The Venice Literary Review

By Paul Levine

The Venice Literary Review is a book of short essays and musings about aging, the challenges of change, a move to Florida from New York during the pandemic, adjustment to a highly regulated gated community for retirees, diminishing physical abilities, memories of the past, and the struggles of being a writer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781663236036

Paul Levine

The author of twenty-two novels, Paul Levine won the John D. MacDonald Fiction Award and has been nominated for the Edgar, Macavity, International Thriller, Shamus, and James Thurber prizes. A former trial lawyer, he also wrote twenty episodes of the CBS military drama JAG and co-created the Supreme Court drama First Monday starring James Garner and Joe Mantegna. The international bestseller, To Speak for the Dead, was his first novel and introduced readers to linebacker-turned-lawyer Jake Lassiter. Bum Rap was an Amazon Number One Bestseller. He is also the author of the critically acclaimed Solomon vs. Lord series of legal capers. His latest book is Cheater's Game, which digs deep into the college admissions scandal. He divides his time between Santa Barbara and Miami. For more information, visit his website at paul-levine.com or his Amazon Author Page at amazon.com/Paul-Levine/e/B000APPYKG/ or follow him on Facebook at facebook.com/PaulLevineAuthorPage/ or on Twitter @Jake_Lassiter

Book preview

Copyright © 2022 Paul Levine.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

844-349-9409

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6632-3602-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-3603-6 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 02/16/2022

Contents

One Last Toast

Frozen In Alaska

The Venice Literary Review Begins

The Other Venice

Venice, Florida

Mailbox Rules

Coloring Books for the Elderly and Sad

My Real Home

Two Turkey Vultures

My New Wife is Not New

An American Flag on My Ceiling

L.A. Daughter

The Yellow Notebook

Atlantic Coast/Gulf Coast

A New Place

Why I Want To Be The Editor of The Venice Literary Review

When I Start Writing

My First Writing Group

My Writer’s Group Picnic

The Great and Famous Iowa Writing Workshop

What To Do With The Venice Literary Review

Amenities

The New Property Manager

Animals

Shirtless Old Men

Before Venice

My Life As A Summary

The Ring

My Sister Was Very Nice

The Problem Was She Died At 30

Three Characters In Search Of A Better Life

The Man Getting Fired

The Need To Find Out

Fredericks is Better Now, He Thinks

Reflections On A Character’s Better Life

If My Father Had A Beard

I Wish I Had Known More About My Father

My Mother’s Dilemma

Boats Going By In The Night

Unfinished Journals

The Art of Sheltering In Place

Girlfriend Borrowing

The Space Between Alone and Together

The Right Person

After My Divorce

My Wife

Volleyball

Petersville Road

Second Wedding

An Asterisk Of A Second Marriage

My On Line Writing Class

So What If Scotland Didn’t Work Out?

Different

A New York New Years Eve

I Was Always Jewish

January Compliance

Don’t Bury Me In Florida

On Garages and Fishing Rods

Vaccine Chasing

9/11, Pfizer, and The Venice Municipal Airport

A Question of Physics

Misplaced Prefaces

The Medical Malls of Venice

My Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Plan

Failure to Permanence

Mailbox Rules Again

The Daydream of A Softball Night

The Things of June

The Waiting Room

The Brief Episode of Becoming 80

Some More About Frank

Can You Please Pass the Broccoli

New York, New York— One Last Time

A Fall As If On Ice

A Fall As If On Ice

The Yellow Notebook—One Last Try

Alex, Erikson, and Me (An Interlude)

Retiring From Being Editor Of The Venice Literary Review

One Last Toast

To the realities of our life

And the fantasies that get us by

Frozen In Alaska

We had passed Ketchikan where we walked from the ship to see the lumberjacks and it was a gray, misty day when we sat down in the grandstands and it was cool enough to wear sweatshirts, though it was August. Andrew liked the show, the way the lumberjacks climbed the high poles and the way they balanced themselves on the rolling logs in the water and they way they moved their feet to stay balanced and then the way they chopped wood. It was the kind of thing he would remember.

And then it was near Sitka, or at least I think it was Sitka. That’s what the veil of age can do. That distortion that gets you to second-guess your first recollection about place and time. So I was in Alaska near Sitka or maybe between Sitka and Juno watching glaciers melt while passengers huddled on the top deck and heard sounds like thunder or like buildings falling or mountains sinking as pieces of the glacier fell into the icy, blue water.

