MUSES WITH WORSE PROBLEMS THAN MINE - TALKING TO STRANGERS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hugged her back and asked God to protect her.

I wondered where the father was.

She needed to be held and to cry.

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

Maybe the test was wrong."

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don't know that he's not.

I've seen too many TV shows.

"Have you done everything?

"Yes, on TV, everything!"

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

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

She took the note.

And I have not seen her driving that bus since.

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

"You need a ride home?" she asked.

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

"Get in I'll drive you there."

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

Her boyfriend was coming out of prison.

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

C 2018 - 2025  Christine Trzyna

AN EDITED VERSION OF CHRISTINETRZYNA.BLOGSPOT.COM

After much consideration, and much editing, spawned by the technical changes Google Blogger has gone through, including the new HTTPS version,  below is the edited content of Christine Trzyna BlogSpot AKA Christine Trzyna - Writerly Life circa 2007 - 2014. 

I've taken down dozens of YouTube videos gone extinct but have posted new videos for some the ones in which I had originally made some commentary.

I've also worked hard to organize labels, since by clicking on the label you should be able to go to all posts with that label.

A few of the posts that were simply announcing the fact that there were changes with Google - technology updates - have been removed since that's the past.

Staying truer to the address of this blog, which as always been christinetrzyna.blogspot.com, I'm eliminating the label Christine Trzyna Writerly Life.

However this doesn't change copyright. My original writing belongs to me, and everything you read here has been copyrighted by me since at least the beginning of this blog, which was since 12/11/07. 
 
There are infrequent posts of other people's work, which has been credited to them and has been used under Fair Use as sampling, or excerpts. The news articles that have been linked to have always been copyrighted by the originators and are still owned by them.

One of the changes that effected this blog, and the BlogSpots of all other Bloggers using the Google Blogger, is that for years in order to get to a link a reader clicked on the title.  That was changed so that one could post a link within the text of the post.  I don't know at this point how many of those links still work or if clicking on those titles will still get you there.  Checking near 900 posts to find out is beyond me at this point.  Many of these title links are in 2008.

I wish I could reinvigorate the Meez Avatar that once had a cartoon image of myself typing away on a laptop (to which I always imagined my theme song, Elvis Costello's "I Write the Book," playing in the background) and which everyone said looked so much like me, but Meez no longer offers what it did initially, which is a shame. 

The customized design of this Blog which uses Flashvortex still seems to work, though, Thank Flashvortex!

On the sidebar a short list of direct links to authors whose work I read or reviewed has been taken down. I will continue to check links and take down defunct posts, time allowing.

I've added small images of the book covers where I reviewed or referenced a book.

Additionally, though this Christine Trzyna BlogSpot is once again for public viewing, all comments have been turned off.

THANKS goes out to Google, Meez, Flashvortex, and Dover Publishing (images), which provided free resources for Bloggers.

Going through this Blog, I'm struck by how often the issues of Los Angeles Public Library concerned or effected me.  I've taken down those posts.  I don't use LAPL much these days and I've lost empathy for this massive library "system" that keeps being awarded for excellence when there are so very many problems with it.  (LAPL public computers basically stink but the problems of the bureaucracy are far worse.)

I also noticed as I reread posts that some of the thematic of this blog was BRANDING as in BRANDING A PERSON TO BE A PRODUCT.  I also used some time to bitch about clerks who were jerks and bad customer service.  These days I do that on YELP.  (I still hate shopping and still  have never ordered anything on the Internet.)  However, I'm still concerned that human beings who are writers are encouraged to turn themselves into BRAND OBJECTS.

Early in the writing of this blog I was taking lots of Yoga classes, but my deep interest in Hinduism started before that.  These days I find myself more interested in Freedom of Religion, and rather than mantra, Sound Healing.

That's all for now.  ENJOY!

