BITTERSWEET SYMPHONY : THE VERVE

VOCABULARY : EXPERIENCE THIRTY- TWO : CHRISTINE TRZYNA WRITING WORKSHOP

While reading, make a list of at least five words that you don't know the definition of or that you have never come across before.  Then, write a short story and try to use all five words correctly in that story.

C 2018-2022  Christine Trzyna 

All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
OK to use this post in not for profit situations. Please credit me. Send me love.  It's karma.

EVE BABITZ : SLOW DAYS, FAST COMPANY - THE WORLD, THE FLESH, and L.A. : LA AS A CHARACTER

It's well known that for something to be fiction it must move right along and not meander among the bushes gazing into the next county. Unfortunately, with L.A. it's impossible.  You can't write a story about L.A. that doesn't turn around in the middle or get lost. And since it's the custom for people who "like" L.A. to embrace everything wholesale and wallow in Forest Lawn, all the stories you read make you wonder why the writer doesn't just go ahead and jump, get it over with.

I love L.A. The only time I ever go to Forest Lawn is when someone dies.  A kid from New York once said: ""Look. Which would you rather? To spend eternity looking out over these pretty green hills or in some overcrowded ghetto cemetery next to the expressway in Queens?  L.A. didn't invent eternity.  Forest Lawn is just an example of eternity carried to its logical conclusion.  I love L.A because it does things like that.

People nowadays get upset at the idea of being in love with a city, especially Los Angeles.  People think you should be in love with other people or your work or justice. I've been in love with people and ideas in several cities and learned that the lovers I've loved and the ideas I've embraced depended on where I was, how cold it was, and what I had to do  to be able to stand it....    

Eve Babitz : Excerpt page 7  published 1977

SUMMER IN THE CITY : LOVIN SPOONFUL

FOODIE ELITE and WORLD HUNGER

So maybe I would go ballistic if I didn't have this blog to rant.

I have a friend who has many a good qualities but I haven't e-mailed her back since our last back and forth. You see, she is a member of the foodie elite and the quality of food is all important to her. She sent me one more link to a warning about food - this time about not eating farmed salmon - at a time when three species of salmon are almost extinct - and I couldn't take it any more.

I don't even like sea food.  To me hell (or, well, one cave in it) would be being forced to eat sushi and drink beer.

Well, it wasn't just this last message. I had also been upset because I had told her about a place that brags about being Organic. They get funding because of Organic.  However, when they gave free meals to the general public (no questions asked, which I like) the following happened.

1) The food for these incoming was rarely Organic or had fresh ingredients.

2) One higher up said that was OK because "the people who come to eat need the extra carbs."

3) Some people who put out the food held back from eating. I thought that this was because they wanted to be sure there was enough for the people who came to have a free meal, but it was really because they felt the free food was not good enough for them. 

I thought this was all bad and she said "It doesn't matter, it's free food."

What, her nutrition is all important but other people can eat whatever?

That, and the e-mail message about not eating farmed salmon.

The other day someone told me that the man behind those inexpensive noodle soups that sometimes go five for a dollar, the dry noodle, which I myself have often eaten, usually throwing in some veggies and cracking an egg into the broth, started out trying to solve WORLD HUNGER.

I once knew someone who had no teeth and was poor and what he ate were 7/11 hot dogs almost every day.

There is eating something - anything - to stave off hunger pangs and then there is NUTRITION and BALANCED DIETS.  It's all controversial but vegetarianism depends on protein from plants. That means not just veggies, but beans or legumes, nuts or seeds and food combining.

Where does poverty and need or ignorance collide with Food Weirdness that is an Eating Disorder?

So, after a few days I sent her a message about world hunger. I said I didn't know what the answer was, but there were a lot of people who could not even digest beans and legumes as a substitute for meat protein. 

This morning I read that people in Great Britain are giving up their pets as unaffordable because human food prices have gone up.

I was once again reminded of years ago experiences when vegetarianism and veganism and so on were not even as trendy as they are now:

Going to a college that did have meat on the menu in some places on campus but where you could get stared down for eating tuna salad in front of a vegetarian.