It was like my mother had described when she said we shouldn’t cancel our trip. That her visit to the doctor would be fine.

Though it was late August, I wore a jacket and gloves. It was like early winter, made even colder as the boat moved north on that passage bordered by ice. And when we had seen enough of melting glaciers, we went back to our cabin. And it was good to get inside.

But now that I write about it, I remember more accurately that it was after Juno when the call came in. After we walked on the boardwalk and Andrew wanted to buy Mary a gift from the allowance he had saved, and I went with him into a jewelry store and he liked the silver whale on a chain. And we walked beyond the boardwalk of stores to a stream, and the salmon were fighting their way past the rocks to where they were predestined to go, to where they had to go, and they went to the end where there was no more water but only rocks, and there they plunged forward even though there was no stream, even though they were no longer able to swim, they were still trying to move further, but now the rocks stopped them and they crashed into them because they had that need to continue even thought there was no place to go.

So we were past Juno when we went back into the cabin on that cold day though it was August, and it was late afternoon and the boat sailed north, and when we got inside the cabin, there was that glowing red button on the telephone and that call from my daughter in south Florida, that call from my daughter an earth away who told me the doctor said my mother was sliding.

It was that fast, and all I could do was watch more glaciers and dress for dinner and listen to the guide on the boat who pointed out whales, and we watched the dolphins race with the ship and the stars were bright and the top of the mountains the next morning looked as if they were covered with confectionary sugar of the first snow. And when we got to Anchorage, we got the second call. It was that quick.

28458.png

My mother moved to Florida around the time my sister died at thirty. She had to get away from New York. From the questions. The reminders. And she was never able to come back, no matter how much she missed the family. She just stayed.

And now I’m here.

The Venice Literary

Review Begins

The first thing I note when we are planning to move to Venice, Florida is that there are no writing groups. Nothing I can join and be able to sit with others with similar goals. Instead of my being alone with the words that sometimes come and sometimes do not.

There is one, perhaps, in Sarasota about a half hour north, but that means a drive, and I am becoming a fearful driver, unsure of myself on the road. My vision not the same. The pain of getting into the driver’s seat of the car. The heightened awareness of my sneakers and the possibility of pushing down on the gas instead of the brake.

Old.

And of course there are no literary magazines in this part of Florida. And certainly not in the gated community we move into where the only publication includes the names and addresses and phone numbers and email listings of the residents and the advertising that is put into that booklet. Places where you can get your lanai extended or pest control or hurricane windows or someone to watch your home or any number of things you might need if you are in Venice, Florida.

And so I decide to start a literary journal so I will have a place for my writing, because I am 79 and no longer want to take the time needed to submit manuscripts, and I do not want any more rejection in my life, especially since I am running out of time, yet still have some things to say.

So right then and there in the never-ending heat of the summer, in the midst of a pandemic, I decide to not only start the Venice Literary Review, but to be the editor.

It is a simple choice.

And so what follows, because I am in Venice and I have a hard time walking and I have some sadness (some related to being old and some related to being me), and don’t feel comfortable here as yet, and sometimes panic that I am no longer in our house in New Rochelle, New York, and feel I am an outsider, especially with my New York plates and New York name while everyone here is from some other place, and because there aren’t any places to go to because of the pandemic— even here in Florida where being careful is optional anyway, and because I am very much the loner, I have begun to spend my time on my newly appointed job. That even though I ended up here in Venice, Florida, in this community of sameness, in this community of retired active (or old and inactive), that I ended up in a gated community, so far away from all I know, so far from that place I have always lived, I can be the editor of the Venice Literary Review.

The Other Venice

We once visit Venice. The one in Italy. Not the one in California.

When we get there, we have to take a boat from the airport because there are no roads.

We go to Venice because it is our 25th anniversary, and my wife has always wanted to go to Venice. When we get off the boat from the airport, we have to walk three blocks to get to our hotel. From the window of our room, I look down at the gondolas that are bunched together in a loading area. It could have been a side street, but instead it is a street of water.

The thing we like the best is riding on the busses that are actually boats. The other thing we like is St. Mark’s Square, especially the night we sit for hours and watch the people pass by. That’s the thing we talk about when we talk about that trip. About that night sitting in St. Mark’s Square and ordering drinks and just talking. It is a much better time in our lives, and we have so much ahead of us. We don’t think about that part when we are sitting there, though.

