OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE PRAYING DISEASE

For about a year, just ending, I gave prayer another chance.  Not only did I pray for myself and something I most certainly need, I even walked in the morning with my dog to a location of great natural beauty and said a simple prayer 40 days in row, early this past summer.  Also, a whole lot of other people either prayed (or are still praying) for me /us ; I include my dog in my future life, or said they were.  Catholic novenas - quickies and long drawn out ones.  Protestant Prayers - several denominations from Fundamentalist to Progressive.  God Knows What Prayers.

When I would explain my dilemma to people, granted these people are strangers or extremely new friends, often they would say "I'll pray for you."  Well, what else could they do but invest in magic or miracle since they aren't going to roll up their sleeves or be pragmatic?  

I thanked them sincerely.

At first I was going to keep my needs and desires and prayers private but I got to talking to a woman who had a worse situation than me; just about everyone would agree that someone whose long time partner has physically disappeared without a trace has a worse situation than me.  She was not only keeping the faith, but she went out to a bookstore on a needed day off from work and bought me a book of daily meditations and so I promised her I would read the book every day.

The "voice" of the book is of Jesus/God and he keeps encouraging me to depend on him, clear my mind for him, be full of gratitude for what I have, and so on. I just cannot do it, have that kind of trust that whatever happens in my life is His Will, not Mine,  and I should be satisfied. 

Recently, without asking me first, which I think is basic respect, three people put me on PRAYER LISTS.  Shit, I don't want that up on the Internet, I really do not.   I had to work on forgiveness about this, the "they meant well," absolution.  Still I get angry and think to tell them "Take that down!"

I was told that I must "pray continuously."

That I needed to "Keep in the Word."  (This means read the Bible continuously.)

That I need to trust that Jesus will provide me just what it is He Knows I Need.

The person being asked for results was mostly Jesus, though the Holy Spirit figured in there too.  In fact, I always have had a difficult time with the Three Persons in One God notion, and I find myself feeling very different about prayer to The Father, the Son (Jesus), or the Holy Spirit (aka the Holy GHOST!).  The Father - it always feels uncomfortable to me especially in the  medieval aspect of Lord of the Manor and peasants begging (me) language.  He seems to be an Old Testament character who is mean and jealous and booming his voice all over the countryside.  Jesus - well, I think a person actually lived on this earth, a rebel, but I don't think he saved my soul by dying on the cross and I wish people would stop trying to make me feel guilty for that; who can argue that Christianity isn't massive in this world?  I like his ideas though. Which makes me think Bernie Sanders is a rare Christian in politics. The Holy Spirit, some say was once a feminine energy, but maybe I'm most comfortable with this person because he is the least represented in art. The most mysterious.

Well, I have not gotten what I very much want and need.

And so the prayers start talking praying MORE or waiting for Grace or Miracles.

They talk "God's Time." 

Can I deny that maybe if it were not for all this good wishing, all this pledging of good will and friendship, I might be completely slayed?  No I cannot.  The Power of Prayer; there's a book with that title that emphasizes the positive.

Right now I feel guilty for posting this agnostic post.

It's not like I should have Great Expectations when in fact I have NOT PRAYED for many years.  Who am I to expect A Little Something when I have not done my part praying?

I think prayer can be relaxing.  Praying can help you focus on what you want.
But I am too prone to finding a proof or an answer in something that will later prove not to be.  I have done this one way or another many times in my life, probably because I was tired.  Tired of waiting for things other people find easy or take for granted.

Maybe I'm just tired now.

My Christmas mail was full of religious based wishes, a certain wink-wink that we are all Christians aren't we.  But we are not.

What I feel the most concern about is that some of the prayers seem to think that if you stop, you won't get what you want.  It's superstitious. It's like they expect doom if they give up praying, or wanting, or needing.

C 2018 Christine Trzyna  / Christine Trzyna BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved.

THANKSGIVING TURNS OUT NOT TO BE A BUST AFTER ALL

A well, what did I hear on the radio but a program in which people were calling in to describe BAD THANKSGIVINGS.  Really. 

But actually mine turned out to be one in which I felt cared about and included.

Went to a potluck noonish with Gracie.  She enjoyed some turkey as well.

Took her home and went back out to join some nice people at a restaurant where  I ordered SOUP.  All the turkey I wanted already.

Most amazing thing was that I was invited to 2 more...

DELETING THE DAY - THANKSGIVING

Here I am thinking of Thanksgivings Past - and some of them were awful.  

This one is also going to be especially awful.

What makes this one especially awful?

I'm bitten up by NoSeeUms - ie. insects I never see or feel on my skin that have left me itchy and scratching.  I actually think some of these are spider bites. Others?  I hear there is a tiny Chinese mosquito that likes to live indoors: people are closing their toilet seat lids and dumping their dog's water bowls more often. I have bites up and down my arms and legs, on my chest.  I've been wearing pants and socks and long sleeves to bed but it seems no use. I've never been so bitten up in my life. 

I have a sinus headache due to the terrible fires in Malibu/Calabassas.  I used to travel out that way and go to Broad/Zuma/Point Dume so I watched news coverage to see if I recognized anything burning or burned.  This devastation and that of Paradise, California has got me feeling down.  And all those people waiting for End Times are including these fires as evidence.

Turkey is no big deal these days. People, including me, eat it all year around. Along with stuffing and green beans and cranberry sauce. Someone recently said to me of Thanksgiving, "I won't used canned." (How is that for status?)  Anyone who is my friend and might have invited me to eat with them is leaving town.  

I went into the 99 Cent Only store and Christmas music was blasting.  I hate to go shopping to the theme of yet another holiday being celebrated weeks before it should be, the music being used to create anxiety in me that I need to spend more money and shop for it. 

Someone made me an extremely improbable job offer as the Next Great Thing For Me. I tried to be open minded. Do I really want to leave the county for a more rural area where there might not be anything much to do in the evenings?

C 2018 Christine Trzyna

PAINTED OVER - A MEMORY OF BEING AN ARTIST

I was known as "the artist" when I was a teenager, maybe the best artist in my small high school at the time. I became part of the art world early.

One time we had a substitute teacher in the art room.  She took herself seriously as an artist - beatnik. She showed up wearing a black felt tammy over her hair and a long white shirt.  She took her brush out and started painting over my painting of an imaginary landscape. Apparently my face fell.  Though she probably meant to show me a technique, with one of her own brushes, rather than the ratty old brushes my football obsessed high school managed to budget for, when my face fell other students noticed. They corralled me to tell me they saw my face and that it fell and commiserated.  How I must have felt.

So this was a small canvas that I was working on. The school budget was so dishonoring of artists that teachers had to go to thrift stores and buy used canvases they thought could be reused.

I was dating someone who had a car.  Maybe one of the few who had a car of his own and an allowance to put gas in it.  Apparently a lot of people called him for transportation.  One woman in particular.  When she heard he was dating me, she wasn't pleased. He wasn't on call for rides anymore. So one day she went into the art room and gessoed over my almost complete landscape.  I got there just in time to identify this canvas as mine and to wash the gesso off before it dried.  Painting saved.

So the painting was then exhibited in one of those glassed-in cases down the hall from the art room.  A student one year ahead of me apparently felt competitive.  He went in there and without permission took my painting down and put his up.  He was caught.

