CLOSER TO HOME : GRAND FUNK RAILROAD

WHY WE SAY HAPPY HOLIDAYS and NOT MERRY CHRISTMAS

I had a few people respond to "Happy Holidays" by forcing the issue and asserting MERRY CHRISTMAS.  These people were strangers who did not know me or the people I was sitting with.  To one of them I finally said WE SAY HAPPY HOLIDAYS BECAUSE NOT EVERYONE IS CHRISTIAN.

Happy Holidays can encompass Thanksgiving, Christmas, Boxing Day, Hanukkah, Kwanza, and New Years Eve and New Years Day.  It can be said to strangers who you know nothing about when it comes to religion or spiritual beliefs including non-believers, doubters, and pagans.

If you are surrounded by people at your church or family whom you know to be believers in Jesus, by all means say Merry Christmas.  You won't insult anyone or come off as rude.

Etiquette is meant to allow or make other people feel comfortable.

NO TWO OF A KIND

 

ANDERSON .PAAK and GET LIT

 

NATURAL HIGH

HURTS SO BAD : LITTLE ANTHONY and THE IMPERIALS

I'M YOUR PUPPET : JAMES and BOBBY PURIFY

OVER YOU : GARY PUCKETT and THE UNION GAP

GOIN' OUT OF MY HEAD: LITTLE ANTHONY and THE IMPERIALS

FRIDAY ON MY MIND : THE EASYBEATS

STICKY FINGERS by JOE HAGAN : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

STICKY FINGERS : THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JANN WENNER and ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE by JOE HAGAN    (A Biography of Jann Wenner and his Magazine...)

I'm going to start by dropping names : Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Yoko Ono,  Bruce Springsteen, Joni Mitchell, Bono.   Michael Douglas, the actor.  Annie Leibovitz, the photographer - a whole lot about her.  Writers - Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolf.

Some of these people had far more influence over the magazine than I would ever suspect.  Jagger is unafraid to have his influence and an idea person.  Lennon and Ono become friends but also expect to be treated as celebrities.  Mitchell get's pissed off but eventually forgives.  Leibvitz is - perhaps - having a lesbian affair with Jann Wenner's wife, Jan, but is depicted as a serious drug addict whose talent manages to make it through despite the effects.

This is not to diminish at all the story of Jann Wenner's magazine's endurance, the stops and starts, the move from San Francisco to New York, and the fact (unknown to me) that he also started and succeeded with other magazines. So if you're interested in the history of the magazine don't let the name dropping turn you off. Rolling Stone magazine is not just a music magazine but part of pop culture and so are those people who star in pop culture including the artists - that actors, singers, songwriters, musicians, and the record companies that believed in them and earned millions on their talents, who made it onto the magazine's pages. Writers and editors were assigned. Careers were made but also, opinions could hurt.

 And as a disclosure, I've never been a regular reader. In fact, I have barely read it at all.

I've been thinking about this since I realize some of you may think that's odd, considering how often I post YouTube videos of classic rock and soul music especially. The book may explain that, without my especially noticing it, pop culture was marketed to me, my people. Knowing that there are so very many talented people in the music business, knowing that getting a record contract for even one album is rare enough to be considered a miracle, one wonders how much luck has to do with success and popularity and becoming a public personality, and how much was and is having acquired the best management and marketing.  Articles in magazines, profiles and interviews, photos - especially the cover of a magazine...

This book is simply excellent, so perhaps I should mention that it does include the personal life of Jann Wenner, his long marriage that produced children, to a woman who was very much a part of it all yet who mostly lived a life separate of her husband. Jan Wenner is depicted as someone who was "bisexual" (like Elton John) but, having had many a sexual adventure with men while married heterosexually, ends happily married to a younger man, with whom he has children by surrogate. After he was official with his new partner, he did not divorce for another seventeen years.  So there's the coming out story - but, importantly, this is not one of those books that exists to prove someone is "really gay."

I listened to this book as an audio book and it was well read.  I've been doing that sort of listening- reading more these days, in part because I'm also sewing and crocheting.  The real treat was at the very end when the author himself talked about how he got the assignment and the cooperation, and the people he thanked, including a list of the women who had cooperated, women who were there.

C 2023  Christine Trzyna

THERE IS A LIGHT THAT NEVER GOES OUT : THE SMITHS

Thinking of Christopher....  I don't care. I don't care. I don't care.

HOMELESS STUDENTS STRUGGLE LA UNIFIED and I GET UP ON MY SOAP BOX

AP : HOMELESS STUDENTS LOS ANGELES : LA UNIFIED 

****

Read this story and weep - if you're human - because it's the story of thousands of LA Unified school students and millions in America.  And I hate to say it because I'm no Republican, but illegal immigrants swarming into our country where our strained resources will help them somewhat - but not enough - will only make it worse.  Shit hole apartments.  Street homeless - mentally ill - room mates. Women sexually exploited.  I have already heard of a situation where a building manager in North Hollywood was expecting immigrant women he rented to, to have sex with him as part of the deal.  Come to America and become a sex slave to keep a roof over your head for you and your children. This is why abortion can be a sacrament.  What if one or all of those women ends up pregnant with this building manager's fetus?  I would rather see him dead.

Excerpt: The majority of students the government considers “homeless” do indeed have a place to sleep, but it’s precarious and often shared with roommates, according to federal statistics. In Los Angeles, more than 13,000 students are homeless and 2,000 of them stay in shelters, the city’s superintendent said last spring.

López says she was assaulted while the family stayed in a shelter after getting evicted three years ago. That’s why she’s determined to find her own housing. The scarcity of affordable housing in Los Angeles has given anyone with an apartment lease in their name the power to take advantage of people like López who don’t have the saved cash, references or savvy to compete for their own place and are desperate to avoid shelters.

****

And the shit hole apartment that is too chaotic for study or true deep sleep - the kind of rest that is needed to recharge and take on the next day - can mean that the person is NOT CONSIDERED HOMELESS.  As one women I met walking dogs told me, No Matter How Many Places You Sofa Surf, You Are Not Considered Homeless.  She had been living going from one friend's place to another for three years and the local homeless services place had done nothing for her. Why not?  Because she is healthy, sane, not pregnant, not addicted, not just out of jail - not a priority.

So besides our corrupt City Hall - especially the Housing Department - that pretty much sucks the cocks of greedy multimillionaire developers - there are the priests and ministers - the churches - that are also pretty much bullshit.  They are just as obsessed with the value of their real estate and rarely help even the most faithful of parishioners.   

I recently met a woman who is legally blind who was a member of her church for seven years - in the choir - the whole bit - when she lost her housing.  As she tells it "They not only knew I was a woman alone but a disabled woman and not one of them helped me in the smallest way."  (That's "Christians" for you, I thought.)  I said, "I hope you aren't having anything to do with that religion any more."

