She's got everything she needs...

Hello 2025! I am here, and it is NOW. Welcome to my Substack ... a little scary to begin, indeed, but life is short; particularly in the last chapter.

This is the year to share my stories and reality with whoever might want to hear about a life lived out of the box, filled with all the stuff of being human. It's messy, filled with heart, heartbreak, friends, lovers, adventures, and the mysterious.

In my seventh decade and a true-blue Boomer, ... I've got some shit to share. Fasten your seatbelts.

Born a cherished only child into a humble, barely educated blue-collar family in Paterson, New Jersey, I won a national beauty contest at 8 months old, recorded a record at the top of the Empire State Building at two, twisted with Chubby Checker on the stage in Atlantic City at the famous Steel Pier at nine, moving my body always through dance, and as a cheerleader, and being a member of the National Honor Society throughout high school, I attended Woodstock 1969, took LSD, lost my virginity at 17, and watched men land on the moon while smoking hashish. Later I graduated Cum Laude from the University of Wisconsin, worked in NYC at the wild Max's Kansas City, only to run off to san Francisco and then to Hollywood, and eventually meet Hunter S Thompson in 1978 after dating the sweet Richard Gere (before he became stellar.) Co-publishing a magazine in Los Angeles called LA WOMAN was a peak life experience. I Appeared on TV Shows, in movies, and on book/magazine covers, and somehow stumbled into Bikram’s Beginning Yoga Class, committing to hot yoga by attending classes for months, only to return to New York City in 1979, continuing to live the high life partying with the Saturday Night Live crowd while being escorted around town by Al Pacino and his theater colleagues. I was photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe and many other notable photographers and then ended up living in an Ashram upstate New York. Shortly after my guru-disciple experience, I visited Europe to live in Paris with an artist. I returned to Los Angeles with him to a house perched precariously under the Hollywood sign six months later. Eventually, I moved out to Pacific Palisades into a sprawling pink Italian Villa facing Santa Monica Bay while employed in my first real job, at 31, at The LA Weekly ... whew ...and that is only a fraction of a life lived single, free, without a plan, a cent, or a cushion to fall back on ... living the dream of a liberated woman, believing I could have it all, do it all, and never compromise my bliss for security or money. I gave birth to my only child at 40, alone in Taos, New Mexico, a child I prayed for as the clock ticked off the years.

Security, what is that? That was never my dream ... although I never knew what my dream was. It all feels like a dream that eternally unfolds. And somehow, by some twist of fate, grace, faith, providence, and the luck of the draw, it all works out.

"She never stumbles; she's got no place to fall... " Dylan describes my experience in that song ...

Stay tuned. Some stories will appear in writing, and others will be recorded readings. I thank James Nave and Allegra Huston (from The Imaginative Storm) and a variety of other writers and teachers for giving me the courage to speak out, spilling my imagination onto a page, a fury of rich, full-spectrum adventures; the feelings, revelations, sorrows, costs, boons, wisdom, and successes of a rich, multi-faceted notable incarnation...

And, I'm still here, and it continues to be now.

Thank you for listening to my rant.

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The first story is coming this week.