I have three more movies: "Crimes at the Dark House"(1940), starring an actor named Tod Slaughter, whose reputation, shall we say, precedes him. He was a Grand Guignol theater performer in the early 1900s who went on to make low-budget movies, Sweeny Todd-type stuff, playing leering, knife-and-hammer wielding killers whose trademark seems to be laughing hysterically while they murder you. I'd only seen one Slaughter movie before this. It, too, was lurid. He's definitely an acquired taste, and his acting is deliberately ham-fisted, but he's good if you're bored or distracted as I was, and better than nothing I suppose. We also had a hardboiled pre-Coder starring Chester Morris (one of our favorite early actors) called "Corsair"(1931), in which Chester goes from star footballer at his University to Wall Street hack after graduating. But he abhors the dishonesty of the stock market and rebels by becoming a bootlegging pirate. His co-star is Thelma Todd, whom we'd never seen. A strikingly beautiful woman, she was unfortunately notorious in Hollywood lore for "committing suicide" with the engine running in her garage. In reality (and as long suspected) she was murdered and it was covered up by corrupt Los Angeles officials (is that an oxymoron?). And - get this: according to IMDB, she was murdered by Roland West, her lover and the director on this film! West supposedly confessed on his deathbed to the film's star, Chester Morris! How's that for keeping things "in-house"? Besides being a huge star in early Hollywood, Miss Todd (known, among other names, as Hot Toddy) had opened a restaurant that gangsters coveted and wanted to buy. You can read all about the case by Googling "Thelma Todd Murder". Our third movie, watched last night, was "The Perfect Snob," a screwball rom-com with a great cast: Lynn Bari, Cornel Wilde, Charlie Ruggles, and Anthony Quinn, and many great supporting players. That one's the best of the three, but you can't go wrong with any of 'em.
Well, yet another memory has surfaced that may connect a lot of dots. I'm not gonna say what it is but it's Beyond Mindblowing and seems pivotal in the August '89 scenario. Man, this stuff is a lot of work, folks. And I'm also trying to write the latest book. Every day, I get up, and I've immediately got all this stuff on my mind. It's like trying to figure out a gargantuan puzzle, while at the same time understanding that I've never really known about my life, while people around me have.
Imagine finding out, at 63 years of age, that your life was like some kind of chess game.
The Late (and I used to say Great but now I'm not so sure) Dave Small once told me that my life was like Jim Carrey's in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". I asked him what he meant, and he said, "You know, like 'Cue the Sun'." I understand better now what he meant.
Part of what I'm learning is fascinating, but other parts are horrible in more than equal measure, because the other side of the coin is the horrific violence that I and other people suffered, and somehow lived through, that has never been acknowledged or resolved. Here's something I think about every day:
I should be dead. It's a wonder I'm freaking alive, considering what I lived through, what was done to me.
Well, anyhow, right now I am just trying to connect dots, because in memory recovery you need continuity in order to raise a recollection out of the subconscious and into the conscious mind. You need connectors, little "bits and pieces" of things like "Where did I wake up that morning?" or "How did I come to find myself in so-and-so's house?" or "What happened after I left Dad's apartment?" You need to uncover the little things that got you from Point A to Point B.
An example would be: Let's say you all of a sudden remembered meeting your favorite movie star, or your favorite musician, but you couldn't remember how it came to pass. You knew you'd met them, because the meeting was suddenly in your conscious memory, meaning that it all-of-a-sudden was there, and wasn't murky, that it felt as any memory does, almost like you could reach out and touch it. Well, besides wondering why you'd only "just now" remembered it (in my case I am remembering things after 34 years), you would try to find something to connect it to another memory, so you could know in what time frame it occurred, and where it occurred, and the circumstances that led to it occurring, and so forth and so on.
I have become somewhat of an expert at this after doing it, on and off, since 1993. I know all about how to use "triggers" to try and connect what, at first, are seemingly disparate memories. You have to trust your intuition, and in my case, my intuition is exceptionally strong. I've also discovered I have other extrasensory talents, but again, you have to "work them", like muscles, unless you are a natural psychic (like a person with Mercury in Scorpio). Well, at any rate, that's enough for now. Lillian used to say that she could read my mind. Now, I'm not altogether sure she was joking.
But yeah, since early November, I wake up with all of this in my head, and then to avoid wasting time, I have coffee and cereal and start in on writing the book. After being completely derailed for three weeks by realizing that I had a whole new scenario (meaning August '89), and spending all day trying to process those new-found memories, I am now averaging 3000 words a day, just by crudely typing out every noteworthy thing I can recall about my life, since the beginning. That's why I said "it's gonna take a million words" (2500 pages), because now, the book is not just about Lillian and me, and what happened during our relationship. That remains the core of the story, but it's now a much greater story of my life, about which I knew little until just a few weeks ago.
It's an emotional roller coaster, and one hell of a puzzle. Good thing I like puzzles, but 34 years is long enough. Now today, I just got a jury summons in the mail for early next year. Oh joy. Maybe I won't be selected. Anyhow, I've got my work cut out for me. And that's all I know for tonight. ///
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