Hearts and Minds

Blog Post One 1 Bedeviled - The Strange Life and Death of Actor Tom O'Rourke

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Mon, 12 Feb 2024 00:07:29 GMT

Blog Post One 1 - Introduction

This is a quote from Charles Dickens’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL. “Old man Marley was as dead as a doornail. This must be distinctly understood or nothing wonderful can come of the story I’m going to relate.”

He was a young man, when I met him, with all the promise of many golden years ahead full of the best life has to offer, no matter what obstacles were in his way. Handsome enough, full of good humor and intelligence, high-spirited, with the strength of will, perseverance, and vigor to meet any challenge, always hopeful and dreaming.

How I loved that man. He was laughing sunshine, cheerful, determined, full of spunk and grit.

Given all that both of us brought to our marriage, it seemed nearly impossible that we didn’t somehow contrive to live happily ever after.

Yet, hiding out of sight was the worm of death eating away at his soul. What malign influence, what dark cloud, what sly devil hovered relentlessly over him? Why had fate destined him to take such a wicked turn? What invisible force robbed him of joy and sank his heart and dreams into an ocean of turmoil?

To understand how totally a man can be destroyed in this life and the next is quite a tale. I wouldn’t have believed it myself, if I hadn’t witnessed it all firsthand. What part did I play in this tragedy? Perhaps I slowed the descent into hell on earth, a little. And now he has a story that must be told.

Blog Post Two 2 - Bedeviled - Haunted

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Sun, 11 Feb 2024 00:07:37 GMT

Haunted

A living hand thrusts up out of the loamy dirt, reaching for me; Tom will not let me go. There’s something he must tell me. Something terrible. He haunts my nights with visions of his unquiet soul. What? What is it, Tom? What calls you back from the beyond the grave to agonize and torment my spirit and yours?

Thomas O’Rourke was born in Greenwich Village during World War Two to a beautiful young woman just turned nineteen. His father is an Indiana Hoosier, tall and former basketball star, now in the Navy in the Pacific. He’s a healthy eight-pound baby boy, blonde, like his mother. He spends the next two years living with his mother and grandmother on the Upper West Side of Manhattan near Fort Washington Park. His grandfather is in the Merchant Marines sailing the extremely dangerous North Atlantic run to Murmansk during WWII.

His father and grandfather return home. His father aspires to be a professional singer and tries his luck in the big city, with no success. Then he and his bride return to his family home in Zionsville, Indiana, a town which boasts about 1500 residents, where he will work nearby in a factory. At that time, Zionsville is a small farm town with a railroad, about 25 miles north of Indianapolis. The little, but growing family lives next door to Tom’s paternal grandparents.

But something goes terribly wrong inside that small, country home. It’s something that will destroy many lives, Tom’s included.

Scattered across the country, as rootless as confetti, Tom’s life is always in motion. First the Zionsville boyhood, seemingly so normal, with bikes and baby brothers. When Tom is ten, his family ends and his mother returns to her parents in New York City, retreating from her abusive husband, taking with her their three young sons, and no alimony.

Tom’s grandfather dies four years later, when he is fourteen. Three growing boys are too much for his mother and widowed grandmother, so he’s sent to Arizona to live with his father and a new wife and half-sister. From there, he goes into the Army, North Carolina, paratrooper training, Military Policeman in Frankfort, Germany, then back to New York City, with no high school degree, and he can find no job. He hitchhikes to Chicago and finds a good job, finishes high school, enters Goodman Theater School, part of Chicago University, and lands a good role in the touring company of a David Merrick musical, finally ending up in New York City with his union card.

At first, he works all the time, doing showcase theater productions for free to show off his talents, then getting TV commercials, good auditions, and good roles in good productions. Then things dry up. Like all actors, he’s in and out of work; or is he like all actors? What’s wrong with Tom? He had so much promise, but it seems to be over by age thirty. He’s reduced to doing Army training films for very little money because he’s an actor who actually is believable as a soldier.

Again, I see the soft, lumpy earth as it heaps up where his arm reaches up for me, clutching my arm. Help me!! Help me!!!

I receive the heavy box on the front porch. His ashes. It’s shattering. The man I was married to for thirty-five years is in that box. He’s gone. I don’t know why. Why did he smoke and drink himself to death? He had everything to live for. He’d became a successful working actor. We could have retired on our pensions and been happy together watching our son grow up. But Tom was never happy.

The dreams keep coming from him, now. Almost every night. Do I really believe they are real? They seem very real. We are happily gamboling around in a beautiful field. Suddenly, I look at Tom and say ‘the chemo is working. You’re better. We should call the doctors.” Tom looks at me, disappointment clouding his eyes, and says, ‘I’m tired of doctors,’ then he disappears, and I wake up, sad; he’s still dead, and it’s as if I just lost him again.

In another dream, he shows me a beautiful glowing tube full of many neon colors; rocking it back and forth he says, ‘this is the timeline.’ We are both outside the timeline looking at it in wonder.

“It’s all so orchestrated” said Dr. Tom Cicoria about life as he saw it after he died and came back.

What follows is the story of one man’s soul. Tom never understood why he did what he did, but perhaps I can remedy that to some extent. This is a story of his false hopes and suffering. What happened to Tom was a tragedy. It wasn’t a famous tragedy. We weren’t refugees or victims of racial prejudice or social injustice. Ours was a garden variety tragedy of a man whose parents were immature and impulsive. They used alcohol and violence to deal with each other.

This is Tom’s story, his part of the timeline. It didn’t end well, and it didn’t end when he died. It ends with facing the truth of his story. Then he can rest in peace. He can be free.

Blog Post Three 3 - Bedeviled Sex and Death

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Sat, 10 Feb 2024 00:07:42 GMT

Sex and Death

About the last decade of Tom’s life, it became more and more obvious that there was something wrong, something that gravely disturbed him. He was only rarely happy, and even then, only briefly. He took little or no interest in our growing up son. He took little or no interest in our life and our future. We did very little together. No real vacations or trips. No private happy times except the required holidays, then Tom would recede back into his solitary misery.

When he didn’t have an audition or a job, which was most days, his practice was to stay up drinking and smoking to all hours of the next morning, falling asleep around 5 am. I got up around 7 to get our son off to school and to go to my job. He would take himself to the corner for breakfast and spend the time until Preston or I got home reading the paper and bored to tears.

We tried to try everything to cure his depression: therapy, quitting smoking, teaching acting, working at the mall, anti-depressant pills, and just trying to get him to talk about what was driving him to smoke and drink himself to death.

The only answer was the same one I’d gotten for years every time he didn’t get a job he wanted. He said he was depressed because he couldn’t get anywhere. He wanted to work more often as an actor. I’d heard that so often and rejection is so much a part of the life of an actor, that I believe I’d been indoctrinated to think his depressions were simply passing moods of disappointment. He denied that there was anything else bothering him. Questioning him further never got me any different answers, so I eventually just gave up.

The recurring image I have of him at that time is sitting next to him in his beloved old 1992 Cadillac as we drive somewhere, and he is smoking. Every time he finishes a cigarette, he takes one last deep pull on the cigarette, one last, angry blast of tobacco, and throws the cigarette out the window with an expression and gesture of complete disgust. As per my indoctrination, I interpret this as disgust with his career. But at his age, when that part of life is ending for almost every performer, that justification doesn’t fit. But I am too habituated to blaming career disappointment to think otherwise.

But it’s not just the cigarettes and the booze, it’s the constant acid reflux. He has heartburn all the time. I can’t wash any pair of pants or shirt without finding Tums in one of the pockets. He lives on Tums. Much later I read theories that Tums only worsen acid reflux. But perhaps this acid reflux is exacerbated by the raging emotions he tries to ignore and suppress.

Now, I can look back and see how utterly foolish I was to accept that his career hopes being dashed as the cause of his depressions. No one commits slow suicide, smokes three or four packs a day, and has constant acid reflux because he isn’t a big star. Tom had a pretty good life at the end. We had a good pension with the Screen Actors Guild. Our son had finished high school. Tom had worked every year for the Law and Order shows and did other small, but interesting roles. He wasn’t a big star, but he had been a steadily working actor. That in itself is a major achievement.

And yet he sank deeper and deeper into depression. Why? What was it that he so desperately yearned for? What deep, unsatisfied hunger seethed in him and filled him with self-disgust? No, I should have realized that this slow suicide had nothing to do with his career. This was a deep, raging passion, a mania, an unconquerable rapacity that devoured him whole. And when the cancer came, it was the result of the devil inside him who’d finally come to collect the bill for years of hidden rage.

Why didn’t I guess that only a sexual disappointment could be this profoundly destructive? He had smoked and drunk himself to death from some insatiable sexual appetite. He had pretended up until shortly before he got sick that he loved me. But there had been that one night several years ago when he didn’t come home from his part-time job at the mall until well into the morning. And all night long I was left worrying like crazy, wondering where he was because he never called. Nor, when he came home, did her provide any explanation, as if I didn’t deserve one. When asked the next morning, he angrily tells me I have ruined his life.

Ruined your life? I'd never expected a constant stream of gratitude from Tom, but it's shocking to hear after over thirty years that somehow he believes marrying me was a huge sacrifice which ruined his life. Later, it will turn out that exactly the opposite is the actual truth. This was the devil side of Tom acting a speaking out. The devil side which had become bolder as his sense of failure deepened.

Later, he says to forget it. He didn’t mean it, but he still won’t say where he was or what he did. What was this all about? I never did find out. At least, not while he was still alive.

Sex and death. If you don’t get the sex part right, death looms large on your horizon.

Blog Post Four 4 - Bedeviled - Death By Cancer

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 00:07:52 GMT

Death By Cancer

Above picture is our last Christmas

Tom is cast in the movie UNITED 93 about the plane that crashed on 9/11 in Pennsylvania. The film is to be shot over a six week period in England at Pinewood Studios. He’s thrilled. But before an actor signs a contract, for insurance reasons, he must have a physical to make sure he’s healthy enough to complete his role. After his medical exam, Tom is told that he has markers for cancer. He can still play the role, but he should see a doctor when he gets home. He doesn’t tell me this till he’s finished with the film and been home for several months. Of course, when I hear this, I am devastated.

And I feel so bad for him. His wonderful trip to England where he got to visit so many museums about the British Army and British history which he loved so much must have been ruined because of the cloud of death hanging over him. Poor Tom. Nothing ever seems to work out for him. But he claims he enjoyed himself.

He finally makes an appointment with a doctor who checks out his throat which is where the cancer might be and declares him okay. We start filming Youtube videos of Tom telling some of his funny stories, but his voice gets weaker and weaker.

We go to another doctor, who takes another biopsy. It’s cancer of the esophagus. I faint in the doctor’s office. Tom is strangely unmoved. This is the beginning of the end.

We connect up with doctors at Memorial Sloan-Kettering in Manhattan. At first, we are hopeful, because we are told hopeful things. They look at the cancer’s position, but sadly it is in a spot that is inoperable. Bad news.

Tom must stay in the hospital overnight for some procedure. A blizzard begins. I tell him I have to go home or I won’t be able to get home. They say the procedure won’t start till tomorrow, so go ahead.

I get home and get a frantic call from Tom. Where are you? They need you to be here or they can’t do the procedure. He sounds like a child. I feel terrible. But I can’t go back until the roads are clear.

Inoperative cancers get radiation therapy. A plan is set up. It is to take six weeks of radiation therapy twice a week. We go into the city, hours early every time to wait in line for parking at the hospital. Then we enter the radiation waiting room to sit with others who are receiving treatment or like me, worrying and sad. The melancholy atmosphere in that room is so thick with despair, you could cut it with a knife. Those who are with the sick people attempt to appear appropriately cheerful. Tom goes into the treatment room and is positioned where so they can irradiate the cancer in his esophagus.

When the radiation treatment is complete, it turns out Tom has lost the use of one of his vocal cords, which has been damaged by the radiation. No one tells us that this is a probably an ultimately fatal disaster. And he will never speak again. He will never eat solid food again, because he can’t swallow safely. As a result, he must have an operation to insert a tracheotomy so he can breathe, and then another operation to insert a stomach tube to feed him. He will need oxygen and liquid food delivered, for the rest of his life, his now very short life. The tracheotomy will have to be suctioned out every four or five hours. That will be my job, day and night.

He's an actor. He will never speak aloud again. He will never eat food again. The man who delivers the canned liquid food comments that those on stomach tubes rarely last a year. Fortunately, Tom does not hear this. But the delivery man is not a doctor, and none of the doctors have said anything like that.

Once I have to rush Tom to a local hospital for something. One of the completely insensitive doctors there uses Tom to teach other doctors about esophageal cancer. As he stands by Tom’s bed, this doctor announces that people with this type of cancer don’t recover and never last more than two years.

Tom is terribly upset, of course. I reassure him saying that if that were so, our doctors would have told us. But of course, it is so, and our doctors are trying to be hopeful as we pursue all the treatments available in the desperate hope that something will preserve life in Tom.

We go into the hospital again to see if the radiation has worked. It has. The cancer in his throat is gone, cleared away. We have some triumphant days, living in the delusion that he can have the trach removed and thus be able to at least eat.

One warm afternoon in early spring, I remember sitting on a sunny bench outside a mall with Tom. He was wearing a bandana around his neck to cover the hole in his throat. He’d always been a restless person, and now he’s even more restless, so out we went. I wished I could do something more for him, wave a magic wand and restore his voice and his life. I sat beside him as he smiled happily, lost in some thoughts he couldn’t share. I stared at him, faked a smile, and wondered what my life would be like living with Tom in this condition. I would have to devote my life to caring for him. That would change everything for me. I knew I badly wanted him to live, but my future looked as if life was closing in around me. Tom seems completely unconscious of the huge iceberg our life has hit and which is sinking us. He smiles happily, writes a note that he wants to go into the mall to buy more scarves to cover his trach. It’s the drugs he’s on that render him so oblivious to, well, to everything.

Blog Post Five 5 Bedeviled- The Devil's Revenge

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Wed, 07 Feb 2024 21:24:07 GMT

The Devil's Revenge

The tach irritates Tom’s throat. I am told there is a softer trach that wouldn’t be so irritating. I jump through all kinds of hoops to get this type of trach. It takes weeks. In the meantime, the cancer has come back. Tom doesn’t know it, but the big fear is that a fissure will open up in between his throat and his lungs. That will be the end.

Next, there is chemo, to try to kill the cancer that has returned. I realize that Tom is never happy to see me. When his best friend arrives, his face breaks into a big smile, the type which never greets me. I am very hurt by this, but there could be many reasons, so I overlook it.

They put Tom on heavier pain medication. This is a very restricted drug, so I have to get all kinds of documentation and sign papers to get it. I have a long drive to the only pharmacy that can provide these drugs. Tom goes further into his fantasy land. He seems unaware of all the suffering he’s enduring and equally unaware of the suffering he’s causing his family.

I have snippets of memories of events that all but prostrated me entirely. In fact, if I look back, I have no idea how I managed to get through all these crises without breaking down. I remember sitting on a swing in an empty children’s park in winter, freezing, waiting the several hours it will take to get results. The results come back, more bad news. I remember all the oddly cozy hours we spent sitting in the car in line to wait for hospital parking, listening to the radio together. Any kind of normal activity is so welcome when nothing in your life will ever be normal again.

But the end occurs one day in late August. Suddenly, Tom is laying on the sofa, being fed via feeding tube, and the feeding liquid comes pouring out of his trach. The only way that could happen is if there is a fissure between his throat and windpipe. This is the deadly calamity that I have been warned about. Once this happens, it's only a matter of time. He seems unconcerned, but I rush him back to the hospital in New York. He will never come home again.

They are very considerate at the hospital and give us a room with a fabulous view of the Manhattan skyline. They know that we won’t need that room for long. He loses consciousness for the last time. He’s moved out of ICU. They have a conference with my son and myself, telling us there is nothing more they can do. We should probably let him die. We agree. They ask if we want to keep him in his drugged up state until the end. That seems kindest to both of us. So, he is moved to another room to slowly expire. I go back and forth to visit him, but he doesn’t respond to me at all.

I make the arrangements for cremation when the time should arrive. He doesn’t last long, about two weeks. He dies on a Sunday morning. I receive the call at about 8 am on that Sunday. There is nothing that can be done on Sunday. I spend the rest of the day crying. It’s over. My thirty-five year marriage is over. I’m exhausted, emotionally and physically. How appropriate for a man who always had such a deep faith in God to die on a Sunday. There is more to this day of death than I imagine.

We thought we had it beat, but it came back. The Devil must have his due.

Blog Post Six 6 Bedeviled- Psychic Timelapse

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 21:24:13 GMT

Psychic Time-lapse

Time Lapse Abbreviated version.

I had had a psychic experience long before Tom passed away that completely rocked my skeptical, scientific mindset. After this event, which I could not explain in any terms I’d previously thought about, I began a serious inquiry into paranormal events of every kind.

I call the experience that I had ‘time lapse.’

Our Road to Hollywood had led nowhere. Tom had an offer to learn to direct on a soap opera, so we were moving back to the East Coast. We were on a very tight budget and had no money to buy a house. We’d have to rent, but neither of us had jobs lined up. Also, we had a son who needed a decent school district.

During this time of stress and heartache, I was chosen to fly back east to look for a place to live in Northern New Jersey, because I’d been raised there. We had truly entered the twilight zone of life, where nothing works and sheer luck is your only strategy.

In a very distracted state of mind, Tom put me on a plan to head back east. I boarded the flight and chose a window sea. The plane hurtled down the runway and soared into the wild blue. It was late summer, and we flew over the vast, parched desert of the southwestern United States. Tom had a script he’d written called ‘Desert Heat’ that he’d shopped around with no success. And we’d both forgotten about.

After all the worry and stress about our future, the enforced inactivity of this long plane ride was curiously relaxing, and my mind wandered. Suddenly, as I stared out the window, watching the barren desert slip by, I KNEW that Desert Heart would be made into a movie. It’s not that I saw the movie in my mind, or that I heard a voice telling me it would be a movie, but as I gazed pensively at the aerial view of the desert, somehow, with absolute certainly, I knew Desert Heat would be a movie.

It was a knowing that simply popped into my disengaged mind. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. It was so strange that I really didn’t know what to make of it. But I knew it was a fact as surely as I knew that two and two make four.

This happened back during the mid-nineteen nineties. They psychic true life shows Sensing Murder and Medium wouldn’t hit the television airwaves for another decade. I hadn’t the faintest idea of why this had popped into my head and had never heard of precognition. Later, when I called Tom, I mentioned my strange knowing. We never told anyone else because neither of us believed it.

But several years later, while living in New Jersey, with Hollywood reduced to a very distant planet on the other side of the universe, the phone rang. Jean Claude Van Damme liked the Desert Heat script, and a producer wanted to negotiate a deal.

Thunderstruck, this piece of good luck had come out of the blue. Selling a screenplay in Hollywood is always a miracle, yet Tom’s script was sold, and even more miraculous, got made.

Somewhere along in all the excitement and work, Tom suddenly reminded me of my airplane prediction. Then it all came back to me, that strange knowing which had popped into my head on the airplane. How odd, how very odd. Alright, more than odd. We visited the set up on the high desert and saw the movie being made, just like I knew it would be…several years ago.

This really stumped me because I knew for a fact that it was impossible. I majored in Biology. I knew how science worked. There is no possible way the future can be known. When you consider all the variables involved in some future prediction coming true, it’s laughable to think anyone could know the future. And yet, I knew a future event. I was simply staggered by that fact.

After much research, I was forced to conclude that there was no scientific explanation for the future popping into your brain. That was how I began my journey to learning all I could about every kind of psychic and paranormal event. I was still very skeptical, but it was obvious that the world didn’t work the way I thought it had. Or rather, that science only explained part of how the world worked. Scary, scary stuff. What the heck was going on?

I’ll discuss the implications of all this later, but after reading and watching everything I could about spiritual, psychic, and paranormal events, when Tom passed over, it was like my psychic spiritual channels were wide open.

Blog Post Seven 7 Bedeviled - Tom is Visited by An Angel

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 21:46:02 GMT

Tom Is Visited By An Angel

Photo above is the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin

There were two more important psychic events that happened to us before Tom passed away. I was no longer completely skeptical, but I was still trying to figure out how the two worlds fit together. The first event happened to Tom. He was visited by an angel.

Tom didn’t seem to take very seriously the unconventional occurrence that happened to him in his very traditional church. He had a deep faith in God, but no longer went to church. He’d gone to Catholic schools and loved the rituals of the Catholic church, but his grandfather had been Episcopalian Catholic, which as I understand it, is a church that is not part of the Roman Catholic church, but still preserves all the richly spiritual practices of the Catholic tradition. Tom felt very comfortable in that atmosphere.

Auditions were always held in New York City, and Tom regularly took the bus into the city to go on job interviews. Often finding himself with time on his hands in the city and in the Times Square area, he would spend an hour or so in The Church of Saint Mary the Virgin on West Forty-Sixth Street just off Broadway. This lovely, nineteenth century church with its towering arches built in the classical European style, was open during the week and here he found a welcoming sanctuary that exactly suited his spiritual needs. Darkness, mystery, powerful organ music and smoky incense opened Tom’s spiritual channels to peace and faith. And it was an Episcopalian Catholic Church.

On one particular occasion, he’d sat in a coffee shop and made a list of people who’d passed over and whose souls he wanted to pray for and light candles for. There were about twenty names on his list as he proceeded to his favorite church of Saint Mary the Virgin. He was standing, praying, and lighting candles, when someone approached him from behind. He turned to face a tall, interesting looking stranger very close by. Tom, who still retained his Military police skills of careful and detailed observation, saw a man who looked Egyptian. He was bald, with mocha skin, and striking, almond shaped dark eyes. He wore a beautiful, fine gold chain over his sweater which was woven in mellow autumn tones.

As if he had overheard all Tom's prayers in detail, he spoke very reassuringly and very specifically to him, telling him not to worry. He took Tom's hand in his own, electrifying him with a feeling so deeply moving that Tom was convinced he was in the presence of something extraordinary, in fact, an angel. Then the angel said, "Believe in the Christ." Tom thanked him, and, quite overcome, went to sit down in a nearby pew. When he looked up, the angel had vanished, which would have been impossible in the very large nave of the church in the few moments that elapsed.

Tom came home immediately and was still a bit shaken as he related the story to me. He told me that story so many times over the years, and it always thrilled me and gave me hope. A very dark time was coming to Manhattan, one that would need a great deal of hope and faith to get through. The angel visited Tom in May of 2001, a few short months before 9/11.

I believed Tom’s story completely, because he’d never said anything like that in his life. He was generally a hard-bitten realist and quite often a cynic.

On a more personal level, however, this visitation was regarded by Tom as somewhat embarrassing. He never told any of his friends. He didn’t think they’d believe him. I forced him to tell our son, because I felt it was important that he hear the story from his father’s own mouth. Now, I am sure the spirit world was reaching out to Tom through the channels that his spirit understood and had faith in, the church and Christ, trying to help him to stay true to the love that had been given to him in this life from his wife and son.

Blog Post Eight 8 Bedeviled - The Death Truck

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Sun, 04 Feb 2024 21:55:05 GMT

The Death Truck Dream

The last psychic event that happened several months before Tom became terminally ill, while we were doing his Youtube videos. During the summer of 2008, I had the dream that, even now, I hate to remember. It was a dream visit from the legendary death coach of Irish folklore, the Coiste Bower. In my dream, it was an oversize black pickup truck, which slid solemnly and silently up to the curb just outside our kitchen window and stopped, waiting for its passenger. It was unhurried, inevitable death. It's a dream I can never forget. Even now the memory of it chills my heart.

Ever since my Desert Heat airplane Time Lapse prediction, I had been researching psychic phenomena, trying to figure out what it was all about. I watched the TV show Medium and was aware that Allison Dubois got a lot of her information from her dreams. Tom and I had often laughed that the actor playing her husband must get very tired of doing so many scenes in his pajamas in bed. That's all I knew of psychic dreams. I'd heard that some people keep dream diaries, but my dreams were too ordinary to bother about.

But not this dream. In this dream, my heart and spirit knew with complete certainty that the black truck was death arriving at my door. It was somber death. Solemn death. I woke up with a sinking heart. It wasn’t nightmare scary. It was the darkness and finality of death. A heaviness of heart. A going away.

At the time, I had never heard of the Irish legend of the Coiste Bower, nor did I know that once it is sent to earth, death is inevitable, because it can never go back empty. I told Tom about the dream, because it had really unnerved me. He was curious and wondered if it could mean one of our friends was going to die. We were extra nice to some of our friends who had challenging health problems, fearing we might lose them soon.

A few months later, in November, Tom was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. After he became sick, we never mentioned the black truck dream again. We were far too busy with cancer treatments to even think about dreams. But the dream came true. By the next September Tom was gone. The death coach had its passenger. I still dread having another dream like that. Being even a little psychic is not an unmixed blessing.

Recently, I have read that some people think dreams like mine are simply the mind sensing illness in a close partner. But that was not the case, because I had exactly the same dream about a week later. That awful truck came again, which really puzzled and scared me all over again. In hindsight, I realized that second visit foretold the passing that next spring of the widowed mother of my good friend and upstairs neighbor of eleven years. Her mom lived nearby and was devoted to her daughter. The Coiste Bower had come to our little two-family house for her, too. And I had seen it.

Blog Post Nine 9 Bedeviled - Dark Night of the Soul

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Sat, 03 Feb 2024 14:42:58 GMT

Dark Night of the Soul

The journey from curious observer of psychic phenomena to confirmed believer only truly began after Tom passed away. Up till then, psychic powers, the paranormal, the spiritual world and ghosts were simply topics I read about and watched on TV. Due to my several unexplainable experiences, I was keeping an open mind and trying to form some idea of what the reality might actually be.

Once Tom was on the other side, my experiences became more and more persuasive, until I was absolutely convinced of Tom’s continued existence in the afterlife and that the physical world as it appears to us, scientifically, is subject to a higher power. What follows is an account of the events as they occurred which finally made a believer out of me. It was important to validate that Tom was really still there, aware of my current life events and that I understood how to interpret his communications, because he was going to reveal the very tragic truth about his psyche and soul. This truth would eventually change my understanding not only of my life, and marriage, but deepen my faith in the importance of every human mind and soul. Therefore, it was vital that I absolutely believe and recognize all the levels of meaning of what I would be shown.

When I said goodbye to Tom, I thought I’d buried the only true friend I'd ever had, someone who understood, as I did coming from a dysfunctional family, what a desperate struggle life could be, even for a child; someone who understood how deep the need for love could be, and how very lonely life could be. I didn’t have the slightest suspicion that he’d had a secret life. I thought his illness and death were due solely to constant worry and all our struggles to survive.

In the hospital, when visiting the cafeteria on a break from tending my dying husband, I would make my way down the line, looking at the mashed potatoes and grilled fish, and wonder why I bothered to eat. Disassociation is what it's called. I functioned. At my age, functioning is a more a habit than anything else. I cried and paid bills, and cried and called about cremation, cried and cleaned out the last fifteen years of our life, cried and stopped wondering why I kept going, because it didn't seem to matter.

During Tom's illness, I spent many days and nights alone in the cold, impersonal cancer hospital surrounded by strangers whose loved ones were also fighting for their lives. I had heard the phrase 'dark night of the soul' somewhere, and I knew that was where I was, lost in the dark. Absolutely nothing in our life had worked out as we had hoped. And Tom was dying.

In Tom’s half-truth version of our life, we had tried to make use of our gifts, struggled, and hardly gotten anywhere. So much promise, so little to show for it, and not for lack of trying or success. The long years of stress, underemployment, frustration, feeling like a useless failure, and always living one calamity away from ruin, had taken a terrible toll on both of us. The fight was all gone out of me.

I read about the Dark Night of the Soul in a book I kept going back to for strength by Gerald G. May. He introduced me to John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, two Christian mystics who explained the dark night as a state of mental obscurity and protective darkness.

"John's explanation of the obscurity goes further. He says that in worldly matters it is good to have light so we know where to go without stumbling. But in spiritual matters it is precisely when we do think we know where to go that we are most likely to stumble. Thus, John says, God darkens our awareness in order to keep us safe. When we cannot chart our own course, we become vulnerable to God's protection and the darkness becomes a 'guiding night' a 'night more kindly than dawn.'"

Whatever faith in God we had was entirely Tom's, and he was dying. In my dark night, I could not see why either of us had ever been born. But out of that dark night, God was leading me to a deeper knowledge and understanding of love and my destiny. But that was going to take a lot of spiritual work.

After Tom was gone, as I lay all alone in the bed we used to share, crying my heart out, night after night, distracted thoughts raced through my mind. Suddenly, I remembered the dream I'd had over a year ago, the death truck dream. "Once it comes to earth, it can never return empty, because some greater power has decreed a person's death and mortals may do nothing to prevent it." (Wikipedia) Tom’s death had been decreed. We’d spent a year in useless treatments. Why did the death coach wait so long for its passenger? The answers to this and many other puzzles would be a long time coming, but right then, I was very deep in the dark night and emotionally and intellectually numb.

Blame my Irish grandmother for this dubious gift of second sight, the kind of thing I'd always considered merely ignorant superstition. But I was about to learn how permeable the veil between life and death is and how intimately cherished our earthly loves and endeavors are by our creator.

I knew that large black pickup truck had meant death, but back then, I had only a mortal idea of what death was and meant. And I'd never paid much attention to my dreams. But there it was. The death coach had come to my door and had taken my husband away from this life. To where? How could that possibly be? What was I thinking? Was I losing my mind? Yet, when I thought about it, I remembered the experiences I’d had in the past which had aroused my curiosity about psychics and paranormal events and had even prompted me to take a closer look at the bible, keeping a more open mind to the possibility of supernatural events being possible.

Blog Post Ten 10 - Bedeviled - Elysian Fields

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 14:49:56 GMT

Visiting the Elysian Fields

Now that Tom was on the other side, my psychic floodgates opened wide. My whole concept of life was undergoing a cataclysmic paradigm shift. It was like I had a very powerful connection to the spirit world, and it was open for business. I believe this was instigated by Tom from the other side. He had some very urgent, unfinished business which could only be accomplished if he opened up my psychic communication channels. Some part of his heart had remained close enough to mine to enable us to sense one another as spirits. It wasn’t easy. Even with a great deal of evidence, it’s so challenging to have faith in what the spirit world is trying to communicate to you.

Tom and I had spent a year bound together in a long, exhausting struggle of doctor's appointments and hospital stays, where they had been accommodating enough to let me stay over and care for him. There were numerous operations, radiation treatments, chemo, pain pills in ever higher doses, and our apartment had so many medical devices it was practically a small hospital itself. Tom's physical suffering had been punishing and acute, but we still had to beg him to take a narcotic pain killer. He never complained, was the most patient patient, and never cursed fate or anyone. His stalwart spirit kept our spirits up, until the end. I can never forget his dreadful physical suffering. He paid a terrible price for his sins.

When we had to let him go, my son and I were devastated. Our fearless leader was gone. The man who we both loved and adored was no longer there with us, cheering us onward. Our lodestar through good times and bad, our champion who could always find something to make us smile in any situation, was gone.

Now that I was done with doctors and hospitals, except for the endless bills, there was so much to do that I hardly had the time or energy to grieve. Because New Jersey was no longer in the budget, I had to get ready to move out of our apartment, every corner stuffed with fifteen years of memories and mementos to sort through. On top of everything else, there was so much aggravating official paperwork to be gotten through. Every day brought some new crisis that had to be dealt with.

However, my constant state of weary apprehension and worry seemed to open psychic windows that I didn't know I had. The psychic things that started happening were vivid and startling, as they had to be to penetrate my distracted consciousness, but I hardly thought about them at the time. I merely accepted them with a kind of detached curiosity. But though I was lost in that dark obscurity, Tom was reaching out to my spirit and soul from beyond.

Within a week of Tom's passing over, I had a visitation from him in a dream, but it had an odd feature. In the dream, Tom and I were together, laughing and happy, like the old days. He looked younger and seemed full of energy. As we walked around, I was happier than I'd been in a long time. Suddenly, I became aware of what was happening. Tom wasn’t sick. I took his hand and joyously burst out, "Honey, look at you! You're much better. That new chemo is working. We'd better call the doctors." He looked at me a bit sadly, as if I'd spoiled our good time and said, "Oh, I'm tired of doctors." Then he was gone, and I woke up.

I lay in bed, reliving the dream, savoring every second of it. It was Tom. There was nothing dreamlike about his presence. He was so real that I was calling doctors again. I had felt his presence in the way I felt Tom's grandfather, with that eerie sixth sense that seemed to come and go. These dreams were not filaments and wisps, mixed up stories from daytime, these dreams seemed to occur in the theater of my heart. They were more vivid than life, because their physical presence was pure feeling. I knew it was Tom's spirit and mine having a little bit of happy time together after all the suffering we’d endured.

And what was odd about this dream experience was that our spirits were so happy that my physical body woke up enough to make plans for this world. Honey, we need to tell the doctors the new chemo is working. Was I really so dim-witted that I had forgotten Tom was gone, dead, not of this world? No, I had experienced him as recovered, that’s why I wanted to call doctors in this world. Was this just a wish fulfillment dream? Who sees their loved one well and wishes for more chemo and doctors? Nor was it merely wishing he was back again or revisiting the past. He wasn’t back. And the minute I felt he was back, he had to go. No, we were somewhere else.

What I think had happened was that my spirit had been with Tom's spirit in the afterlife, without my human person knowing it. Tom's sad look told me that if my spirit hadn't gotten so carried away with joy and awakened my body, we could have gone on awhile longer, laughing together. Maybe this was happening every night.

But of course... it was just a dream. Believe it or not, even after all my experiences, I remained stuck in my rational world. I felt the dream strongly, but it was only a feeling. Feelings are just ephemeral chemical reactions in the brain. Best to ignore them because they cloud your powers of reason. That old skepticism and doubt overcame me, as always. I had too much to do to think about it.

Blog Post Eleven 11 - Bedeviled - The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 18:31:36 GMT

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

The very week of Tom's passing, buried under a mountain of paperwork during the day and crying my heart out in front of the TV at night, one of my favorite movies aired on a cable channel. Jokingly, I thanked Tom for sending me such a nice gift. The movie was The Ghost and Mrs. Muir , about a widow who leaves London and goes to live in a seaside town where the ghost of a sea captain, whose house she rents, guides her to pen his blood and swash story. Never would I have guessed that in a few months’ time, I will leave the New York area, live in a small seaside town, and be writing a blog about Tom's career. And he was the grandson of a sea captain. Then, to my great surprise, when I figured out how to find out if anyone was actually reading the blog, it turned out that two to three hundred people a week were reading it. Blood and swash, the unvarnished story of an actor's life was thriving. That was the first thing I’d ever written that had received any positive and encouraging response.

That particular favorite movie coming on the very week of Tom's passing struck me as nothing more than a pleasant coincidence, until all the things that continued to happen started to come together much later. Sometimes good news is much harder to believe than bad news, isn't it?

Blog Post Twelve 12 - Bedeviled - The Timeline

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 22:11:35 GMT

The Timeline

In the meantime, the trips to New York to the hospital were over, the racing around filling prescriptions, giving pills on schedule, doctors' appointments, waiting in hour long lines in the summer heat to park at the hospital, the whole, long struggle to save Tom's life, all that was over and the struggle for my son’s and my future began.

Tom and I had been together for over thirty-five years. This last year we had been together constantly, in a desperate fight for his life. Now he was gone, and being parted from him was so painful, I could hardly bear it. How could we not be together? It wasn't just that I was physically missing him by my side, although I missed everything about him: his voice, his smile, the very special twinkle in his eye that never went away, no matter how bad things were, and his sense of humor. But I was also missing something much more fundamental, a vital part of my life had been torn away, leaving me feeling like half a person.

