I think I mentioned awhile ago that I've been wanting to write a story about a young girl who gets beat up in a concentration camp in WW2 germany. I had a discussion on Tuesday with my writing group about authenticity and after hearing Dean Koontz talk about the theories of quantum mechanics, I came up with a different way to write this story.

I think I may be riffing off my friend Mel's Picasso story, although I've never read it and only heard her talk about it.

I started freewriting the story last night and this is my sketchy plot. A woman goes to one of those free psychic fairs and has a past life reading done. The past life reader tells her that she had a past life as young german girl in a concentration camp in WW2 germany. As a young german girl, she was beat up by the Nazis and subsequently died later of her injuries. Most of the young girl's injuries were in the hip, legs and feet. The modern day woman has the same pain and the pyschic reader tells her the pain is from her past reincarnation trauma. The psychic reader tells her that the woman is experiencing the trauma because there is something she needs to learn from that incarnation. What the woman needs to learn, the psychic reader cannot tell her.

The woman is a skeptic when it comes to psychic stuff but after the reading, she starts see images of the girl everywhere. One day as she's looking into a mirror at herself, she sees the young girl and the young girl in the mirror sees her. The woman reaches out her hand to the mirror and the young girl does the same thing. The woman, magically, enters the world of young girl but as her imaginary friend, since only the young girl can see her.

I'm envisioning three scenes with young german girl right now. The first time she meets the young girl is before the family is thrown into prison by the nazis. The second time is life in the prison camp, and the third scene is after the young girl gets beat up by the nazis. That's as far I've gotten with plot and I started writing the scene where the woman is at the free psychic fair in GG Park. I have to figure out what the woman needs to learn from having this experience. I was thinking it would be fun to have her go to a church and find a magic portal, but I would have to find a lutheran church with what looks like a magic portal and I'm not into doing that kind of research right now.

I like this story and I keep thinking, I want to have this kind of experience happen to me. I want to go through a magic portal and enter into another world. How cool is that? This story has all my long time interests too, reincarnation, WW2 germany, religion, magic, weird stuff.

Does this story sound too derivative of other fantasy stories? I wish I knew what she needed to learn but maybe I have to write the story to find out.

I just finished reading Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. The writing is beautiful and very lyrical but it's very dense and not an easy read. I shall probably have to go back and reread it again just to see what I missed the first time. It's fun for me to read a book then go and look at all the reviews about the books just to see what other people say about it.

There is a lot of violence in the book but because the writing is very stylized and lyrical, it cast an artistic sheen for me over what I think others would considers overwhelming and grotesque. I dislike violence in real life but in wriitng, plays and movies, violence if done right can actually be quite beautiful. I'm not surprised by the cruel and evil acts in this book but then I read this book after the tragedy of 9/11, so maybe nothing violent shocks me anymore, nothing man can to do to other men shocks me anymore. What's that famous phrase, man's inhumanity to man, a phrase that is so descriptive of the characters in Blood Meridian.

I suppose the only slightly surprising thing for me was the ending, but I suppose what happened at the end was logical and inevitable and I congratulate McCarthy for taking the end to its most logical extreme. Very few writers do that.

I don't think finishing Blood Meridian and then going to see Amy Freed's play "The Beard of Avon" was probably a good idea. God, it was hard to sit through this very funny comedy of a play and to hear people laugh after spending the last week and half trying to get through what some critics have called the "great american novel".

I liked "The Beard of Avon", it was very cleverly written and very entertaining, but I found it derivative of all the sight gags and jokes in Shakespeare in Love. And Tom Stoppard is a much better writter than Amy Freed. I also found it annoying that Freed used the same device of putting cliche lines in the play like they did in Moulin Rouge. God, I found that so ghastly and annoying, but people in the theatre loved it and laughed at every old and tired line. I had a friend who saw Moulin Rouge when it first opened and she loved the movie because it used all those old lines.

