The World of Christina Oxenberg – Welcome to the Woolgathering…

Locals say the best thing about leaving Key West is the joy one experiences upon returning. So true!

Early April I made the first of three forays to NYC. Unexpectedly I tripped into a rabbit hole of good luck when my dear friend Vanessa Noel offered to host a party for me and my latest book, a collection of short stories.

A word on these ‘books’. The last three books I have published have been self-published directly on Amazon. This is an incredible option available to authors, the downside being that without a comprehensive knowledge of formatting and templates the finished product can look a little wonky. Thus the degree of wonkiness riddling my latest ‘books’.

My second visit to NYC was all about the book party. A huge success if you count attendance levels, or books sold. But I could not feel any pride about the actual books as they look homemade, because they are.

Also, the latest attempt included photographs by my old friend Patrick McMullan. This was an experiment which, in my opinion, did not work out and I shall not bother with photographs in the future as I am not at all convinced by the results, especially since it shot the price point up stratospherically. Being half a miser I am not the least inclined to see anything more expensive than need be.

My sincerest apologies to anyone who bought these ‘books’. I know they are full of typos and formatting errors, all entirely my fault. Sadly my skill set is narrow, and I ought not to be in charge of anything beyond the writing. I should have nothing to do with editing or production o

r distribution. Therefore, I am offering refunds to anyone suitably disgruntled, equally I offer the solace of you being the owner of collectors items.

Why collectors items? Well, because on my most recent, the third and final trip to NYC I encountered the greatest success of all. I settled on a powerful literary agent and a publisher and now all my books will be proofed, correctly formatted and reprinted (without photographs). I am thrilled about this.

To cap it off, after a day of airports and missed connecting flights and the overall discomforts of modern travel, I made it home in time to shower and change into party attire and off I went to meet Henry Bisharat and John Hemingway, two new-yet-old friends first met on Facebook and now included, for all time, in my personal coterie. The party was for the launch of Papa’s Pilar, a new brand of rum, and the guest of honor was John Hemingway, grandson of one of the greatest writers of all time.

We got to talking about our grandfathers and our love of writing. Henry was thoughtful enough to make me a gift of John Hemingway’s latest book, Strange Tribe, an autobiography.

I know I have found my tribe.

The way I heard the story there is an inland river, up the Keys a ways, and in the river lived a large blue crab. This crab kept to itself, not only because it was a crab, but because it was always grumpy and whining and complaining. Even amongst other crabs this crab was bad.
But one day this bad crab was obliged to engage with the rest of the crab population. There was a referendum, or something political, and all crustaceans had been called together to vote on a issue of the riverbed and how it was being despoiled. Something to do with those dastardly humans and their need to ruin things with bridges and footpaths and, worst of all, roads.
The bigwig crabs at the meeting were busy shouting at each other and pontificating, and not much of anything was getting done, beyond venting.
Meanwhile, at the meeting, this bad crab was crouched, sort of minding his own business from the periphery of the group when a lady crab he liked scuttled close by. She was beautiful this lady crab, she had tattooed her shell with patterns like filigreed silver. She was very theatrical, for a crabette, and despite himself he coudln’t help his feelings. He thought perhaps he loved her, but he hated her too. Because one time, not that long ago, he had sidled up to her, and let his feelings be known, and she had laughed at him.
Now here he was, close to her and she appeared to be

alone, and to have acknowledged him. Could it be, he pondered, that she had changed her mind about him. Women! he thought, Well I’ll certainly give it another go. So he scurried over to her, and close she was all the more beautiful, and he told her so. “You are beautifiul Ms Crabette,” he said.
For her part, she just watched him with middling interest. She thought maybe she knew him, but she couldn't be sure. He was a specimen to stare at.
It was more than awkward and then finally she spoke. “Do I know you?” she asked, and then she waited.
The bad crab was shocked into silence, he was frozen quiet, and his tiny mind went blank. How could she not know him, it didn’t seem feasible.
Suddenly, a large shiny green crab appeared, crashing through the crowds of crustaceans. He was wider and shinier than the others and he came and stopped beside the girl, slipping his claw through hers, sliding it around her waist, pulling her close to him.
The bad crab had trouble recovering his composure. This was everything he had not expected. Now that he thought about it he didn’t know what he had expected.
“I was going to tell you that you have some dirty marsh grass stuck on the back of your shell, that’s all I was going to tell you!” the bad crab declared, waving his long claw as he spoke, and then he dragged himself away, muttering and grumbling.