In the next few months, there was so much to be done, I didn't have time to think or feel, or even dream. In the past, I'd never paid much attention to my nighttime dreams. They'd been just like everyone else's dreams, usually forgotten before I was even fully awake. However, during this phase of mourning, when it seemed impossible to comprehend his loss, I had another lucid dream, as they are called.

In this very brief dream, which was unusually vivid and colorful, Tom and I were facing each other. Tom looked handsome and healthy. He gazed at me intently as he held up a glowing tube full of swirling, pastel colored smoke. The tube had small hatch marks on it, like a ruler. With one hand on either end of it, he rocked the strangely fascinating tube up and down. Then with great seriousness, he said to me "This is the timeline." I studied the timeline tube. It was fascinatingly lovely with its gently roiling smoke in all the colors of dawn. As I looked back at Tom, quite clearly, he and I were still very much together outside of the timeline, but, for now, that pretty, glowing timeline separated us. The dream was so vivid, and the sense of Tom's presence was so real, that I was consoled. I had not lost Tom forever. Somehow, we really were still together, outside of time.

That's it. That's all there was to the dream, and that also made it different from most dreams, which usually move from one strange image through a bunch of others before they're over. This was just that one very powerful and vivid image and the words, "This is the timeline." The glowing timeline was lovely to look at. It glowed in all shades of pink, coral, blue and lavender, like smoke caught in a tube. The timeline. A tube of smoke. What could it mean?

(Later, I discovered a passage in the New Testament that seemed to echo what I had seen. James 4:14 New King James Version (NKJV) 14: whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.)

Blog Post Fourteen 14 Bedeviled - Call of the Wild

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 18:54:53 GMT

Call of the Wild

A few months later, I had another vivid dream that turned out to be the most important one of all in sealing the deal. In this dream, we were outdoors in a woodsy setting. Tom was dressed in a heavy, plaid, outdoorsy shirt. I noticed that his hair was distinctly darker and straighter than his usual hair, but it was definitely Tom. Something was odd about his appearance being slightly different than usual that I didn’t immediately understand. But he had our much loved and long deceased dog under his arm. With a big smile on his face, Tom came over and gave me a hug and a very long kiss goodbye. He backed away and I waved goodbye to him and our dog.

I woke up feeling pretty good. I thought to myself, ah, I understand this dream. It's the goodbye kiss I never got because Tom's illness took a sudden turn for the worse, and he was gone very quickly. Not that I was sure I understood how to interpret all this dream stuff, but that seemed like a pretty good explanation. I was deeply touched that Tom had come back to kiss me goodbye. He had realized that we didn’t get to say goodbye and made up for it. Okay.

That morning, as I was vacuuming, I sat down to take a break and turned on the TV. An old black and white movie based on the Jack London novel Call of The Wild was airing. Although I'd seen almost every old black and white movie from the classic era of Hollywood, somehow, I'd missed this one. It was the Yukon Gold Rush story where a very young Clark Gable stars with a very young Loretta Young and a very special dog. I have always loved Clark Gable and seen a resemblance between him and Tom, and I'm not the only one who has remarked on their similarities. Tom shared Gable's easy masculinity, quick wit, teasing sense of humor, and they're both mustache guys.

So, I decided to ditch vacuuming and watch the movie. As I watched it, I noticed that Gable had darker, straighter hair, and was wearing an outdoorsy shirt just like Tom in my dream. The dog was different, but in the movie scenes, the way Gable holds the dog under his arm and the warmth of the relationship is just like Tom and our dog in my dream. It certainly seemed as if this movie and my dream had some intriguing parallels.

It turned out that at the end of the movie, Gable and Loretta Young must say a long, loving goodbye, because she has to go back to her husband, who turns out to be alive. Clark gives Loretta one of his biggest, longest, most heartfelt kisses and is left waving goodbye to her with the dog by his side. This part of the movie was just like my dream, where Tom kissed me very deeply, then waved goodbye with our dog right by his side. I couldn't help but think that this is how Tom wished he could have kissed me goodbye, if he'd had the chance, and further, that perhaps this movie was his way of making sure I knew that he wanted to give me that goodbye kiss. What else can I think but that he sent me the dream to make sure I watched the movie and got the message that the movie kiss and the dream were real in that otherworldly way that I still don't quite understand?

I wrote up my special dream and was content with Tom’s fabulous goodbye kiss, movie style, expecting that that was the beginning and the end of what this dream had to tell me. And I was very wrong. Call of the Wild would turn out to be my absolute proof of Tom’s continued existence in the afterlife. And like the final goodbye kiss in the movie, this was a final goodbye to the Tom I thought I was married to.

Blog Post Fifteen 15 Bedeviled - A Real Fairy Tale

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Sun, 28 Jan 2024 19:31:39 GMT

A Real Fairy Tale

The next psychic incident came in the form of a real-life messenger in the least likely of circumstances. We were moving, my son and I. We'd been pinned down in our little Fifties town for over a decade, waiting for the big break for Tom. But we have to move on. With energy I didn't know I had, I cleaned and sorted through everything we’d accumulated over a thirty-five-year marriage. I had to lighten the load for our move to… wherever. In spite of everything, I was feeling better. The memorial service went well. The son is recovering from his terrible grief. The idea of moving has energized him, too.

Sometimes the operating principles of the universe are more likely to be revealed in the strange and improbable events in fairy tales than in all the grim realities of hard hitting, fact filled news stories. This story reads like a fairy tale where magical feathers guide Simpleton to safety, or the kindly woodcutter knows the way through the enchanted forest, but it is the absolute truth.

The story begins with our New Jersey PSE and G electric meter reader. He's a very sweet man with ginger hair, married, with two sets of twins and claustrophobia. He has to go into dark, messy, musty, cramped basements many times every day to read people's electric meters. Whenever I was around, I’d go down into the basement with him, turn on the lights, and chat to keep him company. We talked about our kids, their sports, their little foibles and life in general. On this particular monthly visit, sometime around November, a few months after Tom has passed away, he expressed his condolences and said, "I guess you'll be moving away, now."

Slightly surprised that he knows this, I answered that yes, we probably will. I wondered if he had somehow overheard me talking about moving to my son, while he was in our basement on a previous meter reading.

Then he said, "You're going to move to the mountains."

"Oh, maybe", I answered casually, more surprised, than suspicious. "My son wants to move to Colorado."

"I knew it!" he said. "Sometimes, I can see things about people."

He needed no encouragement to go on. "I see mountains around you, when I look at you. Mountains with snow."

"Well, maybe," I conceded, dubiously. I had never met or spoken to anyone who claimed to be psychic. I wasn't even sure if that was what he was trying to say. He's a very unaffected, sweet, kind man who I've chatted with for years. Even now, there was no showmanship or bragging in his manner. He was innocently telling me something he 'sees'. But I am, as always, skeptical to the end of time. However, somebody kept knocking at my stubborn door, even if I didn't seem to be listening.

My ginger haired friend departed with a knowing smile, and we left it at that.

Because he was totally devastated by his father's death, I dipped into the savings and sent our son off to Colorado to give him some hope for his future and to see if he liked it. It doesn't go well. Colorado is okay, but he doesn't want to live there.

Fine. I wanted to move to North Carolina all along. Much closer to home. Near friends.

The Red-haired meter reader came by soon after. "So when are you moving to the mountains?" he asked with a friendly, conspiratorial smile.

"Well, we're not moving to Colorado, so no snow-covered mountains," I replied, sorry to disappoint him. "Our plans have changed. We're probably going to North Carolina."

He gave me a funny look. "No, I don't think so," he said, "You're gonna be by lots of snow covered mountains."

I smiled and didn't argue. Sweet, sweet man. And maybe he was right the first time, but things have changed.

It was a couple of months before he came by again when I was at home. Much had changed. North Carolina was a no go with the son. It's Seattle. It's only 3300 miles away, and we've never even been to Washington State. But I guess, in for a penny, in for a pound.

In the midst of all our packing, the meter reader came by again. "Well," I admitted, "You were right. We are moving near snow covered mountains. We're moving to Seattle, by Mount Rainier. It's a snow-covered mountain."

"See," he cried happily, "I told you so." And I, freely and in amazement, admitted that, yes, as a matter of fact, he did. I admitted it, but reluctantly. How can he have known that? I mean, come on!

But encouraged by his success, he went further with his prediction. "You're going to live right beside a big park, and just on the other side of that park is a big brown building, like a library or a school. You can walk through the park to it. And you will be surrounded by lots of snow-covered mountains. That's what I see."

I listened in incredulity and wonder. I remembered every word he said, but frankly didn't know what to make of it. When he stuck to his first prediction, in spite of my telling him he was wrong, he had proved how truly he saw my future. Could he be right about the park and the building? I sincerely doubted it.

I laughingly mentioned his prediction to some friends before we moved. They smiled and wondered if things like that aren't sort of self-fulfilling, like I'll look around for a place near a park and make it come true. Well, maybe.

We arrived in Washington State and stayed in a motel with kitchen facilities in a suburb just north of Seattle. I had a week before the furniture arrived to find a place to live or pay for furniture storage. Checking out craigslist on my lap top every day, I began driving around to nearby towns to get a feel for what areas would be best for us.

And yes, I did Google parks in the area, looking for one with a school, library, or some institution nearby. That idea faded fast. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. This moving to a completely new place was a lot tougher than I'd thought. I drove all over the suburbs, but nothing really felt right.

Then, I heard about Western Washington University in Bellingham, which was an hour and a half north of Seattle and in desperation I made the bold move to take a drive up to see it. One look at Bellingham, and I fell totally in love with it. It even met with the approval of my toughest critic, the son type person.

The place we found to live was on a lovely historic block, near the top of wooded Sehome hill... with a view of lots of snow-covered mountains, the Cascade Range, including the snowcapped cone of Mount Baker, which is the defining feature of the town. The wooded hill turned out to be one end of a huge arboretum, not a park... exactly... but at the top of my street there's a small path through the arboretum. All the college kids who live in my area walk right up my street through the arboretum to the college.

One day, I decided to walk through the arboretum to see the college. It wasn't as far as I'd thought, only a couple of hundred yards. At the end of that path is... a big, brown college building, called the Old Campus building. Like a library or a school....Yeah.

It was very hard to accept that way back months ago in New Jersey a red-haired meter reader could see that I would move to Bellingham right beside a park with a big brown building on the other side and in view of snowcapped mountains. I just couldn't figure out how that could possibly work. Especially when it felt so much like I discovered Bellingham on my own. I drove up to this college town on a whim based on what I'd read on the internet. It was my own brilliant idea and accomplishment, right? Where does the 'I' fit in there? What happened to Marcy did that? Should I stop patting myself on the back for my good job with the move? What the heck is really going on here?

But this was simply more proof that time is an illusion. I won’t say I accepted all this yet, or that I altered the way I was making my decisions, but I did begin to have more faith that there was a higher power guiding my life. I won’t boast that I worried any less than I always have, but the worry was less overwhelming. I didn’t feel so alone in this awful world.

Blog Post Sixteen 16 Bedeviled - Deja Vu

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Sat, 27 Jan 2024 18:35:23 GMT

Deja Vu

Photo of Sehome Haggen's. Drive through is on the left side

The kindly meter reader turned my universe upside down and on its head. And to make matters worse, no one but me believed the things that were happening to me. I now had some pretty irrefutable evidence that the world we see and sense is not real in the way we think of it as being real. My pig headed, rational brain had been humbled and began to grudgingly concede the existence a spiritual reality. After a lifetime as a material girl, I started to exert myself to listen and attend to my soul and spirit.

Now that I was settling into my new home in Bellingham, Washington State, I tried to reconcile all the various experiences of my life and hit the grief wall hard. If God really is there, he can go away, because I don't want any. I was emotionally exhausted and all I wanted after death was obliteration. I never wanted to think of my life or life on earth again. I wanted death to end everything, blackout, null, void, what a relief. I hated my memories. I hated what happened in my life. I didn’t want an afterlife. I barely wanted to stay alive now. I wished I'd never been born. So many people think belief in God is the result of fear of death. Hamlet was closer to being right in his famous "to be or not to be" soliloquy, where the only drawback he can conceive of in death is perchance to dream. If God doesn't exist, nothing matters, and life is easy. It's only if there really is a God that what you do here on earth matters.

As much as I wanted to ignore the spiritual world, it kept intruding itself into my life. The deeper reality showed up one day while I was shopping after living in Bellingham for several months. I was in the parking lot of my local supermarket. (The Bellingham Haggen’s if you’re interested.) As I packed my groceries into my trunk, I happened to glance up and noticed that from this parking spot the supermarket reminded me of something. Déjà vu? No, déjà vu is when you go somewhere you’ve never been and have the sense you’ve been there before. I’d been to this grocery store dozens of times and never had any particular feeling about it. Today, it just seemed that something about this set-up reminded me of someplace I’d seen before.

I kept looking around at the road and the store, trying to jog my memory. It looked so familiar. What did it remind me of? I noted the small hill behind the market, rising up to a modest height and covered with spear shaped fir trees. Um hum, check, yes that’s just like I remember. I also noticed the market's distinctive pinkish brick and the green trim; yes, check that’s right. From where I was parked, I could easily trace the way I had to turn right off the main road, and then left to get into the parking lot. Yes, that’s just like that other place. Where had I seen all this before?

Then something stirred in my memory. A recurring dream I'd had before we moved suddenly came back to me. Even though it was a very ordinary dream, it had stuck in my mind. The supermarket in the dream looked just like this, even with the hill behind covered in fir trees. As I replayed the dream in my mind, all the turns were correct. Back then, I had attributed the nagging dream to all the hours I'd spent on Google Earth researching places to move to. I told myself that the recurring dream was caused by a bad case of Google Earth fatigue, where Michigan and New Mexico had all started to look exactly the same.

Yeah, I laughed to myself, as I closed my car trunk, isn't it funny how that dream is sort of just like this supermarket. And I remember that dream so well because… why? Oh, yes, that's right, the dream supermarket had a drive through arch on one side. How odd. Who ever heard of a supermarket with a drive through arch? Then, I glanced back at the supermarket again and noticed it… the drive through arch beside my supermarket, on the far side, just like in the dream. The drive through arch had been there all these months, staring me in the face, and I'd simply never noticed it.

Hard to describe what I felt at that moment. It was a bit like time stopped or maybe my heart did, because now I knew that anything was possible. I had seen exactly this supermarket in my dream, way back in New Jersey. Somehow my mind had slipped the bounds of time and bounced into the future for a visit. If it weren't for that darned archway, I could have glossed over the whole thing. Turned out the archway was used to load groceries and catering without getting them wet in this rainy climate.

That whole experience completely unnerved me. I was like a kid who was afraid of the dark again. It wasn’t just the ginger haired meter reader who could look into the future. It had happened to me. Now there might really be ghosts, demons, spirits, the devil, God, Jesus, angels, heaven, an afterlife, chakras, auras, all sorts of strange and scary things that had never been part of my scientifically correct world before; and I wasn't sure I liked that one bit. For many months afterward, I had to fight the urge to crawl under my bed and hide. This whole world was even more out of control than I or anybody thought. No amount of quadratic equations, geologic formations, or DNA, could save me. There was something far more awesome afoot, and it was not way out there up in the sky, it was all around us.

Blog Post Seventeen 17 Bedeviled - Call of the Wild part 2 Mount Baker

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Fri, 26 Jan 2024 19:12:42 GMT

Call of the Wild part 2 Mount Baker

Photo of Mount Baker from my Bellingham window

Very gently, but firmly, I was led onward to complete acceptance. It was Tom, of course, who got me to relax and enjoy my new universe. I shouldn't have been surprised that he had a wonderful gift for me hidden right in my new home in Bellingham, and that he'd set up all the clues to help me find it. Here is how I got that gift.

One afternoon, I was chatting with one of my new neighbors, an elderly lady who'd lived in the area all her life. She was regaling me with tales of the famous moments in the history of her Bellingham. Learning that my husband was an actor, she suddenly remarked, "Did you know they shot the movie Call of the Wild with Clark Gable and Loretta Young right up on Mount Baker?" She pointed to the snowcapped peak easily visible from both our houses. That she would have even heard of the old movie Call of The Wild was a shock. But I guess the filming of a movie from the Golden Age of Hollywood with two movie star legends is one of the really big events in the history of Bellingham.

But all I could think was ‘no, she did not just say that Call of the Wild , the movie which was such a special dream message to me way back in New Jersey, the dream kiss goodbye, she didn’t say that that movie was shot right here on Mount Baker?’ No. I got instant brain freeze. Tom, how did you do that? I'm sure I went on chatting normally, but my mind was in an excited turmoil.

Old black and white movies from the Golden Age of Hollywood had always been one of our shared passions from our very first date. Tom and I had seen, studied, and enjoyed so many of those old movies together. This message was a super special bon-bon meant just for me; one whose sentimental impact and significance I could not possibly miss, or help being thrilled by.

My rational mind was standing on its head, saying things like no, no, I don't believe it. It can't be true. The movie where Tom and our dog were together and where Tom kissed me goodbye. The movie I dreamt about months ago, back in New Jersey, before I had even heard of Bellingham; the movie Tom made sure that I watched the very next day when it aired on TV by showing me himself as Clark Gable with our Border collie as Buck, that movie was shot right here in Bellingham? No. I don't believe it. But I'm going to have to start believing, aren't I?

I knew Tom was enjoying this. He was having fun giving me this unexpected gift, this love story wrapped up in a movie riddle. But there was more. Interrupting my inner ruminations, my neighbor was not finished with her story. "Yes, they shot the whole movie up at the Mount Baker Lodge and around Bellingham. They actually shot a bunch of scenes right behind your house on Liberty Street," she added proudly.

On Liberty Street, which my back deck faces. They shot Call of the Wild right there within sight of my back porch. That was the final punch square in the solar plexus of the psyche. I was laughing. The Clark Gable goodbye kiss, the dog, the movie that invaded my dreams, and then appeared on TV that very day. That movie, right here.

Tom is not gone, he's here with me. I believe I went inside and sat down for a very long time. I don't think I thought anything. This was not just snips of future events slipping into my conscious mind; this was a personal message, wrapped up in a special movie, that Tom knew I would find out about, when I moved to where he knew I was going to move. And he was telling me he wanted me to know for sure that he was still with me. I was so happy to think how much he must love me to send me this gift. Every time I walked on Liberty Street, I thought of him and was sure he was with me.

Little did I suspect at the time how important this piece of evidence was, because Tom had a terrible secret to reveal. For him to be believed, and for me to get through the devastating consequences to the real truth of our life was going to take everything in me, all my intelligence, all my sympathy and understanding.

But Liberty Street was the final event that put all doubts about psychic insights to rest forever. I knew there was a spiritual world all around us. I knew that time as we understand it was an illusion. I knew that my dreams sometimes told me things that it was necessary for me to believe and understand.

Blog Post Eighteen 18 Bedeviled - Confessions of an Unquiet Soul

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Thu, 25 Jan 2024 19:34:25 GMT

The Confession of an Unquiet Soul

Tom on stage in a play

Immediately after he passed away, Tom began communicating with me from the other side in many paranormal ways. (See blog posts 10, 12, 13, 14, 17) Finally, having amply demonstrated that he was still very much himself and still present with me, he showed me the shocking truth about who he’d really been. This message came in what is usually called a lucid dream, but it was very different from any dream or even any nightmare. It was an emotionally charged vision of my husband’s sexual betrayal of me.

What I didn’t know then, was that just like the goodbye kiss in the Call of the Wild Movie was the final kiss between the two lovers, that dream kiss was also the last time I ever kissed the man I thought I’d married. Once Tom made his confession, that man was revealed as an illusion. I would soon have to figure out who I’d really been married to for all those thirty-five years.

This time, after so many previous experiences with psychic seeing, I knew what I saw was manifestly true. It was a very real dream, too real. I woke up constantly in the early morning hours, revisiting the dream, falling back to sleep and weeping throughout the dream, woke up and wept and wept more. It was a horrible dream. Not just a nightmare but the complete destruction of thirty-five years of marriage.

In the dream, I was watching Tom as his younger self, and he was chasing after other women in a way that was unmistakably sexual heat. He glanced back at me with a cold face, running away from me and after them. He was angrily ignoring me. It was impossible to believe what my vision and emotions were showing me. Even in the dream, I couldn't quite believe what he was doing: deliberately ignoring me, running after with other women, and showing contempt for me. I called out to him to come tell me if it is true that he has been unfaithful to me. Then I noticed there was a white-haired old man sitting nearby, with his back turned to me, his head down and his shoulders slumped. I felt I had to wait until he left to talk to Tom. But even after the old man disappeared, Tom wouldn’t come over. He just stared at me coldly. I woke up again and again, crying, sobbing, exhausted.

I could hardly comprehend that our marriage and almost my entire adult life was a lie. I had been completely in love with him, and he always told me he felt the same about me. We got along so well, it was as if something in the universe had destined us for each other. But his confession cancelled that out completely. My whole world fell apart.

In the manner of all of the previous psychic messages, the dream spoke directly through pictures and my feelings. The scenes I saw opened very clearly what had been in Tom’s heart. It wasn’t love. It was the very opposite of love. To say that I was shattered would be a gigantic understatement.

Blog Post Nineteen 19 Bedeviled - "It's All So Orchestrated

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 23:32:37 GMT

"It's All So Orchestrated

After the shocking betrayal dream, I realized how easy it would have been for him to play around to his heart's content with as many women as he wanted, I felt Tom had played me for a fool and a chump. He had taken advantage of my trust in him in a way that was unconscionable and despicable. I was so outraged that I was barely able to function normally. The man I had once loved, I now struggled not to hate. Many pictures of a smiling Tom ended up cut to pieces in the trash. Things of his I had cherished were thrown out in anger. Nothing helped. The phrase if he wasn’t dead, I’d kill him was my constant refrain.

A month before his shocking confession, an old and very close friend of ours had passed away, and I had immediately gotten tickets to fly back for her memorial service in October. Now, as furious as I was, I almost didn’t go back. Forget it. I didn't want to see our old friends and be reminded of our past life together which now seemed a shameful fraud. I didn't think any of these friends knew about his betrayals, but I didn't care. I hated anything that had anything to do with Tom O'Rourke.

I kept asking myself was I as dumb as it now seemed I had been? No, I realized my anger had overwhelmed my good sense. I had to have a little confidence in myself. As I remembered how Tom suffered and died, I realized that I was only thinking of myself, my hurt. He was obviously much more hurt, may have been actually been destroyed by the failure of our marriage. I knew I had to figure this out.

As the date of the memorial service for our old friend approached, I was reminded of the near-death experience of the Dr. Tony Cicoria who was struck by lightning and commented, “It’s all so orchestrated.” Tom has told me his dreadful secret with just enough time before the memorial service so that I will get over the most violent of emotions and be able to attend and reconnect with our old life and friends. All so orchestrated.

As I took my journey to revisit my old haunts in New Jersey, celebrating the life of probably our dearest old friend, it was so clear that our lives are very carefully orchestrated. Just as I was ready to write Tom off as a terrible mistake in my life and myself as a fool, I went back to the memorial service and saw all our longtime friends. The friend who'd passed away had been at our wedding; her husband had done our wedding photos. And they all loved Tom, and they loved me. So many of our treasured friends were there. It was all orchestrated to remind me, as nothing else could have done so effectively, that Tom was not a terrible mistake in my life. He was not a jerk and neither was I.

We'd had a good and long-lasting marriage and a life full of meaning and shared good times. I came back a new person, still very hurt and baffled, but my faith that something had been right about our marriage was restored. Many of our friends are fellow actors or in the biz, and they had families and marriages of long standing, so Tom had not rejected the idea of happy marriages. He enjoyed his friends and watching their children grow up, as he seemed to enjoy our marriage and watching our son grown up.

It was imperative, if I wanted to keep my sanity, to figure out how I’d spend over three decades thinking I was happily married, while my husband cheated on me. The biggest mystery was why. He’d always professed himself to be happily married, and thought he was an actor, nobody is that good. He couldn’t have faked happiness for thirty-five years.

Trying to solve the riddle of who he really was, I delved into every psychology book and article that might provide some understanding of why he lived a double life. Because of his difficult childhood, I poured over books about children of alcoholic parents, abused children, borderline personality disorder and all sorts of clinical discussions to try to understand who he really was.

But clinical explanations only get you so far. He was a human being, a person I lived with and interacted with every day for decades. Psychological generalizations were not enough to explain how Tom could profess deepest love, yet angrily and exultantly chase other women every chance he got.

Once I suspected the truth about Tom’s extramarital activities, a thousand recollections of suspicious encounters with women flooded my mind. Looking back, there were several emotionally upsetting personal and career events that had left me puzzled, which I now reexamined to see what might have really been going on.

If I was ever to solve the mystery of what the dreams and paranormal events were trying to tell me, I had to figure out the truth about Tom’s half of our marriage. There must be clues in the events of our marriage to give some insight into what had really been going on, who he’d been involved with, and what his secret motives had been. Every time I thought I’d gotten to the bottom of the problem, new messages would come through, forcing me to go deeper into the profound connections between our bodies, our minds, and our souls.

It is only by looking at some of these events in our life that I began to rewrite the real story of our marriage: Tom’s secret story.

Blog Post Twenty 20 Bedeviled- Was I Crazy or Just Crazy in Love

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 22:34:56 GMT

Was I Crazy or Just Crazy in Love?

This is the chapter where you can decide for yourself if I was crazy to fall in love with Tom. There were a few early warning signals I missed, some minor, some major. But as they say, hindsight is twenty-twenty.

Love stories can begin in the most mundane places. Tom and I met at an audition for Sure Deodorant at a casting agent located in the theater district of Manhattan on lower Broadway in west forties. Her no-frills office consisted of a couple of rooms off a long corridor full of small businesses. It was the kind of audition I went on several times a day almost every day, when I didn’t have a paid modelling booking.

Auditions for TV commercials were pretty much what you’d expect. At Estelle Tepper’s, you entered her office reception area where there was a sign-in desk and about a dozen chairs for the actors waiting to audition. The audition took place in the other room, fitted out with bright TV lights and one of those huge, expensive, old video cameras to record your performance.

Tom was late. The men's appointments were in the morning; the women were scheduled for the afternoon. However, Tom was a born night owl, which was part of what had attracted him to a career in the theater. If you wanted to see him before noon, you had to pay him. Auditions, like all job appointments, are freebies.

I was sitting in a room full of chattering and primping models and actresses, when this very tall, good looking young man in a blue suit and tie entered and cast a quick glance around the room, presumably looking for a place to sit. I can't say that I really noticed him. To my jaded eye, at first, anyway, I didn't think Tom was particularly handsome. At auditions, I was used to encountering many photogenically perfect, male model faces.

I do remember him smiling with genuine amusement as he noticed there were only women in the room. Since there were plenty of vacant chairs, I had a pretty good guess about what was coming next when he sat next to me. He was going to hit on me. Many male models are vain and self-absorbed, always ready to start talking to a girl, 1) to rehearse their sparkling personalities, and 2) to score your phone number as insurance against ever spending even one moment without an adoring audience. So, I prepared to rebuff the attack. And sure enough it came. As I was filling out my contact card, Tom asked if he could borrow my pen. I was using my favorite purple ink pen. I looked over at him. It must have been the moustache. How dare he be so, so…. Masculine!

"It’s a purple ink pen, does that bother you?" I asked, sarcastically, in a semi witty attempt at a put down of him and his flagrantly masculine moustache. I just wanted him to know that I was onto his game.

"No, I think I can handle it," he replied, with a bemused smile, just like in the romance novels. Tom did have a very quick wit and terrific sense of humor. He was never without his charms. Sadly.

That he got my snide remark and came up with a quick-witted retort must have impressed me, because when I came out of the audition room, looked around and saw he wasn’t there, I remember feeling distinctly disappointed. Not to worry, he was waiting in the hallway to catch me on the way out and talk privately.

Very politely, he introduced himself and asked if I would wait for him so we could have a cup of coffee together. He claimed to be an actor; all male models do. I primly informed him I was studying acting and due at an acting class with Uta Hagen, wondering aloud, with my nose high in the air, if he'd ever heard of her, Uta Hagen being a famous and much admired Broadway stage actress.

Tom was not a bit put off. Of course, he'd heard of her. Not only that, he informed me, he had studied acting at Goodman Theater School, part of Chicago University. Then he added he had worked with a disciple of Polish avant-garde theater director Jerzy Grotowski, and he mentioned a few other theatrical luminaries of whom I, yes, even the Columbia University graduate Marcy, had not heard. I was impressed. Lastly, he informed me that he was taking all his savings and planned to leave for Spain tomorrow and stay until the money ran out, so would I share a cup of coffee with him before he disappeared over the horizon?

Spain? Tomorrow? Had he booked a flight? Was he planning on taking a tramp steamer? Was he putting me on? He didn’t seem like some kind of nut. But clearly, this guy was not playing from the same rule book as the usual male model/actor type. How could I say no? I agreed to wait for him downstairs by the phone booths. (This was in the seventies when phone booths were an absolute necessity for keeping in contact with agents.)

Now, as I waited, I was determined to try to impress him, since he wasn’t the usual lightweight model. I bought a copy of the New York Times to pretend to peruse while standing nonchalantly in the lobby. I never read the Times except on Sunday for the book, movie, and theater reviews. What a little phony I was! But it was prop. Hey, I had to be doing something while I stood by the phones, otherwise I'd have looked desperate.

It took forever for Tom to get through with his audition. All those other women in the waiting room had to audition first. But I hung in there, because he was okay looking, had a sense of humor, was a real actor, and was tall enough so that I could wear high heels if we went out.

At last, Tom appeared and the New York Times I was flashing didn't impress him in the slightest. He read through all those daunting, narrow columns of national and international names, events, and tiresome facts every day, cover to cover. (This I learned later.) We adjourned to a nearby, lower-level cafe and actor’s hangout that Tom frequented, aptly named Beggar's Banquet. It was three steps below street level, a funky place, with oversize, uncomfortable bare wood banquettes. The lighting was dark and the coffee terrible, but it had atmosphere.

We gave each other the short version of our backgrounds, and I remember in response to some of his opinions, which I guess I didn't agree with, I kept saying in exasperation, "Well, you Marines!" after which he'd correct me, saying he'd been in the Army, not the Marines. Sadly, I must report that I didn't know there was any difference between the Marines and the Army. Anyway, he kept talking.

He got my phone number, and we parted. That’s how things worked in those ancient, patriarchal days. Men either had the guts to ask for your phone number, or that was it. But did it take him forever to get up the nerve to actually call the big-time model? Yes. Did I count the nanoseconds the phone remained stubbornly silent until his call came? Most assuredly. Did I know I was madly, completely, out of my mind in love? Not consciously, and not for years to come would I ever guess how much I loved him or that I was even capable of loving that much.

Blog Post Twenty-one 21 Bedeviled - Budapest and 3 Freudian Slips

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 22:34:56 GMT

First Date in Budapest and 3 Freudian Slips

Our first real date was in Budapest. No, really. Tom took me to what had been an old-fashioned burger joint, which a charming, elderly Hungarian couple had turned into a small European style café on the upper eastside of Manhattan on Second Avenue. The lighting was dim and dreamy as we sat at the long lunch counter, drank May wine, and admired the old world, candy box charm of the little establishment. As I would come to appreciate later, the Tip-Top was one of Tom's discoveries, an overlooked gem that served delicious, home cooked Hungarian specialties at a very affordable price.

All fancied up for my date in high heeled pumps to die for, I confess to being disappointed by my first impression of the Tip-Top, fearing I had overdressed. I’d expected to be taken somewhere a bit more impressive. High fashion models are used to being wined and dined at very chic places. I should have realized I was dating a real actor: no money, but lots of style and imagination. The Tip-Top was pure romance, so, in a very short time, high heels didn’t seem at all out of place. After all, I didn’t tower over Tom in my heels, and he had worn a jacket, tie, and a pair of slacks.

Ours was a generation that aspired to romance. We sort of took it for granted that romance of any kind was highly desirable, but very hard to genuinely achieve. I have never understood today's love story movies, which seem more like how-to sex manuals for the carnally deprived, rather than stories about two people falling in love. The movies we'd been raised on savored all the twists and turns leading up to the first kiss. After that, I'm pretty sure most of us had figured out what came next without any help from Hollywood.

The juke box serenaded us with its classical music selections. By the time the friendly Hungarian owner/waiter showed us to our booth and gave us the small menu of what his wife was cooking that evening, I was totally entranced. Chicken Paprikash with Spaetzle and sour cream was Tom's recommendation for dinner. It was delicious, and spaetzle was a revelation. Dessert was palacsinta, a thin crepe pancake, with a cherry filling and topped with whipped cream, followed by cappuccino. (I still have the mimeographed copy of the recipes.) If it's romance you want, go Hungarian, 'For the man the sword, for the woman the rose.' Dinner in Budapest was a most memorable night.

At the end of the meal, the owner and his wife came out and shared a brandy with us. We sat enjoying the brandy, and Tom proceeded to tell me about two of his favorite movies, both of which happened to be tragic romances. Waterloo Bridge was the first one. It's a war movie starring Vivien Leigh as a ballet dancer who risks everything to marry an aristocratic flyer, Robert Taylor, but sinks into degradation to earn a living when she believes him to be killed in World War One. He returns alive, but her fall into prostitution leaves her too shattered to marry him, and she commits suicide. How could I, a devoted Vivien Leigh fan, have neither heard of nor seen this movie, and this big masculine Marine, I mean Army guy, knew it by heart? How did that happen?

Seeing he had my complete attention, he went on to describe a second movie, To Each His Own, starring Olivia de Havilland as a wartime young woman who gets pregnant by a World War One ace pilot. Unfortunately, he is killed before he can marry her and make their child legitimate. Then, she inadvertently and anonymously gives up her child to rich, but childless old friends. Crushed, she throws herself into her career as a face cream manufacturer and is very successful but remains lonely until that child comes back into her life in London as another pilot, this time in World War Two, just like the father he never knew. At last, she is able to do real, motherly type things to make him happy. It's a total tear jerker and a movie not to be missed. Never heard of that one either. What was going on here? I was the diehard romantic. Yet, here was a man who understood and loved romantic movies, too.

Movies were a language Tom and I spoke to each other for the rest of our lives starting on that first date. The sharing of movies was our personal code, woven through our lives right through to our last date on Liberty Street, before the bottom fell out of our love story. We were always quoting our favorite movie lines to each other. Film stories meant a lot to both of us. Neither of our families had been very good role models, so we looked to the movies to see what other people thought and felt about life.

Interestingly, both of these movies would turn out to be very revealing Freudian slips and have some interesting parallels to Tom's secret life which I only learned after he'd passed away. Not that I could have guessed anything at the time. I was simply very pleased that he was a romantic like me.

But in case we missed the point that we were each other’s destiny, Tom accidentally provided the proper soundtrack. He had been feeding the juke box coins all evening to play his classical favorites. At dessert, he had a piece by Wagner he particularly wanted me to hear. He popped his coins into the machine and returned to the table, eager for me to experience the music. But instead of whatever he thought he'd played, Wagner's classic Wedding March filled the little cafe. Tom was very embarrassed and tried to laugh it off. To prove his point and play the correct Wagner classic, he went back, put his money in again, and returned to his seat. And once again the Wedding March played. This time, he was too mortified to do anything but blush. Faulty jukebox? I don't think so. Not anymore. I think the spirits of our loved ones watch over us and clunk us on the head occasionally to make sure we don’t miss that something important is happening in our life and we should pay attention with our whole mind and heart. This counts as the third Freudian slip.

It was a very romantic date with a very romantic man. There was nothing in his behavior to suggest that true love was any less important to him than it was to me. Everything he did or said seemed very genuine, and I still believe it was.

Once he passed over, I started reading his diaries. They provided some pretty interesting insights into what he was thinking. Here is the entry about our first date.