She and a friend scraped together the money to buy a van to live in. And she got herself a boyfriend, one who, like she does, believes that sex has to wait for marriage. When the van broke down and she and her woman friend were unable to repair it or keep it, her boyfriend, now a fiancee, managed to get her into a sober living - even though she has never used or had a problem with booze or drugs - for which she is grateful for. But now he is on the street, using a walker, waiting for housing help offered by so called homeless outreach people who drive around talking to people on the street.  Their wish to marry has been suspended. Every morning during the week she gets out of bed and buses to a senior center where she spends her days.  He, meanwhile, battles for the housing that would allow them a normal life, busing around while on that walker. So here you have two people who are White (and therefore now assumed to have White Privilege) and who have lived decent lives, are now in their sixties, and applying for housing lotteries and wait lists.  

This housing crisis took YEARS to develop and those who allowed it to happen HAD NO INTEREST IN THE FUTURE. By then they would be out of office or dead, and it would be someone else's problem.  That too, goes for our Presidents of the United States - a long story of inheriting the last administration's daring do.

C 2023 Christine Trzyna

BERNIE SANDERS TELLS IT LIKE IT IS : ISRAEL and PALESTINE BEFORE THE TERRORIST ATTACKS

 

Listen well, my friends.

Those of you who consider yourself Bible based and worshipers of Jesus should ask yourself just what Jesus you adore and wish to follow.  

SEASON OF THE WITCH : DONOVAN

NOT IN OUR NAME - CEASE FIRE DEMANDED - JEWISH VOICE FOR PEACE - GRAND CENTRAL STATION

The largest peaceful protest New York has seen in over two decades.

Destruction and Violence - Just the opposite of Creativity and Peace.

COME DOWN IN TIME : ELTON JOHN

KEEP ON WALKING : GINO VANELLI

THIS PARODY SONG WRITER - MUSICIAN DOES EX-PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP HIS DUE : WEIRD AL YANKOVIC WATCH OUT! LOL!

PATRICK FITZGERALD

THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA  ( Original song was by Charlie Daniel's Band)

In this STOP THE WORLD I WANT TO GET OFF MOMENT (war in Israel, Ukraine, Genocide....) only the war has the ex-President's fiasco number two in the headlines) I take a moment to have my funny bone tickled. 

HARBOR LIGHTS : BOZ SCAGGS

INTO MY ARMS : NICK CAVE and THE BAD SEEDS

LOUIS ADAMIC : EXCERPT FROM LAUGHING IN THE JUNGLE (1932)

LOUIS ADAMIC : LAUGHING IN THE JUNGLE

page 52)

...These men are the high priests of the Chamber of Commerce whose religion is Climate and Profits.  They are - some of them - grim, inhuman individuals with a great terrifying singleness of purpose.  They see a tremendous opportunity to enrich themselves beyond anything they could have hoped for ten or even five year ago, and they mean to make the most of it.... And trailing after the big boys is a mob of lesser fellows, whom the former awe with their superior economic advantages and control through the Chamber of Commerce and other pay-triotic organizations: thousands of minor realtors, boomers, promoters, contractors, agents, salesmen, bunko-men, officeholders, lawyers, and preachers - all driven by the same motives of wealth, power, and personal glory, and a greater Los Angeles.  They exploit the "come-ons" and one another, envy the big boys, live deliriously for business, bigger and better business, while their wives gather in womens' clubs, listen to swamis and yogis and English lecturers, join "love cults" and Coue clubs in Hollywood and Pasadena, and their children - boys and girls in their teens: "Beautiful but dumb" -...drink and rush around in roadsters...."

pages 53 -54)

...Most of the people come here to be sun-kissed and made well, and so healing is one of the big industries in town.  Besides thousands of more or less regular doctors, there are in Los Angeles no end of chiropractors, osteopaths, "drugless physicians," faith healers, health lecturers, and manufacturers and salesmen of all sorts pf heath "Stabilizers" and "normalizers," psychoanalysts, hynotists, mesmerists, the flow-of-life mystics, astro-therapists, miracle men and women - in short, quacks and charlatans of all descriptions.

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

Note: Don't you just love it!?

CAN YOU LIVE WITHOUT A CELL PHONE?

Everything I imagined before land lines became obsolete and public phone booths were destroyed.

DAILY MAIL : COULD YOU LIVE WITHOUT YOUR PHONE? Celebrities

This article from Daily Mail on line (Daily Mail UK) about celebrities who go without is of interest.

However, celebrities usually have other people who can and do handle their necessary communications.

The distraction of cell phones,  the pile of work that e-mails can be, that we have more privacy and time for life - and actual encounters with people - when we aren't on the Internet, and the addiction to news and information or constant back and forth - all mentioned, all encountered.

***

THE FATHER OF FLOW? GOOGLE FEATURED MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI

I clicked on the artistry on the Google start page a couple mornings ago, a pastel image of a man with a lot of flowing energy depicted and came upon Mihaly Czikszentmihaly a Hungarian-American who died a couple years ago, a psychologist who studied flow. I'd never heard of the man before honestly, but since I talk about writing in flow and staying in flow, I thought it might be interesting to learn more about his work. 

***

I experience flow as a sort of deep concentration and focus and it used to be that I could stay in it for hours. The enemy of flow, as I experience it, is interruption. Your own cell phone going off for instance. Other people's. My local library is not so quiet. Libraries used to be refuge but are now mostly distraction. Finding a bolt-hole is necessary. 

Some people have learned how to tune out all the distractions around them - loud music - conversations - and focus intently on their computer, maybe with earphone or earbuds and some low volume relaxing music. I have some " relaxing music" YouTube videos that I choose to listen to while writing.

Silence and quiet, hearing only the sound one makes from physical activity and that of nature around us, is rare but desirable. In our experience now, we are so used to 'aloneness' with sound, in particular music, movies, films - information (some would say programming) coming in - or bombarding us - that fear can be experienced in silence and quiet.  However, I suggest we go without this bombardment from sound when we are writing, also, because we need the thoughts, insights, and intuitions, coming in to us that may be obscured when our brains are also engaged in processing the audio incoming.

***

What does Mihaly Czikszentmihaly think?

CLAREMONT COLLEGE GRADUATE PROGRAM : PEOPLE : MILALY CZIKSZENTMIHALY

U CHICAGO : MIHALY CZIKSZENTMIHALY FATHER OF FLOW

UNREQUITED ANGER

Unrequited   (of a feeling, especially love) not returned or rewarded)

Mutual discontent:

Walking down the street.  I see Malcolm (of course that's not his real name) sitting on a plastic chair.  Some other men are here and there on the pavement in plastic chairs, one a few feet away.

Hi Malcolm, I say.  "Have you recovered from that sweet kiss I gave you off my fingertips last week?"  (I had kissed my own fingers and applied my fingers to his temple.)

He looks at me.  He doesn't remember.

"I have something to say to you," I say.  (I don't know why I didn't have the bravery back in the day.)

He looks up at me.  Malcolm has thin gray hair that he periodically doses with black dye.  He's Italian and Mexican in heritage. He's younger than me. He looks up through his-bifocals and I see the same glimmer and flash that was there years ago.