Having a friend over for a year most Sunday nights to share a hot home cooked meal because I knew he was living in his RV. He had lost a lot of weight eating 99 Cents only salads and said he was vegetarian out of compassion for animals.  He sure did wolf down chicken when I made it.

The young mother I met at a coffee house who had deliberately had a child young and single, struggling to afford a refrigerator, who fed the kid mostly bread and pastries. Said he'd never had meat in his lifetime.  They looked healthy but...

The house mate from Germany who ate two things all year, pasta with some tomato sauce and tapioca pudding. She did try the little sausages I folded biscuits around, as I joked this was an All American recipe.

The friend who, when I met him, smoked cigarettes and pot, and ate meat.  Got a girlfriend who was afraid of foods.  When he got off the cigarettes and then the pot, we thought that was a good thing for his health. But it was about her converting him and controlling him. Then it was red meat, then it was poultry and fish, and as they got more and more radical, they announced they would not eat honey because bee keepers were mean to bees. They traveled with suitcases full of supplements.

He was getting fat from yogurt.

The news on World Hunger is always bad, but the starving children in Africa are in Africa and the children with bad nutrition are here in America.

Half of all American households are getting some food assistance funding from the Federal Government.

Seniors and disabled on fixed incomes are standing in food bank lines.  The food given out is often repetitive (which is why the man who ate 7/11 hot dogs wouldn't go to a food bank any more.)

School lunch programs are sans much in the way of fresh veggies. The school nearest me sometimes has carrots or mini salads but is heavy on the pizza and burritos, chips, and muffins. Kids throw the whole bag away because it is repetitive, and then homeless people go into the cans to get the food.

Parents bring fatty and salty fast food home for dinner for themselves and the children.

We wonder why so many are diabetic.

I could go on...

C 2023 Christine Trzyna  

VAL KILMER's SUPERNATURAL ENCOUNTER from his memoir I'M YOUR HUCKLEBERRY

Excerpt from Val Kilmer's memoir I'm Your Huckelberry

page 111 -112

 In my early trips to New Mexico I had, in addition to my connection with she of the wealthy swagger (a woman he names but it might be a fake name), another pivitol experience.  This one was seismic.  I encountered an angel  I was wide awake.  I was indoors.  It happened on my birthday.  I had just turned twenty-four.  I was asleep and awoke suddenly to an amorphous black figure before me.  It will ruin the absolute gravity of this moment but in truth this dark angel looked very like Darth Vader though without a helmet. The figure seemed to be covered in a black shroud that every now and again revealed the slightest outline of a face.  It took up space in an infinitely eternal way.  I was afraid.

I addressed it by saying in my mind, "I can feel you reading my mind."

He replied, "That's not what's happening."

Well, that proved it, didn't it?  It's indescribable when someone or thing can read your mind, and I said so - or thought it.

"I have nowhere to hide."

I knew this was a sacred encounter and yet, like Mary or Moses, I felt fear.  He then reached in, extracted my heart, and held it before me.  It had a purple blackish hue, leading me to joke, "Is it that bad?"

"No," he said. "I'm just giving you a bigger one."

The bigger heart, spinning rather than beating, was placed inside my body.

At first I thought it was the Angel of Death before realizing it was the Angel of Life. I wish I could elucidate the experience more than I have already done, but I can't. It simply happened,  I remember pinching myself as hard as I could in hopes of bruising myself, so that if I fell back asleep or was to to sleep by this dark angel, I would be able to prove to myself that this was a real experience  I looked at my clock and noticed it was moments before I was born that morning twenty-four years ago. Somehow the spell was over, and just as I thought, I did fall fast asleep and woke up the next day with a bruise on my arm. I have nothing else to say about this, except that I am grateful for the new heart.  It has served me well.  And I've only just begun to use it.

-Val Kilmer

BALL AND BISCUIT : JACK WHITE

SALMAN RUSHDI GETS STABBED, J.K. ROWLING GETS THREATENED, and PEOPLE ARE FLOCKING - JUST LIKE IN STEPHEN KING'S CELL

What a god-damn weekend. 

I have never read J.K. Rowling.  A librarian friend said of the Harry Potter books, "It got kids reading again." I realize Rowling has been accused of getting kids into witch craft but fantasies of kid-power go way back. 

I've never read Salman Rushdi.  I did try to get into a lecture he gave at the LA TIMES - UCLA book fair one year, but it was sold out, and later when it was all over, I saw him pulling a rolling suitcase behind him, alone, going for his car. I'm aware of what his life became years ago when a book he wrote, called Satanic Verses, was published.  It was a novel. Novels can be political or have an agenda though fiction.

However, I support writers, as creators, and as humans who have, because of their inventions: books, and their personal beliefs and opinions, taken fire. 

It seems today there are any number of evil people waiting for some 'trigger' to go bezerk and hurt one or more people violently. I'm becoming more and more in favor of the death penalty - without delay - for serial killers and mass executioners. That includes the people who are using cars as weapons and school shooters who are kids.

I was at a library when I heard the news that Rushdi had been stabbed multiple times and it sickened me. I felt a wave of nausea come over me.

Just a few days ago I had the opportunity to watch the film Cell; I had read Stephen King's book Cell, years ago. As I heard it King was dubious about owning a cell phone.  (At the time I did not own one.  My immediate knowing was that they would become tracking devices. I also dreaded the work day never coming to an end and the interruption of my private life via phone calls about things not close to emergency being made by so by "employers.' Eventually I did get one and all that came true.) 

Although I could not remember the book well enough to know how true to it the film was, if you haven't read the book or seen the film, all the people who have cell phones or get an electronic message or electronic impulse sent to them that turns them into extremely violent murderers.  These reprogrammed people turn into crowds that flock - like birds, the comparison being made.  They do get down time - sleep time - when they lay in fields or parking lots together.  Their individualism is gone, their choice is gone, they are programmed with intent - to murder those who are not getting the message or convert them too. THEY ARE CONFORMISTS.

You see Stephen King is a popular writer, a best-seller, and there are serious themes in his work, but I doubt his work is taught in any literature program where it can be deconstructed.

In the story, a few people get it right away that the difference between them and these murderous ones is the cell phones. They realize that they should discard their phones - burn them - throw them in the freezer - at least keep them turned off - but Oh the habit, the temptation!  They are used to using them to contact their family, their loved ones, on a good day but now it's an emergency. The desire for connection, the need to love or be loved, is strong enough to turn on the phone and risk being turned into one of the programmed. Those programmed with intent to murder will turn on those who they once loved.  There are some truly frightening scenes in the film and it's the mindless flocking that's worse than the violence.

(Remember when women would say they were just getting a cell phone so that if they had an emergency, like if their car broke down or they had to drive at night, they would be able to call their husbands?)

I was thinking about this, as well as the pain in the ass of having a cell phone turned on, to be on-call for EVERYONE, which is especially horrible when you're researching, writing, painting - doing something that requires concentration. That's me.  Then I'd get calls in which someone was complaining/demanding explanation for why I did not pick up or where I was or what I was doing. (Do you remember not having to explain your every move or needing to or wanting to?) I loved saying "I'm in a library where phones must be shut off." Too bad my closest library has now degraded to allowing people to have long cell phone conversations inside the library. On those days I can barely concentrate there.

(It also becomes a little difficult to remember which of your friends does not want phone calls certain hours because they are meditating or doing yoga; they COULD turn their phones off.)

I was also thinking about commercials and advertising. 

It used to be, if you watched television, that you would watch a commercial in about 55 minutes, or about 25 minutes, or about 15 minutes in. If you went to the theater to watch a film, you got a dose of advertising - usually for films coming up or the popcorn and soft drinks available for purchase - but then you could see a film uninterrupted for a couple hours.  

But now, if you want to watch a two or three minute YouTube music video, you will likely be forced to watch at least some of an advertisement until you click it off the screen, right away, or at the end, or whatever it is will be interrupted in the middle. You might even have to listen to an ad as long as the video. BOMBARDED WITH ADS, some repetitive (more likely to brainwash), lately the lawyers looking for victims of childhood sexual abuse and the sellers of dental tooth restoration come up again and again - as do the small native american tribes that don't want the big native american tribes to have all the benefits of legal gambling profits. (Gambling: there's a vice.)

Commercials every minute to three minutes.

And if you want to find videos that do not have commercials you can listen to a half dozen to find that one. More time gone by.