"May 5 (Tom's Diary) Sunday. When I met Marcy, something seemed to click, like it’s really right for us to be together. I could very easily get crazy over her, but I’m afraid I’d scare her off. It’s been years since I’ve felt like this. I know this sounds absurd, but she could be the one. Time will tell. I hope the Gods are with me on this one. It would be great if she felt as strongly about me as I do about her."

It’s diary entries like this that really puzzle me, because it’s almost impossible to understand how Tom could write these words and yet do the things he subsequently did. Clearly, there was some part of Tom that really wanted someone to love and to be loved by.

Blog Post Forty-one 41 Bedeviled - Two Telling Movies

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 22:15:17 GMT

Two Telling Movies

It’s only after I learned about Tom’s mother’s sad descent into hopeless alcoholism and degradation that the two movies which Tom recounted to me on our very first date take on a new meaning.

“At the end of the meal, the owner and his wife came out and shared a brandy with us. We sat enjoying the brandy, and Tom proceeded to tell me about two of his favorite movies, both of which happened to be tragic romances. Waterloo Bridge was the first one. It's a war movie starring Vivien Leigh as a ballet dancer who risks everything to marry an aristocratic flyer, Robert Taylor, but sinks into degradation to earn a living when she believes him to be killed in World War One. He returns alive, but her fall into prostitution leaves her too shattered to marry him, and she commits suicide. How could I, a devoted Vivien Leigh fan, have neither heard of nor seen this movie, and this big masculine Marine, I mean Army guy, knew it by heart? How did that happen?”

Now, I can see it’s obvious this story bears a striking resemblance to the tragic story of his mother, who married so young, only find that the man she married was not the man she had dreamed he was. Perhaps this was Tom’s way of excusing her for sinking so low and ultimately committing suicide with alcohol.

Here is the second Movie:

“Seeing he had my complete attention, he went on to describe a second movie, To Each His Own, starring Olivia de Havilland as a wartime young woman who gets pregnant by a World War One ace pilot. Unfortunately, he is killed before he can marry her and make their child legitimate. Then, she inadvertently and anonymously gives up her child to rich, but childless old friends. Crushed, she throws herself into her career as a face cream manufacturer and is very successful but remains lonely until that child comes back into her life in London as another pilot, this time in World War Two, just like the father he never knew. At last, she is able to do real, motherly type things to make him happy. It's a total tear-jerker and a movie not to be missed. Never heard of that one either. What was going on here? I was the diehard romantic. Yet, here was a man who understood and loved romantic movies, too.”

I think Olivia is the mother Tom always dreamed would come and rescue him someday and make him feel loved.

Interestingly, both of these movies were very revealing Freudian slips about his secret life story that I only learned after he passed away. Not that I could have guessed anything at the time. I was simply impressed that he was a romantic like me.

Blog Post Twenty-two 22 Bedeviled - Who Was I?

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 18:11:27 GMT

Who Was I When I Met Tom?

By the time I met Tom, I was twenty-five and already had quite a past. What had propelled me to such frantic achievements was my family situation. My mother was an extreme narcissist. There are plenty of videos on Youtube to give you some ideas about narcissists. My mother was incapable of physical affection, depressed and unable to experience joy, self-involved to the point of neglecting her children, and I was the designated scapegoat.

My mother had predicted utter ruin for the family scapegoat, and my father, good at math, bad at emotions, placidly accepted that. So, it was a painful shock to my parents when I went forth to college and at eighteen became a successful model with Eileen Ford making double per year what my father made.

It was quite a shock to me, as well. I’d never been the Homecoming Queen type. I was skinny, taller than most of the boys at five feet ten inches with thick, kinky Irish hair. I’d never read a fashion magazine and hardly ever wore make-up. But my secret power turned out to be it was impossible to take a bad picture of me. I was hopelessly photogenic.

I got my first modelling job working for the college issue of Mademoiselle magazine at eighteen years old. Working as a model was a revelation to me. On a crisp autumn day, the magazine people came to the campus with a trailer where they dressed the girls they’d chosen to model in the coolest, college girl type clothes; then they did our hair and makeup until we looked fabulous. A charming photographer set up his camera and took pictures of us swanning around the Columbia Quad.

The magazine editor ladies had magic ways to make my hair behave, and makeup tricks that made me look better than I'd ever dreamed possible. I was beyond amazed and delighted. It was very Cinderella, and I will never forget that. The fashion industry was my fairy Godmother and very good to me. I went from being a too tall, skinny girl who'd just gotten out of braces to MODEL. It was quite heady.

At the beginning I was so naïve about the world of fashion and glamour, that I actually walked into the Ford Agency, the top fashion model agency at the time, with a manila envelope holding my cut out Mademoiselle pictures. I did know how to do my make-up and hair decently, but mercifully, I can’t remember what I wore.

There were about a dozen other girls sitting in the elegantly furnished room, decorated with huge fashion photos of famous models. The other girls were already professional models from less stellar modeling agencies who hoped to get signed by Ford's. They all had professional leather-bound books with large, glossy pages of 'tear sheets' from jobs they’d done. They were all very sophisticated models.

I still remember vividly the feeling of stark hopelessness I had as I sat in that reception room, all of us staring around and sizing each other up. It was obvious that I was totally outclassed by every single girl there. Even the ones who came back out having been rejected were worlds ahead of me in sophistication. But my turn came, I mustered my courage, trudged back to the office to be crucified, and probably laughed out of my silly delusions. After working with the "Mademoiselle" crew, I had noticed that kindness and sensitivity were not common traits of a true fashionista. No, their secret motto was 'be as scathing as possible.'

I walked into a large room where six or seven women were sitting, talking on headphones, facing a long wall with sliding vertical boards that had pockets holding weeklong calendars. Everyone was busy. The women were all chatting animatedly, sliding the boards back and forth to each other, reaching down weekly calendars and setting up bookings for models.

Behind them, overseeing everything, was a petite, attractive woman curled up in a chair at her desk. She was a ball of energy, talking on the phone, calling orders to the girls at the boards, and writing things down. She did not glance my way as I entered. I correctly guessed that this perfectly groomed, whiplash slim dynamo was Eileen Ford herself.

The receptionist bid me sit by the desk of a very pretty, svelte, warmly smiling, vivacious blonde, who I was too young to recognize as Sunny Harnett, the original Clairol "Is it true blondes have more fun?" girl. And she still looked like she was having more fun. But she was no longer modeling. Eileen, to her credit as a caring agent and friend, had given Sunny a job, because her career as a model was over. Plus, I think there had been a bad marriage which had left Sunny with temporary financial difficulties. She remained a remarkably good humored, down to earth person, still laughing and beaming her beautiful smile on everyone, including me.

As a matter of fact, as I took my pitiful little pictures out of the envelope, Sunny was very friendly to me, which greatly surprised me. But she explained that I looked very much like her good friend and former model Suzy Parker. She then brought me to Eileen's attention, saying something like, "Look, Eileen, doesn't she look exactly like Suzy?”

Eileen gave me the gimlet eye. As I later learned, she gave everyone the gimlet eye. Then she asked me if I'd ever plucked my eyebrows. Blushing furiously, I stammered no, because I had no idea what she meant by plucking your eyebrows. She promptly dived into her handbag, pulled out her tweezers, told me to bend my head back and started yanking out my eyebrow hairs, informing me that it would hurt a lot, because the first time was always the worst. I guess that was my big make or break moment. If I screamed and ran out, my dreams of freedom and my own life were over, so I sat there, endured the eyebrow pluck, flinching now and then, but I got through it.

Having shaped my eyebrows to her satisfaction, all the while talking on the phone propped between her shoulder and ear, Eileen became friendly, for her. Some secret signals passed between her and Sunny, and Sunny took me into the smaller office to introduce me as a new model. She said they would be setting me up with testing appointments to get pictures for my book, the large, leather-bound portfolios I’d seen the other models carrying. Sunny told me what makeup I needed, where to get it, and a million other things about what to do to get started. She explained that testing appointments would be set up for me with photographers who wanted pictures for their books. My reward would be large black and white or color prints for my book. No money would or should ever change hands. Pictures you had to pay for were worthless for the up and coming, professional model. It was my first experience with the code of the artist: real artists do a lot for free until they become famous enough to get paid.

This modeling book that I would gradually build up would be what I took with me on appointments to get jobs. But they would only send me up on job appointments when they thought I was ready. In other words, when the pictures in my book were finally up to their standards, they'd let me loose on the world of advertising and magazine publishing.

It was a lot more work than I'd anticipated. Every time I was free from class, there were three or four appointments, all long subway rides away in lower Manhattan, where the aspiring photographer's studios were located. I was on my own in this undertaking, usually providing some sort of outfit that would look fashionable in a photo and doing my own hair and makeup. It was a real challenge and great training. All this practice made a big difference when I started having real jobs.

When I wasn't studying chemistry or geology, my nose was buried in fashion magazines, trying to get the knack of style and how to achieve it. I invested in makeup and hair pieces, which were very expensive and made of real hair in those pre Dynel days. Stuffing all these things, including electric curlers, shoes, clothes and make up into a huge shoulder bag and setting off on the subway was my after-class hobby. I dragged that huge bag of equipment around for twenty years. It's a wonder I don't walk like a peg legged Long John Silver. I studied for my academic classes on weekends.

In the excitement and turmoil of my new life, I made a terrible first marriage to man who had to be paid off to eventually give me a divorce.

By the time I met Tom, I had almost a decade of fashion modelling behind me. I’d appeared in the editorial pages of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Ladie’s Home Journal, and many more magazines. I’d worked in Paris, Rome, and Frankfort, getting interesting pictures and learning more about fashion. I’d been cast in many TV commercials in New York City, as well as Atlanta, Cleveland, Toronto, Dallas, and Los Angeles. And I’d still managed to get my BA and graduate with honors.

But the problem with modelling was that career would end when you hit thirty. I had to figure out something to do with the rest of my life. And models were taxed as if they were going to make this kind of money forever, so I lived frugally, putting away as much money as I could for the future. Due to my success doing TV commercials, I had begun studying acting and gotten bitten by the theater bug in the best city in the world to see great theater.

Consequently, when I met Tom and heard his career history, I knew he was a real, bona fide actor, not just someone dabbling in theater. He was earning a living as an actor. That was impressive.

Blog Post Twenty-three 23 Bedeviled - First Night

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Sat, 20 Jan 2024 22:02:21 GMT

First Night

Writing about marriage and infidelity demands absolute sexual candor and frankness. I have tried to be truthful and not to make anyone feel uncomfortable, including myself. And being completely explicit at this point turned out to be very important in understanding what had happened to Tom.

What was the heat that drew us so powerfully to each other? What was burning up our bodies and souls from the moment we met? That old cliché about it being bigger than the both of us was pretty much true for us. It’s a wonder we didn’t set the Tip Top restaurant on fire.

There was never any doubt that we were both physically attracted to one another. The dinner portion of our first date had gone well. We’d both been dating for several years, so we were pretty familiar with the drill. Meet, talk, check the other person out, see how you feel. Everything about Tom seemed perfect to me. He couldn’t make a wrong move: his genial friendliness to the Hungarian couple, the way he got my jokes, his serious questions about my life and life in general, his deep interest in theater and movies, and his favorite romance movies; the man was flawless. Sure, it was lust, but lust is funny thing. You can find someone very attractive when you meet them and suddenly something they do or say just kills it. Tom was the opposite. Everything he did inflamed my desire and admiration for him. Yes, he could be very charming when he wanted a woman’s love and affection.

After the Tip Top, Tom took me back to my upper west side apartment to drop me off. He was subletting a place not far away. In those days, the Upper West Side was still quite affordable for actors and artists. We stood by the gate at the entrance, and, with a bit of encouragement, Tom began kissing me goodnight. He was a great kisser. In fact, Tom was great at everything he did. He had terrible performance anxiety, which he dealt with by constantly perfecting his performances, on stage and in life.

I still remember that goodnight kiss. He put one hand on the back of my neck and the other around my waist, then he tipped his head sideways, bent down and began kissing me very gently. There was none of that slobbery, eat your face, hungry kissing. No, Tom was a master of underplaying a scene. He could get more emotional impact out of one line than other actors could create by storming around the stage, yelling, and throwing furniture. And it was the same with his kissing.

His gentle kiss was so tantalizing that he very thoroughly tickled my fancy with his lips. I had no idea I had so much fancy to be tickled. He went on forever just with his lips on mine until I thought I’d go crazy. Then he slowly upped his game and opened his mouth and mine, but still no intrusive tongue, just pure sensual enjoyment of lips engaging each other in kissing. Never in my life had a kiss driven me so crazy. By the time we had to stop and draw breath, I was leaning against the metal railing, barely able to speak.

As he started kissing me again, I realized that we had to get inside before we did something indecent right there on the sidewalk. I was unprepared to ask him in. I had no wine or beer or anything to offer. Like, “why don’t you come in for a glass of wine?” No, stupid me thought this was just any old first date, where we’d part at the door. “How about a cup of tea?” was what I still remember with great chagrin offering the best kisser in the world.

We never had a drop of tea till breakfast the next morning. We began the kissing again on the couch. And we engaged in everything that goes with your clothes slowly becoming more and more obstacles that have to be breached, until it’s clear they have to come off altogether.

When Tom took his shirt off, I realized he was a much bigger man than I’d thought. He had broad, well-muscled shoulders, with tattoos on each of his biceps, which were a shock. And his chest was enormous. He really didn’t have a waist, just wide chest from shoulder to hip. And he had a lot of black chest hair, but that didn’t bother me. I liked it. But I liked everything about Tom.

“Where’s the bed?” he finally asked, looking around my studio apartment with some concern. “You’re on it.” It was a pull-out sofa, and we pulled it out pronto. From kissing, he moved on, and it just got better and better.

For me it was a wondrous night. For Tom, it started well, but kept going on and on. But something was wrong. After several hours of lovemaking, he confessed he was a little bit worried because he couldn’t finish. He apologized and was embarrassed about having to keep going for so long, swearing that this had never happened before.

He continued to make love, but, although he reached the heights of passion again and again, he failed to climax. For Tom, our increasingly heightened passion was becoming sweet torture. Again, and again, he reached the peak of sexual arousal, breathing hard, sweating, yet nothing.

He simply couldn’t climax. And he was getting more and more upset and perplexed.

Looking back, I realize this was the first obvious sign that there was something slightly off about Tom and sex. Knowing what I know now, I think because we were so blatantly made for each other, for him, this was no longer casual sex. In bed, with a woman he found very attractive, his body and mind were on fire, uniting his desire with his intellect and passions. So, what went wrong?

This was my first encounter with his hidden self. There seemed to be some very powerful brake on his libido which had control over him; and though his desire was powerful, his body was forbidden by his hidden self to surrender to pleasure. Final capitulation was a very long time in arriving that night.

But no matter how thoroughly something in him fought back, once he’d gotten into bed with me, he was a lost man in many ways. He’d never be able to completely escape love’s clutches again, except by dying. Now I believe that after that night, I owned some part of him emotionally, but the real battle for Tom was just beginning. For some reason, he was terrified of falling in love, but on this night, love flew in under the radar guarding Tom’s heart.

One other thing happened that night which connected Tom and me in mysterious ways that would result in some important signs from the afterlife much later. When we got to the door of my apartment, before I opened it to let him inside, I playfully warned him that he would have to pass my dog test, telling him my dog had very decided opinions about the men I dated. He was a little wary about meeting the friendliest dog on earth.

However, Tom and my dog became best friends. Tom’s favorite dinner was spaghetti and meatballs. When he noticed that my dog would eagerly lick up his leftovers, he decided that she deserved her own spaghetti dinners. Many years later, she accompanied us to live in California, having attained the grand old age of nineteen. Eventually Tom had to take her to be put down, because I couldn’t bear to do it. She was blind, deaf, and lame in her back legs.

However, there was another misstep that first night which persisted for the rest of our marriage. If Tom’s small, unimpressive restaurant was a disappointment to me, at first, I think my apartment made a very bad first impression on him. I remember his asking when he looked around if I had just moved in. No, I’d been there for several years, but just hadn’t bothered with a lot of furniture. I lived very modestly in small studio with a garden. Unfortunately, this did not conform with his idea of a successful model, a misperception that I paid dearly for the rest of our life together. Modelling was only a stepping stone in my life. I was on to other things and trying to figure out what those things might be. I didn’t want to be prisoner of my lifestyle.

My place was a far cry from a penthouse on Park Avenue, like some models rented. But I wasn’t looking to marry a millionaire. I had a lovely garden apartment on the Upper West Side with two rose trellises in the backyard, a great kitchen and huge windows looking out on the garden. It was a small livable paradise in Manhattan.

I believe he incorrectly pegged me as only a modestly successful model, good looking and fun, but nothing more. The fact was that I knew that modelling was a career with a shelf life of about age thirty. I was trying to figure out what to do so that I didn’t end up broke.

For me, that first night was it. It couldn’t have been more fitting that Tom played the Wedding March at dinner, because I married him that night. There never was another man in my life. Never dated or kissed, or even looked at another man. No man’s touch ever excited me like Tom’s did. I was his, body, heart, and soul from that night until he left this world, which is why it was so shocking and devastating when I learned that he’d never been faithful or rated me very highly as a person.

Blog Post Twenty-four 24 Bedeviled - Tom Runs Away

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Fri, 19 Jan 2024 23:15:01 GMT

Tom Runs Away to Los Angeles

Above is the headshot I did of Tom in our Upper Westside Garden

Young people must always be racing to get somewhere. It’s the make or break time of life. For a while, Tom and I seemed to be making good progress, but as I look back now, there was always a sense of impermanence dogging our successes. Having been raised in a family where my father always had a nine to five job, I attributed this unease to our financial insecurity, not uncommon among artists. But now I know it was something much deeper than that.

It’s hard to make a living as an actor, but everybody knows that. I knew just what he was going through and gave him the benefit of all my experience in television and advertising. Because of his height, moustache, and brawny physique, he’d always been cast as a blue collar, rough and ready kind of guy. Not having classically chiseled features, he hadn’t gotten up for leading man roles. He thought of himself as a character actor and was very comfortable with those roles. But his personality seemed just as well suited to leading man roles. How you see yourself as a performer has a great deal to do with the kind of roles you get to audition for.

Unlike many of the other actors and male models I’d dated, Tom was the opposite of a narcissist. He was very uncomfortable looking at himself, and when he did, he was convinced he was not good looking at all. This was also a clue to his deeper problem. I believe that feeling good about himself was always a very fleeting sensation for him.

Once we started living together, I began my campaign to turn him into a more castable actor, the kind who could do character roles and leading man roles. Actually, many great leading men start out as character actors because the character parts are usually meatier roles you can really sink your teeth into.

The first thing we had to do was fix Tom’s hair. Believe it or not, great hair can make an acting career. As a model, I knew we had to give Tom’s hair a ‘look’, other than the wild man of the mountain, slightly unkempt look he was using in his headshot. And the moustache also had to be tamed, made more kissable, and less assertive. We had to broaden his range. How many beer drinking, blue collar commercials can you do? It required much convincing to get Tom to agree to adopt a new look. I took him to a great hairdresser and got him a stylish new cut and got the ‘stache trimmed.

Tom loved photography and owned a very good Nikon and a tripod. I’m not very skilled with f stops, but I knew how to get a good headshot. Well-groomed and suited up, complete with a white shirt and tie, I took him into the garden of my studio apartment and got to work creating a new black and white headshot. He hated getting photographed, preferring to be acting a scene, unaware of camera or audience. A headshot requires you to look into the camera with an easy, unforced, and winning smile. Smiling into the camera made Tom very self-conscious, so to relax him, I embarrassed him by describing all sorts of naughty sexual acts we might do when we were finished. If the neighbors were eavesdropping, they got an earful, but it worked. His self-consciousness dissolved into helpless laughter. I kept that Nikon firing and got a great shot of him looking every bit the relaxed, successful, intelligent man of the world he was.

I think it was important for Tom to see himself as a regular, middle-class guy. He could always do the tough guy, the army guy, and the outdoors guy, too, but to get a good role on a soap opera, he had to be a leading man. And soap operas were the best jobs for an actor in New York City in those days, when there were over a dozen soap operas being filmed in the city.

Using the picture we’d shot, he began to get submitted and seen for more and better roles. As he saw that casting people accepted him as a leading man, he got more comfortable playing that type of character. There we were, two people standing on the brink of life, hoping things would work out for us so our love story would have a happy ending. But even then, something was terribly wrong with Tom, though I couldn’t figure out what it was. When he suddenly decided he had to leave our New York City bivouac in the war on show business and head to California, if I’d been more perceptive, I might have seen that this wasn’t quite right.

We’d been living together about seven months when Tom’s savings started to run low. He couldn’t seem to connect with a job. Suddenly, he decided to go to California and see if he couldn't get something going out there. With the last of the money in his savings account and a few West Coast contacts, he borrowed my Volkswagen bug and headed across the George Washington Bridge for Los Angeles in late January.

Six-foot-five, two-hundred-and-ten-pound Tom squeezed into my Volkswagen bug and began the three-thousand-mile solo trip, in the dead of winter, by way of his old stomping grounds in Chicago and Nebraska, with less than a thousand dollars in the bank. Pure idiocy.

I could certainly understand his frustration. He'd been pounding the pavement in New York City for several years before we'd met and getting nowhere. At the time, it seemed to both of us that by going to Hollywood he was seeking a quicker route to success than he'd found in New York. That was a very plausible goal which all our friends understood and agreed with. No one in New York had a very clear idea of how the acting business in Los Angeles worked, so Tom was essentially scouting the LA scene.

However, there was something suspicious about this trip, which I seem to have noticed since he mentions in his letters that I have accused him of not being totally committed to our relationship, of always having one foot out of it. That turned out to be a far more insightful observation than I could ever have guessed at the time. I felt his hesitancy at being part of a relationship but had no idea why or what was causing it.

However, nothing about this trip went as planned. He didn't get any work in LA. His California female agent, who had handled him in New York and had promised to help, got fired very shortly after his arrival, broke up with her boyfriend, and became suicidal. In his letters, he tells me they took long walks on the beach together as he tried to cheer her up. He was so disarmingly honest about her and her situation, that I trusted him completely. Yeah, probably not the smartest thing to do.

But she was only the beginning of his troubles. His apartment was horrible. Agents kept cancelling their meetings with him. It was the wrong season to find work in Hollywood. In short, he was miserable, and his meager bank account was almost empty.

Now, when I reread his letters, trying to figure out who the man I married really was, I see danger signals in everything he writes. Back then, I saw only the passionate outpourings from my lover, who was missing me as much as I missed him.

One of the things that strikes me now is that his letters were far more candid and unreserved about his feelings than Tom ever was in person. I'm grateful to have them, because they are a written record of what he was going through. I don’t think either of us understood the magnitude and significance of that trip.

Here are several of the very revealing quotes from Tom's letters: “When you drive great distances like I have been doing lately, you have all kinds of time to think about all kinds of things. Sometimes you say you don't feel I am totally committed to our relationship, that I have "one foot out of it." Jesus, sweetheart, let me assure you that I'm as committed to you and our relationship as Thomas Jefferson was to the American Revolution. I love you with every fiber of my being. I'm giving my all in this relationship, something I have never done before…I want so much for us to have a wonderful life, full of warmth and love and romance…."

From a later letter, after he’d been in LA for a couple of weeks: "After I talked to you on the phone last night, I cried like a baby for the first time in years. I have never known loneliness like I am experiencing now in all the years and traveling I have done, and I think the reason is that for the first time in my life I feel I have something, someone who really loves me and whom I really love and want to be with always."

He confesses his love for me and his dreams for us in writing, and he allows himself to actually break down and cry out his lonely despair, but only when he’s three thousand miles away from me. In thirty-five years of marriage, I never saw him cry, not even when they told him he had terminal cancer.

Rereading this gives me new faith that no matter what happened later, he did truly love me at one time as much as I loved him. He speaks of his terrible loneliness and crying like a baby. I think what he went through on this trip was much more emotionally overwhelming than he was ever willing to admit, even to himself.

Another letter referring to his agent friend: "We were invited to the party afterwards at some rich lady's home up in the Hollywood Hills with a spectacular view of the city. When they live right out here, they really live right. So, we all stood around and talked theater etc. Needless to say, there were numerous women there, all available. To tell you how much I love you, (and the relationship we have is the only reason I mention this fact) I love you above all temptation. I am neither attracted to nor tempted by other women. And I was happy and content at that party with the thought of you. I love you so much toots. It's such a pure, fresh love, it reminds me of the snow I saw in the Rocky Mountains, clean and beautiful and breathtaking, almost defying description."

He has run away to California, and, in a roomful of women who are in show business, he says he loves me above all temptation. And it sounds like he means it, but why is it so important that he mentions it to me? What is the temptation that these women offer that might be such a threat to our love? It’s easy to say that these women might offer him good parts and a chance at success as an actor. But it’s doubtful that he was at a party full of A list Hollywood players, so the most any of these women could do for him was throw an audition his way. It’s not sex that’s tempting him, either, because he wasn’t some sex addict who constantly had to get laid; and according to his letters, he’s very much in love with me.

Something was going on that I don’t believe Tom ever fully understood. He was all alone fighting some overwhelming urge that he couldn’t admit even to me.

Another letter: "I hope I don't sound like a crybaby when I tell you all the things I am feeling or all the things I fear. What I am about to tell you is pure truth. I stress this because you may doubt what I am about to say. I have never in my life let anyone see me weak or terribly afraid like I have you. I confess all to you, my fears, doubts, jealousy, weaknesses. I trust you like I've never trusted anyone before."

I was naturally thrilled to read this and so happy that he loved and trusted me. But frankly, I never saw any unusual weaknesses, fears, doubts, or jealousy in Tom, quite the opposite. I think one of the things that attracted me to him was that I sensed he was a man who could survive anything. Everyone who knew him sensed his inner strength. Tom would always come through. He’d fight till his last breath. What were the terrible weaknesses he was so afraid of confessing?

In light of his posthumous dream confession that he constantly cheated during our marriage, it’s evident he did always have one foot out of our relationship, the foot heading toward the door. What was driving him away from me? These events happened long before he was famous or even very successful, so his infidelity wasn't because he suddenly got carried away with himself when he became a TV star. Some impulse drove him three thousand miles away from the woman he professed to love. In a way, it seems as if this trip was actually some kind of self-induced emotional breakdown. Or was he testing himself to see if he really loved me?

He stayed for two lonely months in Los Angeles and, when he couldn’t get any acting jobs, he gave up his apartment and came back to the east coast. The trip home was an epic disaster. However, he did get a big and unexpected career success from his experiences on the road trip home, only it took about twenty years to come to fruition. The cross-country drive home was a misadventure that he later turned into a screenplay, the only one that ever got made into a movie. Getting a screenplay turned into a film was one of the great triumphs of Tom's life.

Blog Post Twenty-five 25 Bedeviled - Desert Heat

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 23:35:54 GMT

Desert Heat - The Back Story

Tom Wrote the Screenplay for Desert Heat starring Jeanne Claude Van Damme

If art imitates life, then perhaps the movie plot is telling me something about what Tom really felt when he got stuck in the desert in depressing Seligman, Arizona of the 1970’s. He makes jokes about his disaster in his letters, but the movie he wrote using his memories of this horrible trip back to NYC begins with the hero trying to commit suicide. Did the feelings of needing me and my love which his LA trip had unleashed arouse some self-destructive urge?

Here are the letters he sent to me about his truly awful, terrible, scary and sort of hilarious trip back to New York City that later became the movie Desert Heat starring Jean Claude Van Damme.

"Letter - March 1, 1975

Seligman Ariz. To NYC

Dearest Marcy,

It all seemed like a wonderful exciting day when I left Los Angeles. I crossed the mountains into the high desert and the sun was shining and warm, and I was on my way home, home to my baby, looking forward to auditioning, getting into a show, working at acting. I rolled along feeling great. I went through part of the desert where I was on maneuvers in the Army eleven years ago. Soon I crossed the Colorado River into Arizona, and then pop, and that was the sound like a light bulb going out. First pop and the oil light and generator light registered red. I stopped, thinking maybe the new fuel filter was messed up, tried the starter and nothing, not even a moan. I tinkered with the engine some, but no luck. It was 5:30 pm and on each side of the road were plains, sweeping up toward the mountains as far as the eye could see. I started to hitchhike standing next to the car, thinking that people would see that I was having car trouble and stop, but no such luck. Finally, a truck driver gave me a lift. By the time I got into Seligman, it was 6 pm and all the stations with tow trucks were closing left and right. I finally got a hold of a guy just as he was locking up his garage. So off we went to get the car, me thinking that it is the points that burnt out. We hookup and drag the VW back to town and the guy takes a quick look at the engine and says it's thrown a rod.

I tell you, when he said that, it was like being punched in the heart. I couldn't believe it. It was like the worst thing that could happen to this car. He then abruptly told me to find a motel because he don't work on cars at night, then his wife. (She drives a tow truck, too.) keeps asking him to get the tow money from me, $29.95. He laughingly said, "he aint going nowhere." Nice people. So off I went to find a motel.

Someone told me about a Mexican fella who has a garage and repairs VWs. I talked to him, (Tony). He said my trouble sounded like a thrown valve, said he could fix it Monday, maybe, if he can get the parts from Prescott. Hopeful I can be out of here Tuesday if the parts arrive.

How can I best describe this town? Well, it's about a quarter of a mile long. Route 66 runs down the center. It's really just seven or eight gas stations and garages, a few motels, a bar and a small grocery store. The town is built exactly next to the road and is only two blocks wide. On one side is the railroad, just freight trains. On the other side are trailers, real old, small trailers in terrible condition, all of them surrounded by old junked cars. It's a really depressed area and depressing, too, I might add. There are two restaurants, both bad. But the people are civil. It's a terribly poor little town that makes its living off the road, and not much of a living at that. It's Saturday night now, 8:30 my time and the car will not be ready till Tuesday at the earliest. So I sit here for 2 whole days doing nothing. My motel room does have a TV, thank god. At least there is something to pass the time. It's sort of funny really, no TV in LA and nothing but TV here. Christ, the next time you see me I'll have test patterns for eyes.

Well, I guess I'll watch some more TV and sleep some, hoping the time will pass quickly so I can get the hell back to NYC and start to lead a productive life again. Jesus, I'm really going into debt because of all this. Well, Toots, I love you. And I'll be home soon. And you will be in my arms and we can look back and laugh at all this. So go easy on yourself.

I love you

Tom

Letter - March 2, 1975

Seligman Ariz.

Dearest Marcy,

Howdy baby from the middle of nowhere. At breathtaking Seligman, home of gas stations and motels, cheap turquoise jewelry, and women with bee-hive hairdos, shit kickin music and pickup trucks. A small town with a panoramic view of a Santa Fe railroad siding. Ah the west, the wild, wild west. What am I doing here? Waiting for parts from Prescott. I stayed up last night till 3am watching TV hoping I would sleep a lot today so the time would go faster. Well wouldn't you know that at 9:30 am, I am wide awake and bushy tailed. Jesus, I'm really going nuts. Usually I'd sleep till at least noon, but here with nothing to do, I'm up and around. Well, actually I stayed in bed and stared around my room, then I got up and had a giant salad for lunch, lots of lettuce, sliced egg, salami, olives, carrots etc. Then I went and did my laundry and took a long walk. I walked all over town, took 5 minutes. Only kidding. Boy are there some really poor people living here in little more than shacks, horrible little hovels out on the plains, windblown, old, some even with outhouses still. Well, if nothing else, I've got clean shorts. Ha ha.

It was good to talk to you last night. You really helped boost my spirits. I hope I boosted yours. I think I did. Well, tomorrow I hitch into Williams and get the money at Western Union. (I had to wire him the money to get my car fixed.) There is a James Cagney movie coming on TV. Boy, what a great actor he is. I'm getting a little sun. What else is there to do? I'm trying to eat good, which isn't easy in this little burg, which is sort of greasy spoon kind of place. People here think Health Food is something California pinko Commie Weirdos eat or rub on their bodies during orgies. I swear to God if I'm here much longer I'm going to organize and direct a show with the town folk. "Bus Stop” would be a biggie here, the whole town is full of guys to play Bo Decker and the Sheriff.

So here I sit waiting for spare parts and a miracle so I can be on my way home and to your loving arms. Take care of your beautiful self.

I love you

Tom

Xxxxxxxxxoooooo

March 3 Monday Up at 9am breakfast and off to Williams to telegraph office. Hitchhiked for about an hour. No ride. Finally, a couple of longhairs from Colorado I talked to earlier gave me a ride to Williams, they’re on their way to the Grand Canyon to camp. Arrived in Williams at 11am, telegram arrived 2:15. Bus for Seligman left at 2:10. Got check cashed. Finally got the money, next bus out of Williams for Seligman at 7:50. Decided to hitchhike. Local police were starting to give me the eye, so I figured it's time to leave. Hitched a ride with a young black couple on the way to LA, gave them $2.00 for gas. Got back to Seligman at 4 pm. Stopped at Tony’s garage. He said his wife is coming back from Flagstaff with parts. My spirits are getting hopeful. Will be too late today, he said. I should be on the road tomorrow. YAH."

If you've seen Tom's movie, Desert Heat, you will recognize the setting and the mood are drawn directly from Tom's experiences in Seligman, Arizona. From Tom's horrible, really bad trip home from Los Angeles came one of his greatest triumphs in life, getting a movie made from one of his screenplays.

Tom returned from his harrowing Los Angeles adventure just before his thirty-first birthday. He was dead broke, again, and started making the rounds of agents, casting people and theater open calls. Coming back to more career failure and hopelessness in New York was tough. So many times, over the years, I heard him say he was so depressed that he felt as if he was at the bottom of a well. He always tried to keep busy. He’d paint a room or a piece of furniture, fix something, work in the garden, go to an auction, anything to feel like he’d accomplished something. I always tried to be encouraging about the future, cheerleading, cooking nice dinners, the usual stuff all significant others do. But nothing I could say or do ever seemed to help very much. Only an acting job would rally his spirits. And that, too, was a very important clue to Tom’s psyche that I misread. I thought he was just ambitious and desperate to get ahead, but as I was to learn from his afterlife communications, his elation when he worked, as well as his constant fight against depression had a very different cause.

Back from Los Angeles, and he was starting over. He did have an agent and at least his Los Angeles trip gave him something to talk about with casting people. One bright spot occurred immediately on Tom's return. Just before his birthday, he had an audition for the CBS soap opera Search For Tomorrow and got the job. It was a one-day gig as a construction boss, but it was a role whose character had a name and a couple of decent scenes.

After Tom's first speaking part on a soap opera, his diary is completely blank for months until September, when he had an appointment to meet Lloyd Kolmer to see about having Lloyd manage his career. Lloyd didn't ask him to sign till October, but, somehow, that autumn, things suddenly picked up. Lloyd was the good father Tom never had, and the best friend and show business guru he desperately needed.

Lloyd specialized in celebrity endorsements and had become famous by getting the celebrated mime, Marcel Marceau, a million dollars for an American Express TV commercial. He was riding high, running his own talent management company. Fate must have destined the two of them to meet, for it was the beginning of lifelong friendship. Lloyd's confidence in Tom and his organized strategy for getting somewhere were just what Tom needed. Somebody who was somebody liked and believed in him, believed in his talent and prospects, and it meant everything to Tom. With his confidence in himself renewed, Tom dove back into studying acting, just to get up on the boards, keep his skills fresh and stay in practice.

In September, Tom got a Swift Sausage commercial-casting note: RUGGED. A big national spot. Real money. The kind of money you can actually live on, even in New York City. Tom was ecstatic. And they liked him so much he did another one in December along with a couple of voice-overs for more money.

From Tom's diary:" Auditioned for Lowenbrau to play a Merchant Marine as a principal in national commercial with Steve Horn, a top New York photographer and TV commercial director, and GOT THAT TOO!"

"December 11- Did a scene from The Only Game in Town in Wynn Handman's class. He loved it and said that it was the best he'd ever seen it done. Wynn told the class "That’s Theater." God, I’m high on it."

