A New Purpose

It's strange.  Most of the time, I shrink from revealing too much of my thoughts.  But sometimes I need very much to share; but to only a small audience.  It struck me that, now that the Helen saga was decently concluded, the number of readers checking out this blog will be reduced, so I can tell things to this blog—you know what I mean—and reach a smaller audience just like I would prefer!  So the topics of these posts are not going to be exclusively about Helen in the future. 

This is actually the 'younger' blog; the earliest post dates from almost a year after the earliest post on the Don't Wait For the Movie blog.  I created it for the purpose of writing about Helen, which had a lot of sex in it, initially.  I also wanted to discuss how to tone it down.  Actually, the relationship between Helen—who was less than 16 years old at the time—and Janet, who was in her mid 20s, and a college graduate, was highly inappropriate, but even more, writing fiction about it would have been in very poor taste, so I ripped out huge chunks of the story to sanitize it.  It must seem as though Helen's feelings for Janet is/was mere infatuation, but they had a full on sexual relationship for close to a year.  But then Helen had sexual relationship with practically anyone who asked her in her first two years of college, until she fell seriously in love with Lalitha.

Well, anyway ...

What brings on this strange desire for sharing, you might ask?

It's actually quite (innocent).  I was pondering on what sort of girl/woman I would model my ideal woman—a subject that is very personal indeed.  In earlier years, my image of a perfect girl was—let's face it—a somewhat sexual one!  This is why, I think, Helen was created.  Helen was the image of the girl I wanted, as well as of the girl I wanted to be.  I wanted to be all those things: a blonde, with long, curly hair; thin and delicate (which I already was); a good guitarist—I'm fair; she was to have a beautiful 'white' soprano voice, which is not how I'd describe my voice, but I have a good choir alto; athletic, and a good tennis player, I'm barely athletic, and a hopeless tennis player.

She was to like little kids, and to be good at minding them; I'm sort of okay there.  She was to learn specialized woodworking very fast; I don't know, I've never tried it.  She can dance ballet; I just know the basics. 

As I described Helen in her twenties and thirties, our differences took over, and I will never resemble her.  She has already stopped being the sort of woman I could go for; her second amnesia put the last nail in her coffin, though I was still able to write about her sympathetically.  A lot of her character and personality had been passed on to the children, principally Erin and James.  Not intentionally, but unplanned. 

Just this morning, I saw a sort of PSA about caring for dogs by Katherine Heigl.  She seems genuine in her interest in the welfare of dogs 🐕, though I'm more a cat person myself. 

When I first encountered her, she seemed very German.  At that time, I had a close affinity to the people, the language and the culture of Germany.  It turns out, Katie Heigl is thoroughly American, though these days that is not a complete unqualified endorsement of her.  I must be getting old, because I thought she gave out a no-nonsense, but motherly vibe, which I found very attractive!  In the past, 'my type' has been women like Olivia Newton-John, Emma Watson, Naomi Watts, and various other ultra- feminine women, but perhaps more athletically built.  Keira Knightley?  Too thin.  Actually, I was crazy about Elizabeth Hurley, and still am!

There now.  I had promised myself I wouldn't gush about my crushes, and here I am ...

As far as guys go: I admire Obama, and that's about it. 

Kay 

Just Keeping in Touch!

Well, it's getting warmer in our part of the world; crocuses are popping up, grass is greening, there are buds on the trees!  We used to have a real winter, but now we're inflicted with this fake winter, with just a little snow, making a nuisance of itself!

Just as it is hard to remember the beautiful winters of years gone by, it's hard to remember a time when people celebrated diversity, and were generous towards people who were poor, and soup kitchens and food pantries were supported with enthusiasm!  Elon Musk has said that empathy is a weakness of civilization.  From where does he get this nonsense?  That sort of sentiment will probably not resonate with a lot of people; we've progressed too far for people to feel right about dumping on the unfortunates.  [Musk himself must feel constrained by social expectations from the 'richest man in the world'!  When he does what he wants, like an overgrown kid, he feels the disapproval of the community, and he's unhappy!  He longs for a society that will cheer him on, when he grinds the poor and helpless under his heel.  In Trump, he must have thought he has found such a person.  Trump would consider the poor and helpless 'Losers' and worthy of destroying.]

I'm reading Concerto, and I described Sita, Trish, and Maryssa as generous and kindhearted.  Back then I found it difficult to write about crude, cynical, cruel characters.  I guess that's a weakness.  I'm a Loser, according to the Trump classification!  All LGBTQ are 'Losers.'  I guess I'm saying that I write about soft-hearted, generous people. 

Kay

If only I was a concert grade contralto!

Helen was my surrogate singer, as I have said often!  I made her a soprano, for many reasons.  In my imagination, sopranos have one sort of personality, and contraltos have quite a different sort.  Sopranos are dominant, brilliant, tall, beautiful, have a powerful need to be loved; have a strong sex drive.  They're charismatic, highly strung, and have a powerful drive to succeed. 

Contraltos (altos; contralto is the word used for soloists) seem to me to be more retiring, more earnest, more serious, more nurturing, more concerned with success of the group, and less with their personal advancement.

In the Helen story, I did not stick to these—personal—stereotypes.  Yes, Helen was brilliant, tall, beautiful, a little needy, and somewhat highly sexed; but I gave her a strong sense of responsibility, and self-control.  Helen was given less of a drive for personal success, than for achievement, more broadly.

