with D.H. Lawrence. 

Our affair began in the winter of 1970, when the film “Women in Love” was released. 

            “ Let’s go see this movie, Alan Bates is in it.” Lizzie,  and I were madly in love with Alan Bates.  Neither one of us had read the book, or had much knowledge of D.H. It was a film that explored sexual relations that interested us, and it was filmed in England.  Back in Junior High Lizzie sang musical songs while I taped her on a recorder.  Now in High School, she was singing Hey Jude, and I was reading the words from the record album.     

 

I remember sitting in the balcony of the Beverly Wilshire Theater, leaning forward in my seat  as I longed, with adolescent fixation, to be inside the story. I wanted to live in a studio like Gudren’s( the part played by Glenda Jackson) and toast my bread in front of fireplace and paint all day.  Gudren was the artist terrified of being tamed.  Her sister Ursula, who personified Lawrence’s wife Frieda, wished to make her life within a man’s.    

 “Your Gudren, and I’m Ursula,”  Lizzie claimed with clairvoyant assurance.  

 ”  No, I’m not all Gudren.” I protested.

 ” You are– you’ll see.”   Within  a year, Lizzie would be in-love in London, creating a life around a man, and I would be an art student at Sonoma State College.  

  

But on that lazy matinee afternoon,  we gasped, and squeezed each other’s hands, during particular erotic scenes that shocked our sensibility. It was an  awakening, of the abstraction of relationships. We’d discovered that friendships  were not as they seemed, and that love did not always have a happy ending.   It woke me to what possibilities lay ahead, and turned a defining fold in my growth.  Would I end up like Gudren?  At times the thought haunted me.

 

Over the last thirty years, I’ve  watched the film every time it screened on television.  It was the benchmark of my youth,   just before I wandered off into relationships with artists and bohemian living.  Several years ago I purchased a copy.  I was convinced there  was something I’d missed.   

 

Summer 2006 Taos, NM

 I move to Taos and Rudy gives me “Birds, Beast’s & Flowers” a collection of poems written by D.H. during his stay in Taos.   I journey out to Del Monte Ranch where D.H. and Frieda lived on and off for several years.  The ranch keepers took us on a private tour; oral and on foot.  I yearned to learn more.  Several days later I walked down the portal of Ranchos Plaza to see what new treasure books Robert had in his shop. 

   “What do you have by D.H. Robert?” 

   “Kangaroo, and Lorenzo in Search of The Sun,” it’s a biography about DH.

   “I’ll take them.” 

They were placed on the bookshelf in the bedroom and remained there unread.  By now,  I’d seen the famous stained glass window D.H.  painted in Mabel Dodge’s bathroom in Taos, and the sketchings on display at the La Fonda Hotel.  Still, I had not read any of his novels.  

 

Winter  2008. Santa Fe.

The down blanket is wrapped tightly around my shoulders on a snowy night.   I take “Lorenzo in Search of the Sun”  off the shelf and begin to read.  The book begins with his adventure in Taormina.     

    “I am so thankful to be back in the South, beyond the Straits of Messina, in the shadow of Etna, and with Ionian Sea in front: the lovely, lovely dawn-sea where the sun does nothing but rise toward Greece.”

 

 This first excerpt  leads me to chisel the cobwebs of memory to the  summer of 1972.  I left my sister in Barcelona, with a Spanish- lover, and took  a solo journey to Sicily. I don’t recall what precipitated my quest;  but the warnings and discouragement from my sister, and fellow travelers didn’t obstruct my vision. I had to go to Sicily. It turned out to be the bittersweet part of my European summer.  An  Italian hotelier rescued me, and put me up for a few weeks in his Taormina hotel; like he did with all the lost American hippie girls. 

 

Every night this winter, I huddled inside and read a few pages of the book, savoring them as I would a chocolate souffle. These descriptions of Italy, Mexico, and Taos infiltrated that clamping cold.   D.H mentions the Model T Lizzie in his chapters on the El Monte Ranch in  Taos.  I am reminded of my trip to the ranch.

 

This is an excerpt of the column I wrote about my visit to ranch in 2006.        

 

D.H and his wife Frieda moved to the Ranch in 1924.   Imagine that journey–there was no road to the Ranch, that came much later. They must have hiked up the hill or gone on horseback.  The ranch includes a small barn, and two cabins; they chose the larger Homesteader’s Cabin. It is so organic, as if spun together by weeds and timber chips, but actually is a mixture of pine logs, mud, straw and water.  The Homesteader was a man named John Craig. He claimed this property in the 1880’s, and built the cabins with the surrounding Ponderosa pine.  The pueblo Indians helped D.H restore the cabin and he moved in during the summer of 1924. 