Christine Trzyna

WHY ANGELINA JOLIE SHOULD HAVE KEPT HER PRIVATE MEDICAL DECISIONS PRIVATE

WHY ANGELINA JOLIE SHOULD HAVE KEPT HER PRIVATE MEDICAL DECISIONS PRIVATE

I woke up at midnight last night. 
It's been sweltering for two days. 
Gracie was panting. 
I put on the radio. 

World News. 

Angelina Jolie, famous actress, incredibly wealthy woman, with a couple international adoptions and natural born children, who got Brad, chose to have her breasts removed and replaced with - name the brand Angelina! - jiggly foam, molded rubber, squishy plastic, goddess knows what, same size, larger, smaller, because doctors told her she has a scary gene that elevates her risks way high up for breast cancer.  Not said, next she will have her ovaries removed.  She says this increases her chances of not dying on her children, like her mom did her.

WHY DID WE NEED TO KNOW THIS?  Isn't anything personal?  No, not when you are now trying to lead women into their own personal decisions about medical care, and what is EXTREME REACTION to a POTENTIALITY.

Why?

Because her surgery (she has little scars so they must have sucked her breast tissue out with one of those hoses they use for lipo?) was done "secretly" but then she got paid to reveal her secret in an OP ED piece.  Now thousands of women will follow her lead, won't they? 

Did the manufacturer of breast prosthesis pay for her surgery? 

Her pictures, taken in the days before and after and since her surgery, some showing natural breast, some not, so guess! are splashed everywhere so you can goggle and decide if the breasts are missing or the same.  You can look in her eyes and think "She looks pensive, in pain but on heavy meds, regretful, glad she did it, missing her nipple sensation at this very minute."

Angelena Jolie, the woman who has millions from acting in VIOLENT FILMS, films in which she kills as a charming sociopath or not, who feels nothing about killing, IS NOT A ROLE MODEL for the vast majority of women on earth. 

SHE DOES LOTS OF THINGS BECAUSE SHE'S RICH AND CAN.  (Most of us do not have those opps.  Many of us DO NOT WANT THOSE OPPS.)

Angelina goes to a lot of war torn countries and places where women are raped as a matter of culture and because she is SO famous, beautiful, rich, and got Brad, these countries are supposed to have peace and stop rapeing. 

By morning the news was ALL OVER THE WORLD.  Angelina Jolie big BAD example of how to approach medical care for women.  At a time when so many women have no health care at all and Obama Care is the OBAMA DEBACLE! 

Now, you will be a BAD WOMAN, a bad cancer patient, if you do not do as ANGELINA LEADS.

Now you WILL NOT BE A GOOD MOTHER, because Angelina Jolie is not just a beautiful wealthy actress, who got Brad, but SUPER MOTHER, if you don't replace the tissue you were born with with  jiggly foam, molded rubber, squishy plastic, goddess knows what, same size, larger, smaller... 

We should feel guilty for going holistic, taking our chances that we'll get hit by a SUV whose driver is text messaging, not having children at all...

Don't think I'm insensitive to the Breast Cancer issue because I, like you, have lost people in my life to the disease, but LIVING FOR STATISTICS is, well, you may as well invest your quarters in Vegas.  LIVING FOR STATISTICS is ABOUT AS DUMB AS LIVING FOR A RESUME!

When you read around the subject of breast cancer over the years you will read the pros and cons and the cons that used to be the pros and the prose that used to be the cons. 

BREAST CANCER IS NOT JUST BIG BUSINESS it's BIG PUBLICITY.  Be it all this "walking" and "running" for breast cancer, wearing pink bows on your lapel, or buying hideously pink (female branded = if you like blue you must be lesbian?) merchandise, scarves, shoes, jewelry, to "support the cause" for a "cure." 

What if "the cure" is abortion of any fetus that carries the gene?  (The ancient Greeks exposing female fetuses to the elements so they die.  The ancient Chinese throwing first born females to their death rather than upset the family structure and selecting out female fetus's today because of one child policy that is forced and enforced? Indian women today using ultrasound to detect unwanted female fetuses and aborting them.)  WHAT IF THE ONLY CURE IS DEATH?


