Blog-o-thon #1: Blog For Your Life

Somewhere filed and thus, impossible to find at the moment are wise words from a woman blogger who talks about the 'need' to write we writers have and how it's a good way to work yourself out of a corner.
And so, here I am, shivering outdoors with either the late afternoon wind blowing across me every two minutes and the air blowers from my neighborhood grocery store chilling my legs. I won't be shivering here much longer....I hate being cold.
The point with this exercise is just to keep writing: word after word, funneling that focus away from the usual hi-jinks. Not that I'm trying to run away from certain behaviors: I came to a realization today and am reacting to it.

Elsewhere, filed terrifically is a link to a history of to the Shamans of Atlantis who dabbled a bit too much on the recreational side of crystal energy and sank the continent. However, the knowledge that they had gained was preserved, not in written form but through those crystal skulls Indiana Jones was tangled up with, as well as the Mayans, the Nazis, and probably the Kardashians.

I don't know if any of this means a hill of beans, but it's fun to speculate and be silly. Laugh with me, though, not at me. And if you can't laugh, perhaps you are thinking about  the power of crystals to enlighten, or eliminate a group of healers.

An Early Christmas

I had shook my head in amazement when I got an email from Mr. Big Woods of Wisconsin. I should have known the minute I began to reenter the world of the living something like this would happen.


The letter was friendly, with no 'old business' from the past being dragged out. I had last spoken to him July 4th Weekend, when he called and I lay on my big couch and cried after we hung up.
I was feeling so very lonesome, the roommate hunt was not going anywhere, a job negotiation had just fallen through. I went on a three day binge: not leaving the apartment, not eating, just staring at the walls.

This email found him in good spirits and mentioned a possible West Coast trip before Christmas.

We marked out calendars and things promptly unraveled. It started as an inability to coordinate face time via Skype. Then he announced he was running late to pick up his date for a monthly dinner club event, but oddly, and this was a good sign, I didn't wall up in tears when he said he had to go .

And that surprise trip to the Coast didn't happen--- which was no surprise to me.

December came, and with it,his birthday. He called me on mine, but could I stand the thought of having to talk to him, but neither did I want to blow him off. I sent an email, and in my own way began quietly closing the books on Woodman "Woodsy" McCarthy of Milwaukee, and this silly drain of energy known as party and play.
I could have gone to Madrid last year. He would gracefully fade into my past.

I received a rather ardent plea that we 'must' talk, and was told when and where to receive this call. (No 'Taming of the Shrew' jokes either, folks)

What could I do? I thanked Woodsy for making my day, as I was feeling mighty low, and for an hour plus enjoyed the most civilized conversation, with questions
"On the last night of my visit to Milwaukee, why DID you take me to the Supper Club where your father proposed to your mother?"
His reply: " It was?"
Laughter (I still call his old boyfriend 'Winston' which is the name of my cat. It's not deliberate. I'm still referred to as "That Man", which is.) Woodsy has a non-steady steady, and his description prompted me to quip: "He sounds like my twin'.
The reply: "He's a plumber; you're a writer." Ouch.

For once, I looked no further than the moment, turned off the sophisticated comedy repartee(might as well speak in Urdu), and just looked at him...he had fallen asleep on cam.

When I told Woodman  with my extended troubles I feared becoming Ava Gardner at the end of Show Boat, he asked 'Why not Howard Keel?'
I admit, I wasn't prepared for that one.

It's make believe in reality perhaps, but that call was the most marvelous Christmas present I've ever received.

The Camino: One for my baby, and one for the road

Meanwhile, things grew stranger: 

I'm backlogged on posting.Time keeps moving faster. And just a lot of weirdness has permeated the air. My blog is now up and running on Blogger.
Blogger is very user friendly and easy to format. The blog program here combined with my Firefox browser, hindered me in many ways. The social networking classes and seminars I attended over the summer were united in one aspect: WordPress was by far the most recommended.

Let me put it this way: WordPress was rammed down my throat, but for what I'm doing, which is telling stories about me, I don't need much sophistication to blog . I need an EZ-in EZ-post venue. I'm not making any head way on full time work.

Listening to me bemoan the lack of good jobs, a Skype friend...suggested I become a janitor. Stunned at this idea, I recited from a movie trivia book: "Even when she playing a waif, everything about Audrey Hepburn breathed money." My friend threw his hands in the air and logged off.

I may not 'breathe' money, but I know I burn through it more quickly than most. Audrey didn't play a janitor and neither will I. But Audrey didn't have to consider the possibility that home is a refrigerator box under the 101 Freeway. I wonder at times, how it all was coming down to this.

So, its getting spooky around here...Armed robberies are way up in the hood. Why? Because we live in lousy economic times with no clear picture that its getting better. The dozen or so clubs in Hollywood close at 2AM when drunk, high or emotional patrons flood the streets and thieves are following the clubgoers. The crime index for Hollywood is triple digits higher than the city average.

And, just when I thought I was done with 'endings', the large apartment building behind me has been vacated entirely. Not only was my stalker gone, but the guy on the top floor who'd been there 20 years. That building, and almost all the others like it around the block, are under new ownership. They'e being gutted and remodeled.

I had recommeded to my ex reading Shirley MacLaine's The Camino. This was about her journey along the mystical magical pathway that crosses Spain. I was planning to see the actual Camino, as part of a journey to Madrid, but chose Milwaukee instead.

The Camino was due back to the Hollywood branch library soon, and my ex couldn't stand the book. However, I kind of liked it, but for some odd reason, well, the reason was to save time, I began skimming backward in my reading.
That's right, about halfway along the Camino, I jumped to the end and worked backwards. And: I felt a whole number of coincidentals seemingly fall in to place.

According to Shirley, before Atlantis, there was Lemuria, a land of harmony, united souls and collective bargaining...make that collective thinking. They used crystals for healing, and many other good things.
And then Atlantis evolved, I suppose, and united souls were now male and female, no longer connected and growing self centered. And ultimately that became the selfish ego that would cost the Atlanteans their advanced world.

Wasn't this also the plot of Forbidden Planet? Monsters from the Id.
And this all about change. Resistance to , resigning oneself to , embracing.
....and I continued my rationalizations. And in my bookbag I had an eclectic combination of titles:

The Camino by Shirley MacLaine, Ask Your Guides, by Sonia Choquette, Eckhart Tolle, and my spiral notebook.

Could the mysterious world of Lemuria which gave way to Atlantis, find its dependence upon crystal energies were causing a different reaction than historically had happened. These events migh destroy the culture of Atlantis, and it would take a thousand plus years to have found a synthetic replacement for crystal: once used- changed, subverted, altered.

What did it all mean? Did it mean anything?