A teacher took his down and put mine back up.  (He would also compete with me to design his senior class play set. Actually his set was much better because the play he was working on was far more interesting than my senior class play.  He went on to be the set designer for a city theater.  He managed to give me a dirty look or act haughty when we passed each other in the halls for a year. Rarely was anyone so jealous of me.

My landscape I gifted to my boyfriend with the car.  His mother was proud of the painting or maybe even me. I watched as she got a nail and hammered it into the plaster.  She hung the painting up above the entrance to his bedroom door.  This was a very big deal.  His father had designed the house to have perfect thick plaster.

We broke up. I don't know what happened to the painting after that.  I have a vague memory of the size and composition of the landscape. I recall that I put a sun in it.  There were long grasses.
I suspect that one day my painting was thrown in the trash or maybe donated.  But you never know. It might still hang on a wall somewhere with my painterly name in the corner using a very fine brush.

C Christine Trzyna  2018

EMPLOYED - HOMELESS - HUNGRY : TALKING TO STRANGERS

I remet him on a tourist tram.  He was using the free tram to get to free showers.  

His story several weeks ago ignited my desire to write to Bernie Sanders. So I did. A few days after Bernie announced his ideas about going after the richest of the rich, such as Jeff Bezos of Amazon. 

The man - 40 something - had been working for an Amazon warehouse, he said.  He had not made enough to rent in the area - not yet.  He was doing a good job.  He was neat and clean. He looked fit.  His hair was short.  He's a WASP. Then they found out he was sleeping outdoors, which is called sleeping rough.  They called him a bum and told him to get out of there. OK, maybe there is more to the story, such as differing opinions.  But I believed him.

I wish Bernie had not used the term Socialist Democrat when he was running for President of the United States because we Americans are afraid of anything Socialist. Is it Socialism or is it Judaic-Christianity?  The real thing - not the greedy, materialistic, the hell with you, I got mine, that some of us now associate with both groups because of our personal experiences with them - is what Sanders endorses, even if he never set foot in a church or temple.

Someone once told me it says in the Bible that there will always be poor people. The Bible again... as a Big Excuse. If you want this country to be "one nation under God" (i.e. God first, country second) if you want this to be a "Christian country" think about it.  What would the Jewish radical Jesus do?  What would a genuine human do? 

Where are the psychologists on the front lines of social change? I learned in Psych 101 that one of the goals of the profession was to make the world a better place.  I also learned about the needs pyramid.  Basically, it is not true that poverty makes you a better artist (or a better anything). Actually, you produce best when your basic needs are met.  Only then can you go beyond survival. Being an artist is often like being a surfer; it helps if you grew up with wealth, this I learned to be true through the years. You only have the audacity to be an artist when you're poor - and then you're usually exhausted from working for a living - too exhausted to paint. Asking someone who does not know where they will sleep safely or who does not have enough to eat and is stuck in survival scrounging for their basic needs to be met to also work full time is asking a lot - too much.  All their resources are to stay alive.

Is there enough?  Are we really the "richest country?"

The man who got fired by an Amazon warehouse left the county where he was working and homeless to come back to LA to be homeless and find warehouse work, which there is plenty of, especially in the business of shipping packages from Amazon or forwarding them. He's got the skill of a fork lift driver, that helps.  Will he ever make enough to afford to rent?

Ask yourself when you order from Amazon how you are complicit in this scenario.

On the tourist tram he had good news: the local Work Source had sent him on some interviews and he'd been hired to start in a few days.  The bad news?  He had already used his EBT benefit (turned on as a restaurant benefit - i.e. fast food - due to his homelessness) for the month.  He also had no money for bus fare to get to the job in three days. It would then be the middle of next month before he saw either GR or a paycheck.  I wanted to give him the bus fare but didn't have any money on me to do that.  I was able to direct him to a local place that has a community meal outdoors.

Gracie and I decided to go by there at the end of our afternoon. We saw him sitting alone - with a pile of food in front of him - a few extra sandwiches on the side.

He put a forkful of pasta in his mouth and grunted.  He speared another forkful. He was eating fast - like someone who hadn't in days. A tear sprung from his eye.  He lifted his head up to look at the sky - or maybe Jesus or God - and said, whispering, Thank You!

C 2018 Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved

EVALUATING YOU TUBE VIDEOS

Once upon a time I had an embedded YouTube player in this blog.

I enjoyed listening to the favorite songs I loaded on to it as I wrote.

Then one day YouTube got sold, soon enough my password into it which was attached to a Yahoo account stopped working, and the forsaken YouTube channel still shows up on the Internet though I want it taken down and many of the songs I loaded on it went poof a while back. 

There were a couple ways to look at the borrowing of music from YouTube. One was that it was a lot like a lending library.  We've used books, films, music and so on from our lending libraries without guilt about what happens to the intellectual properties involved.  Re YouTube, those were the days when people posted videos with some notion of community interest and volunteerism - not much for profit.

However, the more commercial YouTube got, the more posters profited - while original artists languished in unpaid hell - the less comfortable I got with this borrowing.  It seemed to me that crediting the artists might have given them some advertising or some patronage. But I've met artists who were ripped during their careers and seeing their work up on YouTube just ripped them back up.

Some people are making a living on creating YouTube videos with original content and art.  

Some of these are of high quality, a pleasure to look at, intriguing, and worth your time.

Finding videos that are worth your time is increasingly difficult.  It's one more thing that can waste your time.

More often I find videos that are confusing because they have agendas, sound authoritative, but are spinning opinion.  Conspiracy theories are often in this category.  There's nothing wrong with having an opinion.  It's all American to have an opinion.  However, I WISH YOUTUBE WOULD HAVE AN OPINION CATEGORY when you chose to advance or refine your search.  I'm sure that those who are trying to present themselves as alternative news stations would hate to put themselves in the opinion category, but to a viewer/listener it would be helpful.

Among the things I would like to filter out are ROBO VOICES.  I don't want to hear any "news" delivered by a robo voice, which often mistakes words and pronunciations and has a hint of "anonymous" in it.  I'd like to filter out the names of accounts.  If I determine that an account is fake news (exaggerated gossip) maybe I would prefer to eliminate it from selections.


C 2018  Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved

ROBERT TOWNE (1974) : PREFACE AND POSTSCRIPT TO CHINATOWN

No script ever drove me nuttier, as I tried one way and another casually to reveal mountains of information about dams, orange groves, incest, elevator operators, etc. As in most states, it finally comes down to exile or death; my wife in her wisdom banished me and my growing shame to any island of choice - in this case the cheapest, closest and as it happened, most perfect, Catalina.

There in the fall of 1972, inside the flaking white and green trimmed dusty, clapboard of Banning Lodge, perched between Cat Harbor and Isthmus Cove, I wrote the heart of "Chinatown" - with the aid and comfort of two friends, one who lived with me and one who visited me in banishment - Hira my dog and Edward Taylor, since college my Jiminy Crickett, Mycroft Holmes, and Edmund Wilson.  Eddie would periodically drop out of the sky on a Catalina Seaplane, Hira would chase forty head of buffalo into the windsock waving at the shore line of Cat Harbor, just on a whim, and I would whine and wring my hands - and slowly discover my invisible collaborator on "Chinatown."


