Blue Asylum

Blue Asylum by Kathy Hepinstall is set in a time when women were considered property. Northern and Southern states were fighting a Civil War. The Confederacy felt states had the right to define personage; while the Union felt the federal government had the right to declare slaves as human beings.

Iris Dunleavy sympathized with slaves on her husband's plantation. After a doctor and judge declared her insane, on account of this disrespect and humiliation, her husband had her committed to an upscale insane asylum. A British psychiatrist ran the Sanibel Asylum situated on a remote island off the coast of Florida. Iris is determined to escape. Although the asylum is upscale, Dr. Cowell is renown due to his thesis showing positive effects of "cold water treatment".

The 270 page novel is a quick read. It kept me turning pages wondering if Iris would be subjected to the cold water treatment, would she escape, would the tale have a happy ending? Other inmates included a Civil War veteran with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, although it was not called that at that time. The story hints at the specific event that caused the trauma; another reason to keep reading. Do not want to give away much of the story; suffice it to say there are interesting side stories needing answers or how will it turn out for other characters.

One women refuses to dine unless a plate is set for her deceased husband whom only she can see. One of my sisters continued setting a place at the table for her husband after he moved on to the Great Beyond. Might say a thin line between sanity and insanity. A quote:

"The doctor opened his eyes at some hour of night when the deepest sleep occurs. Those who wake at this hour feel a lonely separation from everyone but night birds and ghost crabs, never imagining the legions of kindred souls scattered in the darkness, who stare at ceilings and pace floors and look out windows and covet and worry and mourn."

Something for me to remember on insomnia nights. I used a bit of the fictional doc's advice when distraught over neighbor's all night LOUD music. Did not work, as it did for his patient. Yet I will continue to try it ~ concentrating on everything colored blue ~ I can conjure up visualizations, if only I could get my mind back to the days when all I had to do was whisper (or think) the word Peace and body would instantly relax.

Harlan Coben

Reading book reviews at Yahoo Voices (aka: Associated Content, Yahoo Contributor), came upon an article that began: "There is nothing quite like a well written mystery to capture your attention and Harlan Coben is a master at just that. Coben is one of the best authors around today at writing page turning suspense." It also stated:  "Coben's thoroughly satisfying, can't put down books explore human emotion in today's world."

Based on that review, I checked three Harlan Coben mysteries out of the library. Live Wire did not capture my attention with page turning suspense. It simply annoyed me. Without telling the story, will say that author was using a literary devise to create suspense or keep readers reading to find out: What lie did he not want to tell? What were the two words? Were all the Facebook comments relevant to the story or just to add words to it?

I kept thinking of an author's advice to just tell the darn story and get on with it*.  I finally put Live Wire down and added it to my Goodreads' gave up on list. I dreaded starting another of his books, but was not in  the mood for the only other book I had checked out ~ non-fiction, so began Promise Me.

Some of the things that made Live Wire annoying to me were present in Promise Me. Such as with Brenda, why not just tell the story about what happened to her, rather than allude to it, time and again. At one point, I had to go back to an earlier scene at the grave yard, to determine that she was (not) the same (non) character, now mentioned. Sound-alike names or too many names, not relevant to story line or senior memory issues, who knows.
Was glad I decided to give Promise Me a try. Can not say that suspense was what kept me turning pages well into the night; more that the story captured my interest and kept me reading to find out how it would end.

It is hard for authors of mystery series to let new readers know about main characters, without boring old readers of the series. Walter Mosley is a master at doing that. Coben is not. Not that I could do it, as they say, I am just saying.

No homeless mentions in the novel even though some of the action takes place in NYC. Perhaps the streets on Fifth Avenue are deserted in the wee hours of the morning; I would think, "deserted except for a couple of winos sleeping in a doorway" or some such mention would be more realistic ~ the homeless guy pushing the shopping cart, going through trash bins, and so on.

Food for thought:

Life goes on. That was a good thing, right? The outrage flickers and slowly leaks away. The scars heal. But when you let that happen, your soul goes dead a little too.

*nephew's wife threw away a suitcase of my stuff which included my quote collection so no longer can attribute author (have not located it via web searches) or attest to exact accuracy of quote

Rock Star in Seat 3A

Jill Kargman's The Rock Star in Seat 3A is a fast paced, quick, summer read.

At Hazel's 30th birthday party dinner, the guests play a game. Would significant other give a free pass should they meet their favorite celebrity crush and who would it be? Hazel has been lusting after Finn Schiller, a moody rock artist that records by band name Void, even though it is not a band, ever since she was a moody teenager.