 

I thought about this man sitting under the majestic beauty of the pines, and writing all day long.  The plateau of silence that envelopes this ranch is every writer’s dream.  Here he wrote some of his Taos poetry, “Birds, Beast’s & Flowers” he finished “St. Mawr,” a short novel, the novel “David,” and parts of  “The Plumed Serpent.”    D.H didn’t know how to type;   he left that task to Dorothy Brett, the artist that accompanied D.H and Frieda.  D.H invited Dorothy and several other friends to join him in Taos after his first visit in early 1924.  He was creating a Utopian society, he named Rananim.  Brett was the only artist to accept the offer.

 

I took a few photographs and then we trotted back to the entrance. Just as we were getting into the Van, a car pulled up. A woman got out, and called out a hello from across the way.   I yelled back that we were just leaving, and she yelled even louder, “I can’t hear you – I’m almost deaf.”  I got out of the car and went to meet her halfway.  Immediately taken with her pioneering eyes, and up at dawn spirit, I yelled to Rudy to get out of the car.  

            “ I’m Mary and that’s Al over there, we’re the caretakers.  Al’s been here 50 years.”   I nodded to Al, standing a few feet behind her, watching us with a tinge of curiosity. I noticed his eyes, the color of faded denim, squirming with stories.  I tried not to ask too many questions too quickly;  Al was tired from a long journey so he took a seat on the porch.   

            “ Open up the cabin for them Mary.” He called out.

            Mary nodded and led us up the path to the D.H. cabin. 

Along the way, she talked about the ranch. There is a society named the Friend’s of D.H. Lawrence in Taos, and they want to build a big commercial visitor center on the ranch. Mary and Al think this is a bad idea, because the pines and silence are so happy, why mess up a beautiful memorial.  If you saw the ranch, you’d agree that a visitor center will look like a spaceship in this territory of natural beauty.  Mary opened the door to the cabin and showed us around. The first thing I noticed was the typewriter. 

            “ Is that where he typed? ” (She gave me printed literature that fills in the information I know now.)

            “ Nope,– but that’s the typewriter Dorothy typed on.”  The cabin is well maintained, simple and authentic.  After we examined everything Mary led us back to Al. We gathered around the porch and Al talked about the road that he cleared to the ranch, the typewriter he dug out of the dump, and the time he drove out from Chicago in his Tin Lizzie.  Rudy turned to the Model T in the parking lot.

      ” You drove that out here?”  He asked. 

      ”  Naw, that’s my brother’s. We‘re going to get it workin’ soon.  Go on in and take a look.”    Rudy jogged over and got inside.  I took photographs of him, and Al watched. 

    ” That’s how D.H. and Frieda got around Taos, they’s was great cars.”  

   

 Mary took me aside and told me that she was throwing a party for Al in a few weeks, and that we’d be welcome. It would be Al’s  90^th birthday. I glanced over at him, petting his dog and looking very content.  I didn’t think he heard us, but he did.  “ I’ll be here until I’m 100.”   We exchanged good wishes, and many waves before leaving that afternoon.  

 

Was Al’s brother Gotzsche, who D.H. writes about and who toured them around in his Lizzie?   Further in my reading,  I discovered that Gudren, personified the author Katherine Mansfield.   I became more keenly acquainted with Katherine  in Saratoga Springs, when I attended a reading of her short stories at Yaddo Arts Colony. 

 

D.H.  is a puzzle that continues to zigzag around my  “adventures in livingness.”  He is also the author of that slogan.  I found the saying in Anais Nin writings, but in fact I think its origin is with Lawrence. 

Any dice to throw Email: folliesls@aol.com

 

SPRING & WOMAN

Smiley’s Dice  Adventures in Livingness

                                                 Luellen Smiley 

 The throw of the dice this week lands on the wind and the chime. At three in the morning the walls of reality merge with dreams, namelessness, restlessness, and an alertness of unspoken needs.     What I think of at three in the morning is never the same at ten o’ clock in the morning.  The labyrinth of safety, colliding with the unknown, seems to be the most innocent of emotions. It is also a time that  springs bright eyed realizations, recognitions, and a time when our mirrors move toward us.  I see my looks fading. All I ever wanted was to be as pretty as my mother was.      The wind is sudden as it whips through the spruce tree outside my window.   