C Christine Trzyna 2013  All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights. 
PS: See my review on the book ANGELINA JOLIE by Andrew Morton earlier on this blog! 

BRANDING CHRISTINE TRZYNA or I THINK OF ANDY WARHOL

I've been thinking a lot about BRANDING. (And that Andy Warhol was a futurist in his understanding of this concept.)

Branding is a marketing term for moving a product (a person/writer is a product) into a category that is evocative of the essence of that person/writer, sometimes through associated product.

State that again?

It is assumed that what I buy says a lot about me - my personality, character, values, class.

I think maybe what I DON'T BUY SAYS MORE!

I'm in love with cutting edge advertising as pop culture. I love paging through a VANITY FAIR or a VOGUE and looking at the ads - what models are being used - what is the "story" each pictorial promotes. (High fashion ads are sometimes creepy. I hated the lurking molester/rapist of young sexy girls jeans pictorial a few years back.) But I can't say that I have bought anything I've ever seen advertised in either magazine.

Anyway, I'm going to have fun with this idea of me being a BRAND, as associated with PRODUCT, during the most materialistic time of the year in this "Christian" country; the Christmas season. I'm going to pitch products I like, just like I used to play at being a TV commercial actress and promoting a box of cereal when I was a kid.



C Christine Trzyna/ Writerly Life 2010 All Rights Reserved Including Internet and International Rights
C 2016 Christine Trzyna Blogspot

ONE OF THE STUPIDEST THINGS PEOPLE SAY TO WRITERS ....

One of the stupidest things people say to writers, when we share (and since we are expressers, we share) instead of the horridly patronizing "Thank You For Sharing," is "You should write a book."
Our every harsh experience is dismissed or deemed worth experience for the "learning value." We are often told by people that these experiences are worth it because they give us SOMETHING TO WRITE ABOUT. As if we don't already experience life as worth writing about without the angst. As if only harsh experiences are somehow illuminating or invigorating or inspiring! AS IF OBSERVATION, RESEARCH, or pure IMAGINATION are not enough!


C 2010 All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights
C 2016  Christine Trzyna/ Christine Trzyna Blogspot

NEXT MAGAZINE REDUX : NIGHTMARE ON C STREET by CHRISTINE TRZYNA

This was a feature article in the November 1994 Next Magazine, by me, Christine Trzyna.

NIGHTMARE ON C STREET

Last night Pan was trying to seduce me into the Poetry Cult. Maybe it wasn't the old cloven footed trickster himself, but a naked surfer waving the latest copy of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, from Dutton's. These definitive reference books for the 90's wordsmith keep flying off Dutton's dusty NoHo shelves like B-52's with UFOs on their tails. Maybe Pan, knowing I'm a poet, didn't think his stupendous butt or the long slender fingers of a slide-to-hell guitarist were enough!

He was dripping with seaweed. One piece of it hung seductively over his right nipple. He was carrying a surfboard with a screaming lime NEXT...logo airbrushed on it. Gosh! He looked like Killer Dana's Gary Wright...or maybe it was GMT himself!

His voice was full of maple syrup. "Hey you sweet young Pancake, you," he said. Definitely not Gary or GMT. "Wouldn't you like to enter into the dark den of the gypsies, tramps, and thieves?" he said.

He went on to mention the allure of the Anti-Menites, the Idealogues, and the Revolutionaries, like Psycho Boy did last month, but they all sound so like Jungian archetypes. This was my dream and I wanted crazy Sigmund and his coke addiction.

"Get involved in the poetry scene and before you know it, you'll get all the tarot and rune readings you ever wanted. Married women will turn gay and try to seduce you while their husbands are out paying off the charge cards. Pretty soon, even you will be working for cash under the table," Pan said.

"Wait a moment, Pan. This sounds a lot like a Music Business seduction to me. Did we meet at Lollapalooza? I asked.