"I want you to know that back in the day you had me for a moment. I don't know why I didn't use my writing skills and write you a damn long letter."  With my hands I ran over an invisible document, a long scroll."

His eyes flash and he smiles.

"It was because you were so sincere with me. But you lied about the two wedding bands you wear."  (I had asked him about the rings.  Asked him if he wore them to ward off women. Still in love with your ex? I asked. He said he just liked to wear them When I found out - for sure - that he had been married twice.)

I noticed that the man sitting closest to him was earnestly trying to not listen in but that got him.

"But I hate your friends." I said.

"I hate them too," Malcolm said.  "T.J.?  He shook his head."  (T.J. (not his real name) was a tough Native American man who it was rumored had five children with various women he did not support.  Had worked as a bouncer.  Had been in jail with Malcolm when they were younger.  For what I don't know.  Rumors had it T.J. had a baby with an underage girl.)

"That one guy... he told me his problems...that woman...her mother threatened him and told him to get out, her brother held a gun to his head..."

"They got married,"  Malcolm said.  "And got their little place."

"Well one day he looked at me and said,"You're nothing but some woman in a hat."

"He did?" 

"And I said, "Most Certainly Not," and that surprised him.  

"And someone else told me that you ran a brothel," I continued.  "But then someone else said you don't charge."

Malcolm laughed.  "They did?!"  

Yes, I nodded.  

"Look, I'm just an entertainer," he said.  "That's my job, to keep people up."

"Yea, but there's a point there where it's a tease - a mean tease.  Like that time you sang me the song."

"What song did I sing to you?"

"Well, T.J. went past me one day and said "That Malcolm sure has the biggest crush on you." And then a couple weeks later you stood up and said "I'm now going to address the rumors that have been going around here about me.  Then you looked at me and said "I'm going to sing you a song and when I asked you what you were going to sing to me you said "Under My Skin" but when the time came you sang "Hooked On A Feeling."

"Hooked On A Feeling, I know that song," Malcolm said.  

"It has that horrible oooga booga." 

"Yea, everybody hates that part."

Malcolm was still smiling but also looked like he swallowed a goldfish.

"And then you ran."

"Where did I run to?"

"Before I could talk to you, you ran, all the way down the street, and I saw you run into this place."

"There was another karaoke"

"No, you ran, as if you were embarrassed." (After his feat, Malcolm really never talked with me again. I would see him sitting in a plastic chair on the sidewalk and stay on the other side of the street.  Yet for a moment there was no doubt about it, Malcolm had a crush on me and for a moment there was no doubt I had a crush on him too.)

"Maybe if things had been different I would have gotten married and had a lot of babies," he said.

AN ARTIST WHO REDESIGNS HISTORICAL ROMANCE BOOK COVERS TO FIT THE STORY and THE TIME PERIOD : BERNADETTE BANNER

I don't read romance novels but this genre is the best seller to women.  (Murder - fiction and nonfiction - sells best overall.)  The writer of a historical novel does their best to describe their characters authentically but then the cover is turned over to an artist who may not read the book or understand the fashion, hairstyles, and cosmetics of the era.  BERNADETTE BANNER does and with a much better understanding of what the writer wrote, attempts to redesign the covers.  Watched her videos and was just fascinated.

Because I have a rule that I do not embed videos that have commercials, I'll provide the links instead. 

REDESIGNING HISTORICAL ROMANCE BOOK COVERS TO BE ACTUALLY HISTORICAL PARR 2

CAROL BASKIN : LEARN THE TRUTH OF HOW TIGERS ARE TREATED and WHY HAVING THEM AS PETS IS LEADING TO EXTINCTION : SIGN THE PETITION to PASS THE BIG CAT SAFETY ACT

Carol Baskin,  has spent much of her life rescuing Big Cats.  Having a cute tiger cup as a pet ends with them being unable to live as wild animals. Love Surviving the Survivor Podcast, one of the very few I listen to.

CHANGE ORG : BIG CAT SAFETY ACT

Excerpt:   Right now in the U.S., thousands of tigers, lions, cheetahs and other big cats are cruelly forced into unregulated “ownership” for human amusement.

The Netflix show Tiger King has raised new awareness of the cruelty, killing and exploitation of the captive big cat industry -- now is the time to finally pass legislation to free these majestic animals from suffering.

Confined to backyards, breeding compounds or decrepit roadside attractions, big cats are ripped from their mothers just days after birth and suffer severe malnutrition because their owners fail to properly feed them.

Many of the cats are brutally declawed, leading to lifelong disability. Confined to tiny concrete enclosures or kept on chains, the animals suffer from circulation problems, cracked footpads, and other painful conditions -- as well as severe psychological trauma.

Keeping big cats in captivity is also extremely dangerous for humans, who are at grave risk of being mauled or killed.

Congress has introduced The Big Cat Public Safety Act, a bill that could finally end ownership of big cats by unaccredited animal exhibitors and those who simply want to keep the cats as pets.

Of the estimated 5,000 to 7,000 big cats in the United States, fewer than 400 live in accredited zoos (which already fail to provide adequate living conditions). The rest are owned privately by people who may have no clue how to care for the animals.

One of the reasons so many people own big cats is because there is no federal law against it. This new bill could save countless animals from lives of abuse and neglect.

Sign this petition to urge Congress to pass the Big Cat Public Safety Act, and save both cats and humans from misery and pain.

THE WARMTH OF THE SUN : THE BEACHBOYS - BRIAN WILSON

So interesting.... a mood came over them... the city lights... the moon... a spiritual song.

GLORIA STEINEM and the 50th ANNIVERSARY OF MS. MAGAZINE : FEMINISM IS STILL A FIGHT FOR EQUALITY

commercial at the very end....  never ending commercials making YouTube a potentially brain-washing experience...

I had a subscription to Ms. at one point in my life and have considered myself to be a feminist since I was a teenager - during which many students in my high school - male and female - mocked and ridiculed me.  

And Gloria is right that we must imagine something before we make it happen. I say, we must also be careful not to engage in thinking that thinking itself makes something happen.  

I've experienced sexism my entire life and still do. 

Sometimes I think that men, collectively, hate women.  I never forget that men hold the power on this earth and use it, and that they often use it against women.  Sadly, there are many women who cooperate with men against other women.  