I get up and wander downstairs, listening to the wood floors crackle at my footstep.  I walk outdoors onto the back porch.  The wind is like a mirror to me. This sound, so clear and unmixed in Santa Fe,  brings me back to my adolescent years in Hollywood. The nights my father went out,  allowing me the freedom to explore outside. I would run down Doheny Drive to Santa Monica Boulevard and just keep running.  It was on those windy Santa Ana nights that I’d run the longest.  I was running because the need to express something was bulging through my soul.  Back then I didn’t keep a journal at home. My father had discovered it and then questioned me about everything I’d written. 

 This night is like that, only I don’t feel like running, I am listening to the sound of the wind and the chimes.  I’m thinking of the music of Charles Lloyd, and the shadows that look like ghosts, and the clouds that appear to have messages,  and how everything is different when you are alone.  I dine without pause and usually finish before I’ve even wiped my mouth. I have extended conversations with the cats, Bugsy and Alice,  and moments are elongated.  I sit down at the counter and this wind and chime continues to circulate the house. It is an announcement- it is expectant of spring.  I jotted down some notes and knew what I wished to write about today. 

April is expectant- there is expectancy everywhere you look. The buds on the stark tree limbs are about to bloom, the birds have evacuated their nests and begin singing early in the morning, and insects eject themselves from their hidden corners. I don’t know what spring is like for a man, I’ve never asked any man, but I am going to tell you what spring is like for one woman. 

 The essence of spring is sensuous, and for a woman it is an overture.We strip down the layers of clothing; replacing socks with sandals, and sweaters with t-shirts.  When I hear birds and watch them in the trees, I think of babies, and innocence. There are flowers about to shoot through the heavy clasp of winter dormancy, and when they do, the colors remind me to replace all the black pants and turtlenecks with pastel shades of coral and blue.     The sunlight radiates through my skin and warms every thing. My heart  feels like it has been through a tune up.  My body wants to dowse in sea water, eat less,   run up canyon road,  listen to music,  dine al fresco, and get pedicures. Men, do notice your woman’s new pedicure, it will make her very happy.  All of this preparation is to tune up the romantic notes,  and to get YOUR ATTENTION. It is time to bring you out of the garage, or wherever you go in spring, and to notice that we are blooming. This is what I felt the night I heard the Charles Lloyd Quartet;  I heard them blooming.    Surprise us with flowers, a new hat, or a picnic on the banks of the Rio Grande.  Spring is time to redirect your attention to woman because we are at our best in spring.  Our attention is on our surroundings; we will want to buy flowers, and baskets and new cushions for the patio furniture.   We change our lipstick color, comb our hair different, and we look for new ways of expressing how good we feel.   Today I see cherry blossoms in my neighbors’ yard.  They remind me of

a day in April at Golden Gate Park.  Then I feel young again, like I was in the park that day, when I was in love with a man who would prove to be one of the great adventures of my life. 

If you live in Santa Fe then you understand when I say-hurry up spring and start undressing!   “Is there any feeling in a woman stronger than curiosity? Fancy seeing, knowing, touching what one has dreamed about. What would a woman not do for that? Once a woman’s eager curiosity is aroused, she will be guilty of any folly, commit any imprudence, venture upon anything, and recoil from nothing.”Excerpt from Guy De Maupassant, “An Adventure in Paris.”    

SMILEY’S DICE ON SPRING & WOMAN

SMILEY’S DICE

SMILEY’S DICE

SMILEY’S DICE

CONFESSIONS OF OTHER KIDS  

The day after Confessions of a Mob Kid posted Iin the NEW YORK POST new names appeared in my email box.  The messages were the same, “We have a connection.”

Over the years I’ve contemplated the whereabouts of all those aunts and uncles belonging to my father’s world. The aunts and uncles were not genetic; they were part of that other family. 

Some of them had children that became part of my childhood gang.

When our fathers were talking business in delicatessens, poolside or a hotel, we were busy being children.  Over the years I asked dad what happened to some of these kids, and he‘d answer, “Meyer puts it this way; ‘You don’t inherit friends.  He said if often, as if it was a warning; “When I’m gone so are my friends.” He was right; all of his friends vanished into thin air. It was if they had not been part of my life. Yet they formed my first impressions of conversations and behavior between adults.  They set the standards for whom I felt comfortable and with whom I didn’t.  