"Nah. Too muddy," he replied. "Listen, Christine, follow me and you'll be important. You'll have friends all over the place. You'll drive...drive..drive to readings., No matter what, people will clap for you. I'll see what I can do to rig the slams. By the 30th of the month you'll be frantically searching for NEXT... so you can intelligently plan your month. And you'll start drinking coffee, even though it does taste like crap and puts cellulite on your thighs," he added, glaring at my skinny rump in a way that made me tremble.

"NO! NO! I heard myself moan. But I had sleep paralysis and my efforts to flee were canned. Somewhere in the background, like all good feminists, I heard Mick Jagger singing, "Under My Thumb."

"All I ever wanted was financial security!" I yelled. He vanished into thin air, but I heard his laugh all the way down the beach.

If you're reading this propaganda, you may already me a member of the poetry CULT. And Darling, there is no escape.

C 1994, 2008 Christine Trzyna

Commentary: When I read this silly article years later, I was impressed with my own sense of nonsensical fun and realized it had been a long time since I had written so freely. This was a first write so there wasn't time for both the editor in my head and the press deadline. Of course I see myself trying to tickle (with a jab) certain members of the poetry scene back then.

Duttons closed about a 2 years ago. It was a North Hollywood tradition. Hello to Dave Dutton! (The place is now a yoga studio!)

C 2016  Christine Trzyna / Christine Trzyna Blogspot

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

CHRISTINE TRZYNA WRITERLY LIFE COPYRIGHT

Christine Trzyna Writerly Life Rights Information  AKA Christine Trzyna BlogSpot AKA Christine Trzyna

Every once in a while I'll be posting a notice like this one that reminds readers that the content of this blog is Copyright Christine Trzyna with all rights reserved including Internet and International Rights.

If interested in communicating with Christine Trzyna please send a comment that includes your e-mail address and full name.Comments do not automatically appear on the Internet and are moderated.

THANKS!

WHAT I WANT IN MY SOCK (NOT MY STOCKING! I DON'T WEAR THEM!)

WHAT IS MY HEART'S DESIRE?

My Favorite (Cheap) Chocolate: Hershey's Dark and Hersheys Chocolate with Almonds. (However I'm open to Chocolate Swiss.)

My Favorite Gum: I've been trying all the new chewing gums in their newly designed artistic packages but ORBIT brand in WATERMELON or CITRUS is the best! (It turns out 20 minutes of chewing after each meal really is good for your teeth and digestion!)

My Favorite Nut Candy: Pastel Jordon Almonds.

My Favorite Fruit: Oranges. These are perfect!

A GOLD COIN - much better than a half penny though a half penny will do.

MY LONG LOST RING RETURNED MYSTERIOUSLY (Perhaps an apportation!)

A LOVE LETTER (It must be sincere!)

All the money that is owed to me by various scoundrels (including intellectual property thieves) so I can pay off all my own debts.

A year's supply of Indian incense.

CHRISTINE TRZYNA - WRITERLY LIFE RIGHTS INFORMATION

Christine Trzyna BlogSpot / Christine Trzyna

Every once in a while I'll be posting a notice like this one that reminds readers that the content of this blog is Copyright Christine Trzyna with all rights reserved including Internet and International Rights.





THANKS!

WE ARE EVERYWHERE (NEXT MAGAZINE REDUX)

From the March 1996 Next Magazine

WE ARE EVERYWHERE

by Christine Trzyna

Poets are sometimes performers, sometimes producers, sometimes workshop leaders or magazine editors. These are the high profile poets we know of. But poets can be found everywhere, even in unexpected places. AT LAVC's computer lab, where I culled my poetry file for an eventual chapbook, other students were surprised to see my poems making it through the printer between spreadsheets and graphic presentations.

You're the poet?" they asked. Later a woman timidly slipped me the song lyrics she'd written and a Russian man, an intense immigrant, presented me with a thick manila envelope and dashed out. It was full of poems he'd published in a Yankee literary journal.