1975 New Year’s Resolutions:

Plan on quitting smoking sometime soon.

Start getting to bed early and up early

Stop being my own worst enemy

Get a running part on a soap opera

Make a lot of money.

JANUARY 6- Broke again.

The sad fact of life, you know, if you're the kind of person who has to pay bills on a regular basis, is that for commercials you got a session fee, but the big money is in the residuals which are paid quarterly.

Tom's vow to get a part on a soap opera wasn't wishful thinking. It was certainly within the realm of possibility. This was the Seventies, and the fifteen or more daytime soap operas on the air at that time had large and incredibly loyal audiences. The soaps provided fresh content every day and were very cheap to produce compared to a nighttime TV drama or comedy. Soap operas were booming, and there were lots of them. Many actors, actresses and directors worked on soaps in those years, and many went on to great success on nighttime TV and in the movies. If Tom landed one, it could be a steady paycheck and the foothold in the industry we desperately needed.

The next year was one of the happiest in our life. After doing the two Swift Sausage commercials, which provided Tom with a respectable income for the next year, he studied acting with Wynn Handman, who ran the American Place Theater and was very encouraging to Tom.

Probably as a result of all the new support Tom had found, he got cast as one of the leads in a play opposite the movie star Barbara Rush, which was to rehearse in the city, then go on the road to play in top theaters in Atlanta and Palm Beach to tune it up for a run on Broadway. He was gainfully employed for the next three months as an actor.

The play didn't make it to Broadway but working on stage again with real professionals in front of a live audience was an immensely valuable experience for Tom in every way but financially. He came home owing money. But we did get to spend a week together in Palm Beach in a little apartment provided by the Palm Beach Playhouse.

It was the Bicentennial year and the spirit of '76 reigned all across the country. Tom's acting teacher Wynn Handman who managed the American Place Theater had a couple of American History plays by the famous American poet Robert Lowell that he wanted to stage in honor of the Bicentennial. Back from his three months of acting out of town, Tom auditioned for the director and got two small parts, one in each of the one act plays. He was going to be on stage at a very highly regarded theater, reviewed by all the top critics, right here in New York.

His parts in those plays were nothing game changing, even had the reviews been great. But then on March eighth, the casting director at the soap opera The Guiding Light set up a meeting with him because the show was casting a new contract part of a doctor, age mid to late thirties. The meeting went well.

Casting people were starting to take notice of this “new” face in town. He was now an employed, steadily working actor. His career was on roll.

Blog Post Twenty-six 26 Bedeviled - Tom Is Cast As Dr. Marler

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 17:41:31 GMT

Tom Is Cast as Dr. Marler on The Guiding Light Soap Opera

His parts in the American Place Theater plays were nothing game changing. But then on March eighth, the casting director at the soap opera Guiding Light set up a meeting with him because the show was casting a new contract part of a doctor, age mid to late thirties. The meeting went well.

Casting people were starting to take notice of this “new” face in town. He was now an employed, steadily working actor. His career was on roll.

Then it was back to the plays at the American Place Theater, which were excruciating to work on. Lowell was a poet, not a playwright. For two months, Tom labored, first in rehearsals, then in performance in the two awful plays. The director was miserable because nothing he did could salvage any semblance of drama from these plays. The cast members were so depressed they began bringing quarts of booze to the dressing room. It was exhausting to work on these horrible plays, and thankless, because none of the work paid off. And to add insult to injury, because this was a highly regarded artistic theater, the cast was working for peanuts. You know, because all actors are independently wealthy.

Then we got word from Tom's agent that the meeting with the casting lady at CBS had gone well enough that they wanted Tom to come in to read for the part on March 19th. They sent him a script which he decided to learn by heart instead of just reading, preferring to be in command of the material and more relaxed and spontaneous. What happens in this type of reading is the casting person reads the part of the other character. In this case, she'll be reading the part of a lady doctor who was formerly a girl friend of the divorced Doctor Justin Marler, the part that Tom was up for. For this reading, a low level producer was present to give his thumbs up or down to Tom after the reading.

After a full day in rehearsal for the infuriatingly awful play, off he goes to his Guiding Light audition. He came home feeling the audition had gone very well. But we heard nothing. This is the one job that he is being considered for that could actually change our life.

A full month of silence followed, and, when we had long since given up all hope, Guiding Light called to set up an audition to put Tom on tape on the twenty-second of April.

Somewhere along in April, I practically had a nervous breakdown, depressed and crying. Tom notes it in his diary, so it must have been pretty severe. My hindsight guess is that we were both frazzled and worn out to the max. We were beginning to feel that we were on the treadmill to nowhere. We were so close, and yet we just couldn't seem to make it happen for Tom. I think the waiting to hear on Guiding Light was more than I could stand. Then we got word from his agent that Tom would be put on tape, along with some other actors, as a final audition for the part of Justin Marler.

The scenario went like this: if he doesn't get this job, it's back to nothing, no job, no money. Yeah, right, no pressure, no worries. Just do the audition. It had probably been less nerve wracking for Tom to jump out of airplanes in the Army. At least he had a parachute.

Here is the blow by blow description of the day from Tom's diary:

"April 22 Thursday

Up at 11 am and getting myself prepared mentally and physically for the taping today. God, do I feel the pressure.

2 pm Taping for "Guiding Light" at 22 West 26th Street. Be prepared to stay till 4 pm. Taping the same scene I did at the CBS studio

Arrived at Studio at 2 pm sharp with coffee. Had to wait till 4 pm to tape.

Gene Ruppert is up for the same part. He is a Broadway musical actor, age 38, dark hair, a little heavy. The other two actors were dark, attractive in a male model sort of way.

I did the scene twice. The second time was better. The director said he liked it and the Producer came out of the booth to congratulate me and introduce me to the executive producer who was also all smiles. We chatted and laughed, and then I left and walked from 26th street to 48th Street, 22 blocks in a trance. Went up to Lloyd's, had a drink to calm down. Home, Marcy made lovely dinner.

It's been quite a day.

"By god I think I got it. So does Marcy."

Then the waiting began again. The awful part was they only called you if you got the part, so you never knew when to give up hope. In this case, we waited a full seven days before we heard Tom got it. That was one of the happiest days of our life. The salary negotiations by Lloyd, a master negotiator, were another test of our nerves. You really need an ace agent when dealing with these corporate types. They wanted all the options for no money. But Lloyd was a smooth deal maker.

Before the deal was even signed, Tom had a completely unexpected surprise for me. May first was the second anniversary of our being together. On May third, Tom wanted to take us out to dinner at a little French restaurant called Chez George on Fifty-Sixth Street, just off Sixth Avenue. I thought it was to celebrate his getting the part on the soap opera. We ate dinner, and I was happily chattering away. Tom was almost silent and seemed quite distracted. I began to worry about him, fearing something had gone wrong about the job, and he was afraid to tell me. I kept asking him, "Are you alright? Is something the matter?" He replied several times, very unconvincingly, that he was fine. He ordered a split of champagne, popped the cork, and we sipped it. Then he took my hand and with great sincerity, very earnestly and sweetly, asked me to marry him.

There was no ring, which was a strange omission considering how fastidious Tom usually was about doing things the right way. But I was so shocked, I didn’t’ notice. The only thing I remember clearly is laughing hysterically, completely out of control, till tears were running down my face. Suddenly, after all the agony we'd been through over the soap opera, he was thinking about marriage! It was all too much for me, not that I would have ever said no. I felt scared silly, but very proud and happy. I’d been suggesting marriage for at least a year, but Tom always had some excuse. Once he got the soap job, it seemed to bolster his confidence. That turned out to be part of the reason, but as I discovered later, there were other very convoluted psychological motives that prompted him to spring the question when he did. Somewhere deep in his mind alarm bells were going off. He knew he had to do this now, or he would never do it.

Tom's diary entry: "We walked to the Plaza Hotel and took an enclosed Hansom Cab pulled by a horse through the park. It was so romantic. She laughed and cried. We looked at the statue of the Husky Dog in Central Park (Balto who led sled team across the ice in Alaska to bring serum to save a town from diphtheria in 1925), and it will always be special to us. After the ride, we went to the Chateau Henry VI for drinks. I ordered a bottle of Dom Perignon. It was great."

"May 4, Tuesday

"What a night last night. A night to remember.

“I called Lloyd at three pm. The suspense was killing me. He sounded a little upset. It seems that Proctor and Gamble and the producers were willing to give all he asked for but wanted me to do five shows in a row, then have the option to cancel. Lloyd said NO WAY. I am really scared. To be so close then to lose it. I read a Travis McGee book to calm my nerves. Finally called again at 5:30. Lloyd was on the phone with them. We got it, all of it. He got me a fantastic deal. I can't believe it. I am so happy I can hardly believe all these wonderful things happening to me. Marcy marrying me, my getting the show. I am the luckiest guy in the world. Well, I've worked hard and long. We took a cab to see Lloyd, my manager. I bought him a bottle of champagne."

Yes, it was a day on which we shared our great happiness and promised to join our lives in marriage. We had many wonderful things happen for us as result of Tom getting the soap opera, including a house in the country, new friends, wonderful vacations, and memorable holidays. But it was also the start of the thirty-five-year battle for Tom’s life against a formidable secret enemy, only I didn’t know that. I thought we had the mighty Mo Mentum on our side at last. And that was another big clue I missed. Momentum never got Tom anywhere. It always left him stranded on the beach. Why?

Blog Post Twenty-seven 27 Bedeviled - The Soap Opera

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Tue, 16 Jan 2024 15:20:31 GMT

The Soap Opera in Tom's Mind

Photo was taken on the set of The Guiding Light

Getting on a soap opera was about the best and steadiest job an actor could have in New York City, but, (and there's always a but, isn't there?) everyone's contract had a clause which let the networks drop your option every thirteen weeks with no penalty to them. This meant that Tom had to hit the ground running and make his character indispensable to the show if he was going to last. It was all about your story line on the soap operas. If your story line was hot, you could figure your contract would be renewed.

He needn't have worried. He was almost instantly popular with the audience. His love interest, as it is called on the soaps, was an excellent and experienced actress, which was a blessing he didn't always enjoy during his seven-year run on The Guiding Light. The chance to work regularly as an actor with so many other fine actors and talented, creative people was sheer heaven for Tom.

Outside the studio every day, adoring fans waited to get his autograph and have their picture taken with him. Where once he’d been just another out of work actor, desperate for any job, and at the mercy of casting people, now he was a soap star and all sorts of people who wouldn’t have given him the time of day only a few months ago were suddenly taking a very enthusiastic interest in him.

The first year that Tom was on The Guiding Light the show went from the number six soap opera to number three. Many times, during those first years, Guiding Light won the week in ratings as the number one show. Every week that the show hit the number one spot was cause for celebration and kudos all around. Tom's story line was hot, and he was on the show sometimes three or four days a week, doing as much as sixty pages of dialogue a day. What a gratifying experience it was for him to be so popular and to have his work so appreciated.

Tom, as Justin Marler, famous heart surgeon, mender of broken hearts, intemperate, irascible, and slightly arrogant, was a resounding success on Guiding Light. He and Sara, the other heart surgeon, his old flame, lit up the screen. Sara was played by the actress Millette Alexander, a terrific actress, concert pianist and the daughter-in-law of Oscar Hammerstein II.

Everything was coming up roses. Or was it? When I subsequently got the name of one of the women who Tom was allegedly emotionally involved with, I knew that his duplicity began almost immediately after he got on the soap. Sudden fame and success are bound to get anybody a little goofy. But when I first realized that he’d betrayed me as soon as he stepped on the soap opera set, there really weren’t words bad enough to yell out loud at his departed spirit. I’d have staked my life on the heart of Tom O’Rourke, and he initiated a secret involvement with another woman only weeks after he’d proposed to me and been accepted.

At least in Tom’s mind, his interactions with this woman created a powerful romantic connection between them. She may have just viewed it as a casual show business flirtation. But whatever it was for her, for Tom it was something much deeper and more dangerous.

That kind of thing happens all the time in all businesses. I’d heard it many times from photographers, art directors, and actors. “You’re terrific and I’m going to make you a star.” This always involved some kind of sex. And it’s almost never true. I’d been hit on like that since I was eighteen. Was Tom really so naïve that he fell for it?

I loved Tom so much that I have to be careful not to make excuses for him. But furious as I was when I figured out when he started his misbehavior, I knew that his situation and life story certainly made him unusually vulnerable at that time. This was the most incredible and best job he’d ever had. The money was great and steady. And there couldn’t have been more than a hundred soap jobs total in New York, even at this time when the soaps were booming.

The pressure on Tom was enormous. He had the external pressure to deliver as a professional and attractive actor, plus an internal pressure to prove to himself that he could survive this job. It must have been absolutely punishing. From starving actor to big star was the biggest change in Tom’s life, ever. Overnight, he went from obscure nobody to an actor who would be watched, recognized, and judged by millions. Not just his face, but his entire personality was going to be exposed to see if he measured up. It was the biggest thing that had ever happened to him, careerwise. The people he worked with on the show must have basked in a very glamourous aura in his eyes. And indeed, many were from very privileged backgrounds of great wealth, well-connected families, and high class colleges.

Tom had nothing to fall back on, no college degree, no one cared that he’d been in the Army, or been a paratrooper, or gone to Goodman Theater School. He had practically no formal education. If this didn’t work out, God only knows what he’d end up doing. Pumping gas or working in a convenience store, if he was lucky. And he was a sensitive, artistic, talented, very intelligent man who wanted a good life and had worked very hard to get this chance. This was it for him.

But none of that explains why he so quickly emotionally disengaged from our relationship. From his first day on the soap, not only did he do very well and make new friends, but there was a young woman there. He met many people while he was working on the soap and told me about them. Many of them became good friends of ours. She was just one of them. I recall he told me he’d found her crying in the hallway and had comforted her because he felt bad for her. That’s what I heard. Awww. Yeah right.

Back then, I didn’t suspect the two of them of being up to anything, but I should have. After Tom’s posthumous confession from beyond the grave, she was a woman on my suspicious list who I could see he’d been in contact with for decades, supposedly over job issues. Her name as someone he was emotionally involved with was confirmed for me later when I consulted the famous psychic Pam Coronado. Once I knew she’d been his secret passion for many years, lots of incidents that had seemed innocuous turned out to have been anything but.

The woman who Tom was pursuing was young, new on the job, and working in some lowly staff position, but she came from a privileged background and had great expectations of moving up to positions of power in the soap opera industry. She had attended exclusive drama schools and walked into jobs at top notch theater companies due to her connections. I’m sure she impressed the hell out of Tom. How thrilled he must have been that she turned to him for comfort, advice and perhaps something more. Though it was common knowledge that he was engaged to the woman he was living with, she must have, at the very least, accepted his attentions. But that may have been just who she was.

It’s difficult not to feel that she took advantage of Tom’s neophyte status. She had a lifetime of experience in how the industry worked, unlike Tom, who was a relative newcomer, a guy who’d come up the hard way and whose whole future was riding on this job. But, how much experience does it take to recognize trouble when you run into it? Let’s be realistic. It takes two to tango, and he was tangoing, too.

When he mentioned her, it sounded as though he thought he was being kind to a person who was having a hard time at her job. I didn’t really think anything of it. Tom was always kind to people, men and women. I met men all day long on my jobs, too. I had no reason to be suspicious of this woman. You can’t go through life being suspicious of everyone your husband works with.

She certainly seemed to encourage his interest. We were invited to her home quite a few times over the years. She rarely said two words to me. Perhaps she enticed him with her insider tips about ways she could show him to achieve easy career success. Whatever she offered, he fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.

How far their relationship went, I don’t know. But many things happened afterward that can only be explained if they were constantly in contact for years. She certainly meant me no good as she toyed with my husband’s affections. But Tom went merrily along with the clandestine association, never mentioning a word about his secret association. But why would he even give her a second look when he was already engaged, had a great job, and was a success? What was his problem?

After Tom’s confession from beyond, I eventually got over the incredible hurt and pain of his unfaithful behavior, I took a cooler look at the situation from a more objective point of view. So here we have Tom, a struggling actor for many years, who now has a great job, and is engaged to the woman he loves, a woman who adores him, who has proved her love by helping him and sticking with him through some tough times, whose greatest joy in life is satisfying his every wish and desire, and, oh by the way, she’s a successful, high fashion model who’s considered pretty hot stuff and a graduate of an Ivy League college. Without being accused of bragging, I think most people would call that being a lucky guy. So, what does Tom do the minute he gets his great job? He gets himself secretly involved with another woman at his job. Looking at the facts, this goes far beyond stupid. People with single digit IQ’s would know better.

It’s absurd to ask what was he thinking. No one who does something that irrational is thinking. So, yes, there was more to this messy situation than meets the eye. Something else was going on. But what on earth could it be?

There are many things about Tom’s behavior with regards to this woman that don’t make sense. If he’d fallen in love with her, he could easily have made himself available and broken up with me. He was making plenty of money, and she was rich and connected in show biz. We weren’t married yet, so there was no question of alimony. Besides, I was making a very good living and could have supported myself, so he didn’t even need to feel guilty. If you’re both so hot for each other, why not go for it?

Of course, show biz is famous for its cheating spouses; it’s practically a requirement, so he certainly would have been doing just what everyone else at his job was doing. To make matters worse, soap operas would have no plots if it weren’t for cheating spouses. And what goes on in the dressing rooms is even worse. He was surrounded by cheating and cheaters. But what was wrong with our love affair all of a sudden?

Tom’s desperate romantic fantasy about this woman actually shows a kind of emotional naivete. He didn’t need her to get ahead. He had real talent. He was sexy, witty, skilled at finding and playing both the drama and comedy in a scene. But as I was to learn much later, there were deeper and much darker reasons which even he didn’t fully understand, but which plagued him all his life and sent him to an untimely grave.

Blog Post Twenty-eight 28 Bedeviled - Gaslighting

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 15:51:47 GMT

Gaslighting

This involvement of Tom’s at the soap was a disastrous for our chances of happiness. Tom’s psyche was far more fragile than mine. I had been seeing a psychiatrist for several years to recover from my psychological problems from my narcissist mother and to help me deal with the high pressure, highly competitive business I worked in.

But I can see now as I look back that whatever slender thread of love, loyalty, and even respect he ‘d felt toward me was muted almost instantly after he started work at the soap. Success and money had lured Tom into secret life and a cynical web of deceit.

Once my dreams gave me such a startling insight into a Tom I’d never known, I dug out his old diaries and read the entries from those early, exciting days on the soap. Reading them for the first time, I was struck by how unselfconsciously condescending and patronizing he had become toward me. I find comments like 'Marcy's feeling better about herself.’ 'Marcy seems to have more confidence', and 'Marcy's really come a long way'. Suddenly, Marcy, who’s been the rock for two years, paying bills, working in the high power, very competitive world of advertising, meeting new clients, and doing new and challenging jobs every day, has been turned into a helpless weakling. He’s undermining me as a person and belittling my career and success.

As I read his entries, I had to remind myself that I was a steadily working TV actress and model, in New York and all around the country. Does his new disparaging opinion of me reflect the influence of another woman who is competing for his affections?

He was a very insecure guy, and he knew nothing about modelling or the fashion world. I don’t think he’d ever even heard of Eileen Ford before we met. It must have been easy for his new romantic idol to make me seem like a loser in his eyes. He seemed to believe that she was his one hope for success, and he was aiming pretty low.

As a model, I did hundreds of different jobs every year, working for probably a thousand different people over the course of twelve months. You learn a lot when you have to earn each job. People in advertising are trend makers and trend followers. Over the years, I had gotten very shrewd about how to survive and keep working in such a capricious and competitive environment. Consequently, I knew it was going to be just as difficult to establish Tom as a working actor as it had been to keep my modeling career going. No one person was ever going to make you a star, not even the greatest director in Hollywood could do that.

Perhaps, he never got over his first impression of me as not very successful from my sparsely furnished apartment. But my longer experience in advertising had given me a clearer idea of what we were up against. The kind of success we needed was going to be a long, steady, cleverly planned siege of show business. You know, another one of those overnight successes that take ten years to accomplish. But he started hiding his secret agenda from me from the moment he got the soap opera job.

Yes, looking down on me from the lofty heights of soap stardom must have helped him explain his wandering affections. How very convenient. But to sell me out so quickly looks like he was eager to downgrade me. There was more to this than just a troublemaking woman. He must have wondered what was wrong, too. Why, if he was so madly in love with Marcy, did he find himself eager to play around with other women? He must have questioned himself and his conscience. I can assure you he did have one. He’d completely committed himself to a secret narrative that provided an answer to that question, but it was the wrong answer. And it ended up costing him everything, eventually, even his life.

Secret condescension is a slow, but very effective poison. He closed every door I’d helped open for him in my face. He never encouraged me in anything, always claiming to love me, but excluding me from his professional life in every way he could, making up all kinds of excuses. I was never invited to visit the television set when he was working, or to the after-work gatherings at the local bar with the cast members. He was hiding a terrible secret, but I never guessed that.

To all appearances, I was the pariah he was stuck with. We were married, but not married. It was very damning that the man I was married to restricted my participation in our professional social life as much as possible.

And looking back now, I find irrefutable proof that if he’d really been even slightly concerned about helping my confidence as an actress, there was one thing he could have done that would have helped me enormously. Just like Tom, I was also a member of both film acting unions. Any other actor married to such an employable wife would have been down in The Guiding Light production office every week looking for some small role for her to do, some day-player role or some part that lasted a week or a month, if for no other reason than the union benefits. They were always casting parts like that, and as popular as Tom was on the show, I'm sure they would have been happy to oblige him, at least once. But in all his seven years on the show, he never got me so much as one day’s work. His going to bat for me would have done wonders for my confidence, as well as giving me some valuable experience working on a TV soap set and something to put on my resume.

Tom was always a good negotiator who made sure he got everything he deserved from any deal he made. The union benefits of his wife occasionally appearing on the show were a perk that in normal circumstances he wouldn’t have passed up. But he never so much as suggested it. When I brought up the possibility, he made it sound he was working in a Gothic horror show, a place so malevolent and so rife with intrigue that I was better off not working there or even visiting the set. How convenient, it you’re playing around at work, right?

With some skepticism, I accepted his appraisal of the situation. It sounded a little paranoid, but Tom’s survival instincts were usually outstanding, so I didn’t really doubt him. And he was my fiancée. I had no reason to suspect that he had an ulterior motive. But he didn’t have an ulterior motive, he had an alternate storyline, the one with a tragic ending.

Now that I read his diary, I’m very hurt by his betrayal not only of our love, but of me as person. I, too, was a budding actress with ambitions of making a career in show business. Any little boost along the way would have opened many doors for me which would have made both our lives much easier and more prosperous. When we first met, I had worked very earnestly to help his career, giving him tips on how to land commercials, a better head shot, and emotional support. The minute he had the chance to return the favor, all he forgot about me, except to keep me from interfering with his secret life.

As I reached this stage in researching our past searching for evidence of his chasing other women, he was looking very much like a dastardly villain. Was he a total, unfeeling cad? Along about here, when I began to see how deliberately Tom thwarted all my hopes and dreams and betrayed my love, I started cutting up old pictures of him and throwing out memorabilia that I’d been keeping since his death. How could I have loved a man so much who had been working so selfishly against my happiness even before we were married?

Of course, hindsight is twenty-twenty. I should have known right then, when he never did a thing for me, that something was off kilter. But Tom had already gone very far down a dangerous path. By some trick of conscience, he’d exempted himself from playing fair with me and being honest.

But as I looked back at more of Tom’s career choices, the mystery only gets worse. There had always been a sense of turmoil in Tom. He always had to be in motion. Just sitting peacefully and enjoying the sunshine or a cup of tea was out of the question for him. He was being eaten up by something. But at the time, I simply thought he was a real go getter.

After proposing in the first flush of success, Tom put off getting married for almost a year. He made lots of excuses for the delay. We were busy moving to a one-bedroom apartment, and with all the excitement that went with Tom’s new success, a year’s delay didn’t seem excessive. At last, we got married.

Blog Post Twenty-nine 29 Bedeviled - The Honeymoon is Over Honeymoon

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Sun, 14 Jan 2024 15:51:47 GMT

The Honeymoon is Over Honeymoon

Photo is of Jamison Parker (Later star of Simon and Simon), his wife, Bonnie, and Tom in Paris

Tom proposed May third, but our marriage didn’t come off till April second of the next year. I have wondered how I didn’t notice the change in him, but landing a big important lead role on a soap opera was such a life altering event that I think an atom bomb could have detonated in Central Park and we wouldn’t have noticed. Fame is thrilling and humbling, even the small-time soap opera fame we had for seven years. For the rest of his life, people came up to Tom and remembered him as Justin on The Guiding Light or had seen him on Law and Order .

Although we could easily have gotten married at any time over the next year, Tom stalled. He claimed wanted a big wedding, till he found out the cost, then he scaled that back a bit. Then he wanted a memorable honeymoon in Europe. Two nights at the Plaza would have been fine as far as I was concerned. I reminded him we weren’t rich yet, but he insisted that he was only going to do this once, so he wanted to do it right.

So, we waited. He said they couldn’t give him two weeks off from the show, and maybe it was true, but now I doubt that. He had very conflicted feelings about love and marriage, which he never shared with me. I became rather exasperated with the whole thing. It was impossible to plan something when Tom wouldn’t even set a date. Again, I should have known something was wrong. But he kept throwing excuses at me, so I tried to be patient.

This is one case where I don’t think patience was a virtue. Marriage is one of the biggest decisions anyone ever makes. We’d been living together happily for two years. Tom had proposed. I thought the marriage was a pleasant formality. Obviously, there was some problem, which Tom refused to discuss or even acknowledge.

I guess I was just too busy, too much in love, and too naive to address the issue. It never occurred to me that stalling was his way of covering feelings that he didn’t know how to deal with and either couldn’t or wouldn’t confess to me. Since he was unwilling to explain his frustrating behaviors, my assumption was that he was a very temperamental actor type person, given to sudden freaks of behavior which had to be humored, or he’d just shut down emotionally. He would often become almost silent for several days. I would know something was bothering him, but he refused to discuss it. Now, the truth most likely was that he had some woman problem that he wasn’t going to talk about to his fiancée.

Perhaps he hoped the other woman would offer him some proof of her interest, or maybe her situation was as complicated as his. Most likely, he wanted to be available to take advantage of whatever proposition was on the table from her. But he was living with me, sharing a life, and pretending to be perfectly happy. We had so much in common, many friends from my modelling world and from his soap opera, an apartment, a history, and shared interests. It must have been hard to make the decision to give it all up.

But the secret urges and narrative propelling Tom’s affairs and career ambitions were growing more powerful. I think his woman friend on the soap must have balked, because he finally gave up on her and agreed to a date for the wedding, when he could put it off no longer. We hastily threw together a wedding and a trip to Europe. We did have four weeks’ notice, because they needed to write Tom’s character out of the soap opera plot for two weeks. That was another reason I hadn’t wanted to go to Europe and take two weeks off. But in trying to put off marriage, Tom made problems for himself at his job. This was one of the first times his emotional confusions made a mess of his personal and professional life. It didn’t seem like much at the time, but anything to do with marriage has deep roots.

It was insane to have a wedding for a fifty at our apartment, and then to leave for a two-week trip to Europe the next day, while both of us were working full time right up to the last moment. I nearly had a nervous breakdown trying to pull it all off. The first part of the honeymoon was visiting a photographer friend of mine who was married with a new baby and living in a splendid mansion in Ireland. Tom and my friend, Richard Noble, had become friends, too. And Richard’s wife Joan was someone I was just getting to know.

By the time we got to London, Tom was in a foul mood. He hated our hotel. Too late, we realized it was Easter weekend and every place we wanted to visit was closed. He wasn’t actually mean to me, but he shut down emotionally. It was as if this disaster called marriage was all my fault. He was cheerless and took no pleasure in anything. Our honeymoon of love was over before our real honeymoon had properly begun. It was grim, but what can you do thousands of miles away from home?

By the time we got to Paris, Tom was in a slightly better mood. Once again, he didn’t like the hotel, but he spent a day searching the city and found one that he preferred. We moved and he was mollified. Friends of ours who had also just gotten married came to visit us for a weekend. They were the soap actor Jameson Parker, who went on to star in Simon and Simon, and his new bride Bonnie, both very good friends of ours. She was an airline stewardess for Pan Am. Because of her flight privileges, she had promised that they would meet us in Paris for the weekend. They said if they made it, they’d meet us outside the American Express office at noon on Saturday. When we saw them standing there by their luggage, it was just a terrific and wonderful surprise. That finally cheered Tom up. For the first time, he started smiling and having some fun. Perhaps marriage wasn’t the end of the world.

I was scheduled to remain for an extra week to work in Paris. Why I agreed to do this, I can’t remember, but working in Paris was usually fun and the reward was getting great pictures for your book. In those days, no one did fashion better than the French. However, a few days before Tom was to head home, I came down with the flu. As always, there was no getting out of doing my booking. I’d have to remain behind in Paris, with a high fever, sick as a dog and working with strangers, all by myself.

My brand new husband was booked on a flight home in a couple of days, so we called a doctor. I’m sure the spirit world was doing their bit to save our love story, because the doctor who arrived was positively the handsomest man either of us had ever laid eyes on. He was tall with thick dark hair, chiseled, aristocratic features, and a St. Tropez tan. He seemed to have walked right out of Central Casting as the epitome of a French heartthrob. A breathtaking man. And he spoke only French, so only I could communicate with him.

Doctor Gorgeous spent twenty minutes or more alone with me in our hotel bedroom taking my temperature and writing prescriptions, while Tom waited outside. When the doctor exited and shook hands with Tom, even in my feverish, suffering condition, I could see that Tom was seething with jealousy and suspicion. I think it was the first time since he proposed marriage a year ago that his former passion for me was inflamed again. The handsome doctor ministering to his wife’s physical condition had made him recall that he very much wanted to be the only one ministering to all my needs. It really shook him up. That was the upside of having the flu in a foreign country.

When it came time for him to leave for New York, Tom was genuinely sorry to part with me. He had to go back, because in those early days, The Guiding Light was shot as a live feed, with only a twenty-four-hour lead time. Dr. Marler had to be back at Cedars Hospital. Sick as I was, I wonder if he feared he might never see me again. He kissed me goodbye for so long that even the French bus driver, who’d been happily ogling our passionate kiss, finally had to honk for Tom to get on the bus to the airport. I suffered through a week of shooting at the Chantilly Chateau in beautiful spring weather, coughing and pale as death, but applying lots of blush to make up for it.

Of course, I have no idea what Tom did while I was away. But being under the skies of Paris, “Sous Le Ciel de Paris,” as the song says, really did mean something to him that he never forgot, as I found out much, much later, from the afterlife. In spite of all the problems and conflicts he had about marriage and love, for a few days in Paris, he was glad he’d married me. This was all part of the hidden drama in Tom’s heart that was his version of our love story, so very different from my own.

Blog Post Thirty 30 Bedeviled - Synchronicity

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Sat, 13 Jan 2024 16:04:48 GMT

Synchronicity

The bar at the Blue Flame

The best material thing that ever happened to us came about as a result of the soap opera. We bought a house in the country. We both loved that house. It was our joint project. Like many other actors and artists, we created an investment for ourselves by using our spare time, labor, and artistic flair to work on a fixer-upper. We bought the house as a result of paying a visit to very good friend of mine from the fashion industry who owned a small house in the Rosendale area. It was to be a country weekend of fun, food, and work in the yard.

Tom mowed our friend’s lawn, I weeded his garden, we had a big dinner party, and played a killer game of Uno. The next morning, Tom drove to the local deli for the New York Times so we could all work on the Sunday crossword puzzle. While standing in line, he noticed a picture of a charming house on the real estate cork board. He always used to joke that he went out for the New York Times and ended up buying a house.

When we first saw the house, it was a mess with used tires piled in the backyard by a ramshackle shed. The yard was a couple of acres of weeds six feet deep. I was just going through the motions of showing interest to be polite. However, I knew that Tom saw something different when he oh so casually asked me "so, what do you think?" I thought I'd better take a closer look at my new house.

It took a lot of work to turn that house into our dream home, but it was a graciously laid out house with two fireplaces and shady, quiet bedrooms, set on a rise overlooking rolling fields bordered by charming old stone walls which wild turkeys frequented in the colorful autumns of upstate New York. For me, our house was the physical manifestation of the happy home and family life I so longed to have. Tom worked tirelessly on projects around the house. No matter what happened later, I still believe he loved that house just as much as I did.

It was at our dream home that the spirit world stepped in and tried to save our love story. This was an event that is referred to in psychic terms as synchronicity. From the internet: “Synchronicity is a concept, first explained by psychiatrist Carl Jung, which holds that events are "meaningful coincidences" if they occur with no causal relationship yet seem to be meaningfully related.”

This rather spooky example of psychic synchronicity in our lives took place in relation to our country home, Tom’s most visible symbol of his soap opera success and the one thing we did work on together and pour all our creativity into. This startling set of coincidences and the powerful emotional impact it had on him, plus knowing now the forces of self-destruction that Tom was fighting, lead me to believe that this event was manifested to open his mind to his past and help him face the old family memories and emotions.

It all started when Tom turned out to have a long-ago connection to the area where we’d bought our home. We discovered this connection only by accident after owning the house for several years, when second cousins on Tom's mother's side visited us.

The cousins, who’d known his mother when she was young, showed up unexpectedly to visit us at our house. Tom hadn’t seen either of them since he was a child. As we tried to make conversation, both cousins asked, in all innocence, “so by the way, how did you find out about this area? Did your grandmother tell you about it?” Tom was puzzled and had no idea what they were talking about. "This area," both cousins insisted. “You knew, didn't you, that your family and ours always came up here for summer vacations in the old days? That’s why we came back to this area, today."

Tom stared at them, stunned, searching his memory for some distant echo of what they were talking about.

It was as if the curtain that hides the workings of the universe had slipped to reveal the wheels within wheels. Tom had no idea that his mother’s family had ever visited our area. This connection instantly aroused his interest and curiosity.

Cousin Donald was only a little older than Tom's mother had been. He remembered pretty, young Helen quite well. She was only a teenager, a lovely, blooming young girl, when they'd been up here for a summer vacation. Donald described the cottages as being atop a hill, bordering a small lake for swimming. Across the road was a restaurant called The Blue Flame. This was where they would all gather for drinks and dinner.

"Yes," Donald continued, digging deep into his memory. "The last time we ever came up here was right before the war. I remember your mom and I were walking up the hill from the grocery store. She was only about fifteen years old and I kind of had a crush on her. Suddenly, someone came running down the hill. They yelled as they passed that the Athenia had been sunk. We raced up to The Blue Flame. Everyone was bunched around the radio listening to the horrible news report. A British passenger ship on the way to Canada with Americans on board had been sunk with over a hundred dead. Everyone guessed it was a German U boat and was shocked. We all knew it meant war, again. Your grandfather knew he'd be called back into the Navy. Your grandmother and all the women were crying. Your grandmother was so worried for Ed. He'd been through the Great War, and now he'd have to go back to war. We were all scared." He paused, as his mind returned to the present. "I'll never forget that day. That was the last time we were all up here, together." The other cousin shook his head in sad agreement at the shared memory. He, too, was a seaman in the Merchant Marines who had served in the war.

Tom and I were both struck in our own ways by Don's vivid memory of that fateful day and how the war had disrupted a peaceful summer by the lake and wrought havoc in all their lives and shaped their destinies.

But Tom's interest was deeper than just to hear about the war. He questioned them closely, hungry for details of some of his family’s history, some memories of his family before tragedy and despair had engulfed them. He was powerfully drawn to know, to touch and feel some touchstone to his past. "What was the name of the lake and of the town?” Don didn’t remember. “The restaurant was called The Blue Flame?" They went over the details, the setup, the location several times. They had been looking for it, too, and couldn’t find it; but they were sure it was somewhere right in this area.