I find it odd that this play was the most produced play in regional theatres across the country in 2001 but there are no backers for a broadway version. Why? I thought all great plays if they are that good are bound for Broadway. I don't know. There was a lot humanity in Shakespeare in Love, something about the wriitng of that movie touched a human chord in me and I think in many others who saw it. I saw no such thing in "The Beard of Avon". Oh, the play is very well written to be sure, but great, I'm not sure. For me, the play did not strike me deep in the heart like Shakespeare in Love did and for me to really like a play, it has to do that.

But the play is very funny and entertaining and part of me thinks I might have enjoyed it more had I not finished Blood Meridian the night before. I did a brief search on reviews for this play and found critics who thought the same. Isn't it gratifying when you find a critic who agree with your assessment. It makes me feel like I'm not crazy, especially when a respected reviewer has the same thoughts I have.

I felt the same way about that movie, Erin Brockovich. I really was not enamored of the movie and when I read Roger Ebert's review which nearly mirrored my own thoughts, I felt so much elation. An entertaining movie to be sure but not great art.

I did enjoy reading Amy Freed talking about her process of writing in the program though because when I do write, my inspiration is the same as hers. But of course, all the published writers say that to write great things, you must first write horrible things. But my question is, how do you know what' s good and what's horrible? Who's to say?

I had the weirdest dream this morning. I was on a yaht with of all people Russell Crowe. So strange. I think I had a dream about him because I am dying to see his new movie but I can't find someone who wants to see it. Most of my friends think he's a total pig and can't stand him. I think he's such a great character actor. I loved him as the fat corporate freak in The Insider. His walk, how he held his body, his facial expressions, everything was so perfect and he reminded me of many of the corporate VIPs that I used to sit across from in meetings.

I wasn't that impressed with him in LA Confidential, although one of my friends loved the "mook", the name we gave him for playing the hunky dumb cop. I wasn' even that impressed with him in Gladiator but The Insider really convinced me what a great actor he is and I think he won the Oscar more for The Insider than for Gladiator.

But who the hell cares if he's a pig in his personal life. He's an actor and he's an aussie actor and according to my aussie girlfriends, most aussie men are pigs anyway. Remember most of the aussie men in Muriel's Wedding. My aussie girlfriends tell me that those casual portrayals of horny stupid men were very accurate. So what's the big deal if Russell Crowe is being true to his aussie male roots. He's a very good actor and in a film that's really all that matters.

Anyway, in my dream Russell Crowe and I were on this yaht and he was my friend and we got to know each other and we started liking each other even though at first we weren't really attracted to each other. I don't think he's that attractive. I wouldn't kick the guy out of my bed if he suddenly popped in there one night, but he's not as attractive as say Keanu Reeves or Johnny Dep or even Tom Cruise for that matter. That's why it's so strange for me to have a semi-erotic dream about an actor who I don't find that attractive but whom I think is just one hell of a great actor. But then again, I did have a very erotic dream about me and Howard Stern. I don't think he's attractive at all, but part of me thinks it would be great fun to have sex with him just to hear his commentary afterwards on my performance. Sick, isn't it?

It's been a strange week anyway, this first week of this new year. I was in Target the other day on my lunch break and I came across this old couple buying laxatives. In November, Susan, my spiritual healer, said that my clairsentient ability was going to kick into his gear in the next three months. Clairsentience is the ability to feel things through your body. As I was standing in the aisle with the old couple, I got a flash, some kind of feeling, that the old man was going to die soon. Isn't that an odd thought to have about somebody? I mean, I don't go around thinking people are going to die every day. But I got this feeling with this old man and that he was going to die soon. Then I had another feeling that there were angels around watching him, like Nicholas Cage in that movie with Meg Ryan. The angels come and watch and take care of you when you're about to die so they can guide your spirit when you finally leave your body.

I was so creeped out that that I left the aisle, bought what I needed to buy and then went to the post office. Then in the post office, I felt the feeling of the angels again and I quickly looked around the post office but I was afraid to look at anyone's face because I didn't want to think that one of them was going to die soon.