An unexpected upgrade on her flight to L.A. puts her idol next to her in First Class. Stormy weather makes for a violent trip cross country. Will the plane go down? Will she and Finn survive to start a new life on an abandoned island? Or will they make it safely to L.A., fall madly in love and...

I liked that the novel included quotes at the start of each chapter, such as "You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams." ~ Dr. Seuss

I also liked Kargman's words: ""We are on different pages of different books on different shelves in different languages..."

Um

After finishing my Goodreads review of Hope: A Tragedy, I read some other user reviews.

One included quotes. Decided to share these here also.

Why did the chicken cross the road? Because he was a schmuch... because he thought there might be something better on the other side. 

Why did children always draw the sun smiling? he wondered. It's a giant ball of fire, kids. It's rage and fury. Whatever it's doing, it isn't f-ing smiling.

Most of the book's reviews were positive. Among those that were not, someone likened it to Dick & Jane Readers. Um...

I was thinking: Edgar Allen Poe or Dr. Seuss, myself.  As mentioned, the novel did not use quotation marks.  If Kugel was thinking about strange tapping noises coming from the attic, his thoughts might mimic either or. Does not everybody start using song lyrics when speaking? Or thinking? Common or popular words that somehow pop into our minds. 

Has not every one at one time or another said, "Lions and tigers and bears, oh my?" Or on a ship with weather (as the airline pilots say) started humming or singing the theme to Gilligan's Island? Said, "May the force be with you." 

So that if Auslander had written: "Monkeys, squirrels and deer, oh my," in context of story events, it would elicit a chuckle of recognition.  Or maybe I never advanced beyond Dick & Jane Readers.

I also never once thought about Woody Allen when reading the novel. Several readers did.  Mainly readers who did not like Woody Allen. They were mainly the ones with low ratings for the book. Interesting. Very interesting.

Hope: A Tragedy

Blurb on the back of Shalom Auslander's novel: Hope: A Tragedy says: "Can the darkest events of the twentieth century and of all human history be used to show the folly of hope? And can the result be so funny that you burst out laughing again and again?"

So many dark events, not sure I could say one was more evil than another. I also can not say that I burst out laughing "again and again", but most definitely burst out chuckling or laughing aloud several times. I also can not seem to turn more than a few pages without thinking: Ooh, love that, need to copy the quote. Have so many bookmarked pages, starting process of recording while still turning those pages.

What is that? he wondered.
A scratching?
A rapping?
A tap-tap-tapping.

Pondering what his father's last words might have been: Mistakes have been made?

Kugel had a theory. Kugel ws certain that whatever last words, a person chose to utter in his final moments, everyone shared the same final thought, and this was it: the bewildered,dumbfounded statement of his own disappointing cause of death.
Shark?
Train? Really? I got hit by a train?
Malaria? Fuck off. Malaria?

Crucifixion? thought Jesus. Get out.
Hemlock? thought Socrates.
Wrapped in a Torah scroll and burned alive? thought Rabbi Akiva. You have got to be shitting me.

Kugel didn't like attics. ~ "...full of ghosts and regret and longing and loss; worse yet was the implication in all this emotional hoarding that the past was preferable, to the present, that what came before beasts whatever comes next, so clutch it to your chests in mourning and dread as you head inot the unknowable but probably lousy future." ",,,photos of people whose names one can no longer recall..."

Most of Kugel's boxes were filled with books. Science, philosophy, art, literature, the philosophy of science, the science of literature, the art of philosophy, the science of art, books about other books and the books about those books about other books..."

"...atoning for something I didn't do, something my parents didn't do, something done just about before I was ever even born..." (I related to this, because I find it silly when groups demand apologies now for things done long ago by dead people long gone from the planet.)

"There comes a point where you realize that this is it; more of your life has been written than there is left to write, and you're not all that enthused about the pages you've got so far."

Problems

Problems are put before us to solve them, my mother often said. Working on finding a solution to a problem, I read: "Sometimes problems seem quite thorny, but they have a rather simple solution that was staring you in the face the whole time." Yes, I thought, how easy is this: put a vacation hold on my mail, get a bus ticket, go east to visit family, return with money saved by not paying rent here, to get out. (See Homeless in Long Beach blog for details on why I am fit to be tied.)

I did go to SS online a while ago; did not find answer about giving up apartment while on vacation. I think I am obligated to tell the government if I am going to be absent from my apartment for a period of time. What a pain. I knew homeless people collecting SS who did not have a fixed permanent address, just a P.O. box. Why oh why can't I? No, do not want to live on the streets again. Body would not take that anymore. Just need to stop paying 2/3 of income for rent, so that I can save to get out of this place.

Hope: A Tragedy could read as a depressing novel, yet I found it funny. Perhaps ironic ending.

Kugel asks a policeman: Should I be worried?

