Month: July 2007

Yesterday I read about two local artists who committed suicide, Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan. I’d never heard of them before, but I read the article because I’m always curious about people who go voluntarily into something I do everything I can to avoid. There’s a post about them on Gothamist today, and so I was reading the comments section because I’m also curious about other people who are curious like myself.

One of the commentors posted that Theresa had a blog and that she had recently posted about an MK Ultra thing called Project Monarch, and maybe there’s a connection. MK Ultra was the name for a CIA program that did research in mind control. I looked up Project Monarch because when I looked into MK Ultra for my book I never came across even the name Project Monarch. But I didn’t research MK Ultra heavily, I mostly wanted to compare the work at the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory with the direction our government took into mind and consciousness research (hint: not at all the same). It wasn’t particularly meaningful that I never heard of it.

If you google Project Monarch what you mostly find are entries about a couple who wrote about Project Monarch, Cathy O’Brien and Mark Phillips. You have to google this stuff yourself, I don’t know how I could even begin to summarize, mind control, sex slaves, multiple personality disorder.

My immediate reaction is, I don’t know if there ever was a Project Monarch, I’m willing to believe that there was, and that they may have begun some of the experiments described. Our government has attempted some pretty nutty stuff over the years, and not with the noblest of aims, but I don’t know about these two at all. They say things like Hillary Clinton knows all about this, but takes it in stride as just your typical government stuff. Insane. Although J. B. Rhine did come up against this problem where clearly troubled people would tell their stories. They were completely delusional, they’d outright lie and exaggerate, but sometimes their stories began with one element of truth. Who knows.

So that brings me back to Theresa Duncan. I browsed her blog a little. The fact that she accepted Project Monarch without question is a little out there. Plus, she just killed herself. I wonder what Duncan and Blake’s friends and the professional community around them make of this? Blake was represented by a gallery and was in a few Whitney Biennials.

Theresa quoted Reynolds Price on her blog. “A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens–second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence …”

Sadly, I gotta strongly disagree with that. I think millions suffer in almost near silence. Lots of people have no audience for their stories, or keep quiet for a wide variety of reasons.

I was talking to Howard the other day, about the beginning of an idea for my next book. I don’t even quite remember it, something about wrongful death. People dying for causes that turn out to be nothing, or executed for crimes that they didn’t commit, I forget where I was going with it exactly, but I was inspired by a painter named Tina Mion. The painting above is one of hers. It will come back to me.

This was the second thing I learned to cook. I realize cooking is a relative term with meals like this, but it’s still a big deal to me. This was less of a success. Everything felt too much, too much vinegar, too much lemon. Weirdly, it was better as a leftover the next day.

Last week I basically spent an entire day at Mt. Sinai. They are tracking World Trade Center workers and volunteers and every year or so they call you in for a check-up. Each time they seem to focus on different things. This year the mental health type questions were much more extensive and were all about people’s attitudes about the extent of control they have or don’t have over their lives. I’m a do-er (an evil do-er) but I am actually happy about the fact that I have finally come to accept that I can do and do and do until the cows come home, but there’s a lot of things that are simply out of my control and acceptance is a key thing to peace and happiness. Then I come to this question:

Do you feel everything happens for a reason?

I hate this question. I really hate this question. I’m sorry. I know most people do think everything happens for a reason. But beyond cause and effect, which is not what this question is asking, I most certainly do not think everything happens for a reason. A day later I read this, I forget where:

“I don’t believe in accidents,” says the host of The Oprah Winfrey Show. “I know for sure that everything in life happens to help us live.”

Give me a break. It’s like I was watching Big Brother the other day, and one of the players, Amber, prays to God to help her not be evicted from the show. Even for God-believers, I have to think this is a serious misuse of God-power. God should smite her for even attempting to inopportune him with something so trivial. But to bring it back to “everything happens for a reason,” she later says that God put her on the block (the Big Brother term for being nominated for eviction from the show) to make her stronger. The person who writes the recaps for Television Without Pity wrote, “God? It’s not working.”

There is a person in the world who actually thinks there is a omniscient being who not only put her on a reality TV show, he is now orchestrating her entire experience there.

Anyway, I’m tired of having other people’s beliefs imposed on me from every direction all the time, expecially the automatic assumption that I share them. Although Howard rightly points out that given how many people do share these beliefs, it’s a good assumption.

It’s about acceptance, but a different kind of acceptance. I’m facing facts, there are lots of other people in the world, and everyone has their own needs and wants and the world is not all within my control. People who believe in God go even further, they cede control. But I imagine they would describe it differently.

The end result is the same. We all still have to endure what we must endure. If they get through it, they thank God. If I get through it I thank whoever helped me and feel relieved that luck was on my side today.

I was so transfixed I didn’t think to turn the camera sideways, so sorry about the weird angle. But there was a huge thunderstorm, and I heard something in the hall, opened the door and saw that it was raining inside the building. It was coming through the lighting fixture, so that was scary.

But I wanted to. I took this at Union Square yesterday, where I did nothing while Howard tried to write (except I kept interrupting him with stuff like, “look at that dog!”).

Thanks to the internet, members of the families at the center of some unexplained events that I included in my book got a hold of me. I may soon have an inside view! I’m very excited. Thank you, Andrea Herrmann and Raoul Larrinaga.

In other news:

– My choir will be performing Mozart’s C Minor Mass next.
– Jen on Big Brother should be in therapy and not on TV.
– I was so sorry to see Shauna go on So You Think You Can Dance.
– I’m discouraged about how long my arm is taking to heal.
– I’m going to try to cook for a second time tonight. Wish me luck.
– Echo is going to move to a new host on July 31st! I’m stressed, but thrilled.
– I could use some book suggestions, guilty pleasure book suggestions. What books have you read that you couldn’t put down? The kind where you go, “I’m just going to finish this chapter, then I’ll go to sleep.”

Whenever I pass a dog run I stop and watch the dogs for a while, especially when there’s a French Bulldog among them, which I can pretty much count on these days. They are one of the “it” dogs currently. Love these little guys. But when I get a dog I’m still getting a chihuahua. I need a dog I can easily carry up and down five flights.

I’m on a mini-vacation, but I haven’t really been vacationing much. Haven’t seen a movie, gone to a gallery or museum, read a book. What have I done?? One day I bought a really delicious sandwich (Note to self: go back to that place) and sat on the Hudson River and ate it while reading a decent book. That was what, two hours out of a whole week?

Seriously, I’ve got to get down to vacationing-business. Forget a movie today. Now there will be weekend crowds. Same with museums. Maybe I’ll try learning a song on the banjo? Or, go back to the sandwich place and then sit in Union Square and relax?