((Remember the days when you would put an album on a turn-table repeat and have in the background the music you relaxed to without having to tend it?))

I had a project in which I was looking for ad-free videos. You know - videos put up by organizations or individuals who were not all into it for profit - which was the original premise to get YouTube going - the old lie that it was a big collaboration - a 'community.' (When I post videos to this blog, which I've been doing a lot of, I always seek out decent sound quality and no ads. I'm not always sure I succeed.) Back in the day videos without commercials were not so difficult to find and they were not for profit so if you were posting on a not for profit website (such as a blogspot) you didn't think about if the original artists were being thieved - which is a whole other post. 

((A while back I mentioned listening to the entire All Things Must Pass album by George Harrison; I did so on YouTube. The other day I wanted that experience again, and this time there was a commercial before every single song, which totally ruined it so I quickly exited. That'll teach me I should find my vinyl copy.)

The truth is that every advertiser, marketer, and PR person knows that there's a GRAB FOR OUR THINKING and REPEAT ADVERTISING is the game.  We are to be swayed into purchasing - be that hiring a lawyer - buying dental restoration - or some other thing we maybe don't want or need. Their job is to make us think we do want or need it.

Your e-mail is also polluted with advertising, which is supposed to catch your attention - and often waste your time - and so is the news online. Pop up ads that are so annoying, you click on them to get rid of them but sometimes end up on a web site.  (I wonder when the very same shoes come up on a number of ads from various companies on the same web site at the same time. You're tempted to find out who has the best deal even if you don't like the shoes!)

CAN YOU BE OK ALONE?  FOR HOW LONG?

CAN YOU TURN OFF YOUR PHONE FOR AN HOUR?, A DAY?, A WEEK?

HAVE YOU FOUND A WORKING PHONE BOOTH ANYWHERE?  (How about one in which a person can call you back?)

FOR THE MONTHLY COST OF A CELL PHONE - HOW MUCH PER PHONE CALL ARE YOU PAYING?  

CAN YOU GO WITHOUT CHECKING YOUR E-MAIL?  FOR HOW LONG?

DO YOU HAVE A FREE RESOURCE (No commercials) FOR MUSIC, BOOKS, FILM?  (Check in with your local library!)

HAVE YOU READ A BOOK OUTSIDE YOUR USUAL INTERESTS LATELY?

IF SOMEONE HAS A DIFFERENT OPINION THAN YOU, how tolerant are you really?  (I suppose it may depend on their delivery, but do you feel triggered inside and stuff it, lash out or what?)

WHAT SITUATIONS ARE YOU IN where you go along to 'keep peace?"

ARE YOU AFRAID TO SPEAK UP?

C 2022 Christine Trzyna

STARBUCK MOONLIGHT FEELS RIGHT

ENOUGH ALREADY! STUFF I CAN LIVE WITHOUT : HOW ABOUT YOU?

Food Trucks.

I want to sit down in a restaurant - or the outdoor patio - and eat a meal. I suppose an event may be more appealing if food is available that might not normally be, for others, but I don't want to juggle paper plates and bowls, tissues and foils, plastic forks and spoons, and find somewhere to sit that doesn't have filth, for the price of a civilized sit down restaurant meal. 

Football.

Good background noise for cooking and keeping other people - mostly men people - out of my way in the kitchen. Half-times (with the exception of Prince) are also increasingly spectacles that I think I might not want children to see. (See Jennifer Lopez below.)

Religiosity.

If your walk doesn't match your talk, then walk on by.  (I've been bombarded with invitations to churches and religion has even been as a condition of friendship over the last few years like never before.)

Camping.

I'm just not rugged enough. It's not that I'm posh. Maybe next life I'll see Yellowstone. I'd like a good mattress in a decent hotel and, oh, a professional massage after I walk -not hike - in nature. 

Fireworks.

So glad I don't live near Disneyland or in Monaco. Neighborhoods that tolerate illegal fireworks are abusive to dogs, for starters. 

Disney.

I've had enough of the monopoly on cartoon characters and theme parks. Maybe it was the Disney character socks I saw in adult sizes that finally made me realize Walt's precious characters are exploited for money every which way.  Can you raise a child and not expose them to Disney?