You should only worry, said Sergeant Frankel, about the things you can control.

If I could control them, said Kugel, they wouldn't worry me.

Exactly, said Sergeant Kugel.

Winston Churchill's last words were this: I'm so bored with it all.

No use, wrote, Van Gogh in his suicide note, I shall never be rid of this depression.

Goodbye, wrote Sid Vicious.

Bad father staying?

Ellipsis?

According to Free Dictionary online, it is an omission of a word or phrase necessary for a complete syntactical (?) construction but not necessary for understanding.  Oh, I see. I do that all the time. End a sentence with ....

In Hope: A Tragedy, Kugel was pondering last words. "A period, sure, if you 're lucky. An exclamation mark,  okay. A question mark probably; that seemed the punctuation all stories, collectively and individually should end with after all.
Not an ellipsis, though.
Anything but an ellipsis."

Was a good father leaving as bad as a bad father staying? (Could substitute husband, or mother for father.)

George Eastman's suicide note read: Why wait?
Well, yeah.
Sure.
There was always that.

...he remembered reading that prisoners, locked in tiny cells, often walked in circles for hours,either trying not to become infirm or trying---this was the greater challenge---to remain normal human.

According to Professor Jove, it was the knowing that there had been a happy time, a place of joy and peace and security, that made the sudden absence of it all so agonizing...Not the agony of what was,but the agony of what was o longer; this was the source of all life's pain---not the fear of a hell to come, but rather the knowledge of an Eden that is no more.

Pessimists don't start wars.

I marked page 179 on a scrape paper and "subpar" but could not find the sentence using it. Some of the last words, Shalom Auslander included in his novel were written as such:

Alice

It was subpar

Born 1955 Died 2028

Tombstone style.

I think that is all the quotes I wanted to savor.

When I was younger I said the body is prisoner for the soul; death should be a celebration; longed to be free of my body's constraints. Now that I am much older, nearer death's door, I do not remember feeling that way. This book has me thinking about tombstone words for me, although there will be none ~ want cremation. I guess I would like my last words to be something like:

*We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun...

*Terry Jacks' tune.

Moon Walk

Was not sure if I read Moon Walk, Michael Jackson's One & Only Autobiography, His Life, in His Words, so checked it out of the library. What I liked about the book is how photographs were sprinkled through out the pages rather than having them all together in a special section towards middle or end of book. What I did not like, was that the featured photos did not always identify the people, and seemed out of sequence with the story.

Michael said: "One thing I know about children is that if they don't get the love they need from their parents, they'll get if from someone else and cling to that person, a grandparent, anyone."

"I'm a person of the present, and I have to ask, How are things going now? What's happening now? What's going to happen in the future that could affect what has happened in the past?

...there are people out there who don't actively hold you back as much as they work quietly on your insecurities so that you hold yourself back."

"I believe in wishes and in a person's ability to make a wish come true. I really do." "...a wish is more than a wish, it's a goal. It's something your conscious and subconscious can help make reality."

Michael Jackson wrote or said a whole lot more than that. The book was first published in 1988. My library copy was re-issued in 2009. Most of the book was enjoyable to read; other parts got boring to me. I learned that MJ had a problem with acne; had more than one plastic surgeries on his nose and a cleft put in his chin.

Personally I think he should have left the nose alone. I guess, at the time, his self-esteem was so low due to the acute acne, he was looking to improve his looks. Since the book was written long ago, no information on a lot of things I would have liked to hear him talk about in his own words. He wrote about some stars losing their lives due to drugs at an early age. The potential lost; world would never know what else they could achieve, we would never get to see them perform again.

When he was writing the book, he could not have imagined he would be yet another star whose life ended too early, tragically.

Escape by Barbara Delinksy

Escape by Barbara Delinsky

"Have you ever woken up in a cold sweat, thinking that you've taken a wrong turn and are stuck in a life you don't want?"

Thus begins Escape by Barbara Delinsky. Emily a thirty-two year old lawyer, who along with her attorney husband, is on a fast-track to achieve a dream they shared when they meet in college. When she awakes to the start of another hectic day she wonders if people dream of "hitting the brakes, backing up, and heading elsewhere," possibly reinventing or rediscovering themselves, possibly going back to an old lover. The morning starts badly when she receives a text message from her husband informing her he can not attend an important firm dinner with her that evening.

Things get worse, until Emily has a melt-down at work and impulsively decides to escape. She has no clear idea where she will go or what she will be doing, making packing for her impromptu trip a bit of a problem. Escape is a recurring theme throughout the novel, not just Emily's escape, but for other characters as well. Jude, the old lover, escaped a confining life, or used his escape as a way to run from problems he did not wish to solve. Recurring dreams about coyotes eventually lead Emily back to a town where she spent a summer and met Jude.

