ALPEN ROSES AND EDUCATING WOMEN

Bavarian's Kings' museum in Füssen near the Alpensee (with swans!)

Queen Marie (Ludwig's mom) - an avid hiker and club leader gave the Alpenrose with a pink bow to ladies who hiked a local mountain with her
Queen Theresia - given an unusual life of travel and science  and was awarded an honorary degree at two Universities, one being Munich. The audioguide state that she was embarrassed by the attention.
Maximillian - given swan gifts

THE SPECTRUM OF PSYCHOLOGY

 According to the overview given to me by Princess Pirate’s first year college friends, there are two themes. On one end is Freud’s psychoanalysis (evaluate personality from our unconscious mind) and Skinner’s Behaviourism (Measure what we do, no matter what we say and think). On the other is Carl Rogers’ Humanism (growth potential, and self-actualization).

AGATHA CHRISTIE’S TOP TEN PICKS

I am on a mailing list for Agatha Christie newsletter, and they supplied a list I have folded up in my copy of her autobiography. It’s the list of all her books, with short stories and plays, in order, and it’s so long that I am pretty sure I will never make my way through it. The letter started with a self-selected top ten list, and I think that’s a great place to start!

I am in the middle of Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, and I have only read one of those above (and watched the play AND the movie). I will work towards expanding to the titles above!

EIGHTEEN

Princess Pirate had a birthday today. I spent it with her and three of her closest friends, with red velvet multilayer cake with cream cheese icing, and fluorescent mini-golf at the Spheretech Putting Edge . She is not what I was like at eighteen, and she is not entirely independent, but she is an adult, and I am glad to know her. 

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL

I am sitting on my bed in a snowstorm, reflecting on the brilliant writing of the pilot for Lessons in Chemistry on Apple TV, and how it only begins to show the arc of complexity that a singular life can have.

I am thinking how it’s hard to write without getting lost in the character, but that that writing a screen play forces dialogue and pacing of interwoven characters and plot.

I am thinking about how incredibly strong the themes spoke to me, moving me to tears when the protagonist in a more patriarchial gender disqualification role is validated in her colleague.

She walks in at the pinnacle of her tv show fame, confident, decisive, and obviously in charge. 

We see her next, in her past, working as an overqualified lab assistant who also serves as 50s housewife, making coffee and cleaning up, while being excluded by her male peers and only able to work

She exists in the best version of her self within her limits until she intersects with a valuable but difficult colleague, and together they offer a better world than on their own. 

There are flashbacks, though, and the show ends in her fleeing this new arrangement based on fear propagated from a previous yet to be defined, but clearly traumatic event.

In between there is a meeting of the minds, and the chemistry of a man and a woman seeing and valuing each other in a beautiful relationship that makes me crave more. There are sweet endings (how does she get out of an obligatory beauty contest at work that only objectifies the women further) and gorgeous food, and a burgeoning relationship that is bound to get beautiful and messy. The themes run deep and the chemistry is gripping. What happens next is the brainchild of talented writing, and I am hooked! How do I take my ideas, and transform them into something resembling that?

I can’t quite get the pacing and the tension, but I was sitting here on my bed, singing The First Noel from the pages of a Christmas magazine where I made notes about the epiphany cake that I just made last night. We have visitors, and Rebecca is being a good sport in a curtainless living room on a pullout couch. Meanwhile our guests came, and realized that one is highly allergic to our cat, despite us living in an apartment within our house, with the litter underfoot in the bathroom, and the living room and dining room off limits. In my head, and some of my correspondence, I carry the impending death of a woman I spend 4 hours trying to save the day before yesterday, and the myriad complicated patients that I left behind. 

Surely that story could be just as interesting, if I could just write it! 

IDEAS: 

Write as a screen play (simplified but strong dialogue, scenes present but not written advancing plot)

State the obvious, brilliantly

Find an object to carry through (pencil)

Create a cast for my favourite characters

Don’t be limited by typical life. Write an extraordinary

Create chemistry

Think sound, visual, (smell)