C 2023  Christine Trzyna

WALKING IN MY SHOES : DEPECHE MODE

I'VE GOTTA GIVE A HAND TO YOU

 

MATSHONA DHLIWAYO said

"A flower earns its honor in the dirt."  Matshona Dhiliwayo

DEEP IN THE WEST : SHAKE RUSSEL

DON'T TELL ANYBODY THE SECRETS I TOLD YOU by LUCINDA WILLIAMS : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

Am I Lucinda Williams fan? Not really. I first heard her in her Sweet Side era. (World Without Tears album.) But I have been reading musician memoirs. This one is forthright and personal and moves at a good pace. And, unlike some I've reviewed, this one has introspection and change. Lucinda Williams was told not to write about her childhood but she did and it's important to her development as an artist. Lucinda tells about her mentally ill mother and dysfunctional childhood, her poet-lecturer father, her roots in Christian fundamentalism, being an anti-racism Southerner, dropping out of high school and not looking back, and a variety of relationships with men and which songs were inspired by which men, which is something I think most readers are interested in. This book contains the poetry of others and song lyrics of hers, planted in the right places. There is also sexism;  she was not allowed to do erotic videos though so many men in music have and do. She also tells that she has had dozens of inconsequential jobs to pay the rent into her early 40's when, after years of believing it would happen and putting in the work, it finally did.  Money enough.  No more "day jobs."

What this memoir did for me was make me want to listen to more of her music. 

C 2023  Christine Trzyna

Excerpt page 94: I've been called an 'erotic' song writer. I don't disagree, but even though I had plenty of sex when I was younger, I was never promiscuous. I always had partners. Some of them didn't last that long, but I wasn't sleeping around willy nilly. The brain is the real erogenous zone, at least for me, so I have to connect with someone intellectually and almost spiritually in order to be attracted to them physically, and that rarely happens immediately.  I realized early in my adult life that talking - real, honest, substantive conversation - could be superhot, and it didn't have to result in anybody taking their clothes off for it to be erotic in a lasting way, in a way that can really last longer in your mind and memory and in your feelings than physical sex. Very often a good conversation is more memorable than fucking. That's what I was getting at with my song "Something About What Happens When We Talk" on the Sweet  Old World album.

***

Lucinda Williams was interviewed on the Seth Rogan show.  She said she wrote her entire memoir by hand as she has never learned to type.

FIRE IN THE SKY : ANDERSON PAAK

WAITING IN VAIN : ANNIE LENNOX

This one is for Michael and his long distance love.

 

FROM THE BEGINNING : GREG LAKE and HAPPY BIRTHDAY KIMMIE

Thinking about long ago lost friend Kim.  A person of profound influence on me. The smartest girl. Showed up at my school in the sixth grade. Her family finally leaving the city for the country. Remet in high school. Her big house with a pristine all white upstairs and a little round grandma within her own apartment, a surprise little sister to take care of, a dad - my favorite dad of all dads - who was warm and fuzzy and never failed to tell her he loved her as we got out of his latest broken down car when he dropped us off somewhere. The year he made the turkey and three kinds of stuffing. A mom who unlike other moms not only worked but had a career. Her real hair washed and in pin-curls under a wig. Her real feelings covered by secret alcohol. A mom who paid the bills and bought the house; We called it a "role reversal." Till then unknown in our affordable suburb.  

What did we know?

Her room with deep blue walls covered in rock and roll posters.

The short hair cut she got in senior year. Her combing through it in front of her mirror.

Kim - the person who once explained inflation to me while too young to be worried.  "Someday bread will cost $1.00 a loaf!" she said. You had to babysit for two hours to make that much. (She meant the generic white bread that existed for baloney sandwiches. Not the varieties that exist today, said to be baked in-store that cost you $6.) The two of us, our skinny asses, sitting on a board in a tree paging through the magazines her mom allowed her to buy and inspecting album covers; she got an allowance, she babysat. 

She went away to camp. 

She went away.

She got loose.

The last time I heard from her it was a note that said her dad had died, that she got the message to 'come quick' but had not made it to his bedside to say goodbye. Those three lines said more. That she knew she had been loved, that she felt a sense of guilt, that she knew I would want to know.  Her dad who had once begged her to meet up with him in New York City, just for an hour.  

"You can trust your car with the man who wears the star!"

The last time I looked her up, it turned out her brother had died, right after her mother. His obit mentioned how he'd cared for their parents. I knew the truth. He had been the son who had stepped up, the one who sacrificed, the one who never married, the one who had nothing left to live for. There was a photo of her with her mom - broad smiles. I hoped they had finally come to understand each other though mutual appreciation. 

Her mom, hunkered down in a seat, depressed, asking me, " Why did she do it. Christine?"

The big shock was that her mom had left her - living so far away - to deal with their estate as if it were a last bid to bring her home.

The last notes I sent to her - years ago - went unremarked upon.

She had not been there for my sorrows or successes. 

I realized - eventually - that she had not only been an influence. 

She could be manipulative.

She'd been a salesperson.

She'd been manipulated.

She'd been a slave.

She'd been seduced: he told me he had slept with twelve women.

She told me he was a 'pain in the ass' so why would I think he meant something?

She'd become aware.

She damn well knew what she was doing.

She could not get out.

It was too late but then...

Time told.

"What's happening now is that people are going home," she said.

R.M.A.

Hearts, Money, Luck.

"I'm not renting a car this trip home. I can't drive to New York and bring you back here," I said.

"Then will you please go to visit my mom?" She said.

I said yes but didn't. I remembered on the plane back.

She's faithfully married. She says she got a good husband. 

"The only thing is he does not get my sense of humor."

They have children to be proud of. They own a house worth half a million not far from the headquarters of the cult that she gave her life to. I only know this because it's on the internet.

Which proves that a person can veer, even loose control, but straighten it out before crashing.  And even if you do crash, sometimes it's a long recovery or you change forever, but its not guaranteed fatal and you can forget wishing it were. I imagine her thinking, "You could never understand." But let me say this to her, and to you; Never underestimate how much a person who has empathy does understand. You don't have to be on the same highway to be driving. The sign that says "You can't get there from here" can be a liar.

Happy Birthday Kimmie. Our skinny butts are still on the same board up in that tree, paging though magazines and inspecting album covers.

Oh, I still have all your Beatles albums. Should I send them?

Christine

C 2023 Christine Trzyna

TENDERNESS : EXPERIENCE FORTY : CHRISTINE TRZYNA WRITING WORKSHOP

Tenderness.

In a harsh world.  Is this a rare quality?  Are you tender?  When or how are you tender?  Is someone tender with you?  How does it feel?

2018-2023  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.

RICH MEN NORTH OF RICHMOND : OLIVER ANTHONY and I GET A BLUE TOOTH SPEAKER

Who says I don't know what's happening in music, just because I choose so many oldies for this blog?

Here is my confession.  Recently I was gifted a Blue Tooth Speaker.  It is small and hooked up to a Chromebook, a couple years old, which seemed to be loosing volume all the time.  I'm sure I'm not going deaf, however, at first - for about six weeks - I was condemned to using ear phones.  The films I chose to watch on the small screen were sometimes difficult to hear, even with the volume up high.  So this Blue Tooth Speaker  - an inexpensive Made-in-China brand too - has made all the difference.  The tone is warm and tending towards bass while the sound out of the Chromebook is of a higher pitch.  Kind of like vinyl records - for all the snaps, crackles, and pops due to use - the sound which was and is WARM.  The sound out of CD's is COLD and the sound out of the Chromebook is also COLD. The Blue Tooth Speaker sound feels relaxing upon my ears.  Interestingly, the Chromebook registers the volume as mid-range or less as well when it is louder than the 'in-book' settings.  Someone told me that as time goes on the sound out of electronics somehow diminishes. Don't know how well this has just been stated but it's here also in case you think you're going deaf.