After escaping New York city, when her thinking clears, nerves calm down, she believes that summer may be where she took a wrong turn, creating the life she was stuck in and maybe did not want.

Barbara Delinsky has nine other published novels, some on the New York Times bestseller list.  Her writing style makes for easy reading and Escape mostly held my attention throughout. It did not turn out to be the type of novel I expected, which was something more supernatural or otherworldly. It was more about marriage, motherhood and relationships. My favorite quote from Escape is what Emily's mother told her: Tombstones don't list jobs; they list relationships...".

308 pages copyright 2011 published by Doubleday division of Random House, Inc.
www.doubleday.com
www.barbaradelinksy.com

Murder One by Robert Dugoni

Murder One by Robert Dugoni

David Sloane's law partner instigated an intervention due to David's despondency after the murder of his wife. His associates suggested he take some time off from work, vacationing someplace warm. David was indecisive, until one evening while channel surfing he came upon the movie The Shawshank Redemption. This inspired him to rent a house in Zihuatanejo to rest and heal from his wife's murder. The Mexican town was not quite the sleepy seaside town depicted in the movie, but it worked wonders for David's psyche.

Returning home, he accepts a invitation to speak at a charitable event. He planned a quick escape after his speech due to anxiety socializing. As he is leaving he bumps into an attorney, Barclay Reid, whom he defeated in a civil law case a year earlier. One thing leads to another and  David becomes involved with a woman for the first time since his wife's passing. Complications arrive when a upper level drug dealer is murdered. Both Sloane and Reed are suspected of what some consider a vigilante killing.

about pain: "Feeling it every day . . . it's not a bad thing. That's how we heal."
 ,,,he no longer feared the unknown. He'd come to realize it was not knowing the future---the unexpected---that made life worth living.

"Ultimately he had refrained from shooting Anthony Stenopolos, but he could not deny that he had felt the primal urge for revenge, and it had been as strong as any he'd ever had, though not as his instinct to protect Jake. And that was what had ultimately stopped him. It had not been his conscience or some burst of morality, good triumphing over evil. No, the reason he had not pulled the trigger had been something much more practical than divine." (taking care of step-son more important than revenge)

368 pages
copyright 2011
published by Touchstone a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc
$24.99
www.robertdugoni.com

Mary, An Autobiography

Was not sure I read Mary, An Autobiography by Mary E. Mebane, so checked it out of the library. I was quite sure that I had, remember rock piles and such from first chapter. Seems I would have reported it on my Mary website. Maybe I reported it on my now defunct Mary Blogger blog and it got lost in transition.

Not knowing what to read, back then, I started on a quest to read books by authors named Mary due to having a website devoted to the name. Yes, I did read it; worth reading a second time. Mary grew up in an era when she had two strikes against her ~ a black female. Yet she bucked the odds, went to college, rather than settle for the expected role wife, mother, domestic ~ cleaning houses for white people, returning home to do the same.

She had one person early in life who told her the equivalent of Yes You Can; the rest of the world around her told her over and over again in many ways: no you can not. In her words:

I am going to do great things in life, I secretly vowed.
No, you aren't the said the world around me. You're going to accept your lot just like the rest of us. Black women have always had it hard. Who are you to be so different?


The constrictions, the restraints, the hidden threats that we lived under, that were the conditions of our lives, inevitably prodcued mutations in the natrual human flowerng. To me we were like plants that were meant to grow upright but became bent and twisted, stunted, sometimes stretching out and running along the ground, because the conditions of our environment forbade our deverloping upward naturally.



Protest is the most effective way of stoping unfair treatment. People who treat you unfairly don't want others to know.

This reminded me of a Richard Bach quote about our "true family":

Some people find themselves in the wrong grouping of human relationships.
...sometimes the wrong grouping is not the result of a conscious choice--of marriage with a stranger. Sometimes one is part of the wrong grouping because he or she was born into it....



Protest is the most effective way of stoping unfair treatment. People who treat you unfairly don't want others to know.

Some people never grow up.


They were grown, and grown people weren't supposed to do things like that. When you got grown you did the right things just like you had been taught in Sunday school.

The Long Way Home

A quote from Karen McQuestion's novel, The Long Way Home:

"Remember, when the universe aligns it does so for a reason. There are no coincidences."

A Facebook friend posted a t-shirt image that read "Who's Pete Sake?" One of her friends thought that hysterically funny. I pondered, thinking it should read "What's Pete's sake?" I picked up The Long Way Home, turned two pages and read: "Men. For Pete's sake."

Coincidence? Can not recall last time I heard or read the expression, yet it seems a silly universal alignment, eh.

