writing – Liese Ricketts and her foolishness

Sexy Stories from Lima: #2

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I apologize for the delay. The Trump/Clinton debate so upset my humor and constitution that I needed to avoid all social media, really social anything, for a minimum of 24 hours. On with the stories.

A friend of my cousin, a young married woman in her 30’s, Señora X, let us say, purchased a cell phone for her 5 year old daughter so she could communicate with her from work and such, putting her daughter’s nanny in charge of the device.

Day before yesterday, Señora X borrowed the phone for a minute to look up a number she had forgotten and found a series of pornographic images of the nursemaid, taken in Señora X’s own bed as well as in her own underwear, spread eagle to tantalize the anonymous recipient/s. Outraged, she immediately began a search for a new nursemaid but, as is rather typical of Limeñans, has not fired her until she has found a convenient replacement.

Curiously, yesterday, at a well attended luncheon in their home, Señora X’s husband passed around the same cell phone so all their guests could ogle the infamous photos, the maid (unaware, of course) being a server.

The shameful hiatus

This respite has been unmerited and irresponsible. If one has the occasional reader, then respect is due and I have been remiss. I apologize.

I am no longer employed. Since I last wrote, I do not think I had committed to retiring. But, the deed is done and I am no longer a teacher. I am happy, fearful of my financial future, but I do not live in Syria and I should count my lucky stars each and every day.

Because I am no longer employed, it is important to do something worthy every day. It would be easy to stay in my pajamas and watch movies on my iPad all day, with a nap in between films, but I have restrained from doing that. I have begun writing a fictionalized memoir which I began in 1984 but left off when I let someone read it and they were frighteningly enthusiastic. This time is different. I write a couple of pages a day. I write with a pen. When the ink from a good pen flows properly, the story is just as fluid. I use a lined black and white composition book which says Composition Book on the outside.

A couple of pages feels right. Nothing too obsessive, nothing that feels compulsory. I have no idea what I will write, as pen moves to paper. That is a wonderful feeling, like the open road, like a photo of Robert Frank that I have in my head. I tell stories that are made up but based on an element of truth, something I have heard. Sometimes the strange events that occur there make me laugh.

And, now, it is time to visit with my husband as he is employed and he deserves my attention.

The Times, oy.

2.4.2014

It’s has only been a couple of days since the Super Bowl, a stupid spectacle in my eyes, and the Super Bowl commercials, which are somewhat less irritating. This year I saw the Bud Light one with a retriever puppy and the Budweiser Clydesdales that reduced me to tears. Blubbering after a 6o second spot that promotes the drinking of beer is the height of lunacy but I succumbed.

What was far more annoying was when I heard about the Bob Dylan commercial for Chrysler. I didn’t watch it live, but my husband came into the bedroom after the game and told me about it. He was mildly surprised but I almost gagged.

Bob Dylan, the scrawny anti-hero of my youth. This was the guy whom I have looked up to as the King of Cool, rough around the edges, scornful, and cynical. At the last concert when I saw him live, he refused to even look at the audience but kept his back to us the whole time. Arrogant but at least in keeping with his disdain for convention and his jaundiced view of humanity.

I said, “Chrysler?”

“Yeah,” said hubby, “and it lasted almost two minutes. Weird.”

Then yesterday I watched it. Well, I watched half of it. I could not watch more than one minute. His grizzled grey hair was dyed brown and his accent, very fake cowboy. I tried to believe that he was singing for Detroit, the underdog city. I wanted to believe that he was donating all the money from the commercial to rebuilding a city that deserved to survive, but not because of General Motors, or Dodge, or Ford.

I was just fooling myself. When he started singing about the greatness of America, I wanted to yell, “Hey, what’s wrong with you, you dick? Did somebody tie you up, drug you, threaten you, and force you to get a dye job? What happened to the rebel who knew that this rhetoric about America The Great is bullshit?”

He just sold out. Like Dennis Freaking Miller. One day, a frothing radical, the next a Fox show host. He became like his own lyrics. He serves somebody, but somebody that smells like a goddamn Republican.

“You may call me Terry, you may call me Jimmy
You may call me Bobby, you may call me Zimmy
You may call me R.J., you may call me Ray
You may call me anything but no matter what you say.

You’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”

The Times They Are A-Changin’. They certainly are. Fucking A.

December 23, 2013

Welcome to this reconditioned space, like a freshly painted living room, for my thoughts about photography, random images that have no place on my website, fun things I find, and whatever I want to share with you.

It is also a space for me to write. I love to write. Stories come to my head and I let them free before committing them to text; they are like hummingbirds flying to the shiny red feeder on my porch, here and then gone.

Aging is on my mind these days. I will turn 65 in one week. My Dad turned 98 two days ago. He looked at me, as he was about to blow out the candles on his birthday cake. Straining forward, he exclaimed in awe, “Ninety eight! How can that be?” I could not answer him. I feel that way and I am 33 years his junior. Sometimes I look in the mirror and I see myself as I think I look. Other times, I see something quite different. Photographs of me are horrific. FaceTime on my iPad is great to use with close family but I feel so self-conscious with others. The screen does not do me justice and I am not ready for my close up, not ready at all.

Every time I see myself it stuns me. That is a considerable amount of stunning going on throughout the day; like being shell-shocked, each time my reflection blasts my view of myself to pieces. I am not particularly vain, but if Obamacare could kindly take care of non essentials, I think I would like a LifeLift, my lips done, some liposuction and a personal trainer, preferable a cranky woman in her 30’s. In the meantime, I will content myself with getting my hair colored, my handy nono hair remover, an occasional facial, and comfy flannel nightgowns.

Until later.