So, with the new YouTube logarithms - a controversial change - YouTube is throwing up new suggested videos. It's also prompting me to turn history on.  I've never had it turned on and won't.  The Chromebook (Google) itself is already keeping track and needs clearing.

Are the suggestions much different?  I can't tell, but I don't think so.  The problem is the horrible interruptive commercials, and if you're looking at music from the 1950's or 1960's and sometimes the 1970's YouTube will assume that you're interested in pharmaceuticals and miracle cures,  that you're ill or diseased. In particular DEAFNESS cures even bring up ALZHEIMERS. Disgusting...

So, many of us love songs that never made it onto Billboard's top 100.  Also sales of records OVER TIME can still result in Gold or Platinum records. ....

This morning I got the news that the Billboard #1 hit is from a man named OLIVER ANTHONY, who lives on a small landholding in Virginia with his dogs, has never recorded a record or album, has no agent or people promoting him, no recording contracts, and is basically a SELF MADE MAN IN MUSIC. So I hurried to hear the song that got to number one based on the hits to his YouTube station.  Here it is...

So.... WHY IS THIS SONG ASSUMED TO BE A REPUBLICAN SONG?  WHEN THERE ARE PROBABLY MORE DEMOCRATS LIVING THE LYRICS????

And if the men north of Richmond are in D.C. as in the government of the United States of America, that's ALL POLITICIANS (including women).

VISIONARY by GRAHAM HANCOCK : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW : NOTES and QUESTIONING (PART THREE)

DNA... the understanding that we all have a biological code. That code identifies us as belonging to a family, bred by parents, grandparents, all our ancestors as well as to ethnicities and r,aces.  As author Graham Hancock attempts to understand and explain the nature of consciousness, and therefore the nature of hallucinogenic effects on consciousness, he takes us from the Upper Paleolithic to the Space Age.  As we read further into his book Visionary, the author asks us why we humans must connect to and depict supernatural (not worldly) beings. It seems that rock art from many thousands of years ago proves that some humans were involved in making art, depictions of real or extraordinary experiences. 

Our DNA code can be uncoded, and now we know what indicators there are when it comes to our eye color, and what diseases we may inherit. But is there some reason to think that DNA also determines our psychic ability?

Does a small percentage of humanity have more sensitivity, intelligence, and intuitive ability?

DMT is not just a substance made from a couple plants that were discovered to create hallucinogens thousands of years ago, perhaps as humans tried various concoctions, but exists all over the world in many plants.  It's also in animals and it is naturally in us, in our blood! It is when the amount of DMT is raised that humans begin to have visions - and sensations - that are supernatural. One study in which the participants were given injections and remained in hospital beds, the reportage was the same as that of UFO abductees.

Lourdes (the miracle location in France) and the Virgin Mary as a "little lady."

Bernadette going into trance in the Pyrenees where there was a belief in fairies.

How did DNA come to be in the first place? (Junk DNA is not junk at all!)

Bacteria spread around the universe?  Miracle?  But if we are talking about coding, language, then what about books?  What about Moses or the Prophet Mohommed and the books they were given, such as the Ten Commandments or a perfect Koran? Or Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon? So many Shamanic Vestiges in the stories that are central to world religions and the depictions and experiences of saints...

A saint performs a healing or has visions... Sebastian, Ursula, Joan of Arc.  

Fatima - Ezekial - Lourdes

The Hindu's Soma; just one mushroom candidate fits the description.

As we begin to see Hancock's thesis being braided together, we wonder as he did, what came first?  Spiritual ideas or the experience of hallucinogens?

***

This book, which includes Graham Hancock's personal experiences with hallucinogens, is one I will not forget as I continue to give time, as time allows, into my personal inquiry into spirituality that comes with being human. I wonder if years ago when I thought to do a paper on rock art and hallucinogens as my term paper for an anthropology class (which I abandoned as too broad for the assignment time and length) I would have, in my research, ever found any books or graduate student papers that got close to Hancock's thesis.

I also now question what I did find, focusing on the initiation into adulthood rites of Tongva boys versus girls. The girls were supposed to lie on a a structure woven of branches over a pit where tobacco was being burned to be "smoked." They were to show no sign of irritation, to lay still. Perhaps a strong native tobacco plant was given to them instead of the Datura mixture given to the boys, who were said to enter and stay in a special hut dedicated for that purpose. Perhaps the girls were not just proving their womanhood by not being bothered by being smoked, perhaps they were not able to move or disinclined to because they were also having a hallucinogenic experience. Perhaps this was an ingestion through smoke, rather than what appears to be a ritual of making clean or new or renewed. There would have been far more smoke than is used to clear or clean using a simple wand of dry sage.

I also ask myself how the hallucinogenic experience and creativity tie together, for it is true that a number of musicians and artists have remarked that LSD or mushrooms or some other hallucinogen did effect them that way. 

If you are a creative, are you using and exercising and expanding your vision naturally without any help from substances?

C 2023  Christine Trzyna

FOOLED AROUND AND FELL IN LOVE : ELVIN BISHOP

 

FOOT FETISHISTS ARE THE LATEST TO BE OUT : TALKING TO STRANGERS

I've rarely been the person who thinks of toe nails and fingernails as jewelry. I've rarely been the person who had the time to do my nails. Or the money to spend.  My hands are large and used. So are my feet.  I walk extensively. There are better things to be doing than nails.

For a few weeks in high school I tried to grow my fingernails long and polished them up with that traditional pink frosty polish that was allowable on teens by their mothers who also approved pink frosty lipstick. Too much make-up and you'd look like a whore, is what the mothers thought, so there was monitoring of daughters and just how much Maybelline. My pink frosty long nails were tied into being given a real ring - not a class ring or a football ring - from my boyfriend. He told me my nails looked nice.  He once took my right hand in his just to look at them. I soon enough gave it up. Polish didn't dry quickly then and it didn't last more than a few days. To me keeping one's nails polished was like proving you were dull enough to sit around, maybe watching TV, while the polish dried. I hated the waiting and always managed to get a dent or smudge. Did all my classmates who had long nails polished have maids hovering?  I had to wash dishes and cashier.

And those of us who were artists had paint all over.

Feet jammed in closed toed shoes most of the year, it didn't occur to me to also paint my toe nails because who would see them? Today I think how strange it is to have done only your fingers or only your toes, as if these body parts are so separate and distanced from each other that they have nothing in common and are not part of the same body.