For one of my oldest friends, Manuela, who lives in England here’s what happened at the book parties:

The first party was held at my friend Vanessa Noel’s shoe store which happens to be the ground floor of her sandstone townhouse on the upper east side of Manhattan. Extremely nice. Vanessa is a talented artist in her own right and shoes are lucky to have her attention. I say this with certainty because I have seen her paintings and I know how good she is. Miserably, I forgot to have my photo taken with Vanessa! And the reason I forgot was the instant overwhelm of old and new friends.

ps: Particularly extraordinary was meeting longtime FB pal Ron

So that was the New York party! Forgive the blurry shots but I had to heist them (long story). Anyway, as perhaps is evident from the glee on my face in these shots I immediately forgot the plot. All my plans of whom exactly I wanted shots with, and whom I wished to introduce to whom, well, I remembered not one of these artful plans until days later. Such was the abundance of good cheer that my mind was erased and all I could do was savor the moment and revel in it.

And then it was back to Key West, for another book party, co-hosted by the King of this fair island David Wolkowsky. Here are some shots taken by my friend Carla Lavanco.

Ps: A total thrill was meeting local celebrity Kristen KMAC of American Idol fame and City Manager Bob Vitas (who mysteriously speaks fluent Serbian)

Today is Orthodox Easter Sunday, Happy Easter to all those who celebrate today, and that includes my oldest friend Manuela, in the UK.

Thank you to all!

When I was nineteen years old I was stunned to find myself back in New York. The only thing I was sure of was I did not want to live and work in this city, my birthplace. I had tried one year of that and it hadn’t appealed. Now I was back from backpacking around the world, on my own, for the previous six months. The idea was I would travel the earth and thereby discover my purpose, my calling. Nothing of the sort happened. I did experience an eye-popping quantity of stimuli but six months later I was back where I had begun, New York City. And then, by some sort of divine intervention I met Carmen D’Alessio, an energetic Peruvian sexpot public relations queen. Carmen is best known for being the spark plug behind the components of Studio 54.

When I first met Carmen, pretty much on the spot she offered me a job as her assistant. On a lark, and without any visible alternatives, I took the post. Days were all about phoning her hundreds of contacts and inviting them to her parties, at Studio 54, it was an easy sell. Thus I learned everyone’s name, inadvertently even learning their telephone numbers by heart. Nights were all about escorting Carmen, in stretch limousines, along with her forever rotating entourage of hot young men. They truly adored her, and she ruled with a powerful bass laugh and thunderous commands, she was a worshipped general. We motored around the city, stopping in at every happening club, doormen opening ropes and ushering our posse in with personal greetings to Carmen, like she owned the city, and there we would hand out tickets to Studio 54, to anyone who caught Carmen’s fancy. We would work our way from club to club, seining effectively for the cutest catch. Eventually ending up at the great club Studio 54 itself.

If anyone displeased Carmen she would have them tossed out of the club. But if she liked them she might take them home with her. My most important role was to arrive at her apartment at eleven in the morning and put on the kettle. Next I would wait for the man, and there was always a man, who would emerge, bleary, staggering, from her bedroom. It was my responsibility to debrief him of his name, as invariably he was a ‘freshie’, Carmen was not one keen to snack on leftovers, (unless she married, which she did often, but that’s another story). So I would ask their name and then show them the front door. By then the kettle would be boiling and I would make a cup of herbal tea and bring it into the still dark bedroom. And give it to my boss, along with the name of her previous night’s conquest. And she’d thank me and explode with that wonderful rich laughter, and our day would begin again.

While not necessarily the meaning of life, that was one of my favorite jobs.

I just read ‘Levels of Life’ by Julian Barnes, his latest, and I’m a fan, of sorts. However, long ago, Julian Barnes wrote a book called Staring at the Sun, about a woman and her ordinary life sliced up in cartoonishly large leaps of twenty year intervals. At the time I remember thinking it implausible, these spans leaping ahead in twenty year lumps. For a leap, that seemed improbably enormous. Ah, the myopia of youth! All these years later I clearly see the possibility of vast chunks of time sucked away into a blurry tear in Time’s fabric.

And now here I am, so much older and I look back on my life, and I see when the trajectory for adventure truly began. Right before my 30s I entirely gave up on anything conventional, and I have been ‘on the road’, so to speak, ever since. My first divorce was so long ago I don’t remember much about that marriage, like the dude’s name, but what I do remember is that after seven years of marriage there came a time of critical mass. It was stay and breed and do the wife thing, or bail and toodle off to parts unknown. I took the latter course, I packed up the husband and sent him off to Italy. “I’m right behind you,” I lied when I kicked him out of the Toyota truck at JFK. And that was the last time I saw him.