EXCERPT FROM
Writing Los Angeles
A Literary Anthology
Edited by David L. Ulin
Library of America publisher
Copyright 2002

Page 679-680

CROSSED OUT - PAINTED OVER - TOTALLY SURPRISED

Throughout my life I've done a lot of volunteer work.  More informally than not.  Not to be confused with work in which there was an intent or promise to be paid -eventually.  And for the most part I did it without any expectation of recognition and reward.  I didn't want to be called out. So I wasn't counting the days or hours or keeping track of it. If I start feeling uncomfortable or if I felt that people were depending on me as if I were a paid employee and then not paying, I withdrew.  

At one place I volunteered they never failed to say Thank You each and every time I got ready to leave.  I was called Volunteer of the Year after I kept cool and saved someone's life. But I moved on. And when I needed a reference they were nowhere to be found. At another place I volunteered they were full of compliments - "The longest running and best class we've ever offered" - but never actually said Thank You.  When I needed a reference they were nowhere to be found either. 

Recently I got snagged into some volunteer work I wasn't planning on. I was invited to go to a party by a person who had me meet her at a certain address.  When I got there, she wasn't waiting to go, she was working with other people on a fund raiser, and rather than sit and watch, I pitched in to organize for a rummage sale.  Hours went by. I thought we were supposed to start heading to the party around noon. We got there in time for dinner. It was relaxing and enjoyable but I could have used those hours I was pitching in to take care of some of my own business.  A few days later I got a message that they needed more help. I said I would come by on my way home but only for an hour and a half.  At the hour and a half point, well, I got snagged into another hour. 

So the other night I showed up at another place - let's call it my REAL VOLUNTEER GIG - for a fund raiser for a cause I'm aligned with. I was behind the scenes as I like to be.  There had been some chaos earlier when no fewer than 6 people - trying to be helpful - showed up over where I was supposed to be and did the equivalent of rewriting my book or painting over my canvas. I was upset and spoke up to one of the organizers.

I was at my post as someone began to acknowledge volunteers who put so much more time and energy into it than me.  All these people were in my opinion supremely deserving. When I heard someone saying, "And now for Christine... is Christine still here? I stretched my neck to see who this person Christine is.  Then, well... it was me.  My feet moved me forward but I could feel the blood heading for my face. I was given a certificate, it was sweet, but I was so discombobulated that I had to be spun around to face a camera. Apparently my embarrassment was so apparent, I got an apology the next day. 

I'm not going to hang my certificate on the wall, but I did make copies to include in a resume packet.  The certificate is actually a great idea.  As people come and go, when no one is alive or locatable for that reference, I have it. And yes, I will continue to do my REAL VOLUNTEER GIG - as long as I can.

C 2018  Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved

TRUMAN CAPOTE (1950) HOLLYWOOD - LOCAL COLOR COLLECTION

Yesterday, feeling greedy, I remembered ravishing displays of fruit outside a large emporium I'd driven admiringly past a number of times.  Mammoth oranges, grapes big as ping- pong balls, apples piled in rosy pyramids.  There is a sleight of hand about distances here, nothing is so near as you supposed, and it is not unusual to travel ten miles for a package of cigarettes.  It was a two-mile walk before I even caught sight of the fruit stand.  The long counters were tilted so that from quite far away you could see the splendid wares, apples, peaches. I reached for one of these extraordinary apples, but it seemed to be glued to its case.  A sales girl giggled... "Plaster," she said, and I laughed too, a little feverishly perhaps, then wearily followed her into the deeper regions of the store where I bought six small, rather mealy apples, and six small, rather mealy pears.

Excerpted from:
Page 363-364





Writing Los Angeles
A Literary Anthology
Edited by David L. Ulin
Library of America publisher
Copyright 2002

9/11 as I REMEMBER IT - VIOLENCE REDEFINED

The morning of 9/11 I was listening to KFI - Bill Handel on the radio.  Bill is still on the air but I don't listen to KFI much anymore.  (Audio Books suffice.)  He is known for a sort of jokey sarcasm - and an exaggerated way of telling stories - on himself - and on others.  For instance, he once gave a blow by blow account of a death row inmate being fried that was compelling.  So Bill is a character - a personality - and when he started talking about what was happening in New York, there was a question in my mind - it's a joke right?  But it was not.  The television set confirmed it and of all people to call first, I called my then building manager. He didn't believe me. Then I called my best friend - who didn't answer the phone. Like everyone else, I was riveted to the television set. 

And then, then I became depressed.

Someone gifted me something I really needed, something that no one else on this earth at the time would have thought to gift me, something that no one else I knew at the time could afford, and probably the most generous gift I ever received, but the box sat there unopened.  I wasn't even curious to open the Apple box.  I was moving through molasses. I awaited word that we were going to war, that war had been officially declared and called war, rather than a "military action."

At this time I went to a number of coffee houses in order to write.   I went over to one where I had a coffeehouse friend who was an artist, a painter of dog portraits, whose work was even published in a book not of his own making.  The artist told me his own mother had been in the building that the first plane hit.  In fact it probably hit her very office.  His family in New York City wanted him to get on a plane and fly there right away.  They were in denial.  They wanted him to go to the hospitals looking for their mom.  He didn't go.  He knew there was no chance she was alive.

The impact of the loss of his mom in such a horrific way was so strong that this artist could not paint.  He could not hold a brush.  Months later he was trying another form of creative expression - writing songs - to overcome the paralysis. He was clearly not in his normality for a long time.

A couple weeks after 9/11, while still feeling angry and powerless, I went ahead and opened the gift.  It was a laptop computer and I needed it to write.  It was intended as a practical gift but it became one in which self expression was also a way of maintaining the healing I needed because of this horrible event.

While the construct and enormity of 9/11 made it a special attack on an icon of the United States of America, I realize also that it was the closest thing to a military attack ON OUR TURF since Pearl Harbor.  Imagine though what it was for the Japanese when the United States dropped the atomic bomb.  Or enduring the Holocaust.  Or any other violent events that have taken place on this earth - and do now.

Is the world really getting more violent?  Mass shootings for no good reason beyond someone's hatred or insanity seem to happen with regularity.  Would they be as appealing to their originators if it were not for the fast global news coverage made possible not just on television but internet and cell phones?

A recent foray into a Fundamentalist Bible Study - long story as I know you know this is not like me - has been interesting in that just about every other woman there believes with certainty that we are in the End Times. Some people there think that President Donald Trump is in place, no matter how he screws it up, to usher in the End Times, citing his recognition of Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Trump and those like him are, to me, believers in the Prosperity Gospel, a kind of  New Age defilement of Christ's message. Christians feed the hungry, cloth and shelter those who have none, and there is a traditional acceptance and embrace of the poor as worthy human beings. The Prosperity Gospel to me is more like Janis Joplin singing Mercedes Benz.  I guess it could be argued that God gives prosperity to those who HAVE so they can give to the poor, but let's not talk about Amazon's unlivable wages, or that Google's blue collar employees live in RV's near the Silicon Valley "campus."
.
Some think President Trump can do just about anything, because it's really Vice President Mike Pence who is the Real Believer and the Next President, one way or another.  There is lots of talk in this group about which politicians are "Believers" or not.  I'm not there to question the class or the teacher's belief system, just to absorb differences as comfortably as I can and learn some things that I didn't know about the lifeways of the ancient people of Bible times, particularly the few women mentioned.

As a more liberal Christian friend of mine said, "There have ALWAYS been wars.  So it's always the End Times."