Right then, Tom became determined to locate that lake, those cottages, and that restaurant. They said it wasn't much of town, just a grocery store, the cottages, a lake, and the restaurant. On a hill. A small lake. Right in this area, that's why we thought we'd stop by and see you. We were in the area, just remembering the old days.

Finding the mythical Blue Flame became an obsession of Tom's, and he began a determined search, a man driven by something more than idle curiosity. As a result, Tom and I spent many dreamlike afternoons driving all over the countryside, following every little side road and byway, asking questions every place we stopped; but no one remembered The Blue Flame. Then one sunny afternoon, up a road on a dusty hill, we found some very old, frame cottages by a road that dead ended at a small lake. There was a restaurant right across the road from the cottages. It was all exactly as Donald had described it. It had to be the place, although the restaurant was not called The Blue Flame.

We parked, looked around, and went into the restaurant. It was a good sized, unpretentious place, with a large, unmistakably World War Two vintage, horseshoe shaped bar, surrounded by knotty pine paneling and walls painted navy blue. Blue. We exchanged knowing looks. We sat down and ordered a couple of beers, while absorbing the atmosphere. It was like we’d stepped back in time. But though we were sure this must be the place, we wanted proof to make it real. We questioned the bartender and the owner. No, neither had ever heard of The Blue Flame.

When we thought about it, Tom's family had come here almost forty years ago. The restaurant must have changed hands many times over the years. Still, the interior was painted blue. And that horseshoe bar was so nineteen forties. We could almost picture Ed, Ann and their daughter, Helen, sitting here on summer evenings, relaxing after a day of swimming, and lounging in the quiet country, such a change from the busy streets of Manhattan, where they lived. It was so evocative. We wandered around inside and then outside, looking for something to confirm our suspicions, just so we could know for sure. The cottages were definitely prewar, and still very charming with their gray weathered wood and droopy porches. But they were closed and unused, now.

We walked over to the small lake. I tried to imagine what Tom was thinking. Was he trying to picture his mother as a girl with her family on vacation, still happy before the tragedy of her marriage? We walked back toward the restaurant, and it was then he noticed it, the old rickety trellis with dried up tendrils of vine twisted around it. Hidden in the arch at the top, woven among those vines, were the words The Blue Flame. We shared a quiet chill down our spines and a breathless moment of disbelief. We had the proof. It had been right there for forty years and even the owner had never noticed it. Still there. The Blue Flame, waiting for us to find it.

Synchronicity, time crossing over itself and replaying old events trying to make them come out closer to right. The repeated pattern begging to be recognized and successfully completed.

Tom was thrilled with the discovery, and we ate many dinners at that restaurant over the next couple of years. When his brothers visited our house, we brought them there for lunch and showed it to them. Tom took pictures of the three of them together at the same restaurant where his mother and her parents had vacationed so long ago. His youngest brother kept those pictures till he the day he died. Happy days. There were happy days for Mom, Grandpa and Grandma: a summer vacation. Tom felt all the joyful importance of it. His heart seemed to overflow.

But now that I know more about Tom’s family, I believe the synchronicity event happened when it did, at the height of Tom’s success, when he might have the confidence to dredge up some of the painful memories of the past, bring them into his consciousness, face them, and put them to rest. This was his chance to deepen his understanding of who he was and end his self-destructive behavior. That didn’t happen, of course, or I wouldn’t be writing this book.

I do believe the normalcy of a happy family summer vacation did help him to hang onto the good things in his life a little longer. But he never went beyond that.

Love tried to reach out to us from the world of spirit, but I didn’t believe in spirit world nonsense. Nor had I ever heard of synchronicity and neither had Tom. It never occurred to either of us that this was anything more than an unusual coincidence. The idea that the spirit world had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure we knew that this place and our house was special for us, simply wasn’t how we thought about life. And so, because we weren’t connected to our spirits and our hearts, we eventually lost our house and our chance at happiness. I guess neither of us really believed in the power of love to accomplish things in this world, or we’d never have left that house, which we’d worked so hard on and loved so much.

Blog Post Thirty-one 31 - Bedeviled - Divorce, Sort Of

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 16:55:03 GMT

Up Pops the Devil

Photo of our back patio of our house in upstate New York

This is when I first met Tom’s secret self, his inner devil driving him to self-destruction.

It was around the fifth year that Tom was on the show that daytime ratings for all soap operas started to drop precipitously. There were probably many causes. Cable TV was stealing audience share in the big cities by running feature films during the day, as well as round the clock news channels. The stay-at-home moms, who were the mainstay of the soap audience, had gone back to work, leaving their daytime stories behind. And people had begun to buy VCR's and rent movies. The audience share for soaps fell, which made them less economically viable because of the large cost of all the creative people needed to mount the daily new shows.

This was especially devastating for Tom, because he was used to being busy on the show. More bad news came when P & G shifted the writers who’d brought him onto The Guiding Light to another one of their soap operas. The new writers created their own new story lines and characters, so Justin Marler’s storyline was put on the back burner. Going in and sitting around for hours to do a short, meaningless scene was a real come down from the days when he'd been one of the main characters on the show. His character was sidelined, as were our dreams.

We spent his last two years on the show waiting for the ax to fall and working furiously on our country house. It was a way to stay productive, because everything we did would increase the value of our investment. With all the soap opera ratings in the proverbial toilet, our house was no longer our home, but our investment. That's what we told ourselves, but in my heart, it was still our home. It took a lot in those distant days to come up with the down payment for a house. You needed to have about one third of the total price of the house to get a mortgage. Quite a chunk of change to save up. But we’d done it and turned that house into something very charming.

We had struggled so long and so hard to get somewhere, and now it was turning to dust right before our eyes. We could lose everything: Tom's job, our house, our future, even our New York apartment would have to be given up if we had to move to LA to advance our careers.

The Guiding Light increasingly became a place of turmoil and unpredictable change. Producers were being fired, actors were being fired, ratings were dropping, and eventually Tom got fired. We’d gone from our greatest triumph to our most terrible disappointment, and in the span of just seven years.

The stress caused by all these changes had a toxic impact on our personal lives as well. We were facing hopelessness again, both now older and running out of time to make our dreams come true. During these last two years on the soap, an incident occurred that, as I look at it now, provides pretty convincing evidence that Tom was in still in very close and secret contact with his woman friend from his early soap days.

My guess is he thought she was his secret savior who would use her insider status to help him get a job. I believe around that time she’d moved back to California. Maybe he contacted her in a panic hoping she’d offer him a way out of his career dilemma.

Tom never breathed a word to me about her. I don’t know anything for sure. But her footprints are all over these next events in our life, so it’s likely there was some kind of secret whisperings going on. That flame had not gone out, at least not for Tom.

I had forgotten about this strange scene in our marriage, until I learned about Tom’s cheating. A friend who was a travel agent set us up with a long weekend deal in Puerto Rico. The stress at the soap was so punishing that we both needed a getaway. Tom wanted to get a tan, and I was thrilled to escape winter by visiting the Caribbean. We arrived at our hotel, and it was lovely. Under the palm trees, barefoot in the sugary sand, I happily signed up for yoga classes and snorkeling. The whole tropical atmosphere of the island was a wonderful relief from the winter blues in New York City and all our problems.

At dinner, as I sipped my Pina Colada, Tom looked at me and, without any preamble or even much emotion, announced, "Well, I'm thinking of asking you for a divorce." I remember those were his exact words, because for months afterward I grilled him about it. Needless to say, I was absolutely thunderstruck. Divorce!!!? If this was a movie, I’d have done a spit take. I didn't even know we'd had an argument.

Through my tears, I asked why. He said I didn't listen to him. Now, I know I am quite a talker, but frankly, with all the problems that were going on down at the show, it seemed to me that all I did was listen to him complain. There had to be more to this than my not listening. We’d been married for about seven years, and he’d never complained about my talking too much before.

If he was considering divorcing me, I had missed something gigantic, but what? Unfortunately, I am not one of those people who can remain cool and in control in trying situations. I wept and was in shock. The word divorce was just stunning. The bar bill at the hotel was stunning, too. It was all completely baffling. But I could get no more out of Tom than that he was seriously considering a divorce because I never listened to him. And though I was certainly listening then, that was all he would say.

That someone could reach the point of considering divorce, without ever bringing up any previous grievances, was so bizarre I really didn’t know what to make of it. And he was perfectly serious. My perception at the time was that he was so completely stressed out that he wasn’t quite himself. Not insane, perhaps, but overwhelmed by the stress.

Of course, had I been more mature, I should have stepped back and taken a long, hard look at my marriage. Something must have been terribly wrong and probably had been for years, if he could mention divorce so casually and with such finality. This should have been a big wake-up call for me.

In all honesty, I was so naïve and trusting that it never occurred to me that he might have been interested in another woman. The idea of divorce seemed to come out of the blue. It wasn't like he’d said he didn't love me. He never said that, but he wanted a divorce. I pestered him for months afterward for a reason, but he never gave any better answer, always insisting that I had to listen to him. I was listening, but he never told the truth of what he was doing and planning.

Blog Post Thirty-two 32 Bedeviled - We Lose Our House

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 18:16:39 GMT

We Lose Our House

Our House After Five Years of Work

Things Get Even Worse.

Of course, what I didn’t know then, but do now, is that he was actively involved in his secret relationship and an alternate plan for his life which meant getting rid of me. I don’t know how far it went or if his old paramour was still crying on his shoulder or even if she was still married. Tom certainly was. Whatever the temptation was that she offered, he was frantic in his attempts to pursue her, because things got much worse.

What happened very soon afterward effectively ended our marriage as any kind of real partnership, although I didn’t figure that out until decades later, after he’d passed over to the other side. For years, what he did next perplexed, infuriated, and confounded me. When Tom at last got fired from The Guiding Light, he had not been off the show more than a couple of months when he got an offer from another Proctor and Gamble show. It was a very good role and they wanted Tom and only Tom to play it. Yes, it was a bona fide offer, not an audition, but a straight out offer of a main character part. Great! We’re saved. It’s a miracle! A job!

Okay, we knew the soaps were dying, but they’re dying slowly. And yes, the last couple of years on Guiding Light had been an ordeal. But he could try working at this new show where the situation might be better. He can go on making good money, possibly get to do some interesting acting and perhaps even receive a little notice in the industry for being such a popular actor. We can keep our house. And we won’t have to start over in California cold turkey.

Only he turned the offer down instantly, and what was absolutely unforgiveable, he turned it down without ever telling me he’d gotten such an offer until it was way too late to retrieve it. He made the biggest, most important decision of his entire life without consulting me or even telling me what was going on. Yes, the marriage was definitely over, if indeed it had ever been a real marriage in Tom’s mind.

I was livid, outraged and stunned. He trotted out all the things we'd talked about when we'd planned to go to California as excuses, but that was all hogwash. There was no question that we had to go to California. That was where the show business industry was. The trick was to transition to LA without crashing and burning. Everyone we knew who’d gone west had done so by creating some career heat as an entrée into the LA scene. There were many ways to try to do that, but it was never easy.

However, I was a complete idiot not to have realized that Tom had a secret agenda which didn’t include me. Why the secrecy? What was really going on?

Clearly, once he’d turned down the best job in New York that he was ever likely to be offered, I did know there was a big problem. But with bills to pay that needed two incomes, I barely had time to think about what had just happened, because it was up to me to support us and try to keep us afloat as best as I could.

But then he did something even more baffling; after claiming that he turned down the soap job because we were supposedly decamping to California's greener pastures, he refused to put the house on the market and get going. He protested that we could keep the house because he was convinced something would turn up for him here in New York. Yeah right. I have a pretty good idea now of what he expected to turn up, and it wasn’t something in New York.

Now, I can make a good guess as to what he was waiting for. He turned down the great job which he’d been offered because he was such a popular and successful actor, in order to wait for a ticket to Los Angeles courtesy of his secret contact. I suppose he wouldn’t sell our house, because he planned to dump that in my lap, when LA woman got him the soap job offer in California. How easy it would be to hop a plane to an exciting new job on the coast, leave me with many kisses, assuring me that he’d send for me as soon as I sold the house. Then he’d explain via a long-distance call, or better yet, a letter, that it was over; he was now with so and so, and he really did want to divorce me. He was planning to execute the three-thousand-mile clause. again. I love you, goodbye, I’m leaving for LA.

He waited, and waited, but nothing happened. All the while, he was going on auditions for jobs that wouldn’t cover his bar bill. Spring turned into summer, and when his secret LA plan B feel through, we were screwed.

When the money ran low, we had to sell our wonderful house. His secret life was destroying every good thing he’d ever achieved in his life. He’d thrown away his job success, his house, sold out his wife as a loser, and planned to end his marriage. What in the world was the matter with him? The decision to accept the soap opera offer in New York was a no brainer, but he messed up. It’s just stunning to look back and understand for the first time how his mental problems destroyed both our chances of success. Yes, his inner secret devil popped up and drove him ever closer to the cliff of no return.

Blog Post Thirty-three 33 - Bedeviled - California Dreamin'

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 18:16:39 GMT

California Dreamin'

Our life in California went on as normally as life can go on when you’re unemployed in a new state and trying to break into an industry that already has was too many actors. We had arrived in Hollywood at the very bottom of the industry. Tom had a halfway decent agent. I had a very good modelling agent, but I was coming up on forty, so I was pushing the envelope on age in my career. Our life revolved around trying to survive, somehow. Some months it was feast, and some months famine.

Many years later, after Tom was gone, and I had consulted the well-known psychic, Pam Coronado to find out about my dream of Tom’s infidelity, she gave me the name that she saw as of one of Tom’s main flames. Once I knew what might have been going on, one incident, which I’d previously written about in my blog about our Hollywood adventures as the most romantic night of my life, took on an entirely new meaning.

More often than we know, I believe someone who loves us, either God, an angel, or a deceased relative, exerts their power over this world and shoves us in a better direction. I think they give us a chance to wake up and smell the coffee, if we possibly can, and avoid making big mistakes. I guess they can’t force a person to do something or to change, but they can make things happen which will head off the worst of our mistakes, at least for a little while.

Shortly after we’d finally sold our country house and moved to LA, there was an incident which involved the very person who was allegedly Tom’s secret temptress and whose siren song had such great power over his mind and will. Yeah, her. You’d think he’d have learned his lesson after he got stranded, jobless, in New York City. But no, he came back for more.

Once we got settled in Hollywood, the confusing things Tom had done back east appeared in hindsight to be simply the result of the demands our peculiar careers made on us. I was completely unsuspicious that there might be someone secretly working against our marriage and trying to get Tom to leave me or that he was an eager and willing partner in that scheme. When I was given the name of my alleged rival, this incident was probably far more important than I would ever have guessed in saving my marriage and keeping the home fires burning, romantically speaking.

We’d been in California barely three months, just enough time to get settled. It was our first Fourth of July on the west coast. We were invited to a big barbecue at the home of a woman who I thought of as simply one of our acquaintances. There would be lots of other actors and people at the party who we knew from back east. I was looking forward to seeing several of our old friends again. But other than that, this gathering was completely inconsequential in my mind. We might hear some interesting gossip, but these actors and even the woman giving the party were all soap people. According to Tom, he’d turned down the New York soap opera, and we’d sold our house, come to LA cold turkey to leave the world of soap opera behind, and move up in the industry.

Once again, I was completely misled. Tom apparently was in hot pursuit of this woman and hoped her contacts might help him get a soap opera job in California. My guess now is that she was the real reason we were in Hollywood.

The party was at her beautiful beach home along the California coast. It was a very pleasant party. Nothing stands out particularly in my memory. However, while I was innocently socializing with other guests, Tom and the other woman were no doubt having cozy little confabs right under my nose and probably figuring how soon Tom could get free of his wife and be available to her in all the ways she required.

Yes, my beloved was coldly calculating leaving me, suddenly, heartlessly and without warning. However, we were both about to get some big time help when we needed it most from the powers that rule the universe.

It was late evening on that Fourth of July when we started the long drive home. We sailed down the Pacific Coast Highway in our revved up postal jeep with top off and the starry nighttime sky over our heads. We cruised along in the balmy Los Angeles twilight, buffeted by the salty ocean breezes. It was truly California dreaming.

As he drove down the highway, Tom was off in his own world and seemed quite content. He was always great at logistics, so I'm sure he was figuring out how to arrange things so her could leave me. However, as we approached the Sunset Boulevard turnoff, everyone was going home from their beach barbecue, and the traffic was bumper to bumper as far as the eye could see.

Since we had to go from one end of Sunset all the way to the other end in Los Feliz, it looked to be a long, slow ride home. The traffic was creeping at a snail’s pace. At that moment, I believe the somebody was watching over us and stepped in. Suddenly, the jeep's engine temperature shot into the red zone. Steam billowed out from under the hood. We pulled off to the side of the road and let more steam off.

Once the engine cooled, Tom checked the radiator; it was bone dry. It must have sprung a leak. We were stuck. Nothing to do but try to get to a gas station to refill it. But in this traffic, the jeep will overheat again very quickly because there won't even be any airflow to cool the engine. It was stop, go, stop, go, making agonizingly slow progress in the heavy traffic. At last, a couple of blocks ahead, we spotted a gas station, our salvation. Except when we arrive, it's closed. Late at night on the Fourth, everything will be closed. Bummer.

Angry and disgusted, Tom grabbed a plastic jug from the back seat, found a water spigot at the station and filled the radiator with water. Then he refilled the jug. It won’t be enough water to go very far, but maybe there will be another gas station further on.

Unfortunately, we were at the far northern end of Sunset Boulevard, where it winds through some very scenic, but mostly undeveloped, remote areas. There are miles of deep canyons, a state park, a couple of college campuses, and some sparsely settled areas with expensive mansions, hiding in acres of landscaping. But there are no gas stations.

We crept slowly homeward. Tom loved cars, and that jeep was always a favorite of his. What a blow it must have been to him for it to break down, tonight of all nights, just as he was getting ready to launch himself as a free man.

However, once I realized that the steaming engine wasn't going to blow up, I wasn't upset at all. In fact, I thought it was actually kind of fun. We were in no hurry. Tom assured me the problem with the car was easily fixed and wouldn’t break our bank account. The drive along the fabled Sunset Boulevard was taking us on a leisurely journey through some of the most gorgeous scenery in Los Angeles. Everywhere we had to pull over and park while the engine cooled provided a stunning vista of distant lights dotting the fragrant hillsides.

Once we reached the pricey, more residential areas, we had to pull off onto side streets, where every house was someone’s dream home. We’d park beneath a fabulous blue jacaranda, or an orange or lemon tree, or alongside masses of intoxicatingly aromatic night blooming jasmine. Then we’d sit back, gaze up at the starry sky. It was a ravishing feast for the senses and a quick and sure route to Tom’s heart. He was always a very fond and affectionate man, and he was especially fond of me, in spite of his determination to desert me. On that long drive home, I was just the person to make him feel good and loved. We laughed, we snuggled, we dreamed, and we basked in the dark, delicious paradise that surrounded us.

It was always hard to get Tom to stop and smell the roses or the night blooming jasmine, but somebody was watching out for both of us and had gorgeously trapped him with the woman whose charms he couldn’t resist. Yes, with the help of the spirit world, I reestablished my firm grip on his earthy libido on that very romantic night. I’ll never forget our slow jeep ride to Los Feliz. It was a magical night, one I will always cherish. Whatever he thought of me and whatever plans he was making for his future, he couldn’t stop himself from enjoying being with me.

About four hours later, just as dawn was turning the sky pearly gray, we arrived back at our little apartment, safe and happy. Knowing how our lives are in the hands of a greater who helps us gratify our true heart’s desires, I think the threat to our happiness that night was very dire indeed. Having thrown away everything else, Tom was on the verge of abandoning our marriage and my love. But Love seems to draw power to itself from the great animating force of the universe, God. We were saved, because, no matter what, I loved Tom. And on that fateful Fourth of July, whatever and whoever Tom might think he wanted, he was trapped with his true love in a little bit of heaven on Sunset Boulevard.

Tom’s engine overheating? Pretty funny. Coincidence? I don't think so. Proof that God has a very active sense of humor. You bet. The Creator very certainly smiles on love. Someone in the spirit world was working very hard to keep Tom and me together.

After a year of California sunshine and health clubs, my impossible dream came true. After more than six years of trying, I got pregnant. Once I got pregnant, I had to quit modelling and acting in order to find jobs with steady paychecks to help out.

Blog Post Thirty-four 34 Bedeviled - Working Girl part 1

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Tue, 09 Jan 2024 20:13:20 GMT

Getting the Sitcom Working Girl

Working Girl Cast Photo

Based on talent and dogged determination, gradually, Tom began working more often on episodic nighttime shows. But being a guest star in episodic nighttime TV was not a job that could sustain you financially or in career satisfaction. It's what you did while you were waiting to get a real part as a regular on a show or get discovered by the movies. He auditioned countless times for the small, thankless guest starring roles that no one respects you for doing or considers anything more than window dressing for the star. Those roles got no recognition at all in the industry and barely paid the bills, especially if they were on new shows which would never rerun or see the light of day again.

But our life in those early days in Hollywood was a phony as everything else in Hollywood. We were living paycheck to paycheck, always sweating how we'd pay the rent that month. The absolute terror that living like that instills in you, always one paycheck and one audition away from crashing and burning, is cruelly stressful. To be always living in what we referred to as 'survival mode' was exhausting both mentally and emotionally.

Tom's experience shooting the nighttime television series Working Girl is a fine example of how things work in Hollywood. He’d gotten a lead role in the series. It was a great role in a sitcom that was centered around a young woman making it in the business world. Tom had the plum part of her boss. And he got the “And Starring” billing card at the end of the crawl. The role was perfect for him. No one else could have exerted power and masculinity in such a disarming and charming way, allowing himself to appear just funny enough, without sacrificing the dignity of his character. He was born to play this role, and his reviews were terrific.

Here's the scene: It was high summer in LA. All the hills were brown and covered in dry, fire prone chaparral, primed for wildfire by the hot, incessant Santa Ana winds.

The Working Girl pilot had been shot and was in the can, ready for the big fall season when the networks roll out their best bets for ratings hits. We had been promised a highly coveted time slot on that fall schedule. We were on cloud nine and eagerly awaiting the call to start shooting the next episodes.

We'd been invited to the cast party. The address is Beverly Hills and the mansion did not disappoint. It was truly palatial, perched in lordly fashion atop the brown canyons with the endless, flat suburb city of LA splayed out in wrap around views from every room and the terrace.

We wandered out onto the patio with glasses of undoubtedly very expensive wine. Tom surveyed the Los Angeles basin and made his frequent pronouncement, "Hollywood is the end of Western Civilization". He glanced around the crowded room full of chattering media moguls and was suddenly reminded of the movie The Time Machine with Rod Taylor. "Look around," he said. "We're here with the Eloi. It's perfect. They're all blonde with perfect bodies, nobody looks more than twenty-seven, they live on fruit, don't work, and they're totally indifferent to anyone's suffering. They don't read or write, their books have turned to dust, and they spend their idle days cavorting in the sun. H.G. Wells described LA perfectly. Hollywood is the end of Western civilization."

He was right. There were beautiful people everywhere. We did our best not to be conspicuous Morlocks. This was a big moment for both of us, especially for me, because these days I was momming it at home with a three-year-old and working as a sales clerk. I've heard about all the excitement and glamour second hand from Tom. This was my night to mingle with the big shots.

Now, of course, post dream confession, I realize that Tom only brought me along because he had to. There was no way he could go to the cast party and leave me at home. I'd have been furious, and he’d have had to start explaining the inconvenient truth that as soon as this show took off, he was going to divorce me.

Looking back, I see that Tom never introduced me to any of the people from that show or any show. Though it could only have helped him, he didn't guide me to some special friend or influential producer and brag about me. He didn’t say here's my lovely wife, former Ford model, Barnard graduate and mother of our wonderful son. No. Never happened. When we were at business parties like this, he acted like he didn’t know me. His excuse was that he was networking. I should have noticed. I really can’t explain why I didn’t. I guess Hollywood was so new to me that I was intimidated. But I was only trotted out on special occasions, where there were tons of mingling strangers and lots of business pressure, which aided Tom in keeping me off balance.

We circulated and noticed that Nancy McKeon, our star, had not yet arrived. Maybe she'd skipped this party, we thought. After all, she was a pretty big TV star already. Circulating to the bar to get free drinks, Tom reconnected with me. Someone had just told him that Nancy McKeon had left the show and that Working Girl was no longer on the fall lineup. We switched our drink orders from wine to vodka. We were shattered. I was hardly able to remain standing. We heard people around the bar, producers, writers, etc. discussing the change. Everyone said it would be fine. The new girl tested just fine with the studio audiences. Who was that new girl? Oh, someone no one had ever heard of, a very young woman named Sandra Bullock.

Our big chance was blowing up in our face. Now what? The rest of the evening was a blur.

So how did this all get started? The day after his forty-fifth birthday, Tom had an audition for a nighttime series based on the recent hit movie Working Girl. He read for the part of Mr. Trask, the boss of the title character. At the audition, he met Nancy McKeon, the star of the show, and Tom Patchett and Ken Kaufman, of PKE productions. Tom Patchett was the co-creator of the recent, hugely successful TV series Alf, starring an irascible, alien puppet who invades a family. Ken Kaufman had worked successfully in TV and movies for many years, too, all top Hollywood talents, people that anyone would be lucky to work with.

Tom came home elated. He felt he'd given a great reading, and that everyone liked him. We'd been in Hollywood for about five years. This could be it for us, could change our lives, finally and not a moment too soon. Our dreams may come true: the house, the job, the kid, all at the same time, the whole deal. It's so close we can almost touch it.

No matter what, getting a nighttime comedy series in Hollywood is a definitive moment in any actor's life. You've made it to the top drawer of television productions. In those days, it could be the ticket to fabulous wealth and fame everlasting. We were a little excited. Yeah. Every time we drove across Beverly Glen Boulevard from the Valley to Beverly Hills, we picked out multi-million-dollar mansions that we would like to live in.

Naturally, I was picturing us living happily together in one of those mansions. The far more likely scenario was that I would join the legions of Hollywood ex-wives, ungratefully cast aside with whatever a divorce lawyer could wrest from the reluctant hands of their now famous spouses. I would have been just as shocked as any of those wives to discover that my loving husband had just been waiting for the opportune moment to be rid of me.

The pilot was filmed, and all went well. It was in the can, and we had a plum spot on the network's fall schedule. Right, and that euphoria lasted until we got to the Beverly Hills mansion cast party, when all bets were off. We were still on the schedule, but they were reshooting the pilot in September as a mid-season replacement with a brand new young actress cast as the Working Girl. Our new leading actress was Sandra Bullock, who at that time, no one had ever heard of.

We got the new script. It was completely different. The focus of the show had shifted from a woman's challenges in the workplace to more emphasis on the working girl's working-class background on Staten Island. It had become more of a class comedy.

The story was that when Nancy McKeon heard about the shift from a working woman’s story to a show where she'd have to play lots of scenes with parents again, she quit. She'd just come off eight years on The Facts of Life, where she literally grew up on television, complete with stage parents. At least, that was what we heard.

Everything started over again with the new star, Sandy Bullock. With a great sigh of relief, Tom came home and announced that this new actress met and exceeded everyone's expectations. Sandra Bullock was more than competent. Tom thought she was going to be great.

Blog Post Thirty-five 35 Bedeviled - Working Girl part 2

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 20:30:50 GMT

Shooting Working Girl part 2

Tom and Sandra Bullock on the set in Working Girl

Finally, there was a taping of the new Working Girl show that Tom invited me to attend. I had never attended a live taping in LA before. But Tom had done tons of live tapings for many, many episodic shows since we'd moved west, so he was quite familiar with the process.

I arrived early, of course, met Tom outside the studio and got a chance to meet Sandra Bullock as she crossed to the dressing rooms. She was incredibly slim, very pretty, smiling, and very composed, a real pro, even though she was very young and just starting her career.

Then I entered the humongous studio taping area. The place was cavernous, as big as an airplane hangar for a couple of Boeing 747's and about as warm and friendly. The sets were arranged sort of boxcar style in front of steeply raked seating benches that ran the length of the sets. There were cameras moving silently around the floor below seat level, so they didn't block our view of the action; but they did create a wide gulf between the audience and the stage.

Tom had directed me to sit at the far end where the office set was and where he would play most of his scenes. For a dedicated and serious New York theater person, this set up was jarring. I'd been to a lot of different types of theaters: theater in the round, Shakespeare in the park, street theater, etc. But this set up demoted the audience to the lowly position of an afterthought, which, in Hollywood, I guess they are.

Then the taping began. They did the first scene, got some big laughs, which will be used as guidelines when they sweeten the taped and edited show with canned laughter. Then they started doing pick up shots. It was ten minutes or more before they moved on to the second scene. Same deal. We got a quick taste, then they stopped to do close-ups and retakes, fix props that didn't work right, get lines right, and get people in focus who'd missed their marks. Now, again, they stopped to move to another set. The actors disappeared to change costumes. Stop, start, stop start. It was infuriating.

After about two hours of this process for twenty-one minutes of show, I was ready to jump over the bleachers and sock somebody in the nose. As someone whose husband was in the hot seat, well, I could have wept with frustration. The rest of the audience was still laughing here and there, as they had throughout the taping. But the essence of comedy is timing and the subtle chemistry that happens between the actors and the audience.

By the time they were done, I was convinced there were no laughs at all in the show, and that we were doomed. I no longer saw myself living in Beverly Glen. Now I see us raising our son in a trailer in the high desert. I was numb, catatonic with despair. This was it, the end.

Finally, the torture was over. Tom was offstage, getting out of make-up and into street clothes. I waited with a hundred-pound barbell on my chest in the bleachers wondering how to break it to him that it was hopeless. I was approached by a tall, lanky, intellectual looking man with an impish grin who introduced himself as Tom Patchett. He had guessed who I was and come over on his own to meet me. Thank God he didn't notice the deer in headlights look in my eyes. He didn't ask what I thought. Good, because I was totally tongue tied. I couldn't even tell him that Bob Newhart, a man he'd worked closely with for many years as a writer on The Bob Newhart Show , was one of my favorite comedians.

But a miracle happened. This new Tom started praising my Tom. I was all agog with wonder. The man was full of confidence and thrilled. He told me with delight that my Tom was one of those rare comedy actors who got laughs the writers didn't know were there. The immensity of this compliment coming from a veteran comedy writer struck me forcibly. An actor who can get a laugh the writers didn't write was a comedy writer's version of playing on a Stradivarius. I was floored. And this compliment comes from a writer whose work was famously successful in Hollywood and had been for years. I was completely verklempt. It was a moment and a compliment that I treasured and will treasure till I die. Yes, I think, I always knew that about my Tom…. Well …. that is until five minutes ago, when I was going to tell him to quit show biz.

From an opening show card to my Tom from Tom Patchett, "Tom, I don't like it - you're starting to protect your own character. As soon as you realize how funny you are, you won't need me."

Daily Variety review of Tom O'Rourke, "One of the cast members with the most potential appears to be Tom O'Rourke as a powerhouse Donald Trump like character who gets to deliver some of the funniest lines. (When O'Rourke is told that an angry Merv Griffin is waiting in his office, he grumbles that Griffin is probably trying to "unload those casinos again.")"

I was so proud of Tom. Oh, my foolish heart. But I have always felt that Tom’s success on this show vindicated all my faith in his talent. He could have delighted millions with his charm, wit, and gentle humor, if only things had been different.

They did thirteen shows, which went on the air and did quite well. The network, after making us wait forever, decided not to order any more shows. We were cancelled. They had the young, super-talented actress Sandra Bullock signed on to a seven-year contract and they dropped her, too. They passed up a literal gold mine of talent when they cancelled that show.

That show was the biggest thing that happened for Tom in Hollywood. When Working Girl wasn't picked up, we were both devastated. But we told ourselves, you've been featured on a nighttime TV series. Now people will pay more attention to you, you'll get to read for better parts on television and be considered for good roles in films. We were confident that surely now Tom would be able to earn a steady living as an actor. But we were wrong. No interesting or uninteresting movie roles came his way, no more nighttime TV series principal actor jobs, not even a bump in his episodic auditions or a decent television commercial. We were stunned and back on our butts trying to pay bills.

Blog Post thirty-six 36 Bedeviled - Law and Order

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Sun, 07 Jan 2024 20:54:06 GMT

Law and Order and Law and Order SVU

Tom as judge on Law and Order, SVU

As the money ran out in Hollywood, suddenly and very unexpectedly, Tom got an offer to apprentice as a director on Guiding Light . Once again, I’d guess he prevailed on his soap lady friend to make a call for him.

It was not a sure thing. He had to apprentice for months, then direct a few shows, and everybody had to like him. Then he would have to join the union, before they could hire him. Still, it was the best offer he had. And his friends back on the show were enthusiastic to work with him again. They had wanted to bring back Justin Marler several years before, but, as is so often the case, that offer came at the one and only time in Tom's California career when he couldn't accept it, because he was shooting Working Girl and under contract.

Three years after arriving in New Jersey, we were still in the two-family house and nothing had gone as planned. When we had left LA, Scott Free productions had been seriously considering doing one of Tom’s scripts. But they decided not to option his World War Two murder mystery Hunter's Moon which they'd been looking at before we left Hollywood.

Tom spent a year learning how to direct a soap, doing a few shows, and getting his union card, and then the producer who promised to hire him got fired. I don’t believe it was ever a serious offer. It was one more career disaster.

However, within the first few months of our return to the east coast, Tom was lucky and talented enough to come to the attention of the Law and Order producers. Ed Sherin cast him in a terrific part for Law and Order , which was one of the few shows we had always watched and really enjoyed while living in Los Angeles. I’m sure he never would have gotten the audition and aced it so well, if he hadn’t had all his nighttime TV experience from our years in LA.

We both had the greatest respect for everything about the Law and Order shows. The scripts were terrific, the acting was top notch, and the production values were superb. Tom got a plum role as a defense lawyer and was thrilled. This was the best thing that had happened to us in years. The Law and Order people were also very happy with Tom's work and told him that he'd found a home there. They were as good as their word, and every year for the next decade, he did several shows each season.

Then, when Law and Order Special Victims' Unit started, he was cast as a judge and happily went on working for Dick Wolf Productions. Working for Dick Wolf Productions was far more professional and serious than most of the jobs in Hollywood. The work, the acting, and doing a great job were what mattered most. And it certainly showed on screen.

Tom was thrilled to be part of those shows, and he loved the people he worked with. He ended up working in over thirty Law and Order, and Law and Order SUV shows. The only downside to this job was that he only got to do it, to bathe in the luxury of working with great people, for several weeks total each year. That's very thin gruel for an actor to survive on. But working with these very talented and wonderful people was something that Tom could always be proud of. We had a renewal of hope. Maybe, somehow things will work out for us. I now had a full-time job in a nearby small insurance office. We weren't getting rich, but we were getting by.

I was happy enough, but Tom’s “depression” episodes were more frequent, and he never seemed happy anymore. I had no idea what the problem could be other than he wanted to work more often and do more interesting jobs. That was the excuse he always gave.

Then that crazy script Tom had written based on his drive back from his first trip to Los Angeles got made into a movie. We briefly went back to California for the shooting and more rewrites. The movie was made. We managed a small nest egg from the proceeds. Our lives got a bit better from knowing we had a financial cushion to tide us over in case Tom or I couldn't work.

He did many small parts in the top motion pictures that shot in and around New York City, and that was great and perked his spirits up a bit. He taught acting at several places, which all eventually went out of business. He tried working with his old manager Lloyd Kolmer to coach actors in how to succeed. Their combined experience was amazing, but they ended up doing it mostly for free. Nobody had any money. All their prospective students had borrowed money for expensive college degrees in theater that weren’t much help in getting jobs.

Tom spent his lonely evenings smoking and drinking. He’d sit in front of the TV set till all hours of the morning. That, in addition to constant acid reflux was a lethal combination for him.

