Tue 15 Mar 2011
Posted by PJ under quote of the day, reality
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Random quote of the day:
“Reality is what you can get away with.”
—Robert Anton Wilson
Disclaimer:Â The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Mon 14 Mar 2011
Posted by PJ under news, tweets, updates
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We can only hope.
Why do they always do a musical episode? Are they that out of fresh ideas? Does anyone actually like those things? 7 Mar
Besides the actors, writers, and producers, that is. 7 Mar
Stay tuned for a very special all-singing Trapper John M.D. 7 Mar
5 boxes of books donated to Venice Library, municipal election to increase library funding voted in. I AM VIRTUOUS. 8 Mar
The municipal initiative to increase library funding passed yesterday. Huzzah! 9 Mar
My oldest friend just caved and joined Facebook. Et tu, L.? I imagine my days are numbered. 9 Mar
I woke up every two hours last night. Fun times. Must go get my caffeine IV now. 9 Mar
Nationpam is on the lam. 9 Mar
I do want to see the new Jane Eyre movie, as a matter of fact. 10 Mar
Nationpam would like a dram. 10 Mar
I’ve got this thing going with a Natiowide commercial currently in heavy rotation. When it comes on I have to tweet a rhyme for Nationpam… 10 Mar
Kind of like a drinking game only with stupidity instead of booze. 10 Mar
Min is fascinated and afraid of the yellow rubber ducky I keep in the shower. 10 Mar
God bless the people of Japan. 11 Mar
All these Pacific Rim earthquakes are making me nervous. 11 Mar
I drive thru a tsunami evac zone every day but SoCal has an advisory rather than a warning. I still might take an alternate route to work. 11 Mar
Call me silly if you like. 11 Mar
Nationpam keeps saying damn. 11 Mar
This date 1912 Scott distributed opium pills and morphine to his Arctic expedition members so they could end their misery when needed. 11 Mar
Got the last of my boxes out of the garage & in the house. Finally can say “Not my s/t” when asked about those other boxes. 12 Mar
I’m really tired of living other peoples’ agendas. 12 Mar
Had stomach/belly troubles all week & the fun continues today but there’s just so much to do & time running out. 12 Mar
I’m sure stress has nothing to do with the ick feeling. I’m done whining now. 12 Mar
Sick. Laid down for a nap. Heard dijereedoo playing. Wondered if I’d slipped into Dreamtime. Then heard singing on loud speaker at park. 12 Mar
Still think it odd, but I have heard some pretty strange things over those loud speakers. 12 Mar
Anti-social network: knowing when to keep my mouth shut is a talent I do not always possess. 12 Mar
It’s 4 pm–3 by the old clock–and I’m already in my jammies. It was an early morning and hardwork day but the garage is finally clean. 13 Mar
Really tired of getting yelled at for things other people did. 13 Mar
A very long day and so goodnight… 13 Mar
I saw a Yellow Cab on the way to work this morning with the license plate IZYLOST. 14 Mar
Totally cool: http://ow.ly/4e4hL 14 Mar
Chapter 10 wasn’t as horrible as I remembered it. I wonder if I’m delusional? 14 Mar
Hey, Library of Congress: I just spilled coffee on my pants. 14 Mar
Tony Gregor, Roxanne, and half of Ron Salzman are gone from the WIP. Tough cuts to make, but necessary, I think. 14 Mar
Knowing who your true audience is as important as writing well. 14 Mar
Mon 14 Mar 2011
Posted by PJ under quote of the day, writers, writing
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Random quote of the day:
“It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.”
—Ernest Hemingway, quoted in With Hemingway by Arnold Samuelson
Disclaimer:Â The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Fri 11 Mar 2011
Posted by PJ under illness, jung, psychology
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From Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C. G. Jung, talking about when he was a young psychiatrist, circa 1908, feeling his way toward a new way of treating the mentally ill:
Another patient’s story revealed to me the psychological background of psychosis and, above all, of the “senseless” delusions. From this case I was able for the first time to understand the language of schizophrenics, which had hitherto been regarded as meaningless. The patient was Babette S….
She came out of the Old Town of Zürich, out of narrow, dirty streets where she had been born in poverty-stricken circumstances and had grown up in a mean environment. Her sister was a prostitute, her father a drunkard. At the age of thirty-nine she succumbed to a paranoid form of dementia praecox, with characteristic megalomania. When I saw her, she had been in the institution for twenty years. She had served as an object lesson to hundreds of medical students. In her they had seen the uncanny process of psychic disintegration; she was a classic case. Babette was completely demented and given to saying the craziest things which made no sense at all. I tried with all my might to understand the content of her abstruse utterances. For example, she would say, “I am the Lorelei;” the reason for that was that the doctors, when trying to understand her case, would always say, “I know not what it means” [the first line of Heine’s famous poem, “Die Lorelei”]. Or she would wail, “I am Socrates’ deputy.” That, as I discovered, was intended to mean: “I am unjustly accused like Socrates.” Absurd outbursts like: “I am the double polytechnic irreplaceable,” or, “I am plum cake on a corn-meal bottom,” “I am Germania and Helvetia of exclusively sweet butter,” “Naples and I must supply the world with noodles,” signified an increase in her self-valuation, that is to say, a compensation for inferiority feelings.
My preoccupation with Babette and other such cases convinced me that much of what we had hitherto regarded as senseless was not as crazy as it seemed. More than once I have seen that even with such patients there remains in the background a personality which must be called normal. It stands looking on, so to speak. Occasionally, too, this personality—usually by way of voices or dreams—can make altogether sensible remarks and objections. It can even, when physical illness ensues, move into the foreground again and make the patient seem almost normal.