I remember in college I had a friend named Karen and she was very psychic and could tell when people were going to die. She told me it was a very disturbing feeling and now I know what she means. Karen said she had started getting these feelings in her early teens but by her late teens, she had learned to turn it off. It's not a cheery feeling walking around knowing that random people who you don't even know are going to die soon.

In church, I had the same feeling but I quickly turned it off. I don't really want to know when people are going to die. It's really none of my business and it's an awful feeling because you can't tell them. I don't even feel like telling them because after all, those angels are there and I think that means that it's okay and all ordained, but still, how depressing.

The neurotic part of me thinks that maybe it's me the angels are visiting, and that I'm going to die soon, but I know that's not true. I think 2002 is going to be a wild year. I think it's going to full of trauma for people and if karma been speeding up starting in 1998, then it' s just going to go into overdrive in 2002.

I get the sense that great things are going to happen in the world, in my life but also great traumas, big decisions that I'll have to make, that other people will have to make. It's a bit frightening really, knowing that changes are going to take place and wanting yet fearing the change, because change brings new worlds and and an end to old worlds. I've read that one door cannot open until another door has closed. I guess my biggest fears are more to do with what doors in my life will close than what new doors will open. But whatever I feel, what's sure is change will come and all I can do at this point is pray that when change does come, I don't freak out too much

The New Year is here and that' s great isn't it? I was calculating my numerology year and this is year 2 for me in a 9 year cycle. It did sort of feel like a beginning last year, I suppose. I got my health in order and finished the last of my excruciating lemonade cleanses. It's true, it's really like ammonia going through your body and cleaning you from the inside out. I got rid of all my parasites, except for my yeasties, but I'm working on them right now.

My spiritual healer Susan called me this morning and thanked me for the Christmas card I sent her. She then asked me if I had gone to a party two days earlier, which I had. And she said, she knew it because when she picked up my card she felt all this residue and chaotic energy coming out of my card. So strange. She then asked me if I'd felt depressed and melancholy and I said yes, but I thought it was just a massive hangover. She said no, it was the chaotic energy but she cleared it and that I should feel better today. And she was right, I did. I even did an hour of yoga today which I haven't done in ages.

It freaks me out to wonder where I picked up all that chaotic energy. I knew most of the people at that party, old friends from my acting days, most of whom I haven't seen or spoken to in about a year. Something odd did happen though. A very good friend of mine, who is often completely negative towards me which I've put down to the fact that she's a native New Yorker, she still hasn't gotten over her mother and she really is quite jealous of me but would never admit it even on her death bed, hugged me as I was leaving, kissed my check and asked me if I knew how much she loved me. Very odd for her, such behaviour, but then she was on her 6th Manhattan. The instant her lips touched my cheek I felt instant coldness, an odd feeling to feel when being kissed like that by a very good friend of yours. Was she throwing all her negative energy into me with that kiss? I don't know. I just know it felt very, very odd for her kiss me on the cheek like that, so odd in fact, that it creeped me out then and creeps me out now.

It's hard to reconcile the feelings that sometimes your dearest, dearest friends are often your harshest critics, and they say and do the worst things to you, worst things than any enemy has ever done. And what's horrible is you really can't get back at them without feeling guilty. My friend is so negative towards me sometimes, telling me I'll never make any money as a writer, that I'll never have a child or even get married for that reason. Why she does it, I don't know. When she does do it, her voice changes and I get the feeling that she's just parroting things her mother said to her and I feel sad about that God, she'd just die if I ever told her that she acts like her mother. That would send her over the deep far end because she really, really hates that women still.

Ah well, what can one do about one's negative friends. I've decided to not hang out with her as much. We've sort of been drifting apart these last two years anyway and I've felt so guilty about that, even though it was somewhat mutual. But now that guilt over all that has been erased by her incredible negative behaviour towards me and that's a good thing.

It just proves to me once again, that everything in life works out very mysteriously for the best.