Tomorrow I’m headed for New York City, for my party, to celebrate my new book. I have invited all and sundry from all stages of my life, finally mixing everyone altogether, like the end of a great day of work for a painter with his pallet smeared with bright oils.

Today I examine my choices, and my expectations, and with the benefit of so much time passing, I can critically assess. Most notably I will say it has gone fast. Cresting the precipice of middle age was not even noticeable. There was no peak of Everest moment, no instant where I stuck a flag into a mountain top and felt my goals in my grasp. Far from it. Rather, I feel I am in a holding pattern, a sort of long stalling idle, where all my goals are still just ahead, just around the next mythic corner.

I’m looking forward to seeing my old friends, a little concerned to reveal my aged self. Will any of us recognize one another?

I wish Julian Barnes the best with his new book and thank him for his provocative insights. Turns out he was absolutely right about time hurtling, and now I try and savor the moment, try and appreciate the gorgeous smearing bright oils that comprise my life.

Speaking of books, and friends old and new, I wish anyone who can, please come and say hello at my party Wednesday, 24th April, 6-8pm, at the Vanessa Noel Boutique 158 East 64th Street, NYC.

I am exclusively selling my new book on my website for Byzantine reasons to do with anti piracy efforts none of which I expect will work very well. I expect the ramparts to give way after a simple battering. Yet my warrior blood impels me to at least try to hold some ground. This translates into me and a box of fresh pressed books, dedicating each in thick felt tip, wrapping and sealing them in puffy envelopes, and hauling the lot to the post office.

I was a couple of humans from the front of the line when I engaged in conversation with a native American, or so he claimed, a man who appeared neither noble, nor wise, nor spiritual, not even a supreme horseman. Arguably his blood has authentic Caloosa DNA and the spit-up of malaria carrying mosquitos. But his concerns were confoundingly plebeian. The Caloosa, with his odd habit of tilting his bald head back and closing his eyes, would expound on his previous commute from a stay in Mastic Shirley, Long Island to an office at the center of Manhattan, “Two and half hours in each direction!” he repeated, and shook his sweaty bald

head, eyes closed.

“Next” the attendant called and off shuffled Caloosa.

One more person in front of me, ‘Walter the good pirate’ is how he introduced himself and he certainly looked the part, with earrings and hair swept into a ponytail, knee length overcoat and a tricorn hat with a yellow budgie clinging disinterestedly at the brim.

By day these pirates and treasure hunters are fishing guides and contractors and the float of drywall coated him, even his teeth. Mouthwateringly he told me he had access to a treasure map, had even made preliminary dives to inspect the trove and sure enough it’s the real thing. Walter showed me cracked photographs of grayish lumps and barnacle clad clumps, “Those are gold coins and emeralds!” Walter was whispering, holding the pictures low and close.

I was so impressed, shoving my specs onto my face. “When will you go fetch all this?” I was drooling a bit. “Can I have some?” I asked, whining, forgetting my manners, entranced by the possibilities, imagining tiaras and full matching sets of cleavage-crushing heavy jewels. The way jewels were meant to be.

“Never,” Walter said fiercely. “As long as I’m alive, and now my son Little Wally is getting interested, we will be stewards and protect this important history. That’s how I see the world,” he continued, sliding his photos back in an oily pocket.

“Next!” called the attendant.

Finally I was at the front of the queue when a short official bustled from within and declared, “The building is being evacuated. This is not a hoax. …white powder was found in an envelope… We’re taking precautions. We’re evacuating now!”

So out I went into the white blinding sun, kicking my way through the roosters and hefting my box of first to be shipped honest to God sold books, temporarily thwarted.

That same night as Lizzie walked home, Marc decided his nerves were frayed so he put away his guitar, helped himself to a whiskey and got into bed. No sooner had he slid off to sleep when he was awoken by a splattering crescendo. Bleary eyed Marc got up, pulled on his robe (Burberry, from a yard sale) and went off to explore the reason for the rukkus. He unlocked a door and stepped out into the courtyard and the jasmine scented air. Wearily Marc scanned his territory, tightning the belt on his robe. Even the shadows were layered with shadows, even the sliver of moon only momentarily flashed in between dark fronds of palms. Marc’s eyes picked up nothing.