 The first email was signed Uncle Myron. He said his father, known as “Sugie,” was in the juke box business in New Jersey with Abner “Longy” Zwillman.  We had a juke box in our first home.  I was too young to remember Abner, but I remember the name Longy; my dad talked of him with other friends.  Uncle Myron took over his fathers business and during the seventies and eighties was known as the Emperor of slot machines in New York.  

After three emails, I was ready to talk to my Uncle Myron.   

“Hi Myron, this is Luellen.”

“How are you sweetheart?”  That one line ran circles around my memory. His voice assimilated all the voices of those uncles, and best friends that left without saying goodbye.

“I’m all right.”

“Our fathers were from another world.”

“I know. Do you think they’d be angry with what I wrote?”

“Absolutely NOT! Are you kidding, you’re humanizing them. My father may his soul rest in peace, worked with Longy and Meyer.

“Yes, mine did too. But more closely with Ben Siegel.”

“Sure, they all came from the same fabric. And when you met them, you were part of the family instantly. They knew how to treat you so you would never forget.

“ I haven’t forgotten.”     

“When did dad pass on?”

“It was 1982.  I was devastated. It was awkward to have that background and no one to share it with.

“It’s difficult for all the kids to adjust after that upbringing.”

“Are there a lot of us?”

“Sure, some don’t acknowledge the background; they hide for one reason or another. Most of them are in legitimate business today, it’s a different world sweetheart.”

Sugerman broke the ice within seconds.  I was ready at that moment to get on a flight to Newark and meet him.  Over the next few days he sent me fascinating articles and stories.  The breakage of that controversial and complex lineage is rebuilding itself.  I feel as if I can call on him any time of the day.  

The next email came from a relative of another member of the Jersey boys.  He knew both my parents, and especially liked my mother. He had stories to tell and was eager to exchange impressions.  We got cut short on the telephone by present day business interruptions. 

The next one came a few days later. First an email and then a request to call him.  When Michael answered the phone, he introduced himself as

an associate by birth of the Cleveland Syndicate. It struck me that each one felt loyalty towards their parent’s people.   

My dad was as close to the Cleveland bosses as he was to Ben Siegel.  Lou Rothkopf, one of the four bosses was referred to as Uncle Rhody. Lou flew out to be with Dad the night of Ben’s murder. He would do more for a friend than the friend’s own family. If someone owed him money, he crossed the street to avoid the meeting. He was respected in his community.  After Senator Estes Kefauver whipped up the country’s vengeance against gangsters, bookmakers, bootleggers, and on down the line, Lou was called in to testify.  The humiliation killed him, he committed suicide. Michael’s Uncle was part of Lou’s syndicate.  It is better known as the “Silent Syndicate” because the bosses were so understated. They’d never have been discovered by the feds if it wasn’t for the fabulously flamboyant Benny Siegel. 

Michael didn’t follow in his dad’s footsteps but he has no reservation about pointing to his history. He is, like Myron, an educated and proud Jew.   “I’m sick to death of the caricatures of hoodlums in books and on television.    My life is boring–the history of my people is what fascinates me.  If I had more time I’d study it all day long.” 

“Me too.  They seemed to run the whole country.”

“They did! Your absolutely right.”

“We have a very close connection.”

“We do?”

“Yea. Are you sitting down?”

“Yes.”  

“You know who backed the Flamingo.”

 “New York and Chicago wasn’t it?”

“Cleveland.”

“Oh really.”

“You know what I think?”

“What?”

“ Cleveland took Ben out.”

“Cleveland? You don’t mean Rhody’s clan?”

“I don’t know– its conjecture. From all the stories I heard, the books I’ve read–that’s what I’ve hypothesized.”

We talked for over an hour, and then he said, “Call me anytime; I’d love to talk more. I have a lot of stories about Cleveland.” 

The third connection came as I was driving along the highway in Santa Fe. When she identified herself, I told her to hang on, “I had to faint first.”

It had been thirty years since I’d spoken to her.   She was the one I wanted to find.  I’d imagined our meeting again.  Our mother’s were best friends.   Instead, I was given a friendly warning not to mention anyone in her family.  I agreed.  I didn’t inherit his friends, but I did adopt his sense of loyalty. When a friend says don’t identify me; there is no argument.  I doubt we will have that reunion. She is suspicious of writers and honestly I can’t do anything without writing about it.  

No regrets on my end.  Had it not been for the New York Post, I wouldn’t

be planning a trip to New Jersey to meet Uncle Myron.   He’s saving the

best stories until we meet, and I will pass them on to you.