One day in the class, someone said that Oprah Winfrey was leading millions of people straight to hell.  (On the list of deceivers was also Shirley MacLaine.)  So what is that if not intolerance?

And this is CALIFORNIA? 

I have no answers at the moment.  I just know that 9/11 became a pivotal moment in our history which marked a change of consciousness about our vulnerability and need for defense.

As a child in Catholic grade school we often prayed for the President, to make good decisions for us all, just as we did the Pope.  If you're a praying person, this is a good time to do so.

C 2018 Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved

HE CRIED ABOUT HIS DEAD CAT - AND HE'S BRITISH - TALKING TO STRANGERS

I was walking with my dog one morning recently, and though she is getting older, and sometimes doesn't want to take a long walk, she is still cute.  A man was standing there and reach down to pet her.  She looked in his eyes and he burst into tears!"  I mean this man was sobbing.

"My cat just had to be put down!"  he cried.

Turned out that he had come to Los Angeles with his girlfriend, a local California girl, and his cat had been in the hospital a week when the decision had been made back in Britain.  His cat was only four years old.  So he had the expectation of it living a longer life and that he would see it again.

We talked as the tears kept coming.

"Well I said, you just proved the stereotype of the British with stiff upper lips is wrong!"

His girlfriend smiled.  So did he, still through tears.

The death of a pet usually is felt strongly by those who love them.

I asked him if he ever heard of Sylvia Browne, the now deceased psychic who wrote a lot of books and appeared lots on the old Montel Williams show.  He had not.  She was once well known, though towards the end of her life she took some criticism for a very wrong prediction.  Browne wrote about pets and heaven.  She assured everyone that when we go through the tunnel to the light at the other end ALL our pets are waiting.

Well, I feel really guilty about a couple goldfish,a turtle, and a hamster I killed not knowing any better.  I.E. don't make the goldfish bowl too clean, a turtle really does need a sun lamp and a companion, and do not feed a hamster a whole leaf of lettuce, which it will eat and then die of the shits over.

I hope these creatures have forgiven me. 

DIANE VON FURSTENBERG : A SIGNATURE LIFE : BOOK EXCERPT

DIANE VON FURSTENBERG with LINDA BIRD FRANCKE : A SIGNATURE LIFE : BOOK EXCERPT
C 1998 Diane Von Furstenberg Simon and Shuster Publishers

page 39-40

As a small child I immersed myself in books, trading places with the characters of the Comtesse de Segur. My mother added poetry, insisting that I memorize and recite to her the seventeenth-century fables of La Fontaine, such as "Le Corbeau et le Renard" and "La Cigale et la Fourmi." She was a young mother, and until I was about eight she treated me like her toy, alternately playing with me and torturing me with her demands. I was relieved when my brother, Phillippe, was born... I didn't particularly enjoy being a child, though my childhood was perfectly happy. I wanted to be older than I was and never liked people who patronized me because I was a child. I never played with toys or dolls. When I wasn't reading, I was talking to myself in the mirror and pretending I was in the theater. I played make- believe, but it was somehow always about plain real life. I couldn't wait to grow up. After my own children were born, I would always make a pointy of treating them with respect as individuals and encouraging them to grow up within the realities of the world.

MUSES WITH WORSE PROBLEMS THAN MINE - TALKING TO STRANGERS

Talking to strangers seems natural to me and it's helped me when I need to interview someone or take a poll. I'm not a snob about it. I talk to people from all walks of life. I wasn't always at ease like this but I think it started when I was in sales and I grew in confidence also when I went back to college and loved classroom discussions. Walking my dog, I've been part of many conversations that start on the basis of dogs and expand out.

In recent weeks I've had a number of encounters that left me feeling personally "What Problems Do I Have?'

First there was the lady I met in a thrift store I'm not really into thrift stores like some people are I rarely go to them but I like to find art supplies in them. There was a woman looking through clothes and holding dresses up to her body. She asked me what I thought of a dress and we got to talking. Soon the conversation went like this.

"Do you notice that I'm pregnant?  Five months.  And I'm 38 years old."

"Yes  you are!" I said, noticing her prominent belly.

"I had a bad day yesterday.  I went to the hospital.  They heard no heart beat.  My baby's dead."

The woman threw her arms around me hugged me and began to weep, huge tears running down her face.

I hugged her back and asked God to protect her.

I wondered where the father was.

She needed to be held and to cry.

"They weren't nice about it.  They didn't know I lost another baby just six months ago.  They told me to go home and wait to miscarry.  But I think I felt something this morning - a flutter.

Maybe the test was wrong."

***

I was hot and tired.  I had my dog with me on the bus in her wheeled carrier that's like a suitcase. The air was polluted by the fires. I was having trouble breathing. I'd taken her into an air-conditioned office with me for the day. I was so allergy sick I was dull. I wasn't looking forward to sticking to the mattress all night. We need a HEALTHY and HAPPY living environment, I was thinking.  We needed that Yesterday!

The driver said, "You've got to have FAITH in God."

I said, "I can only try to have faith."

She said, "No you must TRUST God,  You must BELIEVE.  You must KNOW that he's going to come through for you."

I simply cannot make myself think or feel this way.  I need proof.  My ideas about God are that there is this Intelligence to the Universe but I don't think He cares so much about me, even if i do things His way. So I didn't lie to her. But I didn't want to put her much stronger spirituality through any tests.

Then she said, "I've got a situation. There's just me and my two kids. My husband disappeared months ago. He flew into Atlanta. He went to Tennessee. The last anyone saw him. He was there.  Me and the kids - we have dreams of him.  I KNOW he is alive.  I KNOW he is out there."

I don't know that he's not.

I've seen too many TV shows.

"Have you done everything?

"Yes, on TV, everything!"

A few days later I waited for this particular bus driver to go past, even though I wasn't getting on.

I handed her a note that said, "David Paulidis Missing 411."  "Look this guy up on the Internet - on YouTube - Don't Freak! - Big Foot I almost whispered. He's an ex cop and maybe he can make sure for you that they did everything right in the investigation."

She took the note.

And I have not seen her driving that bus since.

***
She got told about the huge number of photocopies she was making and that her copies seemed to be jamming the printer. She was a lady with obviously dyed hair and clothes 10 (or more) years too young for her. She meant to be nice. She offered to bring her own paper. The place closed and so we headed out the door at the same time. She was in there looking for work. Verbally she gave me her resume. She had done a lot of physical labor - painting.  I tried to relate with a story about how I once hung wallpaper - three clients before I quit.  I didn't know anyone hiring. I respected that she'd once contracted with a huge apartment building. She told me she used a toothbrush on the light switches.

"You need a ride home?" she asked.

"Well I only have a half hour walk and it is a beautiful day. I was going to stop and get my dog some food at the market."

"Get in I'll drive you there."

So I did get into the car she was living in. Not obviously. She drove me first to check in with her friend living in his van. In the five minutes to the market, she told me tomorrow was going to be an even better day.

Her boyfriend was coming out of prison.

***
All three of these people are muses, each in their own way, and not on purpose.  But don't judge me on how or why.

C 2018 - 2025  Christine Trzyna

WARREN BEATTY - STAR by PETER BISKIND : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

I don't normally review books that I wouldn't give one star, but there is a purpose in not recommended this book and that is the whys I hated it. 