Marc stared into the darkness and he was about to turn around and go back indoors when a noise came from the ground.
“Darling!” he heard and he jumped on the spot and then he looked down to see his wife Lizzie laying on her side, like a baby seal.
“Darling,” she whispered again, “I climbed the wall!”
“What? Are you ok?” Marc bent down beside her, thoughts racing incoherently as he helped her to her feet, the both of them wobbling dangerously, the weight of each other almost too much to bear.
“How do I look?” Lizzie asked, smiling wildly.
“Darling, you look wonderful!” he said, but she looked awful is what he thought, a welt developing on her forehead.
“You know today is Saturday!” Lizzie continued. “We have to go to the yard sales!”

Meanwhile, minding my own business at the crest of the new day, I was just getting ready to leave the Green Parrot, my favorite bar. I didn’t want to go home but the bouncers were fitting bolts across the closed up boards that serve as windows, when copies of The Citizen, the local daily, flapped in through the still open door. I grabbed a copy, paid up, and muttered my goodbyes. I drove through an unfurling town, with the sky morphing from midnight blues to aquas, down dewy streets thick with greenery and the prettiest of gingerbread houses when I saw a hubbub up ahead.

I was half way down Southard Street, headed north and home, when I was blocked by a couple tussling in the narrow street. In front of one of the prettiest of old houses, grey and white clapboard and shaped like an octagon and all surrounded by two floors of porches, like a dowager in her pearls. On the short sloping lawn out front were tables piled-high with higgledy-piggledy whatever. But blocking my route was a tall man with a scruff of orange hair and tiny bandaids on his craggy face and he was fighting with a thin lady with a huge bruise on her forehead. They had some object in their hands, they were screaming at each other, pulling on the thing between them.

I pulled over, skidding in sand, and parked in a puff of dust.

Speaking of adventure, there was a time long ago when I worked for a literary agency. My job was to read and reduce the unsolicited manuscripts. It was midwinter and I was occupying someone’s empty beach house in the Hamptons.

Every Monday I would ride a dirty train into the city, impossible to even see out of the scratched up green hued windows, casting the world in oxidized metal. I would board at a wood carved train station half hidden by pillows of snow out at the end of Long Island, and a few hours later arrive in the sooty dank tunnels that eventually pop one out into the very heart of the city. Shocked into the noise and bustle I’d jostle my way the few blocks to the agency, a tall grey building in amongst innumerable tall grey buildings. Sign in, nod to the attendant and wait in a damp huddle for an elevator.

At the agency I would deliver my reports and cram my backpack with as many fresh manuscripts as I could carry. Back home I’d crank the heat which came through the carpeted floor, I’d brew endless cups of tea and lying on my back, head propped on cushions, I’d spend the week reading my way through the stack.

Largely, the manuscripts were mind-numbing dreck. A disproportionate quantity were submitted by housewives from Seattle, I surmised with too much time on their hands due to the excessive rainfall keeping them all indoors and wistfull. My reports invariably nixed their hopes. Until one day, along came a manuscript describing the journey of a group who traveled from California in their own Cessna, sometime in the 1970s, with the goal of visiting the Galapagos Islands. Each chapter saw them further south, leap frogging obstacles and filling with excitement.

I turned the pages swiftly, gripped, I wanted so much to be with them. At the end of reading I wrote my report. For the first time I could recommend a work for publication. l added an addendum, it went something like: PS: I liked this M/S so much I am compelled to leave immediately and travel. Please accept this as my letter of resignation.

I bought a ticket to Belize, a country where I knew no one and knew nothing of my environs, and immediately I felt like I could breathe. I made my way to Ambergris Cay where I took a cheap room above a liquor store. The view of my immediate future was inspiring.

Keeping to myself I took busses south and then west into Guatemala, scaled ancient ruins, photographed gigantic birds floating up high. Then more long bus rides into northern Honduras where I crawled about over more ruins and then more bus rides the length of the Caribbean country, onward I traveled south, ever further south, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama whence I was obliged to fly to Ecuador. Two months had passed and I was in the back of a pickup truck sharing a ride from Quito to Guayaquil, the port town from where one caught the boat to the Galapagos Islands.

I was so close to my goal and so exhilarated by my journey I didn’t notice the implications of the start of Semana Santa, their Easter festivities. It was quite a surprise to find not only the town was closed up shut, the entire country was on holiday. Alone in my hotel room I realized I was out of money and had no access to funds.

So, I never did get to the Galapagos, but I did clear my stifled mind with an excellent adventure.