I fought like crazy every way I could think of to try to dissuade him from his bad habits which were killing him, but to no avail. He’d been miserable for years. Down at the bottom of a well, he said. We were managing, and retirement was right around the corner, so it was very hard for me to understand why Tom had just given up on life. I knew he felt like an abject failure, but in fact, he’d done pretty well as an actor. Maybe not a big star, but he’d had a good career and done lots of work he could be proud of. I was proud of him.

I really couldn't understand why he took it quite so hard. Sure, we never got the Mercedes Benz or were able to send the kid to Harvard, but so what? We had each other and so much to be proud of. But Tom was not proud of us. He took no pride or joy in his achievements in the industry, or all our hard work in keeping us going. He went back to the bottom of that well and stayed there. Nothing and no one could reach him. Whatever love he’d felt for me, had long since died. We spent a few hours each evening together, talking and laughing, then I’d go to bed, and he’d macerate in his unhappiness, smoking and drinking alone in front of the TV.

Blog Post Thirty-seven 37 Bedeviled- The Frenemy Within

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Sat, 06 Jan 2024 20:29:45 GMT

The Frenemy Within

Photo is from Tom's last Videos on his Boldrascal channel.

I could easily have been very happy with my life at this time, but that was very far from the case. It’s very hard to look back now and realize how disconnected Tom and I had become without my knowing it. All I knew was that he was ‘depressed.’ In Los Angeles, he’d finally given in fully to his cheating ways, which left him isolated and trapped in a marriage that no longer made him happy. Even though we got along fine and enjoyed doing many things together, he was always depressed and distant. He was the ultimate frenemy to me and to himself.

Although he continued to be a concerned and somewhat involved father, he was indifferent to almost everything else in our life together. I was working a regular job, so I couldn’t tell how late he slept, but often I called home at one pm or later and no one answered the phone. Getting out of bed unless he had something to do was almost impossible for him. He didn’t want to face another unhappy day of his life. It really almost drove me crazy. And there was nothing I or anyone could do. He listened to no one, just smoked, drank, and tried to carry on.

There was one very unusual and upsetting incident with Tom during this time. One night, he came home very late and very drunk, without letting me know where he was. That had never happened before. He drank, but never to the point of drunkenness, because he always maintained an iron control over his emotions, except on stage. And he never stayed out late, preferring to have dinner at home and sit in front of the TV all by himself after my son and I had gone to bed.

But on this night, when he staggered into the apartment at four am, he'd completely lost control of his emotions and was in a mean and nasty mood. When I grilled him angrily about where he'd been and what was going on, he got ugly. In a rage, he accused me of ruining his life.

Of all the things that he might have said in a drunken rage, this was a complete surprise. I ruined his life? What was he talking about? It was, once again, another charge against me that seemed to come out of the blue with no prelude, no particular event in our lives, and nothing to suggest there was a problem between us. And suddenly, I’d ruined his life?

He just kept repeating that I had ruined his life, without saying why. I was furious that he could dare say or think such a thing after all I’d done for us. Finally, he fell asleep. The next day, he refused to explain, only saying that he'd been drunk and didn't mean it. I couldn't make any sense out of this.

But Tom had passed the point of no return a long time ago. After many, many emotional scenes when I tried to break through to him, I finally gave up. I’d just leave him out in front of the TV watching some movie for the millionth time and go to bed. All I could do was suffer and cry alone, offering God my suffering as a gift, since I didn’t know what else to do.

There was so much in life to enjoy. Our son was growing up. We had our evening chats. We’d visit the city for long walks and going to museums. But none of it seemed to touch him or bring him any happiness. Every time there was a full moon, he’d take me out on the porch and give me one of super special kisses. Then, every night he’d go back to the bottom of his deep, dark, lonely well of despair.

Our life bumped along. Sure, we'd managed to do very little more than survive, but in my opinion, we had so much to be grateful for. Tom had a decent pension and good health care benefits. Once we left the New York area, our living expenses would go down, and our living standard would go up. We would be okay. He'd always wanted to open a little antique store. We could do lots of things, once we retired.

We survived the teen years and a couple of years of community college with the progeny. Tom was still doing a show or two a year for Law and Order: SVU. The executive consulting firm I worked for was a casualty of the latest recession, so I was between jobs. At last, I began to figure out the internet and decided to put Tom up on Youtube. He was such a natural raconteur that he was sure to be a star. Maybe if we could just access this new digital world, he would finally be a breakout star and be happy at last. (They are up on Youtube as Boldrascal)

Tom really enjoyed making those videos. For a few short months, we worked happily together, like we had when we’d first met. Back then, when I’d talked Tom into doing a new acting headshot in my little garden behind my basement brownstone apartment, he’d respected and believed in me. We’d been in love. We actually got going on making Youtube history with our Tom videos, but after only a few, he got sick.

For over thirty-five years, I had never been privy to Tom’s secret life or his secret self. It took a lot of psychic work to open my mind so he could confess the truth and help me to “face it.”

Blog Post Thirty-eight 38 Bedeviled - The Final Proof

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 23:18:51 GMT

The Final Proof

In my new home in Bellingham, Washington, a mist ridden town on the Pacific Northwest Coast near Canada, I spent many troubled days walking by the glittering waters of Bellingham Bay, scouring my memory to unearth any details of my past that might exonerate Tom or provide further evidence that my worst fears were true. I keep telling myself it was only a dream. And the subsequent dreams of Tom chasing other women were only dreams, too. I don’t have to believe then, do I?

I have written a few previous posts to give the reader some idea of what our life was like, so you could judge the facts for yourself. These were particularly difficult to understand actions that Tom took which now have completely different possible interpretations given my new suspicions.

Even after going over the events in our life which were fairly persuasive proof of Tom’s ongoing infidelities, I still couldn’t convince myself. Afterall, it was just circumstantial evidence; maybe there was some other explanation possible.

Then, another damning memory popped up. I remembered something that had happened shortly after I’d first settled in my new home in the Pacific Northwest, while I was still grieving. I was trying to deal with being on my own when suddenly a life-threatening problem arose. Paralyzed by fear, with no one to turn to, so I searched out Pam Coronado, the famous psychic from the TV show Sensing Murde r. Having watched her many times on television, I knew her predictions were absolutely reliable, and that I could trust what she told me. I set up an appointment to talk to her by phone. She was as brilliant with my problem as she had been on TV and able to give me the facts to alleviate my fears. And everything she had predicted back then turned out to be absolutely right on.

But a funny thing happened during that session, which I believe was actually why my crisis and this call were “orchestrated.” She said that Tom was there and telling her that I would write a book about his true story, and that book would hit it big and come out of the blue, like the book Fifty Shades of Grey . Needless to say, I was astounded; I couldn’t imagine what in Tom’s true story could possibly be a big hit book like Fifty Shades of Grey . It never crossed my mind that he was telling me there was sexual misbehavior in his true story.

I was thrilled with Pam’s prediction about writing a hit book. As a result, I turned my fairly successful blog posts about the adventures of an actor’s life into the ebook Don’t Quit Your Day Job . Now, a few months after the cheating dream, I suddenly remembered Pam’s words: Fifty Shades of Grey and Tom’s true story. Of course. Confirmation of my worst fears. Then I knew my horrible dream had been true.

And Tom had kept telling me through Pam, “Face it. Face it. Don’t hide anything.” Well, facing it was easier said than done. And what had been hidden, was even harder unearth and to face. I knew that I’d have to call Pam again to see what she could tell me.

Blog Post Thirty-nine 39 Bedeviled - Psychic Pam Coronado

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 21:46:49 GMT

Psychic Medium Pam Coronado

Pam Coronado

After working through much of my anger, I made the big decision to call psychic Pam Coronado again. It had been a couple of years since we last spoke. Everything she had told me at that time was accurate. And her mention of the book Fifty Shades of Grey in her prediction from Tom about his life story had proved to be painfully true.

Since the revelation about my marriage had hurt me so deeply, I needed to consult a proven professional psychic like Pam, who could definitively confirm or refute what I had seen and perhaps provide some details. Though it might seem vulgar to want details, if I don't know more about with whom, how often, when, and, most important, why Tom was playing around, I’d never figure out who Tom really was.

In preparation for talking to Pam, I had several women acquaintances of Tom's who were now on my suspicious list as possible affairs. The minute I told Pam the story and she started looking at Tom's life, she physically described one of the women perfectly. And when I said this woman's name, she told me she'd gotten that name, but in a very funny way. She herself had just recently gone through a divorce, and in one of her dreams, that name had come into her mind very clearly and strongly as someone who was illicitly involved with someone's husband, and she presumed it was her own husband. She searched all her acquaintance, but there was absolutely no one she knew with that name. Well, mystery solved. It was my husband who had been cheating with that alleged person whose name I won't mention.

Of course, once I knew this woman's name, a different picture of many incidents in our life started to emerge. This was the woman connected with Tom's job at The Guiding Light right from his first day of work there, so the trouble did go way back to before we were even married.

Now that we had a name, Pam looked more deeply into Tom's life. She said she was going to look at Tom's life, not speak to him, because she found that the dead sometimes don't tell the truth. Well, he hadn’t told the truth when he was alive, either.

Looking at his life, what she saw was that Tom had wanted to be free of me because he felt the only reason he wasn’t as successful as he should be was that being married had prevented him from “schmoozing” with powerful women in the industry who could further his career. She said he absolutely refused to accept that he didn't have enough talent or good looks to be successful; no, he blamed me, because being married had kept him from being free to pursue and hang out with these powerful women and achieve success. And she said that he blamed me, even though she could see very clearly that he knew our marriage had been his own decision.

She said that the woman whose name she’d gotten had been angry that Tom didn’t leave me for her and had taken revenge on him by keeping him from getting a good job where others had wanted him. I wonder if he knew that his schmoozing had actually backfired and cost him a good job? Well, he knows it now, doesn’t he.

But I was stunned and couldn't quite make sense of what Pam had told me. Could that really be true of the Tom I knew? He was chasing powerful women to achieve success? But it certainly was consistent with the woman whose name we got. And I knew he’d done all his cheating during working hours, so that fit the pattern, too.

However, even though Pam confirmed my worst fears about the truth of my dreams that Tom was a constant and angry cheater, still the things she said seemed very puzzling.

It was difficult to believe that Tom could actually thought his only route to success was sexual flattery of powerful women. This made no sense. I’d been by his side through all of his successes and knew for certain that powerful women played hardly any role at all in those successes. Why would Tom think he needed to schmooze powerful women to be successful?

Also, the way Pam said he refused to accept that he just wasn’t good looking or talented enough to be successful didn’t make sense either. Of course, he refused to accept that. It wasn’t true. He’d more than proved he was good-looking and talented enough to be successful. Nobody could possibly doubt that.

You don’t play a romantic leading man on a national soap opera for seven years and help raise the show’s ratings to the top three, without being a very good looking and talented actor. He was on TV daily in front of an audience of millions delivering sexy, romantic, and dramatic scenes that kept people tuning in for seven years, day after day. No powerful woman in the world can help you do that. And in appearances at malls and publicity events, I’d seen the way his woman fans were thrilled by handsome, charming Tom. Not good-looking enough? Not talented enough? Gimme a break!

And later, he’d starred in a nighttime sitcom with some of the best people in the industry. That was certainly proof he was loaded with talent. We had TV veteran Tom Patchett’s praise for his great comedy gifts. Getting laughs in a sitcom is an art. It’s all about timing, character, and delivering lines with wit, a gift that he was well-known for when he went on to play a sardonic judge on Law and Order SV U. Once again, he achieved those successes all by himself. Nobody can help you when the camera is rolling, and you’re out there all alone on stage; and he knew that.

He was right; he was good-looking enough and talented enough to be a big success. So, why wasn’t he? Over the years of his career, I’d certainly asked myself that question often enough.

When he was on the set, it sounds like he was constantly “schmoozing” some powerful woman, rather than networking with people who were impressed by his good looks and formidable acting talents. Maybe this is a better explanation of why he wasn’t a bigger success.

We spent ten years in Hollywood. Tom worked all the time in episodic TV. It mystified that he never made any new friends or contacts that led anywhere. No one ever wanted to get to know him better, as a person. Nobody ever wanted to meet his wife or have dinner with us. Now I know why. Instead of exercising his engaging personality, he spent his time on the set schmoozing. I’m sure he’d acquired quite an unsavory reputation.

His behavior was so unlike the usually very savvy Tom, that I couldn’t understand it. What Pam must have been seeing was Tom’s hidden persona. The Tom I knew and lived with for thirty-five years could never have been so naïve as to believe the only reason he wasn’t a star was that he wasn’t free to zoom the producer babes. He wasn’t a fool. However, on some emotional level, he bought into this ridiculous narrative. My instincts told me this was just a rationalization to justify a deeper, more complex psychological problem.

Pam had the facts right, but not the answer to the question of why for thirty-five years he’d run after women who had only a passing interest in him and never did a thing for his career. It sounds like the definition of stupid, but Tom was not stupid. His actions weren’t just irrational, they were self-destructive. It was like he had a angry, crazy person living in his head.

I needed to go deeper into Tom’s mind, but how could I do that since he was dead? I needed to understand the real story.

Blog Post Forty 40 Bedeviled - A Fatal Legacy

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 21:46:49 GMT

A Fatal Legacy

Tom and his mother in his baby picture

After I’d taken stock of much of the damage Tom had done to our life by his cheating, I still really couldn’t understand what had been going on in his mind. How could he lie to me every single day of our life together? What had driven him to wreck his life and career by schmoozing powerful women? What was his problem?

Frankly, at this point, I felt duty bound to hate him for the rest of my life. I tried, but the awful truth was I still loved him like crazy. He was a terrific guy and worked very hard so we could have the best life he could give us. He never let us down when we got into trouble. Unfortunately, as I re-examined the events in our life, most of our troubles looked as if they were the result of his schmoozing.

However, if he’d been simply feigning love for thirty-five years, there would have been an emptiness between us or some veiled contempt for me. There had never been any of that. I had loved him because he had been lovable and returned something like love when we were together. But since his first dream confession, there was a nasty, angry Tom who kept appearing in my dreams, and who was always running away from me to other women. Who was that Tom, and why was he such a big and secret part of Tom’s life? And why was Tom so angry at me?

Tom began the process of unfolding his mental state by sending me more dreams that gave me some insights into his secret world. The dreams were like watching movies, where the story has an emotional truth hidden inside. He was letting me feel some of the agonizingly painful emotions that drove him to cheat and also to his death.

The first dream turned out to be the most revealing. In this dream, I am wandering through the lovely parklike grounds around a huge estate looking for Tom. It’s a palatial estate with many parties going on inside. But, since I don’t see Tom on this side of the grounds, in order to get to the other side, I must walk through large, muddy puddles. It is only by getting my shoes muddy that I can find him.

I find Tom. He is lying on his back, frantically smoking a cigarette; I can see and feel that he’s furiously upset, and in terrible emotional agony. He’s so hurt and enraged, it’s painful to look at him.

When he sees me, he begins savagely kicking at me like an infuriated child, yelling at me to keep away. Over and over, he screams, “Leave me alone! I can take care of myself! Go away!” He keeps dragging on the cigarette and kicking. “I can take care of myself. I don’t need you. Leave me alone.” Evidently, he can’t get up, but he can kick and smoke his cigarette to take care of himself. He is terrified that I will come nearer to him.

Only recently, a family member finally told me the tragic truth. Somewhere around the time when Tom was fourteen, shortly after his grandfather passed away, his mother was suspected of some sort of sexual misbehavior involving Tom. This was the secret reason his grandmother, then a widow, had sent him away to live with his violent, abusive father. What that behavior was, I can only guess, but referencing the dream, it looks like his mother made inappropriate advances to Tom.

After initially writing this book, and for many years, I had been so fixated on the all too familiar story of a violently abusive father, which Tom’s father certainly was, that I hadn’t thought about his mother. I’d always assumed she was just a victim of spousal abuse. I think furious Tom in my dream was actually angry and yelling at his mother.

During our marriage, Tom had told to me that his grandmother suspected her husband of ‘doing something’ with his mother. This would be after she and her sons had left her violent husband and come home to live with her parents. Researching the new information about Tom and his mother, I checked the dates on the family records I have. Tom’s mother left her husband when Tom was about ten. Tom’s grandfather passed away a few months before Tom turned fifteen.

I remember in the first reading by Pam, when I knew nothing of Tom’s infidelity, he kept saying ‘face it, don’t hide anything.’ I thought I’d faced the worst when I realized he’d been unfaithful. It has taken me much longer to face the reality of some degree of incest. While no one still living can say for sure, the emotional depth and self-destructiveness of Tom’s mental problems lead me to believe that his mother may have been sexually inappropriate with Tom in some fashion from a young age. It seems sexual behavior with a minor is so violating, that it creates permanent psychological damage that lasts into adulthood.

It’s awful even to imagine. And how much worse for Tom to carry such a shameful and infuriating memory seared into his psyche for the rest of his life.

Sexual abuse is a terrible, secret family tragedy that appears to be a fatal legacy for those involved. I believe that Tom’s mother may have been abused as a child, leading to her lifelong sexual and alcohol problems, then ultimately to her own very early death. Was his mother passing on the abuse she’d endured as a child? By the end of her life, she had sunk very far into depravity. She died an alcoholic before she was forty years old.

What a destructive and shocking secret! Tom had all the classic symptoms of childhood sexual abuse. He had two distinct and opposing personalities, an exaggerated terror of being vulnerable, secret anger at me for loving him, and deep depressions where he was at the bottom of a cold, dark well for days on end, completely unable to feel anything.

Blog Post Thirteen 13 - Bedeviled - You're Dead

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Tue, 02 Jan 2024 22:38:39 GMT

"You're dead."

Photo above is the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station, NYC

My son and I got through Thanksgiving and Christmas and as the months passed, I knew we really should have a memorial service of some sort for Tom before we moved away. I had absolutely no idea how to pull that off. In the first place, who would come? We really had only a handful of close friends, and no church. In my lowest moments, I could just picture what the service would be like. Some unfamiliar church where a pastor or priest who never knew Tom would say a few words to mostly empty pews. That vision was so pathetic, it seemed better for all concerned just to skip the whole idea.

There was a church in the theater district in the city to which Tom had retreated quite often between auditions, because that church was always open during the week. This was the church where he’d met the angel, ( I will post an account of the angel later.) so I did feel drawn to that Church as a very special place.

But the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin was in New York City. The few friends I can rely on to attend were in New Jersey. It seemed hopeless. I felt terrible for our son. He should have his father's passing honored in some way. But I was at a complete loss and had no ideas at all. Depressed. Grieving. Hopeless. Overwhelmed.

However, one of Tom's long time best friends had invited me out to lunch at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station in the city. He and Tom had been friends since Steve worked as a stage manager on the soap opera the Guiding Light over twenty-five years earlier. Steve had long ago left soap operas to direct sports and the nightly news. He’d been a great friend all our life and especially through Tom's illness, when he came with us to doctor's appointments, chemo sessions, and medical procedures whenever he could. We shared the terrible loss of Tom. Our Oyster Bar lunch was a chance to reminisce and drink too many martinis to ease our pain.

The night before our lunch date, every time I fell asleep, I was plagued by the same recurring dream, which was so vivid it kept waking me up. In the dream, there was a party going on, and I was the hostess. Everyone was drinking, laughing, and having fun. And strangely, Tom was very much present, too, as if he were a guest at the party. He kept looking at me, as if to say’ pay attention’. Looking around at the guests, I recognized some of them as former cast members from the Guiding Light.

But my dream self was outraged by this party. Furiously, I confronted Tom, demanding, "What's going on here? You're dead. Why is there a party?" He didn't answer. Then the doorbell rang. I knew I had to answer it and let some more people join the party. Again, I scolded Tom "You're dead! Why are these people coming to a party when you're dead?" Even more baffling, no one seemed to notice that Tom was dead; it didn't seem to matter. My sense of irritated bafflement was overwhelming. I kept hurling accusations at him, "You're dead! Why is there a party?" And the doorbell would ring again. I have since wondered if bells ringing isn’t one of the signals used to wake up a person’s spiritual self. Many religions include the loud and continuous ringing of bells in their worship services.

Another strange thing about the dream was the way I kept reminding Tom that he was dead, but I was speaking to him as if he were alive. Yet, I was clearly aware that he was at the party in the state of death. Furthermore, in life when Tom was sick we’d never mentioned the word dead or death. But my dream-self was very insensitive.

All night long, that same dream kept playing over and over. I got no sleep and woke up in a terrible mood. A party when Tom is dead. A party when Tom is DEAD? What the heck was that all about? Why were those Guiding Light people at the party? And why did Tom keep looking at me so steadily like he was trying to tell me something?

Then, like a mental head slap, it dawned on me! A party for you when you're dead is a memorial service and a wake. Maybe Tom was trying to tell me (frantically, over and over again) that I had to have a party for him when he's dead. And he was certainly very emphatic about it. Frankly, as overwhelmed as I was, it's amazing I managed to figure this out, which is not to say that I initially believed the dream was anything other than a dream, but it weighed on my mind as I rode the bus into New York City that morning for lunch with Steve.

Although I was pretty sure by now that there was such a thing as the paranormal, and that there were people with psychic powers whose dreams told them things, the actual possibility that this might be happening to me seemed quite farfetched. I really think deep down inside, I didn't want to accept that these were communications from the spirit world, because I just wanted to be left alone. I wanted to give up on life, not expand its meaning. I resented the burden of these extrasensory spiritual duties and awareness on my conscious world.

After a couple of martinis with Steve, I relaxed a bit and confessed I was very discouraged about having a memorial service. (I didn’t dare mention the dream! For heaven's sake, I didn't want him to think I'd lost my mind.) But Steve was more than glad to talk it over and advise me. I mentioned to him that Tom had a special church he loved in New York City where he often went to pray during the week, but this would be a big trip for our New Jersey friends, many of whom were older people. And I didn't know if the New York church would even do a memorial service for Tom. Besides, the main problem was who would come.

Steve understood my dilemma, but to my complete astonishment, he told me that several of the people who had worked on Guiding Light back when he and Tom were on the show had contacted him since Tom's passing to express their sorrow. It had been so many years since Tom had anything to do with Guiding Light or any of those people that it had never occurred to me that any of them were still around or interested in Tom. But Steve felt sure they would come to the service and the wake. He also felt that New York City was a good place to have the service because it was a central point for everyone in the area. He still had his apartment on the upper West Side and would be glad to help host the wake there.

Once Steve mentioned Guiding Light people coming to the wake, I got a scary feeling in the pit of my stomach and felt sort of bypassed. Some power outside of normal was acting through me. This wasn't just a dream where my conscience was pricking me; there was real information in this dream that I had to act on. The undeniable clues were too blatant for even skeptical me to ignore. Every time I thought about those Guiding Light people appearing in my dream and then Steve mentioning them, I couldn't explain the dream away so easily.

A dawning sense that things were not in my control, and that powers beyond mine were urging me forward, gave me the confidence to believe that I was supposed to do this. At least the memorial service and wake wouldn't be the small, sad little affair that I had feared. Guiding Light people still remembered Tom. And, from his years of living in New York, Steve also knew the perfect caterers to handle the 'party' for Tom, (even though he's dead).

Gathering all my courage, not knowing if The Church of Saint Mary the Virgin would even consider doing a memorial service for someone who was not a member, I went to the Church, where I met Father James Ross Smith, who couldn't have been nicer or more accommodating. Father Smith and the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin were indeed a dream come true. They had a lovely side chapel for services just the size ours would be. Lost in the dark night, I just kept walking by faith, and someone was guiding those footsteps in the right direction.

I had gone through the whole memorial service's planning and accomplishment in something of a trance, never for a moment believing that it would actually work out, staggered when things went well. My halting, uncertain, fearful steps forward felt very much like the incident in the bible where Jesus asks the disciples to walk on water. Insanely, by my rational standards, but trusting that, somehow, I really was being guided by Tom in the afterlife, I had closed my eyes and stepped forward onto that watery surface. Miraculously, I had not drowned, but instead had succeeded in carrying out something very important. My life had become a pure act of suspending what I had formerly thought of as reality and substituting faith in a higher power which could probably be called God. How else to explain it?

The memorial service dream and experience fundamentally transformed me, although I didn't realize it right away. But it was the beginning of my trust that somehow there was real communication between Tom and me. He had shown me what to do and given me a shove to do it. I was convinced that the dream was real. I had to begin to accept as fact that Tom's spirit was alive and well, somewhere, and talking to me and perhaps even taking care of me. Maybe there really was a God and much closer and more involved in my life than I'd ever imagined. Some part of myself that I never knew before was waking up and making a new person out of me, a person who had a strong sense of being partly in this world and partly in the spirit world. As a result, I became more attentive to the clues in my dreams that might be telling me important things.

Blog Post Forty-two 42 Bedeviled - Mental Cuba

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Mon, 01 Jan 2024 22:15:17 GMT

Mental Cuba The Nightmare

The Unhappy childhood

When Tom was alive, I’d asked him about his childhood, he’d reluctantly confessed that, even as a very young child, he’d often tried to protect his mother from his violently abusive father. That has to be another reason why love is so terrifying to him. Violence, physical pain, injustice, and chaos are the feelings he associated with love.

Another dream revealed more of Tom’s subconscious world to me. All three of us, including our son, are in Cuba, living under a communist tyranny. The Cuban police have taken some prisoners to a beach for an outing, but no one is allowed to swim for fear they might try to escape. In other words, the pleasure and release of being in the water is forbidden. This is interesting because Tom had an actual phobia of large bodies of water. Once, when we canoed down the Delaware, whose depth was about four feet, he nevertheless was visibly terrified to be in the middle of the river many feet from shore, even though at six feet five inches tall he could easily have walked to dry land.

Water often is symbolic of emotions. Due to his childhood physical abuse, Tom learned that survival meant keeping a firm grip on showing his emotions, repressing and locking them up so tightly that any sensation that threatened to release them was frightened him. As a child, if he’d responded emotionally to his father’s violence, he was sure to get smacked around even more.

As I have previously said, he showed almost no emotion at all for the whole year when he was suffering so horribly and dying of esophageal cancer. Nothing. No fear, he let not even one tear fall. Yes, he’d learned very early never to let go of his feelings and ride the waves of emotion. This accounts for his strange difficulty in orgasming the first night we were together. It was practically impossible for Tom to let go and experience any feeling, good or bad.

To continue with the Cuban dream, Tom puts on blackened glasses that actually obscure his vision as well as make him appear to be a helpless blind man to the guards. They relax their vigilance, believing that my son and I cannot escape without Tom’s help. When their backs are turned, with Tom running interference, my son and I sneak into the water and swim to freedom. Tom’s ruse has allowed our escape.

Tom is showing me that he experienced his mental problems as a powerful and blinding tyranny, which Tom, the good father and husband, could only deceive, not vanquish. His deception allowed him a brief beach holiday, but he couldn’t indulge in any swimming, (emotion) or escape the oppression of his guards. He sacrificed himself so we could be free.

During our marriage, I learned a great deal about who Tom’s father was, so the parallels to life in a tyrannical state are very revealing. His father was a brutal, bullying, joyless, and jealous narcissist, who was unable to experience any pleasure but anger.

Tom had once told me that a psychiatrist had diagnosed him as suffering from a fear of annihilation. I think that fear was deeply embedded in Tom’s character and so internalized that it was beyond the reach of his rational mind.

The emotional overload of Tom’s early sexual violation added to the terror of his father’s violence must have been unbearably intense. The experience of helplessness, terror, and sex on an unformed child’s mind appears to have literally shattered his soul into two identities.

Tragically, this brutal father and his reign of terror became part of Tom’s unconscious. Some part of his mind was possessed by a constant fear of the jealous, violent father. I believe this internal mental fear is why Tom was afraid to hang on to his success, his possessions, and even to his wife. Any good feelings made him a target for the ruthless overlord who ruled his subconscious. He was convinced that success would always be followed by something awful. Those brutal beatings by his father scarred his mind for life.

The guards in the dream represent his childhood terrors, his father’s secret police, who never allowed him to feel safe or to relax and enjoy his life. Tom never allowed himself to experience any joy, except at Christmas. Somehow, Christmas was the only event which entitled him to safely risk a brief period of emotional release. It was only by divine dispensation that he was allowed a taste of earthly happiness. His childhood fears turned everything he enjoyed into dangerous contraband.

Blog Post Forty-three 43 Bedeviled - Gloomy Ocean

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 23:11:21 GMT

The Grey and Gloomy Ocean

It's been very hard for me to accept all this. My thirty-five-year marriage was a messy disaster, a chaotic, slow- motion drowning of the man I loved. As I continued trying to fathom who Tom really was, the only concept that seemed to make sense and explain what had happened was that there had to be literally two Toms. One was at home Tom, a man who was married, seemingly happily, with a son. This at home Tom never betrayed any hint that there was another Tom. The other Tom spent his days in sexual pursuit of powerful women at his job, full of angry resentment that he needed love and was tied down to his wife. Also, I think this hidden Tom couldn’t control his troublesome sexual submission to any interested, powerful woman, much like his terrified submission to his abusive mother.

The sexual interests that were aroused on the set is shown in this next dream movie. This dream very graphically portrayed the nature of Tom’s secret vice. In this dream, we are at a Hollywood party. As I walk through the rooms full of people, I see the woman who Tom allegedly was unfaithful with, as well as many other women and men. The party is in a shabby boathouse by a grey and gloomy ocean. The rooms and people are dreary and bland. There is a woman lying listlessly on a couch, fully dressed with her breast exposed. Tom is staring at this woman with great interest. Then he talks to another woman. He’s not only ignoring me, he wants me to go away. It’s very obvious he feels comfortable here and is enjoying himself. He doesn’t want me and doesn’t care where I am or what I do. I leave alone.

What is most striking about this party is the louche, debauched atmosphere that prevails. The guests seem like tired and faded roués for whom the juiciness of sex has been denatured down to sexual voyeurism.

Could it be that in the deeper recesses of his unconscious, love was something pure and separate from sex, like the mountain snow he compared it to in his California trip letter? Did he see the world as a dirty, tarnished place? Did he schmooze with certain women in the business, because they shared his taste for the cheap thrill of emotionally undemanding, ‘naughty’ sex?

It’s as if, as a child, Tom developed a jaded sexual precocity from the scary spectacle of his parent’s marriage, which was like being ringside as a pair of Parisian Apache dancers slapped and slung each other furiously around the dance floor. He’d lost his innocence way too young, and his sexuality seems to have been permanently compromised.

Due to his childhood abuse, love and sex are a dangerous combination because they make him feel unbearably anxious, needy, and helpless. Love was an existential threat to him. For Tom, love is best experienced from a distance, like California or Paris. Promiscuity is a sexual thrill that doesn’t threaten his survival.

Now, that strange letter from his very first California trip makes sense. He writes: “I hope I don't sound like a crybaby when I tell you all the things I am feeling or all the things I fear. What I am about to tell you is pure truth. I stress this because you may doubt what I am about to say. I have never in my life let anyone see me weak or terribly afraid like I have you. I confess all to you, my fears, doubts, jealousy, weaknesses. I trust you like I've never trusted anyone before."

What he’s describing here is being in love. In the safety of love, we all feel free to confess our doubts and show our fears and weaknesses, because we are with someone who loves us and will understand and help us. That’s what everybody feels when they’re in love. But in Tom’s world, love feels like being a weak crybaby.

Emotionally, he’s in an impossible dilemma. If he’s with the woman he loves, he’s happy, but he feels acutely and terrifyingly vulnerable, needy, and weak. He’s also in danger when he’s in love, because he can’t control his needy secret self; that self will act out sexually to make him feel strong and free, but that acting out risks losing the love he needs. The result is he feels trapped and angry. However, when he’s at work, he reverts to his compensating sexual behavior in a safe environment with women who he imagines can do great things for him; things that will lift him out of his deep well of despair. In an ironic way, in Tom’s emotional universe, love is a weakness, and promiscuous sex on the set is his secret power for success, a way to prove he doesn’t need any woman, especially not his wife.

When we first met and fell in love, it’s my guess he briefly believed he could really love and be faithful. He was doing okay, except for the bolt to California. But when he got the soap opera, where he was under constant stress, his secret self panicked. His insecurities and lack of confidence overwhelmed his at-home self. He went into survival mode and quickly fell into his old pattern of a secret life; he convinced himself that his schmoozing was essential to his success. But, every time he gave into the impulses of his secret self and schmoozed some woman at work, he made himself look ridiculous and demeaned his own talents. That’s why his career never got any momentum.

Blog Post Forty-four 44 Bedeviled - The "i" Word

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 22:59:17 GMT

The Dreaded "i" Word

Having confirmed beyond a doubt by looking at my married life that Tom was constantly unfaithful and in pursuit of other women telling himself he was seeking success, I can move on to a fuller understanding of why and what was going on in his mind and emotions.

To understand the emotions driving Tom, I now have to truly “face it.” And what I have to face is the word incest, the “i” word. I was told about the incest several years ago. It has taken me that long to resolve my own feelings toward admitting it, even to myself. It seemed irredeemably disgraceful and shameful for Tom’s memory and for his family. It is the last taboo. But this is not about me; it's about Tom and a soul in torment.

As I was recently editing this for my blog, I happened to watch another Marilyn Van Derbur Atler video. (https://youtu.be/dDrUG0FqBmU?si=JGsEZN4nsLZ1M3sh ) I had listened to her in the past, but then I’d only believed that Tom’s mother had probably behaved inappropriately. Now, having been told the truth that there was actual incest, Marilyn Van Derbur’s testimony about her experiences and feelings explained so many of Tom’s puzzling behaviors and ideas.

She also steeled my resolve to tell the complete story because it may help other victims of incest to face it, too, and to do the work to heal, which involves understanding the personal and emotional problems that incest victims must face and overcome.

I don’t believe that Tom ever connected his depression and emotional wanderings with having been a victim of incest. He never spoke much about his mother. His youngest brother once told me he couldn’t understand or forgive Tom for not coming home from Germany for their mother’s funeral. Now, I know why; there was no love lost for his abuser.

I didn’t understand very much about being an incest victim until I listened to Marilyn Van Derbur Atler’s video. All I knew was that the shame was most crushing shame I’d ever felt, for myself and for Tom.

Now having listened to her story, I understand some of the reasons why Tom did the things he did. And why he could never face it in this life. Everything she says in the video opened my eyes to the confused emotions driving Tom. She says incest victims are terrified of losing control because as children their bodies were controlled by their abusive parent. Their bodies betrayed them by having a sexual response. A victim’s mind is forced to leave their body during the act of incest. Of course, this explains Tom’s inability to orgasm on our first sexual encounter. He was terrified of losing control of his body.

Fear of losing control is also why Tom could never relax, never give in to his emotions, and always maintained an iron grip on his feelings, in every situation, even with me.

Van Derbur says she had a daytime child and a nighttime child. One of her strongest emotions was wanting the nighttime child to die, just die, probably of shame. In his emotionally distorted subconscious, it seems to me that Tom also wanted the nighttime child to die. That is probably why he smoked and drank himself to death. He was killing the nighttime child.

Incest is very isolating for the child victim. How does a child know that this is not what all parents do? Who can they go to for help? Tom must have always felt isolated from his family and friends due to his shameful secret. He always avoided his family because he said they had no shared happy memories. Perhaps that’s why finding the Blue Flame restaurant was so important. It was a happy memory of his family, before it all fell apart.

Marilyn Van Derbur Atler experienced a long bout of physical paralysis with no physical cause; finally she was sent to a psychiatrist, who saw her every day for several years to heal and free her body from the pain. Tom’s depressions were his form of emotional paralysis. He would go to the bottom of his cold, dark well, where he felt nothing and just turned off to everyone around him.