The story involves four newly acquainted strangers, who take an impulsive road trip from Wisconsin to Las Vegas Nevada. Jazzy asks the other ladies if they ever pretended they were in a movie and  music was the soundtrack. She explains how that works, tuning in a Queen song, narrating, (and the camera zooms...). My mind wandered, wondering what Queen song it would be. Only title came to mind was We Are The Champions. Soon find out that it was the tune the ladies were singing along to.

It is probably a spoiler to say that one of the women is physic. Ah, those voices in the head (calling Gloria, Gloria...). After a thought comes to her to do something she ponders:

"Was it her own thought or something from outside her? It wasn't always easy to tell."

I can relate to that.

Good advice even for non-physic's:

Stay still...
Be open to the possibilities.

Another woman found "..an amazing number of friends confessed to having mystical experiences." Visions, voices, communications from the dead, yes, I know many who experience them. As with the physic in the book, I believe we all have ESP, some develop it, others unaware. A belief that does not help when hallucinations are the product of an unwell mind.

Also relate to: "Being ignored was the worst of all."

"A crescendo," Laverne repeated, trying it out. What a beautiful word. She'd never said it aloud before, culd have gone her whole life without saying it...

Ah, me too. Reading it in the novel, I said it out loud. Decided it a great game to play when reading ~ words I have read hundreds or thousands of times, yet never spoken. No time like the now to start speaking them aloud. Of course, with me, who knows if my pronunciation will be accurate.,,

11/22/63

11/22/63 is a time travel novel by Stephen King. I did not like the book, but could not give King a one-star rating (I did not like it), so gave the book two-stars (it was okay). I kept thinking: If Walter Mosley had written this book it would have been 1/2 as long and twice as good.

A glitch allows travel from 2011 to September 9, 1958. No matter how long a time traveler stays in 1958, when he returns to 2011, only two minutes have passed.  Can not say much without spoiling the story for any who might read this post and read the book. Will just say that Jake is going to spend some time in the past in order to prevent Oswald from assassinating JFK. The moral of the tale could be that if we change the past, we change the future.

Author, Richard Bach taught me how that could be done with his novel, Illusions; The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah. It is all about changing our perceptions about the past; the historical facts stay the same, but the way we view the events can positively impact our now (or future). Kind did that a lot in the first chapters of his novel (adding parentheses). I vowed I would never do it again as it got downright annoying. I even re-wrote some of the sentences in my head as I read ~ did not need them, Master King.

Why I did not like the book: too darn long. Perhaps if it was a snow bound Pocono Mountain winter when Internet did not yet exist, I may have liked the book as much as I liked King's earlier novels. Yet it seemed 11/22/63 was a series or interconnected short stories and I was mainly interested in how Jake would prevent Oswald's assassination or would he fail to do so.

I enjoyed the 2011 part of the tale and was also impatient for Jake to leave the past, return to the present and see how time travel affected his life. Instead I had to wade through dances, movies, boxing matches, what songs were playing on the radio and so on. Bored. Okay, I get it: details to give authentic feel for the time. Or for those who are nostalgic for a simpler place and time. I guess there had to be something happening to while away 5 years, yet too much for me.

I wrote a bit about 11/22/63 on my Homeless in Long Beach blog. These quotes may have belong there:

"...the way Mohreschildt listened. He did it as the world's more charming and magnetic people do, always asking the right question at the right time, never fidgeting or taking his eyes from the speaker's face, making the other guy feel like the most knowledgeable, brilliant, and intellectually savvy person on the planet."

"..giving myself the old advice, don't look back, never look back."  That may/may not be a coincidence, because whenever someone posts one of those cutesy things at Facebook about forgetting the past, I compose words in my head that I force myself not to type into the comment box. King says people seldom heed the advice. "Humans were built to look back; that's why we have that swivel joint in our necks."

Just prior to reading that I was again thinking about forgetting the past. "God put our eyeballs in front of our heads, so we would look forward, not look back," the arsejet told me. At the time I thought it insightful. I also thought it stupid: if our eyes were in the back of our heads, then our backs would be our front, else how could we see where we were going? Ah, if I could travel back in time and tell him about 'God' giving us swivel necks so we could look back ~ over our shoulders.

Those who can not remember the past are condemned to repeat it, versus, Never let yesterday use up today.

An old, old argument floated back to mind while I was contemplating the "forget the past, there is no future in it" type Facebook copy/pastes. "You're living in the past," my ex used to shout at me. Well, no, I was living in the present moment, talking about the past. The unforgettable time he did thus and such and the result was bad. Of course, he would not listen to reason, and try it my way this time and one more time: bad results.