This book was so unbalanced a star bio of Beatty (whose film REDS is one of my favorites) that it's as if a personal vendetta got the backing of a publisher.  (Shame!  Shame!)  One half step above the trashing typical of a Darwin Porter book, Biskind's entire effort is - cringe worthy. I kept listening in hopes that I would finally come to some redemption.  Unbelievable to me is that so many hateful people would be willing to be quoted and so few loving.  My guess is that the loving wouldn't speak to the author out of their respect for Beatty, that is if the author tried to talk to them.  Attacked so, its no wonder Beatty and many other stars are hell bent on guarding their private lives and personally refuse to cooperate with a memoirist or biographer, even refuse to defend themselves or comment.  Pretty much deemed a failure by the author, I come to the defense of Beatty in that if he is a failure, he is a failure who kept on trying, and how many of us would love to fail as well as he has!  Funny how so very many people undoubtedly heard of the difficulties of working with him but kept signing on.  OK, I know everyone is desperate to make a living, but still.  Beatty has managed to hire a great number of talent people in his years as a film maker.
Biskind also suppose that it's Beatty's reputation as a sex symbol and seducer that makes him famous. He implies the star only married and had children after becoming a washed up old man.  In a ridiculous attempt to compare Beatty's career accomplishments, he brings up Clint Eastwood!  Excuse me but are we comparing road warrior movies that include a pet chimp with the Russian Revolution?!


And so this book reminds me that a friend always sees the best in you and an enemy always sees the worst.  As a writer involved in memoir or biography, aim for the truth, but keep mean spirited analysis and bullshit psychobabble out of it. 


Enough said.


C 2018  All Rights Reserved   Christine Trzyna.

MRI PROVES READERS EXPERIENCE WHAT THEY'RE READING

SALON : RISE OF SOCIAL READER - GOODBY VIRGINIA WOOLF'S SOLITARY

EXCERPT:

Virginia Woolf, writing to her pal Ethel Smyth, noted that “the state of reading consists in the complete elimination of the ego.” Hers was a 20th-century vision of a reader — someone who gets lost in books, someone whose identity is subsumed by the identity of another mind, a narrator. She’s describing a metaphoric experience: the reader becomes someone else.

York University psychologist Raymond Mar has done the MRI scans to back her up. We now know that when we’re reading novels, our brains light up as though we were experiencing the same things the hero experiences. When we read, we rehearse the lives of others. We are, in other words, exercising our empathy.

But Woolf’s ideal reader, who disappears as she reads and tries on alternate identities, is now under siege. Our stories are going social and, as new platform technologies remake the reading experience into something increasingly interactive, we now must ask what we’re giving up in the bargain.

THE SLOW SLOW SLOW CLIFFHANGER

THE ATLANTIC - WHAT'S THE OPPOSITE OF A CLIFF HANGER

EXCERPT : What’s the opposite of a cliffhanger? Tension, suspense, mysteries presented and then left deliciously unsolved—this is all the longstanding stuff of televised dramas, ported over from serialized novels and soap operas to guide the plots of shows that have their own literary aspirations. Cliffhangers themselves (the term arose from Thomas Hardy and his preference for unsubtle plot twists) are time-honored narrative devices, and when executed well they have proven extremely effective at sustaining audience interest and attention and frustration. Dickens used cliffhangers. So did Dallas. So have many, many shows, of the past both distant and recent. 

JAMES M. CAIN (1933) PARADISE : EXCERPT FROM WRITING LOS ANGELES

JAMES M. CAIN (1933) PARADISE : EXCERPT FROM WRITING LOS ANGELES

page 108-109

Wash out, then, the "land of sunshine, fruit, and flowers" : all these are here, but not with the lush, verdant fragrance that you have probably imagined.  A celebrated movie comedian is credited with the remark that "the flowers don't smell and the women do," but in my observation nothing smells.  Wash out the girl with the red cheeks peeping coyly from behind a spray of orange leaves.  The girl is here, but the dry air has taken the red out of her cheeks; the orange trees are here, but they don't look that way: the whole picture has too much pep, life, and moisture in it....

Wash out the palm trees, half visible beyond the tap dancing platform.  Palm trees are here, but they are all phonies, planted by people amused with the notion of a sub-tropical climate, and they are so out of harmony with their surroundings that they hardly - notice.  Wash out the movie palazzos, so impressive in the photographs. They are here, too, at any rate in a place called Beverly Hills, not far from Hollywood; but they are like the palm trees, so implausible in their surroundings that they take on the lifelessness of movie wets.  Above all, washout the cool green that seems to be the main feature of all illustrations got out by railroads.  Wash that out and keep it out."

Page 112)  Here Cain tries to come up with the positives

First, I would list the unfailing friendliness and courtesy of the people.  It is a friendliness somewhat different from what you find elsewhere, for it does not as a rule include hospitality.  The man who will take all sorts of trouble to direct you to some place you are trying to find does not ordinarily invite you into his house; it is not that he has any reason for keeping you out, it is merely that it does not occur to him to do it.

Hospitality, I think, comes when people have sent down roots it goes with pride in a home, pride in ancestors that built the home, conscious identification with a particular soil.  These people, in one way or another, are all exiles.  They have come here recently, and their hearts are really into the places that they left.  Thus, if they do not do as much visiting with each other as you see in other parts of the country, or the gossiping that goes with visiting, they do have the quick friendliness that exiles commonly show, and I must say it is most agreeable...

With the friendliness and courtesy, I would bracket the excellent English that is spoke her.  The Easterner, when he first hears it, is likely to mistake it for the glib chatter of a habitual salesmanship....


Writing Los Angeles

A Literary Anthology
Edited by David L. Ulin
Library of America publisher
Copyright 2002

MUSES ON THE GROUND IN SANTA CRUZ

MUSES ON THE GROUND IN SANTA CRUZ

One day I just got up in the fogpit and drove to the smogpit.
One world and another linked by fast highway.
Sometimes your other world is across the street and doesn't require drastic measures like mileage or time zones, but what did I know?
Walk in closets and toilets in parks were called "alternative housing."
I had to get out of there.

From somewhere high up, the clouds, or maybe the sea cliff, I left an imprint first.
I dragged my heart through the ocean waves before I left, dangling it in a bag made of net, that also held semi precious stones, letting the salt water do its work.

I left muses on the ground in Santa Cruz.
Some made me do what I wanted.
Some made me do what I didn't.
Some just left me terribly confused.

And I heard this song coming in from somewhere, in my head, Bob Dylan's Girl From North Country, so I went out and bought the album it was on so I could hear it again and wonder
who I left behind, who loved me. That and Alanis Morrisette's Ironic.

There were muses on the shelves of the libraries.
There were muses in binders left in coffee houses.
There was a muse who came up to me and pronounced my surname properly.

I had to hide my signature.
I went from handwriting to penmanship.


C 2018-2015  Christine Trzyna 
All Rights Including Internet and International Rights Reserved

FAKE NEWS IS REAL

Even with an open mind, listening and watching YouTube videos, you know that many of them are not NEWS but conspiracy inspired opinion pieces and there are a lot of people out there who have no way of knowing that.  Especially when the "NEWS" is speculation, and has been proven to be so, these videos are time wasters.

But on a more personal level, anyone who has been slayed by gossip whores knows there is such a thing as FAKE NEWS.

ENOUGH ABOUT

ME!