Venice, Florida

That was almost fifteen years ago and naturally we have gotten older, and since I am five years older than my wife, I have gotten old. So old that I have a hard time walking. So old that I think too much about my life and the way it has turned out. So old that we think it will be better if we move from the turn of the century colonial we live in back in New York. Especially if we move to an easy, one floor place in a nice climate with older people like us.

It’s summer here and it’s hard to take the dog for a walk in the afternoon, as the heat index is around 105. And we can’t use the back porch, which is called a lanai. So we sit in our air conditioning, which pumps cool air every time the temperature goes over 75. Its reassuring sound is like a heartbeat that continues, and we say, It’s hot in New York, too.

We pick Venice, Florida because we know someone who lives here, and we think it will be good to be in a gated community that has things to do like going to the pool and trivia night and pot luck dinners and bingo and once a month pool parties and bocce (though I have no idea what that is) and Mexican Train (which turns out to be dominoes) and a knitting circle and movie night and a men’s breakfast and ladies lunch, which will be different than what I have been doing in New Rochelle which is mainly sitting in the living room of a large house. And climbing the staircase to the second floor that is too hard for me to do.

But having never been here before, we don’t know anything about Venice, Florida or living in a gated community where at Christmas you put a holiday hat on your mailbox because that’s what everyone does. And there are rules we are not used to like what kind of flag you can have and the color of your house and the size of a political sign and exactly where it can be placed, and other rules like that.

Mailbox Rules

To give you an example of some of the rules you have to worry about here, the other day I get an email from the management group about mailbox upkeep. The email is headed Mailbox Compliance, and the first paragraph says—

Please check to see if your mailbox needs to be painted or cleaned. The Compliance Committee will be doing inspections in the upcoming months.

The problem is I’m not a mailbox compliance kind of guy. And wouldn’t have a problem if my neighbor has a yellow mailbox or a green one or if mine has some chips. It’s not the kind of thing I really want to think about while I’m retired and struggling to get used to the uniformity of my street where every house looks the same like a Floridian Levittown for the elderly.

These are some of the things on the list—

Mailbox is black with no chipping paint.

Mailbox flag is red or gold.

Mailbox is medium sized.

I don’t want to keep listing the things that the mailbox has to be because the whole thing gets me sick when I think about it with all the things going on in the world and the pandemic that has isolated me. But the sad thing is, it goes on with more rules for mailboxes, and I wonder about this vigilante group of mailbox inspectors filling up their golden years by making sure mailboxes here are okay. If leaving correction letters for residents, pointing out their mailbox deficits, really adds meaning and a sense of accomplishment for them.

So that’s an example of Venice, Florida, if you want to know. I mean back home you’re lucky no one steals your mailbox, let alone having any concern that they are like the others on the block.

28460.png

So we end up in Venice because the kids have their own lives by this time and I have a few falls on ice in the winter. And spend too many days sitting next to my dog on the tweed couch in the living room staring out the window. And too much time daydreaming and have too much sadness and too much wondering about where my life has gone. And too much Sudoku and reading.

I even try coloring.

Coloring Books for the

Elderly and Sad

I get a coloring book in the mail from my friend, Phil. His wife, an artist, has put together a book of mosaics.

It’s like a nursing home thing, I think. Something to do between naps.

When I start my first picture, it feels good because I don’t have to think. I just have to select the colored pencils I want and fill in the design. It’s like a tranquilizer. It’s also the first thing I have accomplished in a long time.

As I fill in the pattern, I feel I finally have some control. There is no one to second-guess my choice of color. No one to ask me why I used light blue there or pink somewhere else. No one to say, I wouldn’t think you would have used so much orange. What made you do that?

I concentrate on a part of the design on the bottom of the page, and I think about how I was once so capable and able to do the things a man can do. My thoughts fill the room like a balloon inflating enough to explode.

After a while, I stop coloring and hold the coloring book up, looking at the unfinished mosaic, and realize that what I am doing is nothing but time. Time that needs to be filled in. Just like the outline of the design. Something to keep my mind from the fear that is increasing. I just don’t know how long.

I buy my second coloring book at the supermarket. There is a picture of a cat on the cover of the book. The cashier holds it up to get a closer look and says, I love cats.

I hurry home and open the book, and find the page I want to color. The picture I pick has nothing to do with a cat. It is, instead, of a man looking out at the ocean from a desk in his house by the sea. In my mind, I become the man in the picture. I wonder how all the things that have happened to me have made me end up looking out at the sea.

As I color, my mind wanders. It is almost as if I