I once had to treat a schizophrenic old woman who showed me very distinctly the “normal” personality in the background. This was a case which could not be cured, only cared for. Every physician, after all, has patients whom he cannot hope to cure, for whom he can only smooth the path to death. She heard voices which were distributed throughout her entire body, and a voice in the middle of the thorax was “God’s voice.”
“We must rely on that voice,” I said to her, and was astonished at my own courage. As a rule this voice made very sensible remarks, and with its aid I managed very well with the patient. Once the voice said, “Let him test you on the Bible!” She brought along an old, tattered, much-read Bible, and at each visit I had to assign her a chapter to read. The next time I had to test her on it. I did this for about seven years, once every two weeks. At first I felt very odd in this role, but after a while I realized what the lessons signified. In this way her attention was kept alert, so that she did not sink deeper into the disintegrating dream. The result was that after some six years the voices which had formerly been everywhere had retired to the left half of her body, while the right half was completely free of them. Nor had the intensity of the phenomena been doubled on the left side; it was much the same as in the past. Hence it must be concluded that the patient was cured—at least halfway. That was an unexpected success, for I would not have imagined that these memory exercises could have a therapeutic effect….
At bottom we discover nothing new and unknown in the mentally ill; rather, we encounter the substratum of our own natures….
When Freud visited me in Zürich in 1908, I demonstrated the case of Babette to him. Afterward he said to me, “You know, Jung, what you have found out about this patient is certainly interesting. But how in the world were you able to bear spending hours and days with this phenomenally ugly female?” I must have given him a rather dashed look, for this idea had never occurred to me. In a way I regarded the woman as a pleasant old creature because she had such lovely delusions and said such interesting things. And after all, even in her insanity, the human being emerged from a cloud of grotesque nonsense. Therapeutically, nothing was accomplished with Babette; she had been sick for too long. But I have seen other cases in which this kind of attentive entering into the personality of the patient produced a lasting therapeutic effect.
Fri 11 Mar 2011
Posted by PJ under apathy, politics, quote of the day
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Random quote of the day:
“The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”
—Plato
Disclaimer:Â The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Thu 10 Mar 2011
Posted by PJ under quote of the day, ritual, self-knowledge
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Random quote of the day:
“He who learns to live the interior life and to take little account of outward things does not seek special places or times to perform devout exercises.”
—Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book 2, Chapter 3
Disclaimer:Â The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Wed 9 Mar 2011
Posted by PJ under quote of the day, words
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Random quote of the day:
“Words can destroy. What we call each other ultimately becomes what we think of each other, and it matters.”
—Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Legitimacy and Force: National and International Dimensions
Disclaimer:Â The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
Tue 8 Mar 2011
Posted by PJ under dreams and dreamtime, stories, venus in transit, WIP, writing
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The WIP in rewrites was at first losing words at a good rate, and I was pleased about that. Getting rid of excess, making things clean. I actually like rewrites, perverse creature that I am. Structural problems, however, made it necessary for me to add new material and so I’ve written three new scenes and I will be adding more. Deleting and rearranging more, too, but the word count is currently larger than when I started. Not as large as the first bloated draft, but growing. I am not too worried about this. I have to get the structure, story, and character stuff right first, then I can worry about slimming. There will be at least one more draft for hammering that out.
I’m only on chapter 8, though I’ve been at it a month. It’s taking forever because my writing time is so limited these days. The only block of time I can count on is my lunch hour at work Monday through Friday. Weekends are completely absorbed with errands and chores and by evening I’m so trashed all I can do is sit it the chair, drool, and try not to fall asleep. Weeknights are often the same. I feel like I’m having to steal time for the creativity, and I’m hoping that when things regularize, my creative time-space will expand again.
At least I still have words. I was worried for a time that I’d used them all up. Things aren’t as fecund as they used to be, but I still have something.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve told myself bedtime stories: little storylets to help me drift into sleep; sometimes multi-pronged epics that I’ve been telling myself for years, often too silly to actually commit to the page, but fun and comforting all the same. These days, I fall into bed and I’m either immediately asleep or my mind is full of things to do, or worries, or…anything but stories. I can think of only one other period in my life when I didn’t tell myself bedtime stories. It was during that four or five year-long writers’ block I had. As soon as the bedtime stories started again, I began writing again, so there is something fundamental about my process involved in those dreamy tales.
I still have words. I still have words. I must remember that. Some day I may have time again, and I may have hypnogogic yarns to lull me into dreams, and oh yes, I may have dreams again, even dreams that are fit to put on the page.
Tue 8 Mar 2011
Posted by PJ under meme, what the living do
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In 2011 I am living in a house in Los Angeles with the roommate.
In 2001 I was living alone in an apartment in Mar Vista (L.A.)
In 1991 I was renting rooms from a married couple in a house in Los Angeles.
In 1881 I was living with two roommates in an apartment in Venice (L.A.).
In 1971 I was living in a ramshackle old house with my parents in Venice (L.A.)
In 1961 I was living in a ramshackle old house with my parents in Venice (L.A.)
This ten year breakdown completely misses the cottage I lived alone in for five years from 1983-1987. It was nice. On the back part of the property with the main house on the front part. Secluded and peaceful. One of my favoritest places I’ve lived, although that apartment in Venice with the roommates was tons of fun. This also misses the brief amount of time I spent living in the nicer home my parents lived in in the late 70s and early 80s. I stayed with them there briefly in the late 70s.
Tue 8 Mar 2011
Posted by PJ under laughter, quote of the day
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Random quote of the day:
“When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.”
—Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin
Disclaimer:Â The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.
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