And what ultimately struck me the most was her response to people who tried to make light of her ongoing emotional problems. People would tell her to “let go of the past,” “Can’t you let it go?” “It’s not that big a deal.” In her long journey, after her abuse became public, she helped many other victims. These victims’ tragic experiences led to her conclusion that “the long-term effects are incomprehensible.”

My eyes are open now. I would have to agree wholeheartedly. Yes, they are incomprehensible. The long-term effects are even carried beyond the grave. Tom could not rest in peace until he could speak his truth. He is using me as his voice. That’s the other thing an incest victim is denied: a voice. They cannot say no to their abuser or tell anyone of their pain.

This is Tom’s story, a story of one man’s life ruined and cut short, a story of a failed marriage, a story of a phantom father, and of the unquiet soul of man who could not rest until he regained his voice and told his truth. Yes, the long-term effects are incomprehensible.

Blog Post Forty-five 45 Bedeviled - Two Psychic Messages From Tom

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Fri, 29 Dec 2023 22:58:21 GMT

Two Psychic Messages From Tom

I had to change the previous version of Tom’s story, because when I wrote that version, I was unaware that Tom had been the victim of sexual abuse. In the previous version, I condemned him for being too weak to face his past. Knowing the truth that his mother had to some degree sexually abused him, makes it all too clear why he couldn’t face his past. Perhaps blinding yourself to your past is sometimes the only way to go on with life.

Two psychic incidents confirm my belief that Tom really was a victim of sexual abuse. The first occurred before Tom’s first cheating confession when I happened to consult a psychic acquaintance with a minor and unrelated question. She gave me an answer that was helpful and correct. Then she said something that really puzzled me. She said Tom was coming through and telling her that he forgave his mother. I was very surprised by that. I asked her if she was sure that he’d said he’d forgiven his mother. She assured me that was what he’d told her.

At the time, I knew his father had been abusive, but I thought his mother had been a battered spouse. Why Tom should need to come back and make it clear to me that he forgave his mother was a complete mystery. Now, I know why that forgiveness was so important. She destroyed his life and sent him to an early grave due to her abuse. He had every reason to hate her for all eternity. That mystery has been solved by knowing the truth about Tom’s life.

The second incident occurred while I was writing a first draft of Bedeviled , after I knew of Tom’s infidelity, but not about the sexual abuse. I get a lot of psychic messages in dreams. But verbal communications are usually telepathic; that is, I get the message silently. I am not often clairaudient. This visitation is one of the few times I have actually heard something out loud. Tom spoke to me in his recognizable voice and urgently told me, “There’s something you need to know.” At the time, I hadn’t the slightest idea what it could be that I needed to know or why it was vital that Tom speak this aloud to me. Now I know. The next year, I learned from a visiting relative about his problems with his mother. Yes, that was something I definitely needed to know.

This new understanding of what Tom’s life had been has greatly altered my feelings toward his infidelity. I haven’t made a study of childhood sexual abuse victims, but from witnessing Tom’s life, I can see that for him it was a fatal mental problem. He was a successful actor, a pretty good husband, and pretty good father, but nothing was enough to free him from his bedeviling secret self.

For a long time, I was very angry at Tom for being a cheater. I wanted to know that he repudiated his actions and felt sorry. In light of the new facts, I feel even sadder than I felt before. He struggled alone against a terrible violation for his entire life but eventually lost the battle against bad Tom.

When all I knew was that Tom had been constantly cheating, I had, with great sadness and regret, doggedly wiped away all my happy memories, cancelled my faith in the love of my husband, and just accepted him as a tragically flawed person. My great romance was a flop. Our marriage was just a convenience for Tom.

Now, it seemed a more nuanced situation. There really was a good Tom who probably was often happily married. That Tom was plagued by a secret-self created in childhood which had enabled him to survive the abuse. I had half a husband, a tragic husband, whose secret self was too powerful for him to overcome. This secret self drove Tom to his death. Tom died from a combination of smoking and constant acid reflux, brought on, no doubt, by repressing his angry secret self.

Tom’s dual self has left me angry and hurt; were all our happy days were fake? Had we ever shared the same joys or dreamed the same dreams? Probably not. Looking at old pictures of him only reminds me that not only had we never been on the same page in life, we’d never even been reading the same book. It was such a tragic waste. True, we’d had quite a lot of fun, on a day-to-day basis. He hadn’t been ‘depressed’ all the time. This explanation left a great hollow place in my heart and an emptiness in my life.

All his life, I believe he’d justified his cheating by telling himself he was just hanging on to his marriage out of loyalty, because he was such a good guy. Ever since our long ago Puerto Rico vacation, he’d been hoping to find a way to divorce me. Had he become a big success, he wouldn’t have shed a tear when he left me. He didn’t shed a tear for me when he knew he was dying and leaving me all alone for the rest of my life. But he didn’t shed a tear for himself, either.

I have a note he wrote in his shaky, drugged handwriting from near the end of his life, where he once again says to me, “I love you more than are stars in the Milky Way. Always have, always will.” It was what he had often told me, from the first days when we fell in love. He had even made a little framed picture of two elves holding hands and staring up at the stars on which he’d inscribed those words for me.

But now that I know his mind better, what a revealing metaphor! He compares his love to the stars in the Milky Way, the splash of stars across the nighttime sky. Tom’s love was somewhere far above, where dreams are born; only there would he find what his heart aspired to. And there his love remained for his whole life, a distant, starry dream, unattainable from the sad world he was stuck in. Because of his mental problems, he preferred to keep love way up in the stars, unreachable, fixed, unchanging, and something he could dream about, without actually making it a part of his life.

Now that I know the full truth, I’m no longer angry. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to change, there was no way he could ever bear to open the door to that painful, humiliating past. He could never face it; not in life, anyway. I’m sure he spent huge amounts of emotional energy trying to keep his mental problems under control and function. As he got older, there was less and less energy for daily functioning. But there was another shocking twist to his story that came to me via his son. Tom had gone to Hell.

Blog Post Forty-six 46 Bedeviled - Psychic Medium John Edwar

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 22:15:17 GMT

Psychic Medium John Edward's Book After Life

There definitely were two Toms. One was happily married; the other was a driven by confused psychological motives that would ultimately destroy him. The two Toms have appeared together only once in my dreams. That was the very first one which tipped me off about Tom’s infidelities. In that dream, the good Tom never faced me; he sat with his back turned and shoulders slumped, off to the side. The main focus of that dream was the bad Tom who kept glaring at me, showing me his angry, rejecting face. In that dream, it was very important that I not speak to the angry Tom until the old man, the good Tom, had left. I didn’t know why, then, but I now think perhaps it’s because they are separate energies on the other side.

My understanding of Tom’s psychological division in this life and the next was validated by a book called After Lif e by the psychic medium John Edward. I learned so much about communication with the afterlife from watching John Edward on television and Youtube. It wa s while watching him on Youtube that I found out he and his grandmother had been huge fans of The Guiding Ligh t. As a matter of fact, John even uses a picture of a lighthouse, which was the symbol for The Guiding Light , for his new Evolv e series on the internet. One of the things that I have learned from mediums and my own psychic experiences is that coincidences are very meaningful, and this was a coincidence that startled me enough that I felt I had to get to know John Edward even better, so I bought his book After Life .

When I read the book, I learned John’s son is named Justin, which is the name of the character Tom created and played for seven years on Guiding Light . I don’t know if John watched the show when Tom was playing Justin Marler, but this is another coincidence that I knew had a personal meaning for me.

I found the most important validation of my idea about Tom’s dual personality and divided soul in After Life where John is reading a young woman whose mother wanted to communicate with her from the other side.

Here is part of John’s reading of the daughter, Mia, from her mother, a famous artist, Cyrinda, about this phenomenon:

John: “The connection is intense. And the emotion that comes up around this feels split, as if there’s a dual type of relationship, where two people are within one in some ways. And I feel like it’s something that has unfinished business attached to it.”

Another quote from John: “Her mother revealed the abuse she’d endured growing up, which Mia acknowledged. Linked to that abuse was Cyrinda’s perception of herself as a “dual personality.”

John: “…so there are two personalities. She left that other person behind.”

Now it was clear to me why I’d been led to John Edward. That was exactly the conclusion I had come to about Tom’s personality. He also was an abused child, and he also had a dual personality with unfinished business attached to it. I was very relieved to find that Tom was not the only person who had suffered this kind of problem resulting from the same cause of an abused childhood.

I think Tom’s subconscious fantasy of some powerful woman’s influence bringing him into the limelight and making him the popular, beloved, and wealthy star he deserved to be was the leftover, unsatisfied child’s desire to be the center of his mother’s loving attention, instead of being sexually preyed upon. Sadly, no matter how successful and popular Tom was, those things never satisfied that empty void in his psyche.

If I hadn’t spent thirty-five years married to a man who was as intelligent, sensitive, and loving as Tom, and yet led a fatally self-destructive, secret life, I would never have believed that sexual abuse could have such profoundly devastating effects on a person, especially not a man. But the facts are there. Sexual abuse by a parent at a young age destroyed Tom’s mind in childhood and prevented him from growing up normally and experiencing and enjoying life. Both Tom and his mother died young, one from alcohol abuse, one from chain smoking; both hiding terrible secrets that unbalanced them.

Blog Post Forty-seven 47 Bedeviled - Hell

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 22:58:21 GMT

Hell

Hell by Hieronymus Bosch

This was a psychic event that happened about a year prior to Tom’s infidelity confession dream. My son had a terrible nightmare about his father which he shared with me because it was so upsetting and so real. At the time, I was surprised by the dream but wrote it off as simply a product of my son’s sometimes lurid imagination. It was only later, when I knew the truth about Tom’s life, that I realized my son’s dream was Tom showing his son something he couldn’t show me. I am sure Tom knew that if I’d had a dream like this, I’d have woken up screaming long before he got his message across. He knew his son would be able to experience the whole dream and understand its message.

In the dream, Tom told his son he’d gone to Hell. Tom showed him Hell, and it was absolutely terrifying. It was burning hot, the Devil was laughing, and the whole vast area was spinning at a dizzying speed. My son said it was a sickeningly frightening experience. His father told him he’d spent seven days in Hell, which was an eternity or perhaps as long as seventy years, because time is different on the other side.

But my son said as he looked at Hell, he could understand why God had created such a horrible place and why his father had gone there. Tom told him that he had gone to Hell and suffered because he could not forgive himself for what he’d done in life. He told his son that he needed Hell to cleanse his soul. My son said he could see that Hell was created because some souls needed it.

Could it be that Tom can’t forgive himself, even in the afterlife, for who he was; that the shame he endured was simply too great to bear. He never wanted to confront his problems in life, because he didn’t want forgiveness for himself from anybody, even from himself. Forgiveness was simply adding more burning hot coals of shame. And so, he chose Hell to thoroughly cleanse his soul.

Perhaps, when he at last escaped from hell, he was free to try to do some good for those he loved and had wronged. In some dreams, I’ve actually seen him intervene with kindness in the lives of some of the women he cheated with.

Given the chance to use spirit communication, he knew he could lighten the burdens my son and I carried resulting from his mistakes and tragic life. And he was very right about that. Once we unraveled all the ways Tom’s problems had caused him to become permanently morose and indifferent to his family, learning the truth was like digging ourselves out of Tom’s grave. It’s hard for me to blame Tom too much because obviously no one choses to be mentally ill.

We all have a story we tell ourselves to explain our life choices. Tom’s secret story got darker and sadder as he got older. He chain-smoked cigarettes in disgust with his life and himself.

When he got to the other side, I wonder if he saw all the joys he’d missed in life. He never took his son out to a park and taught him how to catch a ball or showed him what a two by four is. We took no real vacations together. He was always too busy with his secret life. Secret Tom eventually consumed all of Tom’s life and condemned him to an early grave. He could have had it all: great career, loving wife, success, happy son, and a long life. What a terrible waste of a man with so much to offer!

As I anguished over trying to work out my feelings, I alternately cursed Tom and cried over his fate, and though I continued to be furious at him, he kept sending me loving messages, which seemed very at odds with the picture I had of him as a man who had never loved or respected me. I won't bore you with all the little things that happened. But one incident validated that our wedding and honeymoon had been every bit as deeply meaningful for Tom as it was for me, even though he later regretted our marriage.

On my ancient computer, I have Amazon music on a cloud, a concept I haven't fully mastered. But I have about a hundred albums of the type of music I like, and I have also added some songs that are particular favorites of mine. Then, with the program set on random play, Amazon music provides hours of music that I enjoy.

One day, during all this soul searching, I was feeling particularly low about Tom and convinced he’d never loved me. Chores awaited my attention, so I roused my spirits by putting on Amazon music and noticed that there was a search bar. I'd never tried to use this bar, never having needed it. But on that day, I needed very badly to hear “Sous Le Ciel de Paris” a bittersweet, sentimental French love song. There was music playing as I sat down to try to figure out if I could get my song to play using the search bar. Suddenly, as I stared at the monitor, before I had even touched the mouse, a red bar appeared on the screen with some message about not being able to skip. And “Sous Le Ciel” came on. Psychics say that the dead can fool around with electronics and get messages to you. Well, this was a message to me: my Parisian love song from the man who took me to Paris for our honeymoon. And whatever Tom had done to the cloud, that was the only song that would play. The program wouldn't play the next piece or the previous piece. I listened to “Sous Le Ciel” until I was all cried out. How can you not love a man like that? We'll always have Paris.

Yes, Paris and the flu. It had taken Dr. Gorgeous to rekindle the wavering flame of Tom’s love so many years ago. Those brief, glorious days in Paris had meant much more to him than I ever suspected, especially the good-bye kiss. There it is again, that fateful goodbye kiss. Tom seems to have always been trying to kiss me goodbye.

I appreciate all he’s done for me. I really can’t complain too much. The Tom I knew was mostly fun to live with. We enjoyed each other’s company and shared a deep interest in theater.

Blog Post Forty-eight 48 Bedeviled - Romance vs Depression

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Tue, 26 Dec 2023 22:58:21 GMT

Romance vs Depression

Our Wedding

Perhaps it seems frivolous, but of all the terrible things that have happened to Tom, myself, our shattered hopes and dreams, and the father who let his son down in so many ways, nevertheless, one of the most painful to me is knowing that the romance died out of our marriage once Tom started playing around. I know that sounds silly, but romance is the poetry of domestic life. It’s all the shared moments and the little intimate joys.

Tom abandoned romantic love, which is a union of body and soul, for his angry secret self; promiscuity, depression, and self-destruction were the inevitable results of that choice. Where love and romance could have created a garden, Tom was stuck in a dark, cold well which he called his depression.

He couldn’t fall in love with me. Falling in love requires giving up control of your emotions and becoming vulnerable. Tom was terrified of being vulnerable, and he never let go of his emotions, because he was frozen with fear.

The power of romance is so transformative that life without it is a very skimpy emotional diet. For instance, I have a wonderful memory from when Tom had been on the soap for a couple of years, and I was still modelling and doing TV commercials. We were having the most prosperous and hopeful Christmas either of us had ever had.

It was snowy night as we met after work at Rockefeller Center to see the huge Christmas tree and skaters. Tom suggested a walk up Fifth Avenue to take in the dressed-up Christmas windows in the fancy stores. Then, he wanted to go to the Oak Bar at the Plaza, because he’d heard from other members of The Guiding Light cast that it was a great place for a martini. In those days, the Oak Bar was a dimly lit, dark oak paneled room, full of chattering New Yorkers.

As we were shown to a cozy booth, outside our window was a nighttime view of Central Park with big, soft snowflakes flickering in the glow of the streetlights, a real live snow globe scene. Our chilled martinis arrived, sparkling quicksilver to lazily sip and unwind. It was an evening comprised of all the unforgettable romance of New York City at Christmas. Who wouldn’t have been carried away by the romance of such a setting?

But, as I have now surmised, he had come to the Plaza to chase the woman from The Guiding Light . I know, because I remember he went over to say hi to one of the directors, who was also there having a martini. Tom had previously mentioned to me, by way of job gossip, that the woman, who I now believe was the alleged object of secret Tom’s desire, had a crush on this director. He was there, probably waiting for her. And Tom went over to make his presence known.

Once he got the soap opera, and for the rest of our life together, all our happy, little romantic moments seemed to fall flat. They didn’t resonate and never led to a happy ending; we just seemed to stumble along from one disaster to the next, and now I know why.

For me that is the cruelest part of my love story. All my fond memories are meaningless, now. I was never privy to Tom’s mind and heart. I spent thirty-five-years with an interesting, intelligent, warm body at my side.

This may sound selfish, school girlish, and foolish, but so many people dream of love and romance; I don’t know how you have a happy marriage without it. That snowy night at the Plaza, I was so grateful to be with the man of my dreams, who I thought was as crazy about me as I was about him. But Tom was a captive of his secret fantasies, the ones that didn’t include me.

Blog Post Forty-nine 49 Bedeviled - The Eagle

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Mon, 25 Dec 2023 22:58:21 GMT

The Eagle With Broken Tail Feathers

On that August night so long ago, when the Death Truck arrived in my dream, Tom’s fate was sealed. By then, even as we started making the Youtube videos, it was too late for him to root out his evil genie, except by dying. The secret police had caught him. There was no escape. All he could do was give up all hope and pray for kindness in his last hours. The death truck gave us a year together before it took him. And that turned out to be the most important year of our marriage.

When he was diagnosed with cancer, I fainted in the doctor’s office. We’d been through so much and now a deadly cancer.

But long before he was on heavy pain medication, Tom seemed bemused and sort of enjoying all the attention and care I lavished on him due to his disease. He was rarely frightened or worried. He really was incapable of showing weakness, even when faced with death. His own strength of body and mind was his Achilles heel. A weaker man might have broken down and been forced to deal with his psychological problems long before he got cancer, but not Tom the tank. The only person strong enough to defeat Tom was Tom.

During his illness, he lost the use of his vocal cords, could not speak, could not swallow, had a tracheotomy, which required oxygen at night, suctioning, and he had to be fed through a stomach tube. It was horrible. However, he seemed almost happy and to revel in my constant, round the clock care of him, which he accepted eagerly and with an abundance of warmth, love, and unashamed appreciation of a kind which I’d never previously received from him. I believe his complete physical incapacity freed the good Tom to accept love unashamedly without the secret Tom punishing him for being weak. He was dying. It doesn’t get scarier than that.

Love had to mortally wound him to free the good Tom from the bad Tom. I think this last year was when his soul actually separated into two parts. Once he was so ill that self-sufficiency was impossible, he could at last allow me to take care of him, and accept my love joyfully. With great astonishment, I saw the relief and happiness on his face every day, through every ordeal, as I performed all the nursing chores for him.

He even whispered to me, near the end, that he never knew how much I’d loved him. I was shocked. Had it really taken him thirty-five years to figure that out? No, but it had taken him thirty-five years to accept it.

But it was too late for all that. I still loved him and took care of him because he was and always had been the one man in the world for me. Those memories of our shared daily battles against inevitable death, which crept up on us through cold hospital corridors and long hours in waiting rooms, are unbearably poignant. I will never forget any of those precious moments. All the little things we did to keep our spirits up and all the little kindnesses we bestowed on each other are truly the greatest jewels in my memory of Tom’s love. He was childlike and helpless. It was just tragic. Our hearts truly bonded during that last year as we fought off death together. I believe this was another intervention on the part of the spirit world. That last year sealed the bond between us which has made it possible for our hearts to communicate fairly easily, even though Tom is no longer in this world. I was the one person in life he was actually close to.

I think it is even possible that this strange, last act, bounty of love, that we briefly shared, enabled decent Tom to fully separate from that troubled part of his soul in the afterlife. The death truck gave us one year of love. By chance in the hospital, we were visited by a Catholic nun who performed a marriage service in which we renewed our wedding vows only a few days before Tom lost consciousness forever. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Someone sent her to us, of that, I am sure.

Tom escaped his mental torture. Not to love, but to death. The death coach had patiently waited for him, but it was time for him to leave this world. It’s all so sad. How very maliciously our minds can deceive and destroy us. What a lonely and sad life he was condemned to lead by his own doing. The influence of his mental problems was so powerful that not even all the years of our marriage could persuade him to trust what was right in front of his eyes. His faith in the majesty of God may have been all that gave strength to his loving self in his lifelong battle against the very destructive secret Tom. He was bedeviled all his life.

Tom was everything to me, everything. I loved him madly, deeply, how do I love thee, let me count the ways, night and day you are the one, and I still couldn’t reach him or defeat his past. I couldn’t save him from himself. I couldn’t even get him to tell me the truth so we could try to fix it. I lost him, lost his laughter, his dimples, and those shy blue eyes. He was the whole world to me. But that world had shrunk over the years and become frustrating, grim, and lonely for both of us.

We did make each other better in many ways by being together. I had somebody to love who really needed all my love, and Tom had someone to keep him steady and help him make the most of his many talents. I learned so very much from living with Tom that I could never regret a nano second of our marriage. And Tom’s speaking to me from the afterlife has led me to develop my psychic abilities, which has given me a very strong faith in God. The angel told Tom to believe in the Christ, and I do. I never would have so surely believed in God without Tom coaxing me toward spirituality from the other side.

Long before he made his guilty confession to me, I had a dream visitation from Tom in which he appeared as a giant eagle, like the prow of ship. I couldn't help noticing that this eagle had badly broken pin feathers on one wing. In Allison Dubois's book Into the Dark , she says that "spirit will send you a sign, often a bird if the deceased felt trapped in their broken body in some way before they died, and they want to demonstrate to you their freedom of spirit." I believe the eagle was Tom’s spirit, and the broken pin feathers were his emotional problems, which kept his spirit from soaring freely in this world. I love that spirit in you, Tom, and I always will.

Blog Post Fifty-50 - Bedeviled - Epilogue My Dark Night of the Soul Ends

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Sun, 24 Dec 2023 22:58:21 GMT

Epilogue - My Dark Night of the Soul Ends

The completion and publishing of this story finally brings me out of my dark night of the soul. Tom’s haunting cry for help from beyond the grave is answered. I have helped him clear his conscience and hopefully rest in peace. I also feel at peace at last, and that I have accomplished what I was meant to in this life.

For a long time after Tom had passed away, I experienced a dark night of the soul, unable to find any reason for why I had been born or went on living. But out of that dark night, God was leading me to a deeper knowledge and understanding of love and truth.

I was encouraged to write BEDEVILED by Pam Coronado’s prediction that it would come out of the blue and be a bestseller. Otherwise, I would never have stuck with a task that seemed so futile. Just another book by a nobody that nobody read. Pointless.

But, hoping for the best, I struggled away at writing and trying to understand why Tom had done what he did. That was important to me on a personal level. However, when I learned that Tom had been a victim of sexual abuse, that stopped me cold in my tracks for two years. The shame of any form of incest is withering. What could possibly be the value of writing about it or making it public? There were certainly many compelling reasons not to; why put myself and my family through such a damning confession?

I told the true story confidentially to a friend who asked me why I felt the need to publish it. I really wasn’t sure why I was so determined to publish it, especially now that I knew the sordid truth. So, I found another excuse to put it off.

Writing Tom’s story had certainly been helpful to my own understanding of him and our marriage. Shouldn’t that be enough? Why was I told it would come out of the blue and be a bestseller? Was it just my vanity urging me forward now? Perhaps; but if something is a bestseller, it’s because people are interested and hungry to learn what the story is telling them. Was that why Tom kept saying “Face it. Don’t hide anything.”

Then watching Marilyn Van Derbur Atler’s video convinced me that for the sake of others who have experienced this kind of violation, Tom’s story must be told. He couldn’t heal in this world, but maybe others can when they see that others have “faced it.”

The thought that brought great peace of mind to me and finally convinced me to go ahead was that this story of my husband’s life might be the opening of a conversation about sexual abuse of children and how destructive it can be. If BEDEVILED started a conversation on the topic of mental illness, it might help others overcome the shame and guilt and “face it and not hide anything.”

It seems particularly important to tell Tom’s story. Everyone can see him throughout his life on TV and in the movies. He was a charming, intelligent, sensitive, and hard-working man. He was brave and physically courageous, having been a paratrooper and in the Military Police in the Army. His family loved him; he had friends and coworkers who admired and respected him. How could childhood sexual abuse destroy such a competent, likable man? The tragic truth that I can bear personal witness to is that even his successful life could not counteract the overwhelming mental consequences of his childhood trauma. He was never happy. In the end, mental illness killed him. Tom’s soul was cleaved into two warring halves by his traumatic life. Now I hope he can rest in peace. His story has been told.

Blog Post Fifty-one 51 Bedeviled - Mirabile Dictu

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 18:33:57 GMT

Startling, Unexpected, Wonderful

What happened next absolutely astonished me and was completely unexpected. The next events have deepened the meaning of this entire story and have completely changed my life and beliefs. It is indeed mirabile dictu, wonderful to relate.

I’m going to have to tell a little history to put these events in a meaningful context. Ever since Tom revealed his infidelities, about ten years ago, I haven’t had a picture of him visible anywhere. At first, I was too angry at him to look at him, then too sad when I thought of his wasted life and all the happiness we’d missed.

After his dream revelations, which I spoke of earlier, he only visibly appeared in my dreams occasionally, usually being mean or pursuing another woman, in other words, he was a nightmare. These were constant reminders that we had never been really married, other than legally.

In contrast, he was always sending me friendlier messages via Pandora. Almost every time I put Pandora on random play, the same songs replayed: I’m Working My Way Back to You, by the Spinners, with the constant reprise “I’m really sorry.” Was it Tom? No other song played so constantly. Then I woke up one night having actually heard the song Unchained Melody, with the word “Time goes by so slowly, and time can do so much, are you still mine? I need your love; God speed your love to me,” in my dream. This was one of the rare clairaudient experiences I’ve ever had. That I was sure must be Tom.

Actually, the truth was, I wasn’t still his. I pitied him, but that’s very different from still loving him. I didn’t hate him anymore, but so many memories had turned bitter, because so many of those memories obviously involved instances of cheating; also, so much love and support for me and our son had been sadly missing; all of this making it almost impossible to forgive and forget. I tried to, but in my heart, I couldn’t forget and probably not forgive either. He’d always led two lives.

As you can see, from the last two blogs, The Eagle and Epilogu e, the best I hoped for was that he’d moved on to a better world and could now rest in peace. I’d received many advantages from being married to Tom and I was grateful; but at romance and marriage, I was convinced we’d failed utterly. I’d given up on love altogether. We’d never been in love. I took a rather cynical view of Tom’s feelings for me. He was fond of me, I was convenient and helpful, but at the end of his life, he’d resented having married me. Move on, Marcy, face it.

On January 20 and 21, 2024, I finally finished up my rewrite about the meaning of Tom’s dreams and included my new understanding regarding his mother. Then, having listened again to Marilyn Van Derbur’s video, I realized I had to go further, so I forced myself to ‘face it.’ I knew I had to confront the word ‘incest’, an ugly word and an ugly deed. I wrote the blog post The I Word and finally published it on January 21, 2024. In order to put it in its proper place in the story, I had to change the publication date for the blog to remain in order. That’s what changed everything.

Literally, the night after I published it, strange things began to happen. As I was half-awake the next morning, I heard steady breathing by my ear. At first, I thought it might be the dog, but I felt around the bed, and he wasn’t there. In my groggy state, I thought for some odd reason I must be hearing my own breathing. Finally, waking up more fully, I realized I couldn’t hear my own breathing. Then I knew it must be a visitation from Tom. I was sure of that. He was glad I had finally told his story; I had “faced it,” with him. Strange that he should come so close to me. I was surprised but didn’t think too much about it. For me, it’s always very hard to credit these experiences as being real. An acting teacher once told me I had an over-developed sense of truth.

But that was only the beginning. On February 3, he appeared in a lucid dream wearing his favorite Burberry trench coat. I could tell he was very happy and feeling very good. He was smiling and telling me not to worry. I was surprised, because it had been a long time since he’d actually visibly appeared in one of my dreams, or had seemed so happy, in life or in a dream.

Suspecting that he was still the Tom who was chasing other women, I cynically asked, ‘I suppose you’ll want an open marriage, now.’ He looked at me, kept smiling, but didn’t answer. I know the answer I expected. For years, whenever he appeared in a dream, he was always the cheating, heartless cad.

However, the very next night, I got my answer to that question, and it was a complete shock. In a very intense lucid dream, I saw Tom, just his head, arms, and bare chest in front of me. Drawn by an invisible force of love, I instantly flew into his waiting arms, wrapping my arms around his neck as we kissed deeply. I was overwhelmed by ecstasy and knew that I still loved him, which was extraordinary and a great relief, after years of being angry and even repulsed by him. And clearly, he still loved me and wanted me. I knew I belonged to him and he to me. It was a brief, but intensely satisfying feeling. In the following days, there were many more realizations that flowed out of this encounter.

I had never had a dream like about Tom, even when he was alive. I’d never felt like this about Tom, even when he was alive. And he certainly had never felt like this about me when he was alive. In the dream, I felt so cherished, so loved by him in an unconditional and joyful way that I knew with certainty I’d never felt that kind of love from Tom before, not ever.

At first, I felt so stunned by my own joyful feeling from this wonderful visitation of love with Tom, that I didn’t immediately think too deeply about what it meant. But as the days passed and feeling of happiness only deepened and became more secure, I revisited the events of the dream.

In the brief moments before I flew into Tom’s arms, I had been vaguely aware that previously, in life, there had always been a force keeping us apart. My sense was that some invisible, but palpable barrier had always existed between us in life; it was something that always kept us emotionally distant from each other.

Then I asked myself why was he bare-chested? Then the expression to “make a clean breast of it,” came to mind. I looked it up. It fit perfectly. “The idiom “make a clean breast of” means to speak openly and honestly about something that was previously lied about or kept secret.” “It’s like baring your soul, revealing the truth without any concealment.” “So, it’s about coming clean and revealing the truth, even if it was concealed earlier.”

That was what the post “ The I Word ” had done for Tom and for me; it had made a clean breast of a secret, a terrible secret. Now Tom was free of that. He’d made “a clean breast of it,” and that invisible, but impenetrable barrier between us had vanished. With it gone, we were free to love each other fully and joyfully.

Lastly, I was puzzled that I was being carried in his arms. What was that all about? We’d never done anything like that in life, not even joking around. What was that? Then it hit me, of course, that’s how a man carries a woman across the threshold when they are first married. This dream visitation was our real marriage, without the invisible barrier; we were finally man and wife.

Predictably, I was so very happy that I became suspicious and disgusted with myself. Really, Marcy? Don’t be a dope. Having thought about this for a couple of weeks, I grew more and more skeptical. Obviously, I was just a lonely, old woman with a wish fulfillment dream à la Freud. Was I being a completely silly pushover for love, again?

Of course, this is my bedeviling self who never believes in anything, including myself. But when I thought more about it, why should I doubt this dream, when all the others have been actually proven true? I’d certainly had too much proof too many times to allow myself to be weak and doubtful. Believe, Marcy, believe!

I am sure in some other reality that Tom and I are together, or will be, and starting our happy marriage, at last. He had to make a clean breast of it to rid himself of his bedeviling self and come out from behind his wall of shame to love and be loved, truly, gloriously, and joyfully.

I know that in his heart behind the barrier, he had loved me as much as I loved him. I am glad that in my heart I have forgiven him completely and still can love him. Did our supreme joy last only a few seconds in that otherworldly place, or is time meaningless there? Are a few seconds an eternity when you find the one you love? It felt like that.

As never before, I am sure there is a magic in life that we are all yearning for. As it says in the song from the musical South Pacific about the tropical island we all dream of, “ Bali Ha’i will call you, in your heart, you’ll hear it call you, come away, come away,” to that always distant “unattainable place of innocence and happiness.” Or perhaps it’s Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Or My Blue Heaven . So many of us have barriers that keep true love seemingly far away, barriers which make us doubt that love is real and meaningful.

It’s my hope that this true love story helps change the future for others who have barriers around their souls that keep love out. Face it. Impossible and painful as it is, try to face it so you can hear love call you in your heart. I had it in a spiritual visitation with Tom now free from his shame. In dream time, it only lasted for a few seconds, but it was wonderful. I hope you find it in this world and make some part of this world a much happier place.

Keeping Christmas Well - Scrooge

Thu, 14 Dec 2023 17:13:50 GMT

Joy To the World

KEEPING CHRISTMAS WELL – SCROOGE

AS I do every year, I drank deep from the well of sentiment, accompanied by a few draughts from the well of gin, and watched A CHRISTMAS CAROL starring Alastair Sim, again. In spite of my best efforts, I have become an unrepentant sentimentalist, but true sentiment resonates very deeply into our souls, as does this movie.

How do you keep Christmas? It's a question Scrooge is asked several times, and he responds in a way that many of us can relate to, "Christmas is in the habit of keeping men from doing business." And I believe that is exactly the purpose of Christmas, to keep you from doing your usual business.

How you keep Christmas tells so much about a person. Midwinter festivals and merrymaking are as old as mankind. The Romans had Saturnalia, with religious rites and feasting for seven days. Slaves were freed for the period, only cooks and bakers could work, and a mock king was elected.

The Vikings had their Yuletide in honor of Jolnir, father of the gods, and fertility rites to insure a good harvest. There was feasting and food was sacrificed to the ghosts who came back to haunt the living at this season.

There are many customs and celebrations at this time of year, because in agrarian societies there is not as much work to be done in winter.

Christianity adopted, adapted and refined many of these traditions into their own celebrations. The movie A CHRISTMAS CAROL plumbs the depths of the Christian miracle. Four ghosts visit Scrooge and provide a Pilgrim's Progress for his lost soul to follow to redemption.

The first ghost, his dead partner, comes back in chains, the chains he made himself in life because he didn't allow his spirit to roam free in this world; it was chained to his self-obsessed greed. Mankind was his business, but his spirit never rose to that realization. He is sending three ghosts to help free Scrooge from the same fate, while there is still time for him in this world.

When the Ghost of Christmas Past visits Scrooge, the movie and Dickens become unmistakably Freudian. Scrooge endured tragedy when he lost his mother and sister, and his heart became captive of his financial successes. He became a miser. But the ghost revisits his past, much like a modern-day therapy session, to reveal to Scrooge that he did have finer feelings for those around him until his greed turned him away from them.

The second ghost of Christmas Present arrives bearing revelry and feasting, showing that even those in poverty are warmed by the spirit of Christmas. He witnesses the happiness of Bob Cratchit's large and quite poor family. Cratchit is a man who Scrooge despises and whose happiness he cannot understand and resents as stealing money from his pocket. Here Scrooge must face the man he is. This is a bitter man who cannot keep Christmas because his heart has become hard.

He prefers his porridge without the extra bread because he won't pay for it. Here is the very essence of Christianity: to receive the blessings and the bread that is Christ's love, we must forget about the costs and open our hearts.

The third ghost of Christmas Future is one whose face we never see. He shows Scrooge the future and it is very bleak. But the event in the future that most moves Scrooge is the absence of little lame Tiny Tim by the fireside. Here, again, is another essential Christian message. Scrooge must use the wealth his talents have brought him to do good, as best as he can.

Of course, it is the riotous, mad joy of Scrooge when he wakes up Christmas morning, a new man, a man full of the spirit of generosity that is the triumphant climax of the film. He literally dances for joy and for the joy of being able to give freely, without bitterness, envy, or selfish motives, to others. After that, Scrooge became "a man of whom it was always said, he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us and all of us. And so as Tiny Tim observed 'God bless us, everyone.'

So how you keep Christmas says a lot about the state of your soul. I confess to having been a Christmas hater for many years. When I met my husband, I hadn't had a Christmas tree for ten years. I felt the sentimentality was a swamp of over-emotionality that I preferred to steer clear of. The incessant red and green, and happy songs and bells drove me nuts. Like Scrooge, my spirit had a lot to learn and a lot of bitterness to overcome before I could experience the joy of Christmas. Wishing you a joyous Christmas!