So years went by and then, circa 1998 if I recall, I saw a polish I loved. It was a sheer pastel, holding iridescence of many colors like the inside of a abalone, as if it were from nature, and it cost a dollar. I started doing my short fingernails with it. I also loved that it dried fast and, if I had no time to keep it up, so light that it faded rather than needing to be removed. That was good because even when women in rock and roll and certain actresses were doing magazine covers looking like they hadn't had time to dye their roots or remove chipped polish, I hated their unkempt look that suggested that most of the time they were too drunk or high to let an on-set pro make-up artist or an exclusive salon repair the damage.

A flash back to high school though. In a wood shop class there was one student who had taken to painted his fingernails black with real paint, tempera maybe, that had no shine, and he liked to wave his hands around with it. No doubt his dad feared he was a 'sissy' because we later heard that the man had actually staged a stag party for him and some of our male classmates in which they watched hard core hetero porn.  No doubt this was the sort of father who advised 'man-ing up."  How truly terrible. Do I think maybe this student was 'really gay?"  I do.

I did try, one time, black polish with sheen.  An older friend said "Really, Christine, You? Black?"

Well, it felt subversive for five minutes.

Then, several years ago, because I wear sandals so much, I became dedicated to keeping my feet nice, and applying polish to my toenails. The newly invented polish that dried quickly and that stayed unchipped for longer was a large part of my willingness to do it. Still, on my fingernails the same polish was good for maybe three days. I resented the time that it took to focus on upkeep.  On my busy days it was one more thing to do.

Earlier this year I was out shopping and I wanted only one color polish, the right shade of plain almost skin-matchy-orangey pink, which would not look like a fashion statement. I found it in a six pack at Ross Dress For Less. I'd been out somewhere when I heard a group of men talking, and one of them said, "Christine has the best feet.  If a woman takes good care of her feet, you know she's taking good care of the rest of herself."  These men apparently, unknown to us women, were watching feet.

Wow!  

Believe me I do not have the best feet.  I have medieval feet, like on a statue made hundreds of years ago.  I blame the intermarriage of petty nobility, when asked.

But then, around 2000, I had been falsely accused of wearing simple navy blue flat sandals "on purpose" by one of the regulars at an independent coffee house in the Valley.  All I cared about was being cool on a hot day.  Seeking an explanation for such a comment via one of his friends, a man who carried around a rubber shoulder sack, I was told, "You have good toe cleavage."

Toe cleavage?  Ah.... So this was a foot fetish?  Or was it?

Which brings us to 2023, August, a time when, according to astrologer, the Lions Gate is open.

I re-met a man I used to see around. I was crossing the street and he had pulled over outside the store after waving and calling my name, so I went over and talked with him. He asked me to come over and have dinner with him. We had some catching up to do, sort-of, as I had not been around for at least eight months and he said he had wondered if he would ever see me again. He made us a good dinner and we talked about this and that - the fate of the independent coffee house where we had seen each other around - not the one in the Valley from years before - certain personalities there. I can't remember how the conversation flowed but around one bend we got onto the trendy topic of transgender-ism, and that a Gay Pride Parade was coming up, and he said "I can only wave the flag for foot fetishism."  

Oh, that's why the last time I saw him he had made the comment that the shoes I was wearing, which were simple, black, quasi sneakers, fairly unisex I admit.  "Those look like men's shoes, " he said. "What size are they?"  When he did, I curled my toes in them. It had taken me a dozen try-ons to find a simple, black, quasi sneaker, fairly unisex, that fit.

He also said that he had never seen me so relaxed or wearing a dress - so feminine.  It was true. I rarely wear a dress or skirt if it isn't summer. Whenever he saw me around I was almost always there with things I was working on and wearing my usual pants, top, sweater or hoodie, bundled up. But that day I had been at the pool and was wearing a dress-cover up. He wondered if I dressed as I did so that none of the men at the coffee house would hit on me. Well, actually, some had, in their way, but I dressed (and dress) as I do for warmth and comfort.  

Now that he was out of the foot fetish closet, I went on-line to learn more about it. The first time I had bothered. What I read on various websites had various effects on me, from a certain sense of humor, perhaps delight, to troubling and sickening. See, I see feet as part of the body, not necessarily weird or in need of worship, and I would rather spend money on a foot massage than on a pedicure, but I very rarely have. To me a foot massage is akin to acupressure, holistic health, but it's not erotic. Giving one or getting one has nothing to do with dominance or subservience.

Eventually, the man I see around who I had dinner with, asked me if I ever wore high strappy sandals, toe-exposing ones, toe nails polished red.  I said no and he said that he would buy me them.  I said "No, don't buy me anything." He said, "You won't have to do anything, just stand there."  The thought that I would ever just stand there in improbable pumps, totally out of character for me, was ridiculous and hilarious. I can't imagine ever wearing red nail polish, even though it's a classic polish, and, I read, a favorite of men because it reminds them of their mothers!  So I asked him when had this started and he said he thought it was with his mother, baths with his mother...

Those pro-fetish web sites that I found, many of them from a not-hetero perspective, advised people that if their "lover" would not go with their fetish then they were selfish lovers, because they were not willing to do whatever turned the other person on. My thoughts and feelings about this are diametrically opposed.  I don't think anyone should do anything that they are uncomfortable with and it's selfish of someone who is kinky to expect others to give in to their kink.  There is also a slippery slope - a no end to the things that a person might ask, and I imagined that if I had given in to this man's request, he would have enjoyed breaking down one of my boundaries - or barriers - and than there would be something else.

I also felt sorry for him because I think fetishists are people who are objectifying body parts or objects (i.e. shoes, socks, stockings) and I truly wonder if they can be with the real person, plain and naked. I feel sorry for him to be obsessed with feet and shoes and toe polish and to approach women from the feet up rather than the head down.

At the same time I also thought about the advice mostly women get about how it is our responsibility - especially once in a committed relationship - to satisfy someone else - for the rest of our lives.  Even when the so-called partner is doing little to nothing of the usual to satisfy us.  It's a good reason to be independent and not have a man in your life.

But, this is a Talking to Stranger's post.  So here goes.

Soon after the Gay Pride Parade, which I did not attend... I was walking along one morning, humming as I do, in a good mood, when suddenly a young, maybe 18ish, man, beautiful and with flowing hair, skateboarded over to me.

"Mam, " he said, I noticed your nail polish.  That pink chrome - is it chrome?  It goes perfectly with that top you're wearing!"  I was wearing a rather flamboyant summer top with hints of charcoal and pink, grey and flashes of neon yellow.

I stopped.

"Where did you get that polish?"

I said, "Oh it was in an inexpensive six pack that I bought at Ross Dress For Less," but I don't think much of the brand.  I guess it's sort of chrome but there was one surprise in the six pack. There was what looked like a garish gold flecked polish that I never thought I would wear.  But I tried it and it was mostly clear with just sparks of gold that caught the sunlight. It's the perfect polish for the beach or pool." 

He smiled. "I never thought about buying polish at Ross..." He looked dreamy. "Where did you get your mani-pedi?"

"I did it myself.  Why?  Are you going to school to be a manicurist?"

"No, I work at a hotel."  He indicated not far away.

"Well, maybe you could..."

He pulled out his cell phone.  On it he showed me that he had photographed dozens of women's feet with different colors of nail polish.  He didn't have to ask.

"I don't want you taking pictures of my feet."

He did not and we parted."

I thought, Jesus, it must be the Lion's Gate.

Later I thought that if he continued to be hyper interested in feet, he might do himself in, refusing to see the whole person, the variants of beauty, and reject perfectly wonderful persons romantically and sexually because to comply for them would be unnatural.

And there is this.  Feminists don't want to be entirely sex objects or objects at all.  Not even one part of us.

I can't find my nail polish remover.

C 2023  Christine Trzyna

Note: For the record I've known gay men who hated the whole exhibitionist outrageous aspect of Gay Pride Parades which they feel miscast all gay people as undignified buffoons who ought not be taken seriously as professionals.  However, perhaps there is something to be said about playing with stereotypes and having a good sense of humor about oneself.  I did attend one Gay Pride parade in West Hollywood years ago and laughed out loud at the Dykes on Bikes with Spikes.

Note: This is not an advert for Maybelline or Ross Dress For Less.

VISIONARY by GRAHAM HANCOCK : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW : NOTES and QUESTIONING (PART TWO)

 BEINGS

ARE THERE BEINGS THAT ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT US in the hallucinogenic experience? Or are at least sentient if yet invisible to us in ordinary perception, who are AWARE we exist?  In a 2001 science experiment what was reported by subjects given the same essential chemical in Ayahuasca, a new idea was brought forth. What if what was happening was that the chemical was sort of rewiring the brain so that we could see what really exists rather than interpreting and making it all up?

I'll tell you right now, regarding the experiences reported by Amazonian natives who use a snuff with DMT, the reportage gets close to what some UFO abductees report.  Such as the implantation of crystals (or what is perceived to be a crystal) but can also be quite violent such as experiencing being beheaded. (And this is why you should never ever take such a substance without supervision by a shaman or elder, or someone who remains in this world while you go off somewhere, and can watch you and prevent you from hurting yourself.)

WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON WITH OUR BODIES AND MINDS?

Reported is that one human in eight reports at least an hour in which they did not know where they were or what they did.  (i.e. missing time.  My long ago friendly associate Arthur Kane told me that he and his wife experienced this).

One in five woke up paralyzed at least once.  (This has happened to me.)

One in twelve saw unusual lights or orbs in a room.  

(A couple years ago I was shown a film, taken by a security camera, that was the most convincing orb film I have ever seen.  It's held privately and is not on the internet. Security alarms had gone off at that location two nights in a row and the filming was by the installed camera, no humans around. Multiple orbs were moving as if dancing back and forth - like in a square dance if you can imagine that - while one went up and back to the camera eye itself. There is outside lighting at the location, but the place is locked up, up from car-level in front, and fenced in, so the concern there was a break in or perhaps a raccoon or other wildlife inside. None was spotted.  There was no sign of damage or creatures. These orbs could not have been made by, say, headlights or flashlights.)

Author Graham Hancock states that he did not believe in nuts and bolts spaceships or aliens with physical bodies going into this aspect of visionary experience, research, or reportage.  He states that having completed his investigation he still does not believe in nuts and bolts spaceships or aliens with physical bodies, calling his beliefs hardened.

I have not and do not consider myself to be a UFO abductee. However, I do know that people who experience sleep paralysis do sometimes believe this experience is that aliens have sort of stunned them and is the beginning of an abduction. Science suggests that the mind has woken before the body and it only seems like its been a while since one could move.)

Hancock brings up the reportage of John E. Mack, who was almost kicked out of academia when he decided to work with UFO abductee's.  (He was a professor at Harvard, and a psychiatrist, and had a good lawyer work for him when he was threatened with loosing his position at that college.)

IS THE UFO ABDUCTEE EXPERIENCE also a CULTURAL INTERPRETATION?

Why, for instance, does a shaman experience beings counting his bones, with one extra rib being the qualification of being a shaman?  (Why are shamans with six fingers depicted in ancient Magyar images of shamans?  We know that extra fingers or toes happen in humans and is considered a genetic mutation, as are extra teeth.)

John Mack's work with the UFO ABDUCTEE's showed that they were not "crazy" or lunatic fringe people.

BEING FLOATED OUT OF THE WORLD...

The question I have here is... is it lucid dreaming?  Is it astral travel? WHY would HUMANS who ARE NOT using a hallucinogenic substance, have an experience that they remember well after waking up or returning to their bodies that is also reported by shamans?

Australian aborigines climbing a rope into the sky where they can talk to the star people. Beams of light that pull humans to UFO's?

(This is why finding a crashed UFO or shooting one down out of the sky becomes important, because a vision does not prove the physical existence)

Hancock himself having had the experience of what might be called a Grey while under the influence of Ayahuasca...  Finding rock art that depicts what might be considered to be aliens or ancient astronauts... Abductees saying that their first visions of the aliens were animals...  (I recall Whitley Strieber, perhaps the most famous UFO abductee, stating that owls were the "screen image" the aliens were using and he experienced a fear upon seeing owl images.)

SPIRIT HELPERS or familiars?

Stories of shamans being raised to be shamans before birth.  Stories of origins in the stars. Celestial wives.  Having many children by extra-terrestrials?  Or humans pulling spirits down from the sky to remain here...

Insect People.

Houses of smoke?

What we used to call incubi and succubi...

Fairy...

Changelings.... switched with human babies... UFO abductee mothers being shown babies and told to nurse.

Corrigans

Crop circles as fairy rings?

Hollow hills.  Indian mounds?

PORTHOLES.... springs, wells, caves...

It's been years since I encountered a book like this one and it contained far more entwined subjects than I could have imagined as I read it on Hoopla. It was one of those I could not put down, or in this case, stop hitting the forward button on.

More coming...

C 2023  Christine Trzyna

THERE IS A LIGHT THAT NEVER GOES OUT : THE SMITHS (MORRISEY)

Happy Birthday Michael...

YOU REALLY GOT ME : THE KINKS

VISIONARY by GRAHAM HANCOCK : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW : NOTES and QUESTIONING (PART ONE)

Back in pre-college and college days, anthropology of religion was of great interest to me. I studied belief systems, seeking commonality among religions at first, and was fascinated with what might be considered pagan or primitive. The Greeks, The Romans, the Egyptians...  Native Americans... Among the many books I encountered, sought, and read that had to do with what and why people believe(d) as they do, I read around the subject of rock art.  Rock Art, as well as the hallucinations and visions that our ancestors had thousands of years ago, is the subject of the book VIsionary, by Graham Hancock.

I learned through reading and in anthropology classes that rock art was generally thought to be the work of shamans or the work of hunters who, perhaps, imagined the success of the hunt before they went out to kill, as a kind of psychological pre-hunt ritual, perhaps the essence of positive thinking.  If they were hunting cattle, then they might create images of the cattle or men with the heads of cattle (pre-cattle aurochs).  Bison.  Horses.