Jennifer Lopez.

One of several celebrities who seem to be extremely overly covered in the media.  Have never understood her appeal and do not care about her love-life. Sorry. 

Loud Parties, Loud Bars, Loud Concerts

I have excellent hearing. If I can't hear what someone is saying to me and they can't hear what I am saying to them. is that a good time?  If I want to hear music but if it's so loud it's ruining my hearing, ah, I don't get that. It seems to be an oxymoron.

Beer

I've never liked the taste and see no point. (I'm more of a wine person, but I rarely drink.)

Sea Food

The ocean (and other waterways) is/are another world - a different atmosphere - sharing space on the same planet. In my opinion, the oceans are more important than space exploration. I think we should allow all the creatures in it to eat each other. They should go through their life cycles without humans disturbing the ocean ecology which is what fishing does. (Thousands of dolphins killed in nets.)  And as for "farmed" fish, I've heard some nauseating stories about how this is done. Overall, I can go through the rest of my life without another taste of seafood and it would not be a sacrifice.  (My dog loved salmon.)

Hot Peppers.

I suspect that the "fire" hides the taste of horrible food, rotting or tasteless food that should have been thrown into the garbage, and that there is also macho involved in being able to actually ingest, stomach, and poop peppers. Other than the benefits of vitamin C, which can be had in not-hot peppers, in cabbage, in citrus, and so on, I see no point. I never want hot peppers in my food, not even the sprinkles on pizza.

Surprise! You're On Camera!

Events where they take your photo or film you without your permission.  Some of them post a sign that if you enter the event area you agree and damn it, you already traveled there without knowing this in advance. Worse, some don't. There's a person on stage reading poetry... Don't bait me to your event and then turn me into content or steal my image, you rude, ignorant, privacy invading content providers. 

DNA Testing Reveals on YouTube. 

I'm not entertained or shocked that you just found out your mother was raped or you father has secret children or that you're Italian and not Polish, or that you're an Arab and not a Jew, or that you just found out you're Black. That's supposed to be your private family business, so why does the world need to know via YouTube? Oh I get it, you might make some money if you get enough hits since we're supposed to be 'shocked' along with you.

People who you just met who invite you to check out their Facebook page. Where, you can get a load of their PR and won't have to spend any time getting to know the real them.

Snobs.

There seems to be an overpopulation of people who are not only snobs, but are so low class (even though they have lots more money than me) they feel they have the right to be openly snotty too. They are raising children who also feel entitled to be openly snotty. Guess what?  If you're so great everyone will know it and you won't have to tell anyone!  And I am not impressed that your mummy and daddy paid your college and still pay your rent and make your car payments.

People who blame women for abortions who don't seem to have a problem with the men responsible. This is the ultimate sexism. Since men go around saying "We're pregnant" the stats should be reported as X number of men and women have had abortions. But someone is likely to argue that maybe the stats should be reported by gender and we'll never get an accurate count of the theys and its.

C 2022  Christine Trzyna

BRITISH UNIVERSITIES WITHDRAWING BOOKS - WARNING LABELS ON CLASSIC LITERATURE ? MOLLYCODDLED STUDENTS! EXPOSE!

DAILY MAIL : REMOVED BOOKS READING LIST  by Laurence Dollimore

"Universities are accused of 'mollycoddling' and 'patronizing' students as books are removed from reading lists over 'challenging' content and trigger warnings are slapped on 1,000 texts including works by Dickens, Shakespeare, and Chaucer."

 ****

I know I swore off reading Daily Mail UK but sometimes Daily Mail UK is the publication that breaks the news, and has articles like this one that make me come back for more. 

Excerpt: The University of Sussex has 'permanently withdrawn' Miss Julie from an undergraduate literature module due to its discussion of suicide - a decision made after students complained about the potential 'psychological' and 'emotional effects' of the material.

*****

I was in the fifth grade when forced to read Anne Frank.  My focus was on Anne's crush on Peter. I start realizing humans could be more horrible than I could, in my innocence, imagine.  I preferred reading two Nancy Drew Mystery Stories a night. Nancy was independent, fast-thinking, adventurous and clever; she always solved the mystery.  (She was also a motherless only child with a father who was supportive of her and she had a mention-worthy boyfriend who could be called in if she really needed help as well as having some nice girlfriends.)