Splayed on the sofa in the living room, he watched her. She was boiling water in the kitchen. He hated her. The sight of her, the smell of her, the sound of her voice. He had no idea when this had started, when things had disintegrated.

“Sniff!” he snorted, crumpled tissues all around him, one soggy tissue still grasped in his tight grip. And that’s when he felt the creep of a sneeze, like crazy tentacles switching at the back of his throat, stirring up the impulse for a sneeze, gathering speed, like bellows filling the back of his brain, the top of his esophagus and then he was a canon of spume, particles loosened free and he worried all of him would eviscerate and funnel out through nostrils flaring like stampeding horses. “Aaarrrrr,” he lamented, so sorry for himself, “Oh good Lord!”

He could see his wife at the stove, her elbow raising and dipping and reconfiguring the folds of her frumpy cardigan. He hated that cardigan, he was sure he had told her. Yes, he remembered clearly telling her as much at the Christmas party last year.

Maybe she had forgotten, after all, it was a year ago. An entire year! He was shocked and he tried to sit up, with his arms waggling he grappled through the air, shunting himself to the lip of the sofa, but momentum let him down and he petered out, curled over rounded back right over his pajama clad legs, and coughing like a back-firing car, he hacked and hawked. “Aaarrrr!” he exhaled and, still coughing, collapsed into the welcoming embrace of blankets and cushions. He lay still, and stared at the ceiling, one arm dramatically outstretched to the crumb specked floor with the other draped across his face.

Through half closed eyes he peered at her and her wide back and that awful sweater. He had told her it looked like she had put on a few pounds but it didn’t seem like she was doing much about it. He hated his life and it was all her fault. All his friends agreed. She had been a big mistake. “Aaaaarrrr!” he wailed, and though he missed it, his wife turned to look at her pitiful partner, she felt for his suffering.

As she turned to him, with his cup of chamomile she breathed in deeply on the scalding damp rising from the tea, like it was a spaceship to escape in. As she placed the mug beside him on a low table she hoped she was not going to catch whatever horrible ailment he had.
“There, my darling,” she murmured.
He clawed for the cup and then he whacked at it, boiling water airborne. “You always fill it too full!” he shrieked. “I want a divorce!”

Discreetly she smiled as she watched the hot water roll into the crumbs that speckled the floor, engorging them to tiny islands.

Speaking of private islands reminds me of a time long ago when I sold up and relocated to a private island in French Polynesia.

My senior year was at a high school in the Rocky Mountains where I met Taha, a Tahitian lass. We bonded over our love of adventure and even engaged in a few explorations of our own devising. After high school Taha went west and I east and for the next decade or so we kept in touch by phone. The years piled up and we toiled in drab jobs. One day Taha learned she had inherited a cute little atoll in Tahiti. In a trice Taha took up residence and invited me to join, “Just bring a bicycle, stay as long as you like,” she said. I was tantalized and soon I was extricating myself from a job and an apartment I did not love.

A cab dropped me at JFK and left me in a pile on the curb with my brand new bicycle, my bags and my ticket to ride, and thus began the thrills. First one plane to LA and then another out into the middle of the Pacific Ocean. We landed in Papeete in a hurricane and were advised by the police to immediately seek shelter. My bike had been crushed by so many handlers so I dragged the thing out of the airport and there was Taha. We hugged and shrieked, as females do, and then we drove for half an hour past trees bending horizontally and metal roofs peeling from houses. At last we parked in a gated garden bordering a bay. Half a mile out was the island, a bushy green headdress of palm trees. “We’ll come get your stuff tomorrow,” said my hostess, locking up the car. We hopped into a canoe and Taha paddled us off to paradise.

That night we got plastered and Taha played the ukelele quite at odds with the noisy storm. Next morning Taha handed me a cup of coffee and then startlingly, she dashed up a palm tree and untwisted a coconut which she slashed with a machete and poured the milk elixir into our coffees. I was stunned. “I’m never leaving!” I declared and we clanked cups. We got back in the canoe and oared across to the mainland to fetch my stuff. Scattered on the sandy ground all around the car were glass particles, like snow. The back window was smashed. And all my gear was gone, including the bike.

Later, back on the island I met Taha’s boyfriend. Turned out he would be living with us and this might have been tolerable except they were forever squabbling, their screaming and yelling thoroughly dismantled my communing with nature. I began to wonder what exactly I was doing here, swatting at mosquitos, scratching at bleeding ankles and I began to miss the sounds of squealing traffic and sirens and the smell of soot.

It wasn’t long before I bought a ticket out, and I was gone. A full scale retreat.