THINKING OF MUSE MARK

Mark didn't mean to but he taught me young that I would never ever have a jealous, manipulative, or controlling partner.


One of the most willful people I've ever met, he is predictably a huge success.  He has all the things I don't though some of the things he willfully wanted I never did.


One of the relationships of my life that I suspect has past life connections, there has always been something occult about it.

THE CHARMING SOCIOPATH MUSE WHO LEFT ME IN A DARK PLACE

My cousin, a minister, has quite recently, after more than half a life with no connection, turned out to be the one person I could talk to about one of the deep shocks of my lifetime, the charming sociopath muse of my early adulthood, who left me in a dark place.

Wicked, is what he called my Charming Sociopath, and for the first time in years I found there was someone I could talk to about the existence of Evil.

The Charming Sociopath had a support network of deceivers, people behind the scenes who must have known his insincerity, or at least suspected it, but were not protective of me. Many of them went to Church.

And so I proceeded to a dark place where loyalty, faithfulness, and devotion, idealism and belief were challenged.

My cousin says, "He was grooming you for more shocks."

VISITING JAM MY SENIOR FRIEND

I made a surprise visit to my senior friend JAM recently. 

I met him maybe 6 years ago when I was friend with a friend of his, a woman poet.  The elderly woman used to take walks around my neighborhood and when I engaged her, she recited short lovely poems to me, poems she was proud of and wanted to publish.  Our first conversations were about putting together a chap book (usually a small book published by the person or an editor meant for small distribution, like at poetry readings at coffee houses or art galleries, often free or for the cost of printing.)  She wanted her only grandson to have her intellectual property rights.

I have a soft spot for seniors who are alone in life, without living or local family to look in on them. 

The woman poet only had her grandson and Jam, who with his wife, had been this couple's best friends.  The woman poet died several months after I began visiting and phoning her frequently.  She was dying of cancer and had not yet been told the truth, though she suspected.  I was with her the night before she died, and met her grandson only then. 

JAM was also depressed not only because he was surrounded in a senior living place with people who were dealing with illness or dying, because of the death of his wife, who he had known and been married to over 60 years!  Now in his 90's JAM is my "oldest" friend, but because he does have family to look in on him (people I will probably never meet) I don't visit with him as often.

JAM's way out of his depression was WRITING.  He joined several senior - oriented writing clubs and classes and recorded mostly memoirs some of his short stories or chapters published.

This visit he surprised me by pulling out his Barnes and Noble NOOK! JAM bragged that he might be ready to go but he always kept up with technology and with this NOOK he was able to access Los Angeles Public Library and download books.  He had read near 40 in the last several months on the NOOK.  He surprised me by telling me he didn't like non-fiction especially not history, and naming his favorite writers of suspense, mystery, and murder.  Since he is slowing down physically, this has saved him the hardship of walking with a cane to take public transportation to the library.

UPDATE OCTOBER 2016  ...JAM DIED THIS PAST SPRING...

CHRISTINE TRZYNA PERSONAL DIARY : FUNNY : THE COSMO BOY I PICKED WOULD PICK ME!

HOT MEN FROM ALL 50 STATES ?

by Christine Trzyna

I was in a waiting room, wasting time, waiting, when I picked up a copy of a recent Cosmopolitan magazine.

Now as you know, I think what has happened to Cosmo since Helen Gurley Brown left is - well - traumatizing. Once in a while I go to a newsstand hungering for the OLD COSMO. But I have never once bought the magazine since THE BIG CHANGING OF THE GUARD over there in New York. (Use the search feature of this blog to see what I've had to say about Cosmo in the past!)

So... I picked up this Cosmo and there is a special feature, let's call it HOT MEN FROM ALL 50 AMERICAN STATES. Each state has one man elected (by ???) to represent all hot men from that state. There is one picture of each, a short profile of what the man is looking for in a woman, and CONTACT INFORMATION. A woman can SHOP these men!

I DECIDED TO AMUSE MYSELF by looking through these many pages of "hot men" to see if any of them walked on through the door that moment, I would be ATTRACTED. (When is the last time YOU saw someone and your heart went ping!?)

AND THEN - YEA - I SEE HIM! Whatever it is about him, I wonder, is it familiarity, because I don't have a "type" when it comes to looks.

Then I read what he has to say. He says,"I ALWAYS THOUGHT IT WOULD BE REALLY COOL TO MEET A WOMAN AT THE PUBLIC LIBRARY!"

ooooooh! CAN THIS BE? (After my own heart?!)

Slightly thrilled to have found him, I begin referencing Cher, Madonna, Pamela Des Barres, and an assortment of other women notorius for younger men. I even think to myself that up to 20 years in age difference is still workable!

Sad, sad, sad, he was way too young for me - but perfect!

C Christine Trzyna 2010 All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

Affirmed C 2025

PERSONAL DIARY : CHRISTINE TRZYNA : THE VERY WORST THING ANYONE EVER SAID TO ME TO DISCOURAGE ME FROM WRITING

THE VERY WORST THING ANYONE EVER SAID TO ME

TO DISCOURAGE ME FROM WRITING

by Christine Trzyna

For some time, I spent a large chunk of my day, sometimes every day, in a privately owned coffee house on a major boulevard in a ritzy shopping district. That it was a ritzy area is mentioned here, only to say that a lot of people who came into this place had a lot of money and time to burn. But not everyone. Not most of the writers who decorated the place. I was one of those writers who was tolerated for hours with my laptop taking a small table, though not without purchasing. I bought a lunch and nursed a few refills and once in a while one of those people with money to burn filled my cup for another 50 cents.
My purpose was to write in an environment that was somewhat stimulating so that when I needed to take a break and have a good, intelligent, conversation, I could. I wanted to write in a place where food and beverages were easily affordable and available and that wasn't too far from my place. (I did meet some interesting conversationalists there.)

I think a lot of writers do the same, escaping their environments not supportive of their writing by taking their laptops and heading out. There is even a kind of club for some that suddenly ups and goes to X, abandoning Y, making the owners who counted on them, for their bread if not their butter, wonder what they did wrong. Usually it's just the in-crowd as they think of themselves excluding someone they are tired of.

HERE IS THE VERY WORST THING ANYONE THERE EVER SAID TO ME ABOUT WRITING and PUBLISHING A BOOK:

"You go to the book sales at the libary or to garage sales, and you buy books for a dollar or a quarter, and after all the time and effort, that's where your book ends up."

The guy who said this to me was a rich bum, the equivalent of someone satisfied to live off a trust fund and not do much of anything, not even volunteer work.

Of course I think it's WONDERFUL that books get recycled and go from one reader to the next, that those books got cleared out of attics and bookshelves, so that SOMEONE ELSE could READ THEM! I know that the moment for the author themselves to profit from the sale of such a book is over, yet, this is how some people become familiar with a writer, through an old book. You can't put a dollar on that. And writers write for publication because they want to share with the world. When I get a book from the library that I love and want, I too look for it at library and garage sales. I THINK "GREAT! AT SOME POINT A WRITER GOT PAID FOR THIS WRITING!" That's better than being ripped off from the get go!

SO NO I AM NOT OK with someone stealing my intellectual property, which has happened. That's one of the reasons I don't send work out as I used to, having trust and faith because someone claims they have a great opportunity for me; it seems that promises made by certain chap book publishers (I should sue) and even people with Doctorates in Literature who put out anthologies (I should sue) turn into BS.

A steaming simmering pile of BS...

Hey, thanks for reading!

C Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights