LOOKING AT THE WORLD

LOOKING AT THE WORLD

DREAM ICONS

Can’t See Dreams, My Vision is Partially Blocked,  Lucid Dream.

 

"We look at the world once in childhood. The rest is memory."

-     Louise Gluck, Nostos

 

I found this quote in the recently published memoir by Lisa Nikolidakis called, No One Crosses the Wolf. (A great title.)  If you are interested in reading about childhood trauma I recommend this book. Nikolidakis writes about coming to terms with childhood abuse and her father's powerful influence over her life. And there is a murder.  

I began writing for fun shortly after I retired as a social worker and moved to Bella Vista, Arkansas, in 2004. I no longer had the responsibility of taking care of foster children, and wanted to write about some of my adventures in New York and San Francisco. I joined a Bella Vista writing group organized by my friend, Nancy Brown. Although my abduction memories had returned over ten years earlier, I still had nightmares about working as an actor in porn films., I had received no help from family or friends to support my memory and the trauma was resting in the back of my consciousness waiting for me to accept what I knew to be true. 

I kept busy working in my garden and making new friends in a variety of organizations. Still, my memories plagued me. Therefore, in 2017, I began writing my story as a therapeutic exercise. Because I was writing about the part of my life I had repressed,  I decided to call my book "The Other Me.  No one liked it! Why, I don't understand. Currently, the provisional title is, Abducted: A Memoir of Trauma, Nightmares, and the Struggle to Remember. I'm told any publishing company who might pick my book up, will feel free to change it. Tell me your ideas. 

 

I have always been interested in the Mafia and read many books about organized crime as I researched my abduction.  I was surprised to learn that most of the people I talked to about my book had never heard of these criminals, even those friends who are my age. I'm talking about famous under-world gangsters like Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegal, Mickey Cohen and Johnny Rosselli to name a few, as well as Bugsy's mistress, Virginia Hill, with whom I spent time. This added an extra challenge to my writing as I needed to bring these underworld characters to life. 

 During the time I lived in New York (1962-1974) while studying to be an opera singer, I met an Italian tenor named Benito who was on vacation from Italy. Benito spoke little English and because I was trying to learn Italian, I began a relationship with him. Before long my Italian improved and I could understand the words while singing them. One day, Benito came home from Brooklyn with an illegal social security card, which made it possible for him to take a job at a pizza parlor located near Columbus Circle in Midtown Manhattan.

Many years later, in 2017, when Benito was long gone from my life, I began reading books about the Mafia. I learned that Brooklyn was the territory of the Bonanno crime family and that Nickerbocker Avenue was where their operations were probably centered. I wondered if this was where Benito got his illegal social security card, and what relationship, if any, he had with the Bonanno family, especially after I met Benito's "Godfather," in an interesting exchange over lunch.   I write more about this encounter in my book.  

Recently, on the internet, I learned about a new book called The Cigar: Carmine Galante, Mafia Terror, by Frank Dimatteo and Michael Benson.  Carmine Galante was a vicious serial killer who rose from the streets to become the consigliere of the Bonanno family and was one of the masterminds behind the famous French connection criminal court case in 1961. I found the original book written about the case on the internet: The French Connection: The World's Most Crucial Narcotics Investigation, written by Robin Moore and published in 1968. 

I have dreams with French people in them and wondered if I would find a French name in the book I might recognize from my dreams. (I have lots of dreams with names of people I do not consciously remember.) Then, I was reminded that I owned the movie The French Connection about this actual 1961 case that took place while I was living in Manhattan.  The movie came out in 1971 starring Gene Hackman and Roy Schneider.  If you haven't seen The French Connection, I highly recommend it. The director, John Frankenheimer, makes the movie exciting as Gene and Roy tail drug dealers throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn trying to figure out what these guys were up to.  There is also an unforgettable, terrifying, and memorable car chase as Hackman follows, under the subway tracks, a train carrying the drug dealer who had just tried to kill him. 

 

Onward and upward.  

 

 

 

 

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