Some complain about not making money through poetry. Conversely others feel that poetry is tainted by ambitions that include financial reward. But poets are not unemployed - they can be found in every profession,

Poets make "real money" in "real" jobs in the "real" world. I was once a member of a writing group that included a jet propulsion lab engineer, a landscaped designer, a telephone operator, and a retired IRS officer. Perhaps as we gossip, asking what certain poets "real" names are, we should also ask, what do they really do for a living? A quick survey of my poetry pals includes an office manager, a computer specialist, a teacher, a sociologist, a construction worker, a waiter, a cabdriver, temporary workers and coffeehouse counter clerks. Poetry is written from a vast variety of viewpoints and on "unpoetic" subjects. We are not stereotypes. We are everywhere.

What I disdain is the way some poets judge other poets, rather than praising diversity.

"Not really a poet" - a person who also indulges in other forms of writing.

"Idiot Savant" - a person whose great talent attracts jealous backstabbers.

"No Talent Bum" - a person who could give a damn about literary pretension.

"Bastard/Bitch" - a person who dares to read work inspired by bad romance, even though the ex is staring them down in the room.

"Overachiever" (No such thing!) - a person who keeps trying to perform although they bomb.

Worse of all "LA poet", as in, "Don't get known as an LA Poets!" - a person who is not approved of by the snob establishment, who some point to as "in San Francisco" or "Poets & Writers," or "The Lannan Foundation."

Such comments make me sad for the era when community had something to do with upholding each other's creative path. It makes me understand why some poets prefer to write, and remain, in secret.

***

Affirmed August 2025  First posted September 7 2008

QUICK BOOK REVIEW : I KNEW A WOMAN by CORTNEY DAVIS

I KNEW A WOMAN
The Experience of the Female Body
by Cortney Davis C 2001
Random House, New York

Cortney Davis is a nurse practitioner and poet, and what she wrote, "I Knew A Woman," is a beautiful book that follows her professional and private responses to some of her patients at a low-income and homeless gynecology clinic. One reviewer, Sapphire, says it better than me when she calls this book "an extraordinary blend of memoir, fiction, and clinical detail." I followed especially the story of Lila, the homeless teenager pregnant and living in a car with her legal adult boyfriend, as she grasps independence to make a life with her just born baby. It just so happens that I know someone in almost this same situation, a young woman with few choices who makes dumb choices when she can, who has just passed through my life, and I felt some synchronicity was involved in my reading this book.

I tend to walk around a library and let books fall off the shelves to my feet begging to be read... OK, not really, though that has happened...

I see how I become interested in a book because of the art of the book at times, lured by cover art, typography, and that was the case with this one. I was in for a wonderful surprise of a book, one I could not anticipate, at once titillating my interest in Womans Studies as well as the secrets of the female body, one of which I am in this life.

I don't think I will ever quite think of a visit to the doctor (or nurse practitioner) the same. I know now that they are judging me and my health from the moment I walk in, even based on what I am wearing and my attitude, and that they may cloak what they are really thinking or know about my condition from me for reasons of professionalism. I will be more sure than ever that they intuitively know if I am sick and what my prognosis will be while also being willing to give hope a greater chance than there is reason for.

Cortney Davis too reacts to her patients relating their desperation or poverty in terms of her own life experience. Page 118, hardback:

"What if there had been a fire? What if someone had broken into my apartment - not an uncommon occurrence in that neighborhood - and found my son and daughter? When I look at Lila, I remember being alone and poor and at my wit's end. When I look at Lila, her swollen belly, her thin lips, her jangle of earrings and chains, I remember something a great poet once told me. "Poems that are too perfect," he said, "like lives that are too ordered, lack the human mistakes that make them real." Because I never forget the reality of what I've experienced, I can forgive many of the mistakes I see my patients make. Because I know that I am a different person now, I trust that they, too, will change; that the girl Lila is now is not the woman Lila will become."