I think fifth grade was too soon for The Holocaust. That year, because I was a very advanced reader, I was also forced to read British classics including Dickens and recall hating the world he depicted - the real world he lived in by the way - so much I swore I would never be an English major or an English Literature major. By the time I did go to college one could, if they found the right college and program and qualify for it, study literature in the English language without having to focus on the whole English historical and cultural dominance, 

If a student is intelligent enough to qualify for college, subjects such as suicide should not be too hard to handle. 

I'm beginning to think there is a genetic problem in younger generations, that the average one of them could never have survived daily life in the past when it was so much more harsh.  What no hot shower? 

So many on prescription psychotropics!  Self-spared the full range of human emotions through these prescriptions or self treatment with pot or booze or substances.

WOW! EXPERIENCE THIRTY- ONE : CHRISTINE TRZYNA WRITING WORKSHOP

What ASTONISHES you? 

C 2018-2022  Christine Trzyna 

All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
OK to use this post in not for profit situations. Please credit me. Send me love.  It's karma.

I'D LOVE TO CHANGE THE WORLD : TEN YEARS AFTER

COVID DOLDRUMS - PROTECTING OTHERS FROM ILLNESS IS STILL YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO SOCIETY

Like just about everyone else, I've grown tired of wearing a mask. 

My ears hurt from the pull of elastic. Some of the masks I've tried over time were actually painful. I can't wear lipstick under one so there is no point in wearing it but I used to wear lipstick most days. The mask elastic also gets in the way of earrings, so I stopped wearing them. Sometimes your sunglasses and the elastic tangle. I feel like my nose has been tamped down from mask pressure, although with adjustments this is slight rather than oppressive. One health care worker who wore a mask eight or more hours a day for months told me that she seems to have permanently lost hair from the friction of the rubber that was holding hers to her head. Someone else showed me how the skin on their nose was damaged.

Yet another friend (unvaccinated) who I finally saw in person at an outdoor restaurant after a three year absence told me she was not wearing masks because they are not good for your breathing. Well, she lives alone, drives alone, and is retired. She likes to communicate by e-mail.  She likes to do yoga on zoom classes. She likes to order things on-line.  She's a natural loner.  (And also full of fears about eating the wrong foods.)

I do think my breathing has suffered from wearing a mask. Over time I realized that with the face covered I'd stopped smiling. Maybe I don't have much to be smiley about. I also realized that I was pursing my lips under there while breathing, so obviously there's not a free movement of air under there. I have rushed outside at times in order to take a break and breath more naturally.

Still, I think wearing a mask is the least we can do. Still do.

While some people are mouthing off about their freedoms, they seem to be situated in selfishness.

I've grown angry with the non-compliant who seem to be using defiance in public places as a form of protest against government control of their lives. 

Bla Bla Bla The Constitution. We are not living in 1776. There's all sorts of things about our lives in 2022 that no-one, not philosophical Thomas Jefferson, soldiering George Washington, or even the very inventive Ben Franklin could have imagined in their time.

Most of these non-compliant people are immature, some are ignorant, but often it's all about them and their 'rights'.  They don't care about killing other people. They will not pay your hospital bills or for your funeral. They won't care if you're off work sick for too long to keep a job or if you loose your housing as a result of dire finances. They don't care if you loose your parents, your partner, your child becomes an orphan.  (One of my friends and his wife both have long Covid.  They got their illness pre-shut downs on a cruise that went back into port early since so many people on it were ill.  His wife was in intensive care and almost died.)

And as for government control of their lives, well, have they ever heard of We The People? Sorry to say, some of them are entirely dependent on the government and charity or their parents, so this rebellion may be about their personal frustration with being stuck.  We have a flaming epidemic of Anti-Social Personality Disorder.

I've had one bad experience after another with this type in the last few weeks.

First, I ventured out to a non-profit run location in order to check in on a class I started before the shut downs.  I was told that this place had gotten special permission to reopen and restart classes because while they had administrative employees who were paid by a governmental agency the location was owned by the non-profit. However to get in you had to show that you were vaccinated. Each and every time you showed up. At the reception desk they were keeping careful track of who was coming in and why. 