I do not see how it possible for anyone but a time traveler to actually live in the past. A person may retain habits, such as my mother's refusal to get a push button telephone, hanging on to the black rotary dial phone rather than change with the times. Yet she was not living in the old days; she was right there, right then.

Keep on walking, don't look back, lyrics often float into my brain. I thought it good advice and probably used the song to keep me moving forward, coming to terms with heart ache and sorrow, not wallowing in it. Yet do not see reading about this in the novel as much of a coincidence.

Pulse

I wrote about Pulse by Edna Buchanan on Homeless in Long Beach blog due to homeless mentions. I am not doing a book review on this one, except for a short blurb at Goodreads.

The main character in Pulse, Frank, had a heart transplant. That reminded me of my Facebook game friend, Denise who had one herself. She does not hang at Facebook much anymore. Do not know if she returned to playing the games I used to stay at longer than I wanted to, because they were her favorites. I find the whole idea of organ transplants creepy, but would not say that to Denise who pushes for people to donate organs.

I used to have my driver's license set so that my body could be donated ~ to science ~ for study, because I am quite positive none of my organs would be healthy enough for a transplant. Then I read that the donor's heirs had to pay for the transport of organ or something like that and now check No to organ or body donation.

Denise educated me on that aspect; donors are never billed for their gift. Yet, I put some thought into it and decided no thank you. Even to save a life? Since I used to believe that the body is a prison for the soul, death appealed to me. If its your time to go, go peacefully into the next dimension. Now that I am closer to death, not sure how I feel about all of that.

Anyway, what I found interesting about Pulse was mentions of cellular memory being transplanted along with the organ. A hear is just a pump, a doctor explains in the book, yet it has long been associated with love or the seat of emotions. Could the recipient of the heart (or other organ) take on aspects of the deceased's personality, remember their memories? I want to ask Denise if she has had any otherworldly experiences since obtaining her new heart. Someone else's heart.

A quote from the book: "I know ESP is a fact. Didn't you ever know exactly what somebody was gonna say before they they said it? Or that the phone was about to ring and who was calling? Or think of people you haven't seen in years and then cross paths them the next day?" There is more about dream premonitions or signs of passing of loved one.

I have not thought about that stuff for years. Worry about mental health. Since I believed that everyone has ESP but do not know it, believe in spirits and all of that, I thought his deceased grandmother's voice in my head telling me: Feed him, was real. Now know it was the product of my vivid imagination and slight psychosis, as Dr. Mike called it.

Fear now to go back to the mindset that trusted spiritual things, or stuff like ESP, not knowing how to recognize what is the result of brain chemical imbalances resulting from PTSD. Enjoyed reading about the possibility of bringing another's person into oneself after an organ transplant.

Turn of Mind

Did not finish reading Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante. A retired orthopedic surgeon is in the beginning stages of dementia when her best friend, another elderly woman is murdered. Four of the corpse's fingers had been surgically removed making Dr. White a prime suspect.

At first I like the different style of the novel. The paragraphs are short, sometimes only a sentence or two. The story is told through Dr. White's eyes, remembering, forgetting, thoughts on things going on around her, past memories returning, fading, not knowing her son and daughter, then knowing them.

After a while it became too jarring to read. I wanted to know if the doc did the deed; I wanted to read about the body being discovered and stuff like that. It was taking too long to advance the plot. Felt bad that I could not force self to read anymore of this one.

I learned about senility from my Grandmother Stark. The word Alzheimer was not used in my home in those days. I learned more about it from my mother telling me about Aunt Ida. She did not use the word dementia, but that is what ailed Aunt Ida.  My mother's brother, Francis, took care of his wife until her death. Then he too was afflicted as was my Uncle John. Mom felt bad when she visited him in a nursing home and he did not know who she was.

For a short time I took care of a man with Alzheimer's. Doors were kept locked to keep the man indoors, keys hidden. That was my first in person experience with the dementia. My grandma was just forgetful, repeating herself, not recognizing people. My second experience was taking care of my mother who was aware her mind was deteriorating; made jokes about it.

LaPlante writes her characters well. Caregivers often lose patience; patients often pretend to take their meds; that kind of stuff ~ all incorporated into what I read of the tale. Wish I could have finished the book, but so many books, so little time, so on to another one.

The Sisters

Have not gotten very far with this blog. Got disgusted one day trying to add an image where I wanted it for a book review, written, but not bothering to submit to Yahoo Voices. Perhaps I will work on it this week.

Since I started this to publish articles already written, which are mostly book reviews, will add thoughts on books read here.

I wrote about The Sisters by Nancy Jensen on my Homeless in Long Beach blog due to an almost homeless mention ~ vagrant was the word used.