I DON'T UNDERSTAND

1) Roses with no scent.
2) Roses that smell like roach killer.
3) Roses that were bred not to have thorns.
4) Sinus medication that smells like roses.

PAUL MC CARTNEY's SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY and THE RINGO SHOW AT THE GRAMMY MUSEUM

Just watched the video of the recent Late Late Show with James Cordon, in which Paul McCartney makes the rounds with him singing songs.  So they were in Liverpool and what got to me - during the near half hour video - was when they returned to the house Paul grew up in, where he composed his first songs and had John Lennon over.  Such a little row house, with the sink his dad hand-washed undies in, and the bathroom as the best acoustics in the place. Clearly the house Paul grew up in is something of a local tourist spot since there are early Beatles photos on the walls and so on. Paul said he had NEVER been back there since the early days. That surprised me.  So I had to wonder if he went home and then processed it. I also found it interesting that his mother, who died of breast cancer when he was about 16, had come to him in a dream, saying "Let It Be!"

As you may know if you've read this blog from the beginning, Paul McCartney makes occasional appearances in my dreams, and usually he is cheerfully on the move.  When he shows up in my dreams I take him to be the spirit of creativity.

But last year - wish I'd written down the date - I had an entirely different Paul McCartney dream.  He was sitting on a chair, not in movement.  Yes he had his left handed guitar in his lap but he wasn't playing it. I sat down across from him. And when I briefly touched the top of his left his hand with my right, he allowed this. Our eyes also fully met.  And Paul looked like the aging man he is.  So maybe this had something to do with continuing to create even as one ages.

Watching the video this morning, I was thinking about the Grammy Museum, one of my favorite spots, and the Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey) Show.  Sadly, I missed the previous George show and John show.  On display was a black and white TV set that looked like it was from the very early 1960's and through some video magic, Beatles performances were being played on it continuously.  I found myself smiling, but then everyone standing around me, and all through the exhibit was smiling.  The vibe was just tremendously positive and happy.  I must know the lyrics to most of the Beatles's songs, and listened to all of them hundreds of times, yet I have no attraction to a local Beatles Songs radio show or going to see the reenactment groups that tour.

I didn't grow up with the Beatles, but then I did, simply because I had older female cousins who were into them who lead the way. And then in high school I had a friend who got an allowance and did some extreme "baby-sitting" (child-care) who had almost the entire Beatles collection, plus a hot robin's egg blue bedroom that was full of Beatle's posters.  So we'd sit and listen to these albums together.  Yet, all these songs were already Oldies.

She moved away and one day when she came back to visit, she handed me ALL her Beatles Albums and I still have them, though I have not had a stereo system to play them on in as many years. Sometimes I think I'm going to sell them.  Sometimes I think I'm going to surprise her and ship them back to her.

In a sense I was too young or too old for the Beatles.  In the question about who I idolize, I said I had stopped having idols after my teenage years, so no one.  And this is true.  Though Paul McCartney has been showing up in my dreams since I was maybe 10 or 12 years old, and in the fifth grade I made the claim that he was my boyfriend (!), my friend and I used to sit up in her tree house and go through magazines she bought, such as Creem, and try to decide who was the cutest of any number of Beatlesque mop tops.  I'm now savvy enough to know how well I was marketed to!

C 2018 Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights.

IN BOUQUETS I LOVE

Peonies, Hyacinths,Tulips - but not in the same bouquet.

I hate Bird of Paradise, any kind of Lily.

JERUSALEM : DAN BERN

I was reading some commentary on this song.  Basically, I think people are assuming that this is a love song and that Dan, the singer, is first singing to a woman who wants more of him than he is willing to give.
My interpretation is that, it is the Messiah (be that God or Dan as God) who is singing to YOU.  Don't test my love because maybe I don't love you all that much.

FAVORITE BACKGROUND MUSIC

Jazz from the early 1960's and back.  Louis Armstrong.  Mickey Hart's Planet Drum.  Played low - just a hint - no lyrics.

GROUCHO MARKS on BOOKS

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.  Inside a dog it's too dark to read."  ---Groucho Marx

THE MOST PERFECT MEAL IN A RESTAURANT I EVER ATE

A Chesapeake Bay lunch of crab cakes.  So good that both I and my dining partner closed our eyes after the first bite and then had our next bite with our eyes closed too.

JUST OUT FOR A LIGHT MEAL I'D LIKE

Middle Eastern or Mediterranean.


Sometimes I crave Thai Food.  Such as lemon grass coconut soup or fat noodles with lots of peanut sauce, but some hummus, pita bread, and olives is just enough.

Overall, I like to order food in restaurants that I'm not going to make at home.

A CHILDHOOD SPENT IN NATURE - BEST MEMORY

One summer day I woke up from a nap and had the desire to walk in the woods. I spotted a huge patch of violets and just then a visible shaft of sunlight made it through the trees and right onto that patch.  It felt to me like God wanted me to see those violets.

STOP NEWS PRINT TARIFFS ORG - CALL TO POLITICAL ACTION

STOP NEWS PRINT TARIFFS ORG - call to action

FRAN LEBOWITZ QUOTE

"Here's the problem with being ahead of your time . . . by the time everyone gets around to it, you're bored.


Fran Lebowitz in Martin Scorses's documentary about her, Public Speaking 2010
Secondary source, "Legendary Authors and the Clothes They Wore" by Terry Newman

LAVA: SONG and ANIMATION

The other day when I was out walking my dog I saw a man in a Hawaiian shirt with a guitar looking out over the ocean.  I've been watching the news about the volcano on The Big Island erupting and watching videos of lava flows, so I went over to talk to him about it. He said only vog had reached Maui. I asked him if he would sing a song for us, and he was so mellow, of course he did.  He sang romantic a song that had two lines in Hawaiian which he then translated into English.  This isn't the song he sang but found I found this video looking for volcano news and loved it.

WORST PARTIES ...

1) I gave a small dinner party in which someone I'd invited RSVP'd that they would attend, did not show, and then sent over one of their friends - who proved to be an obnoxious groper of a man - without asking me.  After he tried to get hands on with me, I had to ask him to leave.
2) Grown adults who are stuck in their fraternity days don't know that blasting music and drunkenness is no fun.
3) The time I threw a birthday potluck for a business associate at my place of business, with a strict time line.  We had the lunch hour to lose the business.  The woman who was bringing the main disk purposely kept everyone nervously waiting for her.  (I swear she brought spam and peas but my memory may be fallible.)  See the post about reasons why I've dumped friends. She's there.

THREE PLACES I'VE NEVER BEEN THAT I'D LIKE TO VISIT

1) Catalina Island - to see the Bison herd that live in the Interior of the Island.  And since I've never been on a helicopter, I'd like to get there by helicopter.
2) Yosemite (I will stay on path and will not fall into an acid pool.)
3) The Mediterranean.  I'd like to spend time exploring the Amalfi Coast, stop in Monaco for a day or two, and then go to Greece.

DEEP WATER by PATRICIA HIGHSMITH - CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

  Tom Ripley, the sociopath serial killer of the series that involved him was required reading for me at college just when I was burning out of reading, and so I didn't appreciate Patricia Highsmith in that moment.   The Talented Mr. Ripley film changed my mind and  Iwent back into reading that book over as well as all those that followed in which Tom got away with murder.