Another notion that's promoted is that the underlying theme of cave drawings is abundance and fertility. Rather than the hunt, this might be about the wish for animals who are being domesticated to be fruitful and multiply. 

Some rock art is elegant and sophisticated. We often think that our ancient ancestors were too stuck in survival mode to have the time to create art or become sensitive artists. (Rather I think most of their art did not survive weather and time and a cave is a sheltered environment that better preserved the art.) Some rock art is rudimentary. Thanks to carbon 14 dating, an idea of when humans created this art, which often features half animal humans, has evolved and been accepted by academic science.  

While my study of rock art did brush up with the use of hallucinogens by people who did not keep written records or print books but remembered their origin stories and spiritual beliefs through story telling and being taught by previous generations, I myself never sought the experience. Friends from long ago did try LSD, reporting in some frightening experiences, such as visions that their house was on fire.

I learned that there were also symbols such as spirals, ladders, star-like motifs, and so on that were found on rocks in various places around the world which seemed to show a possibly universal rather than culturally-bound experiences. These motifs coexist with images of the half-animal humans in some places.  

What you see under the influence - what they saw - was supposed to be cultural or rooted in a conscious belief system. Thus, if a particular animal was local and hunted, supplying necessary protein in a diet, and thus a desired animal that one might also be grateful to, it would feature in the rock art. Thus a Christian who ventures to the spirit world is expected to see Jesus or angels, while a Hindu might meet with Krishna or Vishnu... that's the general idea.  (NDE's - Near Death Experiences seem to play out the religious-cultural expectations of encounter.)

But what about all those images of lion-like creatures where lions did not exist? Were those animals that once lived in that part of the world but are extinct?

If the substance is Datura, which grows wild in Southern California, will that result in the vision of a different animal or half animal - half human than if a person is under the influence of  Ayahuasca, a brew from plants the Brazilian rain forest?  (With Ayahuasa Tourism being what it is, I wonder if these plants will become crops in California.) Why would an animal that is not native to Europe, such as a lion or big cat, or a stag deer, have become such an Icon in Europe, I ask, as it appears in the family crests and armory of many families from medieval times.)

In Visionary by Graham Hancock, an "out of the box" thinker and earnest non-academic researcher, who has been pilloried by them, we learn that the use of hallucinogens inspired the rock art of half-human animals. It turns out that these half -human animals, supposed to be cultural, may just be what shamans and other users of hallucinogens see while under the influence of a brew and that the hallucinogenic experience is universal. 

Hancock, who has used Ayahuasca in supervised situations many times, and says snake images are universal with it, says yes, it is the substance that moves a user towards a certain repertoire of visions.  (This is the latest, trendy hallucinogen and is being tried by Westerners far from the Amazon where it originates.)

Noteworthy:  In some rock art settings the imagine of hand appears, which is thought to be like the signature of the artist. These hands are either painted on, or the person put their hand on the wall and dabbed around them or even spit paint.  In some rock art the natural forms of the stone are integrated into the art as if the rock form suggested the image.  Rock art sometimes suggests that the artist is imagining the animal or chimera of coming out of the rock or going in and out of the rock itself.

The book is plentiful with images of rock art at various locations including Europe - France and Spain - and South Africa.  

Hancock goes on to detail how it was that academics fought for professional prominence and their theories starting in the late 1800's (that era that was the beginning of anthropology, starting with the gentleman world travelers) and the "Frightening Power of Preconceived Ideas."  While it can be understood, by me, that so many were inventing anthropology and it's sister that goes hand in hand, archeaology, just like psychology, that there has been trial and error as well as tremendous mistakes, the question is if today's professionals in those fields are willing to go past what might be called the canon. 

ART FOR ART's SAKE or HUNTING MAGIC?

MUSHROOMS, WATER LILLY, MORNING GLORY SEEDS, PEYOTE CACTUS,  FUNGUS ERGOT...

Why, I ask, is there a human need to have out of this world experiences?  Is it because we wish to be reminded of the world we left before we came here? Or are we just bored with life as it is? Imagination and creativity is what's needed to progress or to deal with or extinguish the problems of life caused by change. Do we imagine creatures that do not exist on earth while under the influence or did these creatures once exist, perhaps created through some superior intelligence mixing the DNA?  While on Ayahuasca, Hancock saw a butterfly turn into a serpent, a serpent turn into a jaguar, and a huge insect with human features.

TRANCE:  SLEEP DISTURBANCES and DEFICIT, DEHYDRATION...  DRUMMING  (I think also mantra, and rocking the body while chanting or praying), certain music, bells... forms of dance..) 

ARE THESE IMAGES HARDWIRED INTO OUR BRAINS or NERVOUS SYSTEMS?

The neuropsychologists call these entopic phenomena, phosphenes, or form constants. 

WHAT ARE OR WERE THE POWERS OF A SHAMAN that are considered super-natural? Controlling the weather, in particular making it rain, so that the crops will prosper and animals and humans will be able to eat. Ability to locate animals to hunt. Being able to also check on family and friends - to understand their whereabouts, if they are alive, and if they are OK, understanding plants in particular knowing how to make healing botonicals, to control and alter consciousness. 

FIRST with HALLUCINOGEN VISION are the motifs, the geometric shapes. grids, zig zags, dots, eye-shapes, which seem to show up in ancient rock art all over the world.

NEXT are the animals and people, larger shapes... Snakes, jaguars, as well as monsters. At this point the user is moving into what is perceived as the spirit world.

FINALLY the icons, such as human-type spirits. Ancestors.  Reports of communications with the recent ancestors, such as parents and grandparents.

In some cases, AFTER-IMAGES, which we commonly call flash-backs, as if projected on a wall or ceiling. 

and MEMORIES of the experience.

PREHISTORIC HUMANS were wired just like us and we, them.

........

Datura also called Jimsonweed or Loco Weed was used throughout the region it grew which includes most of present day California. While under the influence, the shamans saw helpers they called mountain dwarfs, water babies, and rock babies...

VISION QUESTING...  In my post about Taisha Abelar, I mentioned that her book was suggested and loaned to me by a young friend, CB.  CB, in attempting to determine what she wished to do career-wise, went on a vision quest.  I'm not sure if she was part Native American, if someone who was or is Native American set this experience up for her, or where it was done as at the time some Westerners, without fear of accusations of cultural theft, were interested in various tribal beliefs and such opportunities existed without either. She reported, if I recall, that about three days into it, just when she was thinking of becoming a midwife, she saw a shooting star.

***

Hancock suggests that AFTER a visionary experience, the art's painted or carved memories of that vision on the rocks.

***

Bodily Sensations : Prickling. "Hairs" extending out. Less or more fingers and toes.

Prickling of body all over or a particular area of the body. Insects gnawing or crawling under the skin - as how the human perceives a bodily hallucination.

More coming up...

C 2023  Christine Trzyna