I joined Good Reads. Gave this book a two star rating meaning "It was okay." I might have given it a one, meaning "I didn't like it", except there were parts of the novel that I enjoyed reading.

Asked what she learned from Vietnam war veterans a photographer said: "That for them the war won't ever be over....I don't think any real war ever is--large, small, between countries, between people. Even the wars inside ourselves. Something always remains."

People preach to forgive and forget. I have found it impossible to forget things; much worse for those who experience wars first hand. And other horrors. The wars may be over; vivid snap shots arrive clearly in mind keeping memories alive. Or the tape of words etched forever in the mind, show up at odd times of their own violation. How to forgive the one who started the war, inflicted the pain when the memories never go away. Scars a constant reminder of the battles.

Thus I liked character's  "never ending war" comments.

A soldier told her that a peace symbol was a broken cross. Interesting thought; yet Jesus said he did not come to bring peace, but with a sword to divide, including families.

The Girl's Guide to Homelessness

I have been commenting about this book on my homeless blog as I read it. The Girl's Guide to Homelessness by Brianna Karp is not a guide to help newly homeless females, it is a memoir. The title, however, is the name of a blog she started when she became homeless on February 26, 2009. The book was copyright by Brianna in 2011 which is a speedy route from homeless blogger to published author.

This might not have happened if she had not taken a friend's advice and gotten a Twitter account. A man from Scotland who had experienced homelessness picked up her homeless tweet and the rest, as they say, is her story. He had a homeless website ~ Homeless Tales. If you want details, you will need to read the book.

Brianna did not sleep on sidewalks or homeless shelters. She was lucky to have a 30' Recreational vehicle to sleep inside; the truck she used to tow it and a car. However, how she came to have those things has little to do with good luck. She parked the RV in a Walmart parking lot in an Orange County city; spending her days at Starbucks using WiFi to send resumes and do job searches from her laptop computer. She had income from unemployment checks.

Brianna was raised as a Jehovah's Witness. I did know a bit about the religious group. Yet I never wondered why they ate meat when they were prohibited against blood transfusions and eating foods made with blood. Brianna was taught that meat was injected with "meat juice" to make it look red and juicy. Her guy from Scotland pointed out that the meat juice and redness came from blood. So I now wonder why Jehovah's Witnesses eat meat and why I never made that connection prior to reading this book.

Brianna showered at a gym and says if we saw her walking down the street we would think she was just like us, not a homeless women living in a Walmart Parking lot. Well, actually, no, even prior to my homeless experience I would not think she was just like me. If I thought about her at all, I would likely assume: superficial, wealthy, OC snob. But I understand the spirit in which she said it.

Many, many of my homeless peers did not fit that a homeless image either. And they did not have the benefit of a roof over their heads when they slept at night ~ unless they stayed at a shelter. I was told over and over again that I did not look homeless. But that was in the early days before acquiring what I called the homeless shuffle and before bug bite sores and rashes became slow to heal.

Perhaps because I slept in an OC homeless shelter, spent many other days in an OC park, walked to Huntington Beach from Long Beach a few times, I was more aware of other OC homeless than Brianna. The Girl's Guide to Homelessness is less about homelessness and more about Brianna's horrid life. If you are interested in reading another abused child grows up to become abused woman tale, you might like the story. I got bored with it, especially the romance bit, even though my heart does bleed for her.

Brianna's does have some experiences or feelings common to other homeless people, but her story is not representative of the majority of us.

YC URL

Yahoo Contributor URL may have changed to a new Yahoo Voices URL. Just sticking this here until I get it figured out.

http://contributor.yahoo.com/user/56332/alyce_rocco.html

Article Comments Gone

Comments received on article, You Make My Heart Sing, are gone. That is sad. Such a long time ago, would be impossible to recall what readers said. One of the readers said she cried, and others were touched by it; very positive response to the article that I wrote "straight from the heart" in about twenty minutes. No editing, other than spelling check. Sigh, sigh, sigh.

UPDATE Links to articles are gone. It was many years later that I realized those words were from an old song, Wild Thing. Maybe Hope I printed the article. I think the homeless guy's name was Albert. He told me I made his heart sing. 01/12/2023

You Make My Heart Sing

Whenever I saw Albert he said: "You make my heart sing." I would say, "I bet you say that to all the ladies". And he would say, "No, I really mean it. When I see you my heart sings." Albert did not mean it in a romantic sense. We have all heard the expression: "Misery loves company", but truthfully when we see miserable people we want to run for the hills. Living on the streets can create misery and most homeless people have a sob story. Or two or three. Albert spent most of his time among other homeless people who, having no place to go, hung around at Lincoln Park. They complained.


