GET TOGETHER : THE YOUNGBLOODS

IT'S GONNA TAKE A MIRACLE : DENIECE WILLIAMS

ROMANTIC : EXPERIENCE FORTY-FOUR : CHRISTINE TRZYNA WRITING WORKSHOP

 

ROMANTIC

What's the most romantic thing you ever did?

Christine Trzyna

This exercise is part of a series of writing exercises and to bring up the whole series use the tag Christine Trzyna Writing Workshop. 

C 2018-2025  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.

MY DRAPERY FAILURE : THE MUNDANE and RIDICULOUS

The mundane and ridiculous!

A few weeks ago, in an effort to let the sun shine in, I removed thick draperies, broomed cobwebs, washed windows, and thought new draperies were in order.  I found a fabric that was miraculously unable to wrinkle, a small almost ditsy print that would flow and let the air through.  Ditsy is not like me but I felt that teeny rosebuds  from afar would appear to be an overall textural repeat pattern and,close up, the three colors would work for the rest of the room.

And then...

I spent an entire Saturday from morning to night hand sewing these draperies.

At least I was listening to an audiobook at the same time.

Audiobooks I increasingly embrace because I get to free my eyes and hands from reading while I Create!

This is the "mood" I've been in.

Back in teenage days I had a friend who was a naturally talented seamstress on top of many other talents and skills. While I sewed a zipper in the wrong way more than once on the same pair of summer shorts and didn't get it that corduroy is generally not a fabric to be worn in the heat and humidity, she fashioned a long wool grey coat with a fur collar and silky lining and impeccable buttons that fit her perfectly and kept her warm in the freezing weather. That coat looked like something on sale at Saks Fifth Avenue for a thousand bucks.  Wearing it made her sachay. 

It seemed that although I was a failure at sewing, most summers I would get a hankering for something new and sew something. It seemed the sewing machine my mom had always had problems with the tension and was in the shop repeatedly. When people saw me wearing one of my creations they would not say, "You look great!" or "How pretty that blouse is!"  They would say...

"Did you make that?"

To be fair to myself: I had another friend who never threw out a single item of clothing she ever bought. She had sweaters that looked new for years. She said this was due to a trick her mom taught her. Something like throwing in vinegar into the wash water.  If there was anyone on earth worse at sewing than me, it was her.  Because I knew when to give up. One day she walked into a store where I was working at the time, a store that sold 100% cotton clothes that included summer dresses with elaborate ruffly collars. She walked in wearing her version of one of these summer dresses which she might have even made in order to look like one of us girls on staff. There were visible, erratic. and large stitches - the kind one would use to baste - all over the ruffly area, which she had not attached to the body of the dress.  I was embarrassed for her. 

But back to the new draperies I hand stitched.

Around ten at night I finally had them finished and decided to hang them.  In the evening light it was clear to me that they looked terrible. 

The next day I watched the draperies as the day sun progressed through the windows. These draperies look great only when the full light of the sun is coming through them but terrible the rest of the day and look particularly bad in the evening.

Well, there they are... until I find some better fabric and more time.

Back in the day I got sewing out of my system with my most recent failure.

It's my hope that this latest fail will also work to get sewing out of my system.

C 2023  Christine Trzyna

HAVE YOU SEEN HER : CHI LITES and A FRIEND IS IN HIS LAST DAYS WITH LUNG CANCER

Sorry about the commercial at the very end.  At least it's at the very end.

This song came into my mind this morning.  Don't know why...  Has nothing to do with...

Listening to the U.N. and other broadcasts regarding the horrific situation in Turkey and Syria because of the twin earthquakes that hit that area.  A lot of people who anticipated getting up in the morning and starting with a cup of tea have left their bodies. Over time I've begun to think that maybe the Buddhists are right and we all come into this life with a certain number of breaths.

A friend of sorts, someone I met about five years ago, who was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer then, and refused radiation and chemo, and kept smoking (though exposure to smoke while working in a ship engine for a decade is more likely the cause), is still walking around.

Each time I see him I think that a person could not be more skinny, more without fat or muscle, and be alive.

More than once I felt that he had to be in his last days.

He eats a lot but is past the point where he can get back the fat and muscle.

So concerned that he not be alone when he dies.

Yet, he does not want me to be involved.

Sent along a crochet blanket a year or so ago.

Last heard that a man friend of his is checking in on him daily and also providing food and water.

C Christine Trzyna

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

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

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

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

Eve Babitz : Excerpt page 7  published 1977

TROUBLE WAS EXCITING

The phone rang.

"Christine, could you put my wife on," he demanded, not wasting words.

"She's not here," I said, not wasting any either.

"She said she was."

"She's not here. I don't know where she is."

We hung up. He had misunderstood. So I thought.

They were boy and girl next door and married young. 

I wasn't the last to know. He was. She wanted out. She was having an affair.

Immature. Badly Raised. Gossip. Trouble Maker. Missing Something. User. 

These were terms used to explain Doreen to me by others.

I don't know what I would've said if she'd asked me to cover for her. She hadn't.

She was drinking after work and with the other man. Coming home to her clean living LDS husband late and with boozey breath, claiming she was out with me while I was at home alone, eating my chili and grilled cheese and reading a book. 

Shit.

She bought her new man gifts on their charge cards. She said they were for me. Was she kidding? Macy's men's wallets?

She took the flowers he brought her home from work and said they were part of a display struck on Friday. 

She wanted to get caught. Trouble was exciting.

Her never married lover asked her to marry him. She had her out. If only he could get a better job, she said. So he got one, risking the loss of tried but true. He was heartbroken when she broke with him and kept the little diamond - his life savings. He went back to another state from where he'd been raised, nothing left for him in California.

How shocked she must have been when her quick acting husband sold their house sans profit, paid off her charges, gave her the car and a couple thousand cash, removed her name from his life and medical insurance, dropped her possessions off at her mother's, signed the divorce, moved to Orange, started his own business, and married someone he just met - in mere months. Wasn't he supposed to beg her back, buy her presents, prove he loved her?

She was terrified of living alone in an apartment she could afford.

Of course she remarried. Was he the man who won the fist fight over her that she managed to produce at a party in the Hollywood Hills?

ASAP.

C 2021

HOW CAN YOU MEND A BROKEN HEART?

Is this heart just starting to break or just starting to mend?
 

JERUSALEM : DAN BERN

I was reading some commentary on this song.  Basically, I think people are assuming that this is a love song and that Dan, the singer, is first singing to a woman who wants more of him than he is willing to give.
My interpretation is that, it is the Messiah (be that God or Dan as God) who is singing to YOU.  Don't test my love because maybe I don't love you all that much.