Once in the class, I noticed that most of the other students were not wearing masks.  The following week I didn't go in because I needed to buy supplies and had not a moment to go shopping. The week after that  I did show up and there I was with the teacher and one other student. Where was everybody?

There had been someone who was vaccinated but had an active case of Covid and came to class anyway.  As a result a heath scare required that everyone else be called and so on.  By skipping that week I had apparently not been exposed. Close call.

Then I attended a lecture at a library.  A librarian had personally invited me to attend this lecture and when I got there, well, there was the speaker, the librarian, me, and some library employees as the audience. I root for the person who is just learning to speak in public; this speaker was mostly enthusiasm for the subject. She rushed through the presentation, speaking too fast. She was barely understandable. It was over quickly. To get home I got on an MTA bus.  When I got on I saw that the other passengers were all wearing masks and seemed to be social distancing as well. Public buses, like planes and ships, are not well ventilated. Then over the next three stops the driver allowed eight passengers on - five of whom were carrying skateboards - on without masks. They stood breathing over everyone. One man, Spanish speaking, urged his unmasked wife to sit next to me. I wouldn't budge.  (The three seniors I know of who died of Covid, all in the their 80's, were Mexican-American.  One was the father of a friend. Two were a couple who had just gotten their citizenship. I met them a few times at a place I volunteered.)

The driver was not wearing a mask. I asked her why she had let these people on.  THERE WERE FREE MASKS! "Tell them no mask, no ride.  Stop the bus and call the police to have these people taken off this bus!" I said.  But she was no example.

Who sat next to me at one point?  An unmasked man in a wheelchair with one leg missing. Diabetic. High Risk. I asked him why not. He mouthed off about how Covid was all Lies and started on the "I believe in Jesus." rant.  Well, perhaps he can't wait to go to heaven and see Jesus but I'm not ready.  His righteousness is Narcissism.

Ignorance personified.

I actually felt like I had to stay home for a few days after this ride. I was waiting to come down with something.

My allergies kicked in. Over a few days time I was itching all over. Something was in the air, possibly from tremendous fires elsewhere. Also I got bit - probably a spider - and had a swelling on my arm that took a few days to go down. My breathing was short.  I could just imagine how bad it would be if Covid set in.

Finally I went to another library to return some books.  I saw half the people in the place including a woman and her daughter were on the free use computers without masks.  So I asked the librarian, in a loud voice, "Are we mask optional in here now?"  She said yes.  So, a couple days later I went in and when my hand-sewn mask slipped off, I didn't pull it up.  At least this place has high ceilings and a feeling that it's airy. I chose an area where there was no one else sitting.  Suddenly a security guard approached me and handed me a free mask.

"We're back on," he said.

"I don't mind at all," I said.  But a couple days ago I asked and was told by a librarian that masks were now optional."

Meanwhile, back at the ranch (as my grade-school friend Annie like to say) I toyed with the idea of getting another vaccination. I do not want to mix brands. My booster was six months after my first shot and is now nine months ago. This is where my resistance is.  I got the Johnson, which was available a five minute walk away when the pharmacy a two minute walk away was overbooked with appointments and so was the one a half hour away.  I suppose I would have willingly taken whatever they had at the time, but now I want the Johnson again and am told that cannot happen.

This is the DOLDRUMS.  I relearned what that word meant watching a film about women who rowed across the Pacific ocean.  The doldrums is a part of the sea that sailors get trapped in. Time and resources go by.  Heroic attempts to push past it, go through it, and come out the other side to navigable waters, are usually fraught with frustration and are difficult psychologically.

If masks are actually a whole lot of false teaching and expense for nothing, which I don't agree is true, then at the minimum they do help us feel we are doing our part to end the ongoing crisis.

So, if you've come this far, wear one when you are indoors in public spaces.

C 2022 Christine Trzyna

A PAINTER PASSING THROUGH : GORDON LIGHTFOOT

 One of my all-time favorite singer-songwriters: 

SUGAR PIE HONEY BUNCH : FOUR TOPS

 Another song that had a few stanzas I used to sing to my dog.  Sugar Pie Honey Bun, You know that I love you, can't help myself.  I love you and nobody else.