They complained about the food. Lumpy or watery oatmeal, no salt, pepper, sugar, butter or margarine to give it some flavor. Hard, stale bread and weeks old cookies or sugary donuts were a routine part of every meal. They complained about coffee actually being chicory and perhaps a packet of sugar would be doled out with watery powdered milk to dilute the bitter mixture. Little cartons of milk were often sour. Mass cooked eggs were a favorite as were the little sausages severed with them, even though heartburn was often an after affect of eating them. It was not unusual to see flies buzzing around the food as one waited to get served. Coach roaches scurrying across the floor in broad daylight made meals a horror.

Then I would come along and say something like, "Well it is better than nothing". It is amazing what people will eat when they are starving. Some homeless people claim to grab pigeons, kill and roast them. Mouth watering, some homeless people grab food off a store shelf and slip it quickly under their coat. Some do eat what they find in the trash. "McDonald's throws out all the unsold food after closing" they will say, and it does not seem to matter that non-food trash is in the black, plastic garbage bag they pulled from the dumpster. Food and eating is just one of the things homeless people get miserable and grumble about. Albert, hanging with other homeless people daily, must have gotten tired of listening to it.

Albert had a ready smile for everyone. He told jokes to make people laugh and forget about their misery for a moment. He was generous; when he had something he shared it. He respected the ladies and they were all drawn to him. He liked "old time rock and roll" and used to play in a band. Now he played air guitar. He also sang sweet love ballads that he wrote. He never quite believed me when I told him his songs could be hits. He did not talk about the miserable conditions of being homeless, except in passing. "Did you sleep well last night?" might elicit a response of some new aches and pains or getting rousted by the cops at 3AM. The story he told that I most remember was this:

Back then the legal drinking age was 18. He went out to celebrate his 18th birthday with friends. He arrived home to find his draft notice. He went right from High School graduation to Viet Nam. He often wondered: "What if?", what might have happened in his life if he had not been forced to go to war. He did not spend much time on details of that experience, he simply drank to forget. The last time I spoke to Albert he was telling me about the Winter Shelter. It had just opened and not crowded. The food was great. After that he was no longer sitting on a wall by the library. I missed seeing his smile and hearing him tell me, as always, "You make my heart sing." We would chat for a few moments, exchange a hug and go off in different directions.

When another homeless cat told me about the guy that had a stroke or seizure at the Winter Shelter, he insisted: "You know Al", and described him, "Long, white hair". That could describe a number of homeless people and I searched my brain for Al's I know that fit it. So it was that I did not know it was Albert that had to be rushed to the hospital until several weeks later. I recalled one of our conversations when Albert was not his usual happy self. He said he was tired of living like this. My first thought was that he was willing himself to die. I visited him in the hospital that week.

In a coma, his face bloated so that I barely recognized him, I chatted away. I have always read that people in comas can hear or sense those around them. I thought I was paying my last respects, but months later he is still alive. He was taken off the machine that did his breathing for him. Even though he is a Vet, no one was able to find his family members. Searches could not locate his ex-wife or his daughters. I wonder if he is able to think and remember. If he can, I bet he is thinking he would rather be back out there on the streets in the company of miserable people than in that hospital bed. My heart will always smile when I think about Albert.

When you see your child, parent, sibling, partner or other loved one today, make sure you remember to tell them, "You make my heart sing", because we truly never know when those might be the last words spoken to those we love.

Self published at Associated Content on August 30, 2007

Whatever

UPDATE: Links go to Yahoo News, articles gone, can no figure out how to remove link.

I printed as many of my self-published Associated Content turned Yahoo Contributor (YC) articles as I could during a visit to library. Seems like all those articles still appear at Yahoo Voices (YV).

History: a homeless blogger asked readers to read his articles at Associated Content (AC), which I promptly did. In order to leave a comment, if memory serves me, one needed to get an account. I have had so many accounts at so many places all over the web, it took me a few days before I decided to get an AC account.

The blurb said something like: Do you have something to say on this topic? (blah, blah, blah, get an account and get paid to write). Yes, I most certainly did have a lot to say regarding the homeless topic. My first two articles came straight from my Mary website. Creation of that website is another long story. I had already spent many, many hours on creating the site; research already done, turned a bit of it into my first two articles.

10 Mary's Who Changed the World
9 Marvelous Mary's

A year later, I wrote Celebrate Women's History Month, writing about women named Mary.

AC kept changing the site, making it harder to navigate. The list of published articles was simple to use. Scroll the page, at a glance determine which articles were submitted for pay, no pay, exclusive, non-exclusive, in addition to how many page views each article received.

Not so with the current YC/YV listing. Tedious process locating which articles I needed to copy here before they disappeared from the web. Much easier to just print them and let it all go. Most were garbage articles anyway.

Whatever.