TIME TRAVEL : EXPERIENCE THREE : CHRISTINE TRZYNA WRITING WORKSHOP

Imagine TIME TRAVEL is entirely possible.  You can go back three times.  You can decide to stay only once, if at all.  You'll show up dressed for the times and speaking the language. Where and when would you visit?

Christine Trzyna
C 2018-2020  Christine Trzyna 
All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
OK to use in not for profit situations. Please credit me.  It's karma.

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

LITTLE GRACE BECOMES MORE OPINIONATED, EXPRESSIVE

It's been a while since I spoke of Gracie, my Maltese-Poodle, who, if her shelter record is honest, turned 11 years old recently, a little Virgo.  Yes, I still have her and love her. I often think of her during the day, hoping she is sleeping, comfortable.  More often she gives me a pathetic look when I try to leave, like how dare I leave her.  She races out to go with me.  The other day I was a block away when I felt something near my leg.  She had fled and followed.

I worry more about her.  I've been taking her with me more too.  She seems to prefer to go with me, even if it means being stuck in a a luggage type carrier much of the day.  I take her out of it to walk a bit, have a treat, whatever, every couple hours, but I imagine it has to get boring for her.  She seems to be saying, "I'll put up with a lot just to be with you."

Since the summer of 2017 I've suspected that she may be older and that by giving a birth date whomever gave her away may have taken a year or so off her life to make her more adoptable.  Gracie is visibly aging.  She's lost teeth and though she eats and all as well as always, she's looking thin. Her hair is darker - more creme colored than white - and she has less of it.  I give her mostly grain free foods and treats, but once in a while she gets some salmon, lamb, tuna, or fattier foods.

She is also becoming more opinionated and expressive.  There is a place that used to have dozens of ground squirrels running around and she always wants to go there.  So, because I think Parks and Recs or some other agency poisoned the squirrels in their holes and I have not seen a single one in three weeks, I want to go into the opposite direction.  Though about 12 pounds, Gracie becomes a 200 pound dog at the corner, not willing.  

She has also been barking more, though overall she is still not much of a barker, in response to sounds, I notice, but I also think in response to men. This screws things up for us when I go undercover with her in her suitcase-like carrier to the library.  I've been thinking about this, wondering if there is something about the men she barks at, if perhaps she smells something on particular men that I cannot, maybe a substance - or maybe it is their mood or intention towards me.  It's not all men. I'm not sure that this is to protect herself or me.  If she herself feels more fragile or knows her own aging, perhaps herself. 

Gracie likes to go out in the morning to pee, but go right back in.  I used to think she was manipulating me into long walks by not going until we were well on our way. I think maybe she has arthritis or is out of sorts.  If I insist, after walking a bit longer, she gets into it, especially if she sees lizards going by.

I read on an Internet site that Maltese-Poodles live on the average 12 years. I had never heard of a Malti-Poo until I got her and then started meeting people who have them everywhere I went.  I met two that were 15 and one that was 18.  But since I learned I'm her third owner and that the second owner bred her (once for sure), I've felt that she may have not had enough vitamins and minerals before me.  I know she ran away and got caught when she was in her third trimester of pregnancy when she was supposed to be about two and a half. So I've been asking other people who have Maltese-Poodles how old they are and what's happening with their teeth, their eating habits, if they are still spry.

A few people lately have said they know she is old because of her EYES.  The hair around her eyes is darker but I don't see what they mean. One person with a 12 year old male who appeared younger for his whiter curlier hair, told me he was starting to develop cataracts.  She held him up for me to see, but I didn't notice this film she said he has.  She said they would go blue, then white.  I never know if I'm seeing glare in Gracie's eyes or not. I don't think she's started with cataracts...  A dog's perfect vision is about 20 feet away.  She seems to notice squirrels and lizards just fine.

Gracie has also taken to doing the sounds puppies use to locate their mom, and, I was told this and didn't believe it till I myself heard her, crying - more like a coyote.  OK, a neighbor got a puppy who also cries when they are not home and I want to think that these two are influencing each other. I cannot train her out of it.  She cries or howls and when I come through the door, she is rewarded.

Another issue this past summer is fleas.  Gracie has never had it so bad with fleas.  There are 400 different kinds and it seems all of them love her.  We started with a collar and I give her frequent baths, but I don't want to give her the pills.  She needs a bath often for dirt, I reason. and she had a bad reaction to her last vaccinations that was scary.  I hear that over 400 people wrote to the FDA after their healthy dogs died from a certain prescription flea pill. 

Gracie has been with me longer than her other two owners combined and I promised her I would give her a forever home. I'm not prepared for the day when it's her time to go over the Rainbow Bridge.

C 2018 Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved

WHAT YOU KNOW NOW : EXPERIENCE TWO : CHRISTINE TRZYNA WRITING WORKSHOP

"If I had to do it over, I would..."


Christine Trzyna
C 2018-2020  Christine Trzyna 
All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
OK to use in not for profit situations. Please credit me.  It's karma.

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."
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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

MEET UP : EXPERIENCE ONE - CHRISTINE TRZYNA WRITING WORKSHOP

THINK OF SOMEONE - ALIVE OR DEAD - who you wish you could have a long talk with in a restaurant.  Choose the restaurant, describe meeting them there, the ambiance, the waiter, the food, and then ask them questions.


Christine Trzyna
C 2018-2020  Christine Trzyna 
All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
OK to use in not for profit situations. Please credit me.  Send love my way. It's karma.