GOING ON VACATION! SEE YOU IN 2013 ?

It's that time!  I'm taking a vacation. 

What will happen between then and now?

Most likely December 12th 2012 will come and go as an ordinary day, as will December 21st, 2012, which is the Winter Solstice, and the "Gregorian Calender" December 12, 2012. 

Despite all the buildup and antipation and the increase in tourism to Guatamala for December 12th or 21st 2012, I'm not concerned that the earth will flip on it's axis, nor do I believe this will be the day that UFO'S reveal themselves to all of humanity,  though I will be watching for crop circles, and I'm still speculating as to how Santa has managed to deliver so very many presents in the wee hours all these years even with the help of elves and reindeer all who multitask!   But I could be wrong!

In which case instead of having a few weeks to use the search feature of Google Blogger to read past posts of this blog, CHRISTINE TRZYNA - WRITERLY LIFE, you'll have a very long time to do so.

Seriously though, the snowman drawing below had me laughing out loud.

That may tell you just how much I need a vacation!

Till then,

Christine Trzyna

DIANE VON FURSTENBERG : A SIGNATURE LIFE : BOOK EXCERPT

DIANE VON FURSTENBERG : A SIGNATURE LIFE : BOOK EXCERPT

pages 187 and 188

"I designed the apartment (in Paris) as Bohemian Luxuria, because I had long since discovered that writers may act bohemian, but they love luxury.  (CT - italics is mine.)

Our apartment was a center for other writers because of Alain's association with Mondadori and many other writers we had a friends. Many of those friends would stay with us in what I called the Literary Room...

The (apartment) concept was one of an ongoing, moving stage, which fit very much with how I saw my life then.

"Writers loved to stay in the apartment and continue to do so. The apartment is very quiet, and Paris is inspiring... Whether it is the air, the wine, or the ambiance, somehow it is easier for writers to write in Paris...

They were all part of the literary mix in Paris and the rich cultural life that I craved after my reclusive years at Cloudwalk. I was hungry for the exchange of ideas, a side of me that I had neglected, and I was pleased beyond measure to be back into it..."

PASADENA by DAVID EBERSHOFF : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

I remember one very obnoxious classmate of mine in a creative writing program.  She said she was "suspicious" of any writing that began with physical (topographical, geographical, botanical) descriptions. 

PASADENA by DAVID EBERSHOFF  : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

This is a book about class and changing status.  Of a certain rich poverty, of people who make the best of that long moment called life, and who seem to have privilege but when it comes to what's really valuable in life, have little to nothing.

This is a book about fallible  people making the best they can do in the long moment called life.

Each and every one of them lives disappointment.  If they have hopes of romance, well, that is not how it turns out, and yet, they succeed at least temporarily at something.

It's pleasing to read a book, be it fiction or nonfiction, that takes place where you live.  "Pasadena," is a book set in Los Angeles,  Pasadena and La Jolla, during the first half of the 20th century, and it pleased me to no end as historical fiction, especially because the rich detail was of natural pre-city world, at the time when the building boom had just begun and southern California was being transformed from a small town dotted map into what you see when you fly into Southern California at night; lights for hundreds of miles of cities joined together.

At the center of this story is a girl of German immigrant father and refugee Mexican mother born high above a beach cliff in 1903, a girl who sets out lobster pots and swims without fear, and cannot imagine how her adult life will be so little of her own choosing.  That girl will one day marry into Pasadena wealth, but her life will go wrong anyway.

So, as you know, I read and review a lot of old books, books that and longer being marketed.  I know I would get more hits on this blog if I only reviewed the books that were just published and being marketed now. As a relatively unknown reviewer I could keep getting to the back of that parade but I love discovering a new author even if the work is "old."

C 2002 author
Random House is publisher.

I DON'T WANT NOTHIN FOR CHRISTMAS : FUNNY and SO TRUE!

MAN ON WIRE : DOCUMENTARY on PHILIPPE PETIT : CHRISTINE TRZYNA FILM REVIEW

MAN ON WIRE is a documentary about a Frenchman named Philippe Petit who has more than a bit of circus in him. In 1974 he managed to walk (and dance) a wire tight rope that was between the two Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. This wasn't just a stunt. It was a spectacle.

High Wire" by '90s Boston band Smackmelon is the identified music.

I got it that this daring feat, almost unimaginable, was "the artistic crime of the century," and I sure was happy that Petit and his team got away with it!


The DVD doesn't focus on the art of walking a wire but in the collaborative effort of various individuals in France and the United States to make this achievement happen, and they had to be real sneaky to haul all that equipment to the top of the towers and install it. Today if they tried to pull it off they wouldn't be able to.


I couldn't help but think about this from a 2012 perspective: because of 9/11 some would say, and I feel this, that the United States of America as is, all that privacy invading "security" as a result of the terrorist attack that fell these towers, is not the one I grew up in or want to live in, though I won't be packing up to go anywhere anytime soon. I think that we had a sense of freedom we no longer have. Such as the freedom to take chances like this! I feel sorry for children growing up in this atmosphere.


I'm reminded of a term I learned in one of my Literature - Creative Writing classes: SENTIMENTALITY FOR THE PRESENT. As I understand this term it means that in the now you know you are in the best days, and they are soon passing, like in the last second. In other words I acknowledge it's going to get worse not better.


This film made me sentimental for the pre 9/11 days, knowing that all the privacy invading "security" that I have come to accept, but which my immigrant ancestors would despise, to access any public building and many hospitals, is actually more like the Soviet Union in the Cold War than some of us patriotic types are comfortable with.


So, watching the DVD which was put out by Magnolia Pictures in the United Kingdom and funded by the National Lottery, I couldn't just watch and not think about the changes since his August 7th, 1974 walk, and while watching I was with the project every step of the way. At the same time I felt that sentimentality for the present.