In my incomplete story about the Weihnachtsoratorium (the Bach Christmas Oratorio), there are two soloists: the contralto Maria Schreiber, and the soprano Amalie de Groot.  These two characters embody my personal prejudices much more closely.  Amalie starts off being somewhat immature, but grows throughout the story.  The contralto is delightful, and I have put a little excerpt about her in one of my Blog pages. 

Loving Women

I came across this photo of a painting on my Fb feed.   I don't know what makes them send these my way, but—it just stopped me in my tracks.  There's nothing prurient in it; it is so very loving, I have no words. 

Damn!

This morning, a strange song unexpectedly popped into my memory.  I had seen it being performed live, but then forgotten it for ages.  It is Sophie B. Hawkins, singing 'Damn!  I wish I was your lover'.

The meaning of the lyrics is somewhat disguised, but I expect that Hawkins explained the meaning of the lyrics to someone, perhaps while on a talk show somewhere. 

Someone, on Reddit—take it for what it's worth; being on Reddit is no guarantee of reliability—explains that the song is about a woman friend whom the singer is wanting to remove from an abusive relationship.  I'll look after you so sweetly, the song says, you'll feel good and whole again. 

How often I've watched someone from a distance, and felt that strong protective instinct, to take her away from someone who hurts her.  But you cannot say the words of the song, however much you may want to, unless you're in love with the victim.  A lot of women could convince themselves that they are in love with the victim, and that could lead to even more pain. 

The girl I used to observe, who regularly wore bruises—quite openly, something I couldn't figure out; perhaps a cry for help?—let's call her Kelly, was quite pretty.  But I didn't want to approach her.  I wasn't seeing anyone, but something prevented me from talking to her.  Looking back, I think I wasn't confident that I could keep her safe, and happy.  I think I was a little too old to assume I could pull it off.

I guess I could have made myself fall in love with her.  That's an interesting possibility.  But I guess I was a bit more cynical back then; you got to see all sorts of unhappy things while you attended graduate school. 

Another thing you pick up very soon in grad school is that nothing is as easy as it looks.  After a while, you look at everything as if it were an impenetrable maze in which someone is trying to get you lost.  Suspicious.  These days, I could walk into some disaster with my eyes wide open, but not back then. 

But I still think, I wonder whether Kelly is safe and happy.  She won't be with the same guy, or perhaps she is, and has a prosthetic arm.  She was so pretty, and when she smiled, which was rarely, she totally glowed!

Damn.

Kay

Voyager

I just re-read a portion of Voyager.  Guys, I felt like crying; it was so sad.  Not the whole thing; there were emotional parts, which were very emotional, and in between them, I guess I was typing fast to hurry the story along.  If I could have kept up that level of emotional intensity (of the emotional parts) throughout, that would have been a completely different piece of writing. 

There are several people that Helen loves in this story:

Cass Hutchinson, the chief administrator of the ship, whose idea it was to resuscitate Helen from the hibernation array.  She was more a great admirer of Helen than the other way round, but Helen did love Cass.  Cass was the grandmother of Summer Levi.

Melanie Arnaud, who becomes Helen's partner, the Captain of Cutter Alpha.

Lena and Summer, two teenagers whom Helen loves, and who adore Helen.

Daisy Warren, Alison's daughter-in-law, and Lena's mother. 

Sheila Connors, and Yvonne, Jennifer and Madeline Connors.  Yvonne (Vonnie), Jennifer and Maddie Connors, are clones of Sheila.  All of them have very strong feelings for Helen, and Helen, in turn, loves these women. 

Lucy, a dropout woman, who befriends and supports Helen while she was living with the Dropouts in their camp. 

Megan Barrows, the child of Lieutenant Peter Barrows, the original EVA specialist.  Helen loves Megan like crazy, and so do Lena, Marissa, Maya, Diane, and Athene.

When I'm describing the interaction between Helen and these women, the narrative naturally becomes intimate, and emotional.  All the characters are generally innocent to the point of being naïve, reflecting the naivete of the author (me) at the time I wrote the story. 

Kay

Helen is Depicted as an All-Rounder

Something I'm proud of is that I was into numerous things growing up—but I was never a violinist!—and when I invented Helen Nordstrom, I wanted her to have just as diverse talents and interests as I did, and a few more.  I had three years of Calculus, so Helen had the same, in college.  She also had physics and computer science and art.  (But I had chemistry!)

There is a story I wrote, in which there is a murder, and Helen is asked, by her Dean, to take over the Calculus class of the dead teacher.  I have no memory of what drove me to write this story, none whatever; but I read it over the weekend, and again I'm stunned at how well I had written it.  This is frustrating; I'm in the process of unpublishing all my stories from D2D (the successor to Smashwords), so when I wax poetic about any of my stories, there will be nowhere you can get them from!  Well, I'm working on the problem. 

To continue: Helen does take over the calculus 2 class.  Unlike in many schools, in Helen's school (Westfield College, an entirely fictitious institution), the curriculum of calculus 2 includes a variety of topics, including convergence of series.  (Wait; you know, those topics are never mentioned in the story.)

In the story, three of the students are caught, trying to burn the wallet of the dead teacher, but there is no evidence that those kids are responsible for the actual murder.  (Robbing  a corpse is still a crime.)

The other students turn on the three who were caught (who are allowed to finish out the semester), except for one girl student, Angie, from New Jersey, who helps Helen deal with the class.

Kay