Hello folks. Still no movies to report. It might be a while before we have some, and it's weird because here we were, cruising along, having an absolute blast with our Halloween films, and then.....whammo. What happened was, in mid-October I finished both of the books I'd been working on since Pearl died in September 2021. For two years, I lived and breathed those books, they were all I thought about (well, mostly), and my mind was 100% in that mode. I barely even went on hikes, except to the nearby Aliso Canyon. I was (and am) determined to become a full-time author, and by October 2023, I had my first two books completed (they are companion pieces). The only other thing I did every day, besides write, was to go for my walks, shop when needed, and watch a movie every evening to relax. And write the blog, which for years has been a movie blog for better or worse. My Blogger blog started out as a blog for Elizabeth, the great artist who has disappeared, though I hope not permanently. In 2013, I even bought a home computer to start writing the Blogger blog on a daily basis, because of Elizabeth. Before that, since 1998 I had used public computers at the library and at CSUN. And of course, from 2006-2008, I wrote my first book, "What Happened in Northridge", which was never published. What happened there, why I never made an attempt to get it published, was that my Dad got sick in 2008, as I was working through a third draft. When it looked like his illness was terminal, I stopped working on the book because I wanted to be with him at the various hospitals he was in, and I went to visit him every day. 2008 was a rough year, because Dad died in September, and then my friend Dave S. died one month later at the age of 48. Then in 2009, though I had a job as a housesitter/organizer/painter, my finances were pretty thin. I did write a lot of short stories that year (which will be compiled down the road in a book), but I could not and did not try to pick up where I'd left off on "What Happened in Northridge", mainly for two reasons: 1) I'd been through the wringer with the deaths, in rapid succession, of my Mom, my Dad, and Dave, and 2) I'd been through the wringer with What Happened in Northridge. I didn't feel the book was complete (even at 800 pages!) because, even after writing it for two years and examining the evidence for ten years prior to that, I still couldn't truly make sense of what had happened to me. I thought I had about 70% of it locked down, but in my own words it was like "trying to wrap your arms around a blimp". For me, even though I could (and did) piece a lot of it together for the book, it was still missing a larger context. Also, I felt it didn't really have an ending, something that would explain it all and wrap a pretty bow around the whole thing.
So, what happened was that my life changed in a gigantic way in April 2010, when Helen offered me the job of being a caregiver for her Mom. I have to say that Helen, by offering me that opportunity, did so much good for me that I really don't have the words to thank her. "Thanks, Helen!" will have to suffice. She changed my life in the best possible way, perhaps more than anyone has ever done except my parents. And then Pearl changed my life, too, and for almost 12 years, it was me and Pearl, and Kobi (her dog), and also Helen when she came down to relieve me on the job (which never felt like a job to begin with).
And, as far as writing was concerned, I was only writing blogs for all that time, something I'd been doing as a hobby since I first came online in 1998. I started out on Delphi, then I was on Myspace from about 2004 until they shut down in 2013. Then I moved here to Blogger, and here we are today. Since about 2019, I've been writing mainly about movies (and yeah, I know, all I do is describe the plots, but hey - at least I'm not some fancy-pants critic who has to use a thesaurus or critic jargon like the dreaded "trope" (whoever heard of that word until about five years ago?), and I hate milieu as much as you do) but anyway, what was I saying?.....oh yeah, so I've been writing about movies since 2019, just for fun, and after Pearl died I decided to get serious.
And I wrote the two books mentioned above, which were completed in October about six weeks ago.
"Oh boy!" I thought, because I knew they were really good, and I was (and am) excited for people to read them.
And then I thought, well, I'm an author now, not a professional one until I sell my first book, but still an author because I've been in that mode for over two years, so what's next? When you write, it's like playing guitar: you've gotta do it every day or you'll get sloppy. And book writing is a whole different animal than blogging. It's exacting. So, you've gotta stay sharp, and I didn't wanna wait to begin my next book, which I already knew was gonna be an update of What Happened in Northridge. I've known that since February of this year, when - for the first time in over 15 years - new and important information came to me regarding the Events of 1989. Actually, as you know, the info was staggering. But I had to put it aside until I finished the two books I was working on, and then around mid-October, when they were finished, I thought "let's dig in". And I started doing memory work to prepare for the new version of What Happened (which may or may not retain that title).
I won't go into a description of what "memory work" entails. I'll save that for the book, and my way of doing it may be slightly specific to me. But lemme tell ya, my memory work works. It works so well that it's blown me off the map. And I've come to realize that what I thought I knew about 1989 (and my life) was just the tip of the iceberg. Well, maybe more than the tip, but there was still a shipload of stuff beneath the surface. And what I've been doing since mid-October, is raising up that information, hauling it out of the murky water of buried memory, or in my case memories that were deliberately erased. What I have found amusing, and it's actually been kind of a lifesaver because it's kept me from getting too depressed, is that the people who erased my memory thought the erasure was permanent. I get a huge kick out of knowing that I beat them.
I haven't won yet, because there's still a lot I don't know, but I am pulling that Monumentally Enormous Memory Fish out of the water, little by little by little. It's a lot of work, though, and it can leave me mentally exhausted. And the information I am learning, is so astounding in many cases, that it has - among other things - left me unable to concentrate on a simple thing like watching a movie. If before, I had a million questions about 1989 and What Happened in Northridge, now I have twice as many, and they extend back to the beginning of my life. As far as the 1989 so-called "Timeline" is concerned, that too has changed. For many years, and until just two weeks ago, I thought the Events began at Concord Square in Terry's apartment on September 1, 1989, and I thought I "came out of it" (came home from the hospital) sometime around September 12th. I knew, from conscious memory, that I'd seen "Sea of Love" with Lillian, and I thought we'd seen it on opening weekend, likely September 16th. Now, I know that neither of those dates are correct as a starting point or an ending. While the September 1st date is correct for the incident inside Terry's apartment, it was not the initiating incident for the Event as a whole. Nor did Lillian and I see "Sea of Love" on it's opening weekend, but very likely two weeks later, around September 30th.
When I finished writing my two now-completed books, I started right in on my new version of What Happened in Northridge. Working only with the new info I'd learned in February and March 2023, I thought I had enough to really make progress in writing a more "thorough" version. But then, in November, just this past month, after Halloween season was over and all those great horror films, the floodgates opened in my memory work, and my life kind of got thrown off the rails. And that's why I'm not watching movies at present, and why we don't have any movies for the blog. I just can't concentrate enough to watch a flick and write a blog about the plot (though I can and have been watching short documentaries). I've also had to stop working on the book (the new version of What Happened) because I have so much new information that I have to get reorganized. It might take a month or two. And I'm still pulling the Gigantic Fish out of the water.
On top of all of that, it really sucks to come to terms with what was done to me in 1989. I mean, I've got a thick skin, because I'm not like other people. My life is a little on the unique side. But it still sucks, knowing that people would do to me what was done, and that people hated me or were jealous/envious of me for no good reason (there's never a good reason for jealousy or envy, and especially not hatred). That's why, in part, I am going to write a book about it. I had thought it would be around 1000 pages. The first version was 800. Now, with all the new material, I'll be lucky if it comes in at less than 2000. Probably 2500 is about right.
Has anyone ever written a single, 2500 page book? Probably. Will anyone read one? Who knows. But I am going to write one, starting as soon as I can get organized here. Gonna keep the blog going, too. I pray, pray, pray that we're gonna get this whole doggone thing sorted out, because the world needs for it to be sorted out. And there needs to be justice. Without justice, nothing I write will make much difference. That's all I know for now. I hope you have a very nice weekend. ////
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