C 2008 Christine Trzyna   Affirmed 2025

DUMBING DOWN AND SILENCE ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW

DUMBING DOWN AND SILENCE ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW

This morning I was thinking about how I've been expected to DUMB DOWN at various moments in my life. (If you've been reading this blog you know that I am using the word moment to mean anything from an instant to a long period of time, an era.) I think this is something that women are expected to do more than men. And I think women correctly perceive that in moments dumbing down is actually a survival skill. For instance it allows you to survive a megalomaniac boss and pay your rent.

Luckily, although I absorbed the concept of dumbing down, and have realize I was cooperating or collaborating to be not the best I could be, unlike some young women my mother didn't actually lecture me to do so. I learned that other teenagers mothers DID, telling them to stifle their intelligence, to not be intellectual, to let him "win," as well as pretend helplessness in order to prove their femininity. My mind rebelled against these notions, but for a long time I acknowledged that I was not exactly independent and what right then did I have to express contrary opinions and still be kept ?

NOT BEING AS TALENTED AS YOU ARE as a writer, can also happen in writers groups and in literature and creative writing classrooms. I recall one star pupil at a local community college where I studied writing who always used to preference her presentations of short stories with a whinny, "It's not very good but...."

Actually she was a very good writer, but I had to wonder why she chose to enter into the competition with a handicap like this phony self esteem problem. Perhaps it's that some women are afraid to compete and be seen as not nice, not... well... women.

For here goes the opposite problem. The competitive person who is hellbent on winning (whatever it is, the love of a professor, etc.) even if they have to play dirty, who uses psychological warfare among their companions and peers to get the advantage. I met a couple women like that in college.

Competition itself isn't the problem then. It's not even especially a feminist issue. It's the dirty play.

The other day, in a particular moment, someone startled me by asking me "The question about you is are you stirring the shit or trying to smooth it." I blurted, "Well I'm not a kiss ass, I'm more of a political activist as a type of person." But later I realized that I was being challenged about telling what I know though it might anger some people and really challenge the status quo or KEEPING SILENT, which is another way of DUMBING DOWN! A nd I wish I would have had this more thoughtful comeback; "Actually I don't believe any shit should exist at all!"


C Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved 2008 -2025

"MOODS" AND "MOMENTS"

"MOODS" AND "MOMENTS"

I was reading Carlos Castaneda. I realized that he was using the term "mood" to mean something other than moody or emotional. Rather, it seemed that a new "mood" could mean something such as a new trend, or instinct, or way of thinking, being, or doing. A mood implies a change, a way of perceiving that an old way is past. A mood could occur as a decision or a perception of having changed. It could register with impact or barely, though to be cognitive of a mood one must sense it. Sensing mood might suggest that the understanding of it is not exactly cognitive but instinctual or intuitive.

I've also heard people using the term "moment" to mean something other than a smidgen of time. For instance a couple who met, made love, and decided against a relationship, can be said to have had their "moment." (A moment is a more romantic notion than "hooking up" for sure.) People can have their "moment" in fame, career success (or failure), or on a night out that lasts beyond the five minutes of fame Andy Warhol saw as a guaranteed moment for everyone in the future. (Perhaps this is what SOCIAL NETWORKING is all about, a self propelled moment of fame!) It is understood that as you read my blog you are having a moment with me and certainly I hope you pick up on my mood and yours is a bit altered for the experience!


Christine Trzyna C 2008 - 2026 All Rights Reserved

LA STREET POETRY - DEBRA SPECTOR D'INNOCENTE

Debra, who is Jewish, handed me this poem on the street, written in her kind of calligraphy. She told me that it is to Adonai - God. I promised I would publish it. 

WHERE SHALL WE STAY? 

Where shall we stay Amongst the rubble or by thoust arms and by the stars for there is no poison, no fear, no fires that burn in my soul - To have found You, a love! so pure, unleashed by grace itself - a pack of cards - a Trojan horse - and your Book! 

C 2008 All Rights Reserved for Debra Spector D'Innocente