Other of Highsmith's fictions have been turned into films as she catches on with a new generation.  Deep Water - which I listened to as an audio book - is not one in which the killer gets away with it, but as I begin to understand what Highsmith was up to with noir, I realize she is playing with the fantasy all of us must have had for at least one second of our lives.  And so the reader, safe under the covers on a dreary afternoon, with that necessary plate of crackers and cheese from Trader Joes, and a glass of wine too, listens well and explores the dark side of human nature and wonders for a while - suspense building - exactly when the character will be driven to murder - or at least stand up for himself already.  And as in other Highsmith works, when he does get to it, he does so efficiently.  In this case there isn't a lot of calculation revealed.  Rather we wonder how a husband in a loveless and sexless marriage that he still wants, can take his too youthful wife's blatant cheating, her bringing home of men into their home.  He pretends that this open relationship not of his making is actually all right with him.


If it were not this, it would be something else because we all stay too long in some situation that has the potential to break us, wishing and hoping it were not so.


Here is the small town with it's own conceits and protections.  It's cliques.  It's phoniness.  It's sexism.  Husband, Vic, is perhaps a "strange bird," but there are those who like him and those who don't, those who believe his wife, those who do not.  Those who would not blame him; they would kill their wives if they were caught cheating.  Is he just suspicious?  Well he has his reason for staying cool and staying married and that is their daughter and to compensate her for her cold and indifferent mother.  You get the idea this young woman married him just because, that motherhood was her duty.


Highsmith manages to convince us Vic is a weird character not just because he retreats to his own bedroom every night, sometimes in the wee hours as he has sat up with his wife and the man she brought home all night just daring them to go to her room with him awake.
In there are his pet snails.  They seem to do the most fornicating - very slowly.


But do we "like" him?  Aren't we encouraged as writers to write characters who are likeable - or at least understandable - or at least worth our empathy?  Well Vic is a passive man and he is a literary snob involved in the publishing business - makes me wonder who Highsmith had in mind as she wrote him.  As she likes to do there is ambiguity about her male characters' sexuality.  Does Vic also need marriage for cover?  What kind of love is his?  Did he drive his wife into the arms of other men because he doesn't want sex with her?


Will his wife manage to seduce someone who believes her and catch him before he murders again since we are pretty sure he could get the hang of it?


And so Dark Water implies the tides of emotion, the noir, as well as where the dead guy ends up, waiting to bob up into view, which he does.  And until then, you will probably enjoy the anxiety of the suspense.


C 2018 Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved

THINGS THAT PEOPLE HAVE RECENTLY CHALLENGED ME ON

1) Why won't you wear high heels? (They are uncomfortable.)
2) Why didn't you vote for Hillary Clinton? (I am still a feminist.)
3) Why do you go to the library so much? (Do you really have to ask?)

AT THE RISK OF SOUNDING STUPID

What does anyone see in football?


(To me the sound of a game in the background means that fall has arrived and that I can count on no interference in the kitchen.)

GIFTS I RECIEVED THAT I QUICKLY THREW AWAY

Quickly!
1) A massive corsage that someone who had not even called me for 6 weeks showed up with on an Easter long ago.  Was I supposed to pin this on my t-shirt?  Did his mother buy it for me?
2) Her child-sized Timex watch - without a band - that came in a Christmas package in obviously reused paper.  There was a smell of moth balls.  Later she said, "It's the thought that counts."
3) Did I mention the stale Christmas candy that also smelled of mothballs?

THREE REASONS I'VE DUMPED "FRIENDS"

1) More than one woman has used me, without my knowledge and permission, to explain to her husband where she was (or who she spent money on) when cheating on him.  Then the husband hates me and puts an end to my friendship with her.

2) Theft of Intellectual Property.

3) Those who think that when they read the words "Confidential" on the top of the letter, it's time to immediately gossip the contents.  You know who you are!

ZADIE SMITH QUOTE

"The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free." - Zadie Smith

Source:  "On Beauty" 2005
Secondary Source : "Legendary Authors and the Clothes They Wore" by Terry Newman

THE STRANGEST QUESTION A CHILD HAS EVER ASKED ME

"Do you make lots and lots of money?"

BYE BYE LOVE - EVERLY BROTHERS

PROFESSION I CAN'T HAVE THAT I'D LOVE

Anthropologist.
Anthropology is to me the most superior "social science."
I also read around archeology.

FIRST HARD BACK BOOK I BOUGHT THAT I STILL HAVE

I bought a copy of Isadora Duncan's memoir that had been published in England.  It still had a London subway ticket in it as a place mark.  Sadly I have since learned that hers was a case in which memory was fallible.

STRANGEST DREAM I'VE HAD RECENTLY

I was swimming under the sea with a variety of whales.  Around me it looked like one of those posters that depicts a variety of whales as if they all swim closely together - a fantasy.  I heard a voice over that said "go ahead and breath in the water.  It will be OK.  You can breath water."  But of course I woke up instead.

RECENT ACTIVITY THAT HAD ME MOST EXCITED

Whale Watching.
2 sets of orcas (no doubt looking to eat sea lions)
A huge whale tale.
Many spouts (I'm learning to identify whales by different sizes and shapes of spouts!)
And one huge side of a Grey Whale out feeding on a choppy sea full of white caps.
(Son of Moby Dick!)

PERSON I IDOLIZE

I was a teenager when I last idolized someone.  So no one.

PERSON I THINK I WAS IN A PAST LIFE

In a group hypnotic regression that lasted less than 15 minutes, I decided to focus on my back pain which was in part because I was sitting in a very uncomfortable chair.  I saw myself as a man wearing a white loin cloth in a simple dirt floor hut.  I had long muscles on my arms and legs, and very little hair.  I was sitting straight up with my legs before me.  I knew I had a wife who was doing laundry down by the river.  I worked on a river barge using a long pole to move it slowly from place to place.  As the hypnotherapist asked what year it was, what my name was, and where I was, I got that information.  I quickly forgot the answers to one and two but three was Assyria.


This was and is a good enough reason for back pain as any.

JULIAN ASSANGE HAS STILL NOT CRACKED UP

NOTE  September 23, 2025  I followed the Julian Assange saga for YEARS and well, it seems he was allowed to go free - in his home country of Australia.  Like the Edward Snowden saga, which I also followed for years - Snowden has married and has a child but looks to be permanently in Russia - it seems the stories have fallen out of media interest.  As of today, the Freedom of Speech is being challenged in the United States.  Of course it's not like the Freedom of Speech isn't tied into Freedom of Thought or overall Expression through Art, Ideas, Interpretations, and so on.

***

I don't know about you, but I've been following the Julian Assange Ordeal/Case/Travesty for five years and while I have mixed thoughts and feelings about the man, Wikileaks, rape accusations, and even Vegetarian Pam's visits over there to Julian in London,  I'm still not bored.

Anyone who has ever studied Journalism or who is watching the demise of paper books and paper news can't help but be fascinated by someone who calls Journalism "Transparency" ; is nothing private? 
The thing that now fascinates me the MOST is that the man still has not cracked up, though I think there are lots of people who wish he would.  He seems to have been made into an example to the world; see what will happen to you if you go against us and have strong opinions or openly publish our personal business!  (One of the things you learn in Journalism at college is that private persons are not news unless they are involved in something exceptional. Public personalities have far less privacy.) Of course, he is actually NOT BEING HELD AGAINST HIS WILL.  It is his will to evade arrest, if not for rape then some other crime, BY NOT WALKING THE HELL OUT OF THERE! 

If you've read hundreds of articles about Julian in the embassy as I have, then you know that he is not well physically. He has less movement freedom than someone in a typical jail where they get to go out into the yard for exercise and sunlight for an hour a day.

As for his vitamin e deficiencies from lack of sunlight, there are those who say to go get a sunlamp (we think they mean full spectrum,) or some daily multiple vitimins. Can't a dentist visit him and pull that tooth?

Recently Assange was cut off from using the Internet by his Ecuadorian hosts because they fear that his OPINIONS will cause economic difficulties for their country's business and relationships with other countries. (Can't they do a disclaimer such as THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED BY JULIAN ASSANGE ARE NOT NECESSARILY THOSE OF HIS HOSTS?) WORSE, he is really going to feel his isolation because he is also NO LONGER ALLOWED TO HAVE LIVE VISITS FROM ANYONE.  (Can you even imagine what Vegetarian Pam will be wearing when she talks to some FBI agent in a raincoat?)

While the room in the embassy that he dwells in (with, perhaps, some privileges to walk the hall, use the bathroom, do some interviews in another room) is really is small, he was able to go through the window of the Internet into other worlds.  Basically he is going to crack up and then maybe he will, when not in his right mind, walk on out, to handcuffs and photographers.


I am feeling his isolation because I'm a person who can't really stand to be indoors in a room in a house or a small apartment for more than a week.  OK, I have once for sure, possibly twice, CHOSEN not to leave for a week or so because I was in a very deep zone of concentration and writing.  I remained in flow for hours at a time, went to sleep, woke up in flow.  It is possible.  It is productive.  But you could end up with carpal tunnel from a marathon typing session and you should have gone to the grocer and stocked up before you try it.  Getting out into the sunlight and air is important to me.
There is one thing worse than being trapped in a place and that is being trapped in a body.  I am no Steven Hawkings; let me die.  I will not acclimate.  I will be miserable.  I will go insane if I have to be a conscious in a body I cannot control.  Don't tell me about people who typed novels using a stylus attached to their nose.


If Assange has not yet cracked up officially, and maybe he is typing away in there without being able to post, if he continues to be isolated from all human contact but for the embassy staff, they are going to have worse problems than him not bathing or his going berserkers and trashing the room.  (Both which have been reported though where's the proof? Tall book shelves have been known to detach from walls and when you no longer know for sure WHAT TIME IT IS, you may get off schedule when it comes to showers.)


I feel sorry enough for him as a human that I want to imagine that Vegetarian Pam and he have had their way with each other.  I know he is pale and pasty, but this is a man who likes to dance to Rave Music and is no innocent when it comes to seduction.  Why not?


C Christine Trzyna 2018 Al Rights Reserved

DARRELL LEA MANGO and WHITE CHOCOLATE STICKS

They didn't PAY ME to say this, but I'm hooked on these candies which have a pleasing SNAP of Belgian White Chocolate in a soft Aussie Mango Liquorice that is non gmo with no high fructose corn syrup (the enemy!)  I like the soft feel of the liquorice on my teeth followed by the SNAP...  Let's face the fact that this is lux junk food.

THE MOST INSULTING THING SOMEONE HAS EVER SAID TO ME

1) "Have you ever been in love?"  (Daaa... Am I a human being?)
2) "I thought of you when I read Sylvia Plath's poem Daddy."  (My relationship with my dad was not at all what Sylvia's was with hers.  In fact, while I respect her poetry, Sylvia is not a person I would ever befriend.  And what was worse was that at the time my dad was seriously ill, and I felt this person was mocking my genuine care and love for him.)
3) "Do you think I'm stupid and have all this!"  (Said to me by a homeowner who wouldn't be if it were not for a hefty downpayment and continual floods of money from her parents.)

JOAN DIDION QUOTE

"I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see, and what it means.  What I want and what I fear." - Joan Didion


original source: her book "Why I Write," 1976
secondary source: book Legendary Authors and the Clothes They Wore by Terry Newman

A MEMORY THAT MADE ME LAUGH.

The other day while on a computer keyboard I suddenly saw my old writing partner and friend Wes Bryan's face in my mind's eye with a big smile on his face, and heard him say, in his slight Southern accent, "That girl is one cool drink of water."  I never did know what this meant, but I had to laugh and I was very happy to "see" him.

A QUESTIONNAIRE YOU CAN COOPERATE WITH

Questionnaire?  hmmm.
Inspired by another blogger, may I suggest that any of our answers might inspire you to do some freewriting and take you where you might not otherwise go?

1) A memory that makes me laugh.
2) The most insulting things someone has said to me.
3) Person I think I was in a past life.
4) Person I idolize.
5) Recent activity that had me the most excited.
6) Strangest recent dream.
7) First hardback book I ever purchased that I still have.
8) Profession I can't have that I'd love.
9) Strangest question a child has ever asked me.
10) Flowers I love in a bouquet, Flowers I hate in a bouquet.
11) Just out for a light meal I'll choose...
12) I like my coffee...
13) I like to shop...
14) Worst parties I ever threw or went to...
15) Best childhood memory while out in nature...
16) Places I've never been to that I'd like to go see...
17) At the risk of sounding stupid...
18) Things people have recently challenged me with...
19) Three reasons I've dumped "friends."
20) Gifts I've received in my life time that I quickly threw away.

SPENDING THE MONEY I FOUND ON THE GROUND - PENNIES FROM HEAVEN

About a decade ago, I started finding pennies as I walked along and picking them up.
Once I got a dog and started watching the ground for pieces of glass that could tear her feet and old chicken bones that she'd like to eat, I started finding more coins.  Sometimes it's uncanny.  Walking diagonal across an empty parking lot, for instance, I was almost startled to stop and see a penny.

Some people will only pick up coins and bills that are "head's up."
I think those are worth a few kicks to turn them around.
I pick up heads and tails.

But I do think finding pennies and other coins are signs.
If there is something I'm thinking of doing and I find a penny, to me it's the OK.

One time in my life I found a hundred dollar bill and absolutely no one around to ask if it might be theirs.  I was on a side road off a canyon on the way to Malibu.  I took that as a real pat on the back.


Then a couple years ago, I opened up my can of found coins and discovered that I had picked up over $40 worth over time.  I donated it to a good cause.

C 2018  Christine Trzyna BlogSpot  - All Rights Reserved

TERRY NEWMAN's LEGENDARY AUTHORS and the CLOTHES THEY WORE

CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

Good photographs that make the point, wonderful quotes (some of which I will record), and the good news is that you do not need to be a fashionista to be a great writer. But then you know that, because you may be one of those raggedy-ass writers yourself!

OK, among the poets and writers I have met, I've noticed a tendency to continue hippie fashions (though with ecologically minded fabrics), and lots of thrift store finds, and I was not happy with Erica Jong when she started getting photographed in suits and in corner office settings (to enhance her authority as a woman, no doubt), but if you are curious about the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda, Donna Tartt, Quentin Crisp... this is the book for you.

Plus, you may be inspired to have a signature look that entails wearing weird eyeglasses even if you are the rare writer with 20/20 vision.  I will splay some of my favorite QUOTES from this book here and there on this blog, as I do treasure quotes.

C Christine Trzyna 2018 All Rights Reserved.