Shameless Progressives Are Sexually Repressed

Sat, 13 May 2023 16:55:34 GMT

The Fairy Tale of One Who Went Forth to Learn Fear

I guess the pussy hats were a real eye opener for me. I mean, come on, who thinks wearing your genitals on your head is anything but making yourself look like the biggest fool on earth?

I felt sorry for the people who wore these hats. But this new candle put out by Gwyneth Paltrow with her vagina scent finally made me see the obvious: progressives, liberals, leftie fanatics all share the inability to feel sexual shame. This is not a minor character flaw. There is even a fairy tale that eloquently and clearly shows why this is fatal to sexuality and sexual satisfaction.

The fairy tale, “One Who Went Forth to Learn Fear”, is the story of a young man whose father wants him to make something of himself, but his reply is that he’d like to learn to shudder, which is something he doesn’t comprehend at all.

He goes off on many horrible, gory, gruesome adventures showing his superhuman strength and courage, but still nothing makes him shudder. My son adored this fairy tale and laughed out loud as the fairy tale hero endures each more horrifying and gory adventure after another, yet still he could not learn to shudder.

The hero’s bravery is rewarded by the King with marriage to his daughter, and though the hero is very fond of his wife, he still cannot shudder…. Until one night when he is in bed, his wife pours cold water and minnows over him causing him to shudder. Now he is happy and grateful to his wife because he has learned to shudder.

“The hero of this story could not shudder due to repression of all sexual feelings—as demonstrated by the fact that once sexual fear was restored to him, he could be happy.”

If you can’t feel a sense of shame or blush in embarrassment, it’s a pretty good guess that you are totally out of touch with your own sexuality. I rest my case. Libs are completely sexually repressed, no matter how much they act out and do weird stuff trying to learn to shudder. Years of therapy.... you know what I mean.

(Quote is from THE USES OF ENCHANTMENT by Bruno Bettelheim.

BEDEVILED

The Obedient Herd

Thu, 11 May 2023 21:05:33 GMT

The Obedient Herd

What prompts this post is the annoyingly dull, boring, unexpressive word and grammar corrections AI is always suggesting. I hate them. They take all the fun and tastiness out of reading and writing.

Stick with me on this and you will begin to understand that degrading the culture is imperative to liberals keeping power and has a long history, even as far back as the Prague Spring, when the Russians rolled tanks into Prague, Czechoslovakia and took over in 1968, imprisoning playwright Vaclav Havel.

Here’s what Vaclav Havel, (the famous dissident playwright/president of the Czech Republic, jailed by the Soviets when they put an end to the Prague Spring) has to say about the importance of culture to society. “The main instrument of society’s self-knowledge is its culture… It is culture that enables a society to enlarge its liberty and to discover truth.”

Liberal censored culture is careful “ not to excite people with the truth, but to reassure them with lies… the aesthetics of banality.”

Here is Havel on liberal induced culture: “it’s a power that sees society as an obedient herd whose duty is to be permanently grateful that it has what it has.”

Strange as it may seem, in Liberal Kulture, the most important qualification for success as an actor, musician, performer, writer, or artist of any kind is to be completely free of real talent, originality, or any sign of genius. This is what must be understood by all conservatives. In liberal Kulture all real artists have been condemned to the liberal gulag. The purpose of Kulture is to distract and pacify the masses, the very opposite of real culture, which inspires and excites new thoughts and ideas.

Complete lack of the fire of real talent is the first and most important qualification for any artist that the Liberal masters will support, because any scintilla of an actual artistic gift is liable to arouse a true feeling or thought in an audience, and that is anathema to Liberal Kulture czars. The “ common herd ” must learn to feel only what Liberals want them to feel and think only what Liberals want them to think.

I am not saying that many of the performers who are popular today don't have a certain very pleasing facility in their accomplishments. They are certainly skilled and entertaining. But as the saying goes, few of them 'will ever set the Thames on fire".

How important is a belief in the value of art to Western Civilization? Here I make reference to Kenneth Clark’s wonderful BBC series on CIVILIZATION. In that series, he speaks of the Abbey Church of Saint Denis in France and Twelfth Century Abbot Sugar’s views as he lavishly remodeled the Gothic Cathedral.

Abbot Sugar wrote that “the dull mind rises to truth through that which is material.” This is the first time that the value of art to Western Civilization had ever been written down and acted upon. It is the belief that, as Lord Clark states it, “we can only understand the absolute beauty which is God through the effects of precious and beautiful things on our senses.”

God and art are inextricably joined in Western Civilization and fundamental to its survival. Christianity provides the religious and philosophical foundation for the value of all art to humanity. Thus, the suppression of art is agnostic and atheistic in intent and effect.

My old buddy Vaclav sums up how I feel about Trump’s election perfectly when he says: “But chiefly, I suppose, it was the exciting realization that there are still people among us who assume the existential responsibility for their own truth and are willing to pay a high price for it.”

All Liberal approved Kulture is nothing but cheap thrills. Even fast food has more nourishment than most of what’s at the movies or at the rock concerts these days.

Hollywood, Then and Now

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Mon, 08 May 2023 01:02:29 GMT

The Younger Generation

HLLYWOOD, NOW AND THEN

LIKE just about everything in the world today, from motherhood, (the tyranny of the patriarchy) to apple pie, (but is it non GMO?) all of classic Hollywood, or Hollywood back then, should have great big yellow crime scene tape and trigger warnings all over it.

When I was a teenager, we had a TV show called Million Dollar Movie in the afternoons, when we'd just gotten home from school. If there was nothing better to do, we watched the old Hollywood classics in black and white on TV. We didn't have color TV. My father despised TV as an animated Hallmark card punctuated with arrogant talking heads. Joe was his name, irreverence was his game. He'd honed his craft driving the nuns in Catholic school crazy. But they had their revenge by forcing my left-handed father to write with his right hand.

But those stolen afternoons watching old black and white Hollywood movies defined my world and my ideals. Later, I sought them out in art house movie theaters on the Upper West side of Manhattan. Now, I own them. Yeah. Sometimes life is magic like that. Get used to it, young 'uns.

I had a son so late in life, we called him a grandchild. He's so much younger than I am that he thinks I make things up when I talk about telephone booths, TV with only three channels and no seat belts. But I've tried to educate him about what America used to be like by showing him those old movies that taught me so much. Whenever he can spare an hour or so away from work or Zombie killing sprees, he comes by and watches one with me.

What a shock I had at his response when we sat down to watch WOMAN OF THE YEAR starring Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, their first movie together and where they began their thirty-year love affair.

Here's the opening scene: It's a bar where reporters are drinking and listening to the radio. You know, an old-fashioned sports bar, for the mega screen TV, substitute a really swell radio turned up loud. So, the guys downing booze hear this hot shot female reporter answering impossible questions on the radio. She's Tess Harding, who takes meetings with FDR and speaks Chinese, and seven other languages.

She can answer all the impossible, obscure questions. Then they ask her a sports question about baseball and she flubs it. Sam, (Spencer Tracy) the sports writer sipping scotch, knew the answer. But not only does Tess flub the question, she then pompously declares that playing baseball should be abolished while we are at war with the Nazis. Okay, so far, my son is bored. Katherine Hepburn is just another feminist know it all type girl, the only kind they produce in his generation.

Sports writer Sam is appalled and angrily argues back to the radio for the benefit of his bar buddies, "We're concerned with a threat to what we like to call our American way of life. Baseball and what it represents is part of that American way of life. What's the sense of abolishing the thing you're trying to protect." Then Sam dashes off to write a stinging column in reply.

However, my son grabbed the remote and played that short scene again, telling me he couldn't believe what he'd just heard. What? What? What did I miss? We were less than five minutes into the movie.

"I can't believe he said that." he said, replaying the scene several more times. I was completely mystified about what he found so unbelievable.

"Didn't you hear what he said?" my son asked me incredulously. "You could tell he really loved this country and he wasn't ashamed or embarrassed. You could never say anything like that in a movie today."

Really? I guess I don't get out enough.

But I will tell you one thing. I kept telling him Trump would win. He very gently and sweetly told me that that was never going to happen, so I shouldn't get my hopes up. He was trying to take care of his old mom. Now that crazy old optimist mom turned out not to be so crazy, I just think ‘get used to it young 'un, sometimes the world hands you a miracle, and all you've got to do is take the ball and run with it. It's your turn to make a grand new world. I think it's gonna be one where it's okay to talk about protecting the American way of life.’

When I was a teenager, we had a TV show called Million Dollar Movie in the afternoons, just when we'd just gotten home from school. If there was nothing better to do, we watched the old Hollywood classics in black and white on TV. We didn't have color TV. My father despised TV as an animated Hallmark card punctuated with arrogant talking heads. Joe was his name, irreverence was his game. He'd honed his craft driving the nuns in Catholic school crazy. But they had their revenge by forcing my left-handed father to write with his right hand.

However, my son grabbed the remote and played that short scene again, telling me he couldn't believe what he'd just heard. What? What? What did I miss? We were less than five minutes into the movie.

"I can't believe he said that." he said, replaying the scene several more times. I was completely mystified about what he found so unbelievable.

Really? I guess I don't get out enough.

ut everything in the world today, from motherhood, (the tyranny of the patriarchy) to apple pie, (but is it non GMO?) all of classic Hollywood, or Hollywood back then, should have great big yellow crime scene tape trigger warnings all over it.

However, my son grabbed the remote and played that short scene again, telling me he couldn't believe what he'd just heard. What? What? What did I miss? We were less than five minutes into the movie.

"I can't believe he said that." he said, replaying the scene several more times. I was completely mystified about what he found so unbelievable.

Really? I guess I don't get out enough.

Why Does NPR Still Exist? Why Does PBS Still Exist?

Sun, 07 May 2023 22:56:43 GMT

Cut Funding for PBS and NPR or Make it American

For many years in my youth, like a good little culturati, I sent checks to PBS during their funding drives and felt good and virtuous.

Then, after I married a professional actor, my husband Tom O'Rourke, we took a harder look at PBS and both were FURIOUS, LIVID AND INCENSED. Seriously. We never sent them another dollar, and I will tell you why.

Every time we tuned into PBS, we saw our hard-earned tax dollars being lavished on buying BBC productions. What a resounding slap in the face to every American actor, writer, director and what an insult to America's cultural history.

There we would sit, short on cash, like all actors, working in a business where good jobs are impossible to find and watch British actors get primo opportunities to do great roles, at our expense. No one becomes an actor so they can watch themselves on TV hawking sausage and cosmetics. You become an actor to do good work in productions of interesting and memorable comedy and drama. Your calling is to bring to light some truth about the human condition.

What part of the PBS budget was spent on great American actors doing the great roles? How about FRIGGIN ZERO dollars.

Think about it. Would Jack Nicolson have said no if he'd been offered the chance to do a production of KING LEAR for PBS? I'll bet he'd have leaped at the chance to have done that and done it for free. And what an incredible treasure that would have been.

Tom and I attended an immensely popular and well-reviewed production of OTHELLO on Broadway starring James Earl Jones and Diane Wiest. Why wasn't some deal made to bring that to PBS? Two incredible American actors in a brilliant production of a Shakespearean classic was pure gold. Would the Broadway producers have turned down all the free publicity and the acclaim they would have enjoyed from being filmed for American PBS? Gee, that's a tough one.

We were privileged to see Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson in a hilarious and unforgettable production of Anouilh's WALTZ OF THE TOREADORS. Where was PBS to capture two of America's most talented actors working at the top of their game?

When Stacey Keach did HAMLET for Joe Papp's Shakespeare in the park, it was the definitive HAMLET that either my husband and I had ever seen. I thought it was better than the Burton HAMLET and far superior to Olivier's HAMLET. Where oh where was PBS?

Where are the productions of great American dramatists like Eugene O'Neill, Thornton Wilder, Kaufman and Hart, Ring Lardner, Garson Kanin, Booth Tarkington? I could go on and on, except my blood is already boiling. And frankly, the loss of the opportunity to preserve so much talent and dazzling brilliance sickens me.

Most actors will work very cheap for the chance to be in something good and to be able to really stretch their acting muscles. It was infuriating to see the American PBS shun everything American in favor of the BBC.

Now, post Trump election, the deeply dyed contempt the elites have for ordinary Americans is blatant and unapologetic. I believe the people running PBS share this ingrained and insensate hatred of everything American; it goes a long way to explain their policy of no American drama, ever.

I also believe the management at PBS is ignorant and lazy. It is so much easier to buy the BBC shows, than to put themselves on the line and do something original.

Most of the elite are completely ignorant about American culture because they have been educated by other Liberals, who also despise America.

SO PLEASE DEFUND PBS OR GET SOME NEW MANAGMENT. Please!

You can now return to your regularly scheduled programming. Thank you for reading my rant.

Carousel My Failed Romance?

Thu, 04 May 2023 17:52:40 GMT

A Tragic Romance is still a Romance

(This is the text version of the podcast.)

This is from the musical CAROUSEL by Rogers and Hammerstein

Why am I playing Carousel? What does this song and this movie, have to do with my dead husband and my failed romance and marriage? Well, for one thing, Carousel is the story of the death of a not very good man who is allowed to come back from Hell to help his wife and his daughter. If you’ve read my book, that’ll sound very familiar.

Another thing is that I have never been able to completely shake the feeling that the man in my life, who I lived with for 38 years, thought of me as something of a fool.

It’s hard not to have grave doubts about yourself when the person you love and trust turns out to have such a low opinion of you.

And on top of that, to be subjected to all this psychic stuff was something of a trial for me. Sometimes I felt like I must be crazy, and I know a lot of people think anything psychic is crazy.

But, when I watched this movie, whose story was based on an old Hungarian play, it seemed as if maybe I was not the crackbrained idiot that Tom and everyone else seems to think. Maybe going head over heels in love is something very important and powerful, not dumb.

So, a Carousel is a Merry-Go-Round, a contraption that spins dizzily around as you ride up and down, accompanied by a loud organ playing an intoxicating waltz. It’s not only delightful to ride, it’s a charming, romantic, old-fashioned metaphor for life, a piece of carnival theater about going round and round and up and down till the music stops. Life is a Merry-Go-Round in a way.

When someone gave me the Carousel movie DVD, I watched it and it brought back another of those strange, sad memories that have haunted me ever since I knew the truth about my late husband.

This memory of mine is one of those tricks of memory, a deep and distinct feeling that has remained puzzling and disturbing and still unresolved. It’s about the one time Tom and I took our young son to Griffith Park in Los Angeles for a picnic and to ride their famous Merry-Go-Round, a huge, fantastic, gorgeous carousel drenched in turn of the century charm, that every visitor to Los Angeles should ride at least once.

It was built in 1926 and brought to LA in 1937. There are 68, colorful, magical horses, every one of which is a jumper, going up and down as well as merrily circling to the swelling fanfare of the Stinson Band organ, reputed to be the largest carousel organ on the West Coast. It plays 1500 different marches and waltzes at top pitch. It’s a really special carousel and quite an experience to see and ride.

The memory I have is of the bewitching beauty of the carousel and the peaceful, gracious park surrounding it. To have a picnic in a park like this, with a happy child, and give him a thrilling ride on the Merry-Go-round was for me a touchingly romantic and memorable experience.

An afternoon like that with the ones you love is so affecting, such a perfect delight, that not to be at least a little emotionally moved, or to grasp your partner’s hand, to exchange a smile and feel grateful just to be alive is very odd.

And that’s what I remember, even today, so very clearly. Tom did not share my happiness. It did not transport his feelings, it did not bring us emotionally closer, it fell flat. He seemed bored and anxious to leave. Now, I suppose he was probably thinking of his secret life or some other woman.

Nevertheless, the setting, the picnic and the hyper romanticism of the carousel, much like the Rogers and Hammerstein music that I played, is so overpowering that any normal person, even a cheating husband, has to practically be made of stone not to respond at least a little. But Tom’s heart was turned to stone. His response to romance was to shut down emotionally. And I remember so well his blankness, which made me feel alone and cheated. Little did I know, right?

If you’ve read the book, you will know that Tom always cheated. He cheated me and himself every day of our marriage and even before. I can see the close parallels between our story and the musical Carousel.

This musical begins at a carnival carousel, where handsome and charming Billy Bigelow, a cynical carnival barker, is being used by a jealous older woman to huckster in the young women to ride her carousel.

Our heroine rides the Merry-Go-Round and flirts with him, causing him to lose his job. He marries her, though, she, like himself, doesn’t really believe in love, but she falls hard for this no-good roustabout, He gets her pregnant, but won’t get a regular job, so he steals to support her, and is killed.

The movie opens as he is allowed one day to come back from Hell to help the family he betrayed. If he can help them, he gets to go to heaven. Given this DVD as a gift, I watched it and couldn’t help but be struck by how eerily similar it was to my own story.

I had been familiar with the movie many years ago and never particularly liked it. The story is based on Lilliom, the Hungarian play by Ferenc Molnar. To me the story in Carousel always seemed to be one of those late Nineteenth Century, depressing European fantasy romances. The kind that make you wonder if anybody in Europe ever had a happy day.

I was familiar with that kind of pessimistic thinking because my St. Louis, German grandparents were very much of that mindset, even though they came to the US as young children in the late Nineteenth Century. I think of it as a sort of peasant stoicism. They came from a long line of working-class Germans whose life was spent 6 days a week, 10 hours a day either deep in the mines or farming for equally long, punishing hours. Trying to wrest a living by the sweat of your brow tends to make people a little depressed and hopeless, not to mention tired.

What has all this got to do with carousels and romance? My grandparents only sporadically attended church, if at all, by the time I know them. I believe they considered God as a luxury in life that poor, struggling people were better off not thinking about. No point in raising useless hopes. God wasn’t likely to ever do anything for them. And Love was also something for rich people. Life was about getting whatever you could and hanging onto it.

But my mother had moved on from their stoic pessimism. She loved the theater, and usually took me with her, since my scientist father had no use for theater or romance. Theater, of course, is intrinsically romantic, since it suspends reality and presents a vision of an imaginary life and world. So, I acquired a strong taste for the romance to be found everywhere in life.

As I watched the movie musical Carousel, it slowly dawned on me that what it’s saying is that there is a very strong, unbreakable bond between romantic love and death, and ultimately to God. But, for most of my life I never had a very strong belief in God.

And though my late husband Tom, as you know if you read the book, watched and responded to some romance movies, he didn’t really believe in love, either. We both were a lot like the cynical characters in the movie.

For many years after I learned of who Tom truly was, I had felt cheated not only on, but of love and romance. I had fallen hopelessly and completely in love with him. And life had offered us many profound and delightful romantic experiences, like that day at the carousel. But, like Billy Bigelow in the movie, Tom tried to cheat at life, not by stealing, but by playing around with other women and hanging onto a secret life.

A month ago, when I had just finished recording the audio version of my book, which I had written several years ago, while the events were still fresh in my mind, I had happened to watch Carousel. And it brought back to me the Griffith Park memory and gave me a new insight into my life.

Here was my story in an old Hungarian romance play, that has been around and very popular for at least a century. It made me reconsider my romance and life and Tom. Maybe I wasn’t a fool and a crazy person. Obviously, many other people felt the truth and power of this story very strongly, strongly enough to make that story into plays, movies and to inspire a memorable musical score by one the all-time great American musical teams, Rogers and Hammerstein.

I think maybe when you live something, you’re too close to it to feel the emotional power and truth of what’s happened to you. At first, it’s too personal. But now, it’s been so many years since I’ve learned the truth, that I think I can accept that I am not the fool that Tom thought me. I can see that, yes, when he despised my love, he did go to Hell. And he was allowed to come back to help us.

I had never realized the deep connection that all real romances have to heaven and hell. Tom coming back and confessing to me proves we did have a little bit of real romance, a romance that was eternal in its own, sad way.

Not the romance I would have chosen, of course, but that spinning carousel of life, music, and love that goes on even beyond death was really all there, it had all the elements of a love story, just not in the happy ending in the way I would have liked.

Still, maybe knowing all this is true is my happy ending. Would I have ever known for sure that love was deathless if this hadn’t happened to me?

More than that, in the end I proved to the man I loved, wherever he is now, that love IS real and IS strong, not just the foolish idea of a naïve woman. The carousel has come full circle. The beautiful painted horses that leap around and around so happily are real…somewhere; and somewhere the organ is playing a waltz, if only we will let ourselves hear it. Maybe Tom did get to go to heaven because he learned to believe in the power of love.

But, an interesting feature of the CAROUSEL plot is the older woman who used Billy Bigelow to keep her business going and even, later in the movie, tried to get him to come back. All that stops him from going back to being her barker is that he finds out his wife Julie is pregnant, so he foolishly and showing his lack of confidence, tried robbery to support them and is killed. Depressed men die young, like Billy Bigelow and like my husband, Tom O’Rourke

In the next podcast, I will discuss depressed men and the mothers who made them that way.

Marx vs Midsummer Night's Dream

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Sat, 04 Feb 2023 19:56:20 GMT

Romance vs Socialism

Socialism vs Romance

The oft derided Romantic impulse is impossible for socialists for many very good reasons. If we are not to breed ourselves like cattle, then we must somehow discriminate when we chose to marry and have children.

Discrimination of any kind requires us to have some set of standards, morals and principles by which to make our judgments. We all have them. Some are attracted to financial success, some to physical prowess, and so on.

But Romance, of course, is not that simple. People often think that it is financial success that they want in a partner, but marry someone poor with no prospects. Or they marry someone rich and find that wealth didn’t answer their Romantic longings. And if you can fathom these and all the other inexplicable matings which occur under the banner of Romance, you begin to understand inherent enigma of Romance.

Socialists and Social Justice warriors want equality of outcome, regardless. No one is allowed to have a story that matters in the unfolding of their life. Some opponents of socialism call this a lack of accountability. While I see their point, I think Socialism and Social Justice is much worse than that: those philosophies deny people their heart’s desire, which is love for who they really are.

And how can you know who you really are if you are denied your story? People don’t fall in love because of someone’s outcome; people fall in love because of who the other person is and how that person has navigated their way through the trials and tribulations we all experience in life, no matter who we are.

Some want to be loved no matter if their outcome is total failure. This can mean everything to some people. Some people want simple lives, some people want glamour, some people want children, and some people want careers. And no matter what people want, they want someone to love them for what they want or they want someone who shows them a new kind of life that they might enjoy. Haven’t we all seen all these paths and paths not taken in our friends and ourselves?

Take away every person’s story and substitute the Socialist’s ideal Social Justice cause and grievance of the moment and you’ve destroyed the person for the benefit of the Socialists, to support the Socialists usually rather limited perceptions of life. The enigma and the mystery of life is subsumed in the trash heap of society’s latest fixations and trendy causes.

Mystery is the essence of Romance and the essence of life. People who live their lives by programmatic Socialism are afraid to face the ultimate mystery of love. As the great Bard said, “The course of true love never did run smooth.” But, ah, you can learn so much by loving and embarking on a Midsummer’s Night Dream.

Happy Valentine’s Day

Romance and Your Eternal Soul

Fri, 27 Jan 2023 16:17:34 GMT

Love Really is Eternal

I’ve thought for a long time about the experiences I had after my husband’s death, which are recounted in my book. I tried very hard to figure out what they mean.

I believe that what happened to me is ultimately and most importantly about the power of Romance. I’m talking about romance with a capitol R, not just a relationship.

Okay, we all know that Romance is dead in the modern world. It’s considered old-fashioned, just a silly feminine hang-up. Today, it’s all about hooking up on Tinder and getting laid. Sex, sex, sex.

Well, after everything I’ve been through, I no longer apologize for being a hopeless romantic.

Until all this happened to me, I was just like you, an everyday, average person focused on making a living in my chosen career, being married and raising a son. I figured God was out there somewhere and Christianity seemed to have some pretty good ideas on living, but no one would ever have accused me of being spiritual.

I thought I was happily married, except for my husband’s depressions. When he died, it turned out I had been wrong about everything, except our romance.

Our Romance connected my husband to me so closely that even death could not separate us. In fact, death opened my husband’s heart and soul to me more fully than he’d ever been able to do in life.

Paranormal and psychic phenomena had always seemed ridiculous to me, until it happened to me.

Now I know that when we love someone romantically, our soul connection survives after death. Romance is what unites our sexuality to our spirituality. So, when you think about it, this makes Romance pretty serious business.

If you want to know how I know this, read Bedeviled . It’s the true story of a very tragic romance. But sad as my romance was, even my very broken, unfaithful, bedeviled husband was still able to reach out to me from beyond the grave. That’s the power of romance, nothing slight or silly about it. It just might save your soul.

Jurassic Park vs Sophocles

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 15:38:57 GMT

Jurassic Park vs Theater

NEW York City is a theater town and has been for over a hundred years. If I think back, I can remember every single live performance I have ever seen. Wondering if theater was really as potent an experience for others as it had always been for me, I conducted a small experiment with my son. (He was part offspring, part science experiment.) He was just six years old, and having grown up in LA, he was a child of the movies.

The penultimate movie of his and every other little boy's life at that time was Jurassic Park. It had real dinosaurs racing around killing other real dinosaurs and people. I do not exaggerate when I say that at the local park on any given day, every boy was consumed with acting out his own version of 'The Raptor', and they all had sound effects. (Incidentally, all boys love making sound effects. Girls may, too, but I didn't have a girl so can't say.) Each boy had captured some vital characteristic of the monstrous raptor and was menacing one and all. What was amazing, was that all the interpretations were quite unique, and yet there was no mistaking them for anything but a Jurassic Park raptor.

But, our son had never been to a live theater performance. Those are hard to come by in Los Angeles. With an actor for a dad, who had done lots of live theater, and a mom who was a theater devotee, I was very curious to see how the kid would respond to real theater as opposed to movies. The only thing I could come up with was a performance of Oliver Twist the musical at his school. I thought it would be a good introduction, since he'd be part of an audience of mostly children.

The son type person consented to attend, but only under protest. He thought the whole thing sounded stupid. But, at last the big day came. From the first moment, I knew I had made a terrible mistake. The theater was a messy classroom with a small stage on one side. The piano was onstage with the cast. The best that could be said of it was that the children playing the parts of Oliver and the others in Fagin's gang were lively and trying hard, but getting no help at all. I cringed as I suffered through the first act, feeling that my experiment had gone very wrong, and vowing to make no fuss at intermission when my son was disgusted and insisted on leaving.

It was a horrible production; not just amateurish, but haphazard, with no thought given to anything theatrical, like costumes, scenery, staging, curtain, or acting. They had made no effort at all to help the imagination along in suspending reality and drawing the audience into the story. It was also an abbreviated version, with only a few of the songs. That was forgivable, because none of the kids were professionals. The two or three songs they'd included were nicely done.

Released from audience bondage by the intermission, we headed out for some lemonade. My disappointment was so great, I was simply waiting for my son to demand to go home. Instead, he turned to me, his face shining with enthusiasm, "Mom," he exclaimed, "it's better than Jurassic Park."

Staggered, thunderstruck, astonished! I was completely stunned and will never forget those words. Even if he'd seen a fabulous Broadway production with all the bells and whistles, I would never have expected it to be in any way comparable to Jurassic Park. Such was the impact of live theater on his young sensibility that even a poor production was felt by a six-year-old to be better than the number one movie of his entire life. Astonishing. Beyond even my wildest hopes. Actually, beyond my understanding. I learned much more from his reaction than I had expected to learn.

The experiment proved one thing for absolute certain: live theater, even poorly done, has a power that should never be underestimated. It's almost as if we are programmed to respond to theater in a uniquely profound way. I mean better than Jurassic Park? The movie that spawned a million boy raptor's?

The Greeks who invented theater were really onto something big and powerful. In those distant millennia, fraught with conflict, superstition, and war, they recognized theater as a force for molding the will and understanding of humanity. If we remember Aeschylus's Oresteia, or Sophocles Oedipus, tragedies that move the human spirit from the self-destructive vanity of vendetta, vengeance, and inter familial murder to the validation of faith in the superiority of the Goddess Athena's justice, we can begin to understand how five hundred years before the birth of Christ, theater helped mankind take the first halting steps toward western, humanist civilization. Just gives me chills to think of it. But, theater always does that to me. And I guess I'm hardly alone in that experience.

There is something visceral about being in the audience of a live theater performance. Theater is more than the sum of its parts. It's got plot, action, acting, sometimes music, story, moral, and theme, which combine to reveal many things to the intellect. But when you sit there in the dark and witness real live people acting out a play, the experience circumvents your normal channels of discrimination. You are moved in a deeper way than almost anything else can accomplish. Theater began as a sacred, religious rite. It still carries that power because theatrical performances speak to your deepest spiritual self.

Blue Roses -A Doubting Thomas Part 3

Thu, 22 Dec 2022 22:11:30 GMT

Blue Roses - Doubting Thomas Part 3

This event occurred before I’d found out about Tom’s secret life, but after he’d passed away. I was still avidly reading and exploring people who’d had psychic experiences like I was having.

My background was strictly scientific. My father flew all around the world designing nuclear reactors. The science to accomplish this is incredibly precise and exacting, not to mention dangerous.

Growing up, I thought about God on Sundays, but my father always stressed the importance of getting my math calculations correct down to the very last decimal place, or else.

This event happened after I had become a widow. I found out that The Exorcist author William Peter Blatty had written a new book about his son’s death. It’s called, “Finding Peter: A True Story of the Hand of Providence and Evidence of Life After Death.”

He wrote very movingly of how, prior to his son’s funeral, he desperately prayed for a very specific sign from his son so he would know for sure that his son was still there, on the other side. The sign he asked for was a blue rose. However, he was unaware that blue roses do not exist in nature.

At the funeral, there were roses of every color, but, of course, no blue roses. By the time he arrived at the cemetery, he’d given up looking for them in despair. But, as the procession passed the newly decorated grave of a veteran, he suddenly noticed red, white and dyed blue roses in a patriotic arrangement. Blatty knew he’d received the sign he’d prayed for; he’d gotten his blue rose. His son was okay and loved him.

As I read this, I began to feel pretty sorry for myself. How I envied the faith of a man like Blatty, because he wasn’t afraid to ask God for a sign. And God had so very obligingly sent him exactly what he asked for: the unlikely blue roses.

I was quite sure I would never have the gall or the courage to put God to the test by asking for a sign from my husband. I knew I would undoubtedly be very disappointed and feel like a total fool when I didn’t get my sign.

Why? Because I knew I really didn’t have that kind of strong faith. So, yes, I had my own little pity party that night, envying those like Blatty who had such simple and powerful faith and such unscientific beliefs.

The next morning, I was shopping at my local Fred Meyer’s store, and as I was checking out, one of my friends who works there suddenly appeared at my side and handed me a red rose, saying, “It’s ‘give a rose to a friend day’. This is my last rose and I want to give it to you.”

I could hardly believe it. And I will never forget that moment. Never. Or my friend, Connie.

I cried the whole drive home. I had gotten my rose! God had heard me and sent me a rose.

He wanted me to know for sure that he heard me, and he let my husband send me a sign that he loved me and was okay. All the math and scientific formulas in the world, couldn’t make that happen. And just to be doubly sure I knew who the message was from, that morning happened to be a Sunday.

Of course, theologians have their own interpretations of the Doubting Thomas story, but, to me, it’s very clear that Thomas had a scientific nature, much like my own.

To quote from the bible, “Unless I see the nail marks in His hands, and put my finger where the nails have been, and put my hand into His side, I will never believe.” Thomas applied the scientific method to the resurrected Jesus.

From the bible, again: “Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe."

Jesus didn’t ignore Thomas’ need for physical proof; he understood and came back to give it to him.

Scientists, nurses, doctors, plumbers, architects, computer programmers, pilots, pharmacists, and many others today, are highly trained to be doubting Thomas’s. To believe something without proof would be grounds for dismissal from your job and might even cause someone’s death.

Perhaps it’s no accident that in this age of science, there are so many who struggle to believe in God.

Maybe this Age of Doubting Thomas’s is also why there are so many psychics and mediums on television and in books demonstrating very convincing evidence of a greater spiritual reality.

To quote the bible, “Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen Me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed.”

Nevertheless, Jesus understood that some people have to see to believe. I’m very grateful that when I had too little faith to ask God for a sign, he sent me one just to give me proof. Not a metaphor, not a vision, but a real red rose that I could see and touch so that I could believe, and not be a doubting Thomas anymore .

A Doubting Thomas Part 1

Thu, 22 Dec 2022 21:51:35 GMT

What Does It Mean to Be a Doubting Thomas?

My husband lied to me and lived a double life for 38 years, and I never figured that out. This appalling lapse in my perception has compelled me to ask what was missing in me and our relationship that I didn’t pick up the clues.

It has caused me to examine and search my own character to see the blind spots. Every person has their strengths and weaknesses; and both my strengths and weaknesses facilitated my husband’s lifelong deception.

Two of my strengths that Tom used to gaslight me are, one, that I am extremely loyal, to the point of complete gullibility to someone I believe in. And I believed in Tom. The second is that I am very independent and reasonably competent. Tom relied on me to come through for us.

What has haunted me, though, is that I so easily accepted Tom’s portrayal of theater and show business as a completely hostile and almost hopeless profession. Now, this is the general opinion of careers in the artistic professions and why everyone discourages their children from entering those professions.

I know many people believe that show business people are excessively immoral. I have worked in a number of professions over the years, and I don’t think show business people are any worse than average; their failings are just more public. (At least, they didn’t used to be worse than average. These days the best you can say is that Hollywood isn’t quite as bad as DC.)

Having worked as a model for nearly ten years before I met Tom, I was fully aware of the casting couch as one route to success. Due to my experience in the advertising world, I had a pretty shrewd idea of how hard it would be to become a real acting success without the casting couch. But I had become a successful model without sacrificing my integrity. So, the question I ask myself is why did I accept Tom’s steady drumbeat of discouragement about my chances as an actress?

That is the question about myself that has haunted me since his death, and since I knew that he was gaslighting me about show business for our entire marriage so he could pursue his secret life.

Trying to learn, belatedly, from my 38 years of marital experience, I asked myself what was missing in me that allowed me to succumb so completely to his admittedly clever and convincing lies, which he acted with so much sincerity. I believe in some ways he actually thought he was telling the truth. But that’s another story.

Why had I had so little faith in myself as an actress? The answer I finally arrived at was that I lacked faith in God. I know that sounds too easy, but it’s more complicated than it sounds.

I had gone into my auditions thinking that what I had to do was to deliver my performance. Of course, that’s true. In some ways it’s like interviewing for a job.

But good acting is like falling in love, you have to throw yourself into a role and trust your feelings, your true self and just give in and have faith that you have something interesting to say by acting this or that role.

There is something mystical about good actors. They may lack intelligence, they may be ignorant, they may be immoral, they may not believe in God, but they know that they know something about life that’s important; and they are compelled to share it by acting. They have faith that life means something, and that life is using them to express it.

In my many years on this earth, I have come to the conclusion that wherever and whenever you encounter any kind of faith in an unseen, but greater meaningfulness of life, you should respect it, cherish it, and encourage it.

I had gone into my auditions without God at my side. I had gone in as a professional, but not a lover of acting. I didn’t let myself fall in love with my role and have faith that sooner or later someone else would share my vision of acting.

Modelling was easier for me because I could see that I was photogenic. All I had to be to work as a model was to be photogenic and to be personable and professional. I have always been a very sociable person, so that part came easily. I like people and many of them seem to like me.

Acting wasn’t as tangible to me as modelling. Acting was a leap of faith I just never even thought about trying to make. And here’s what I figured out. I was probably born a Doubting Thomas. It’s just my nature. I need proof. Being photogenic was visible and proof.

Acting; where was the proof that I was doing it? I had a very good acting teacher tell me once that I had an overdeveloped sense of truth. She was right. Like Thomas in the bible, I had to feel the wounds before I could believe it was Jesus come back from the dead.

Faith in something greater was what I lacked and that was what hindered me, eroded my confidence in myself, and made me vulnerable to be gaslighted so easily by my husband. He always gave me the impression that show business was somehow not for me. And sadly, I accepted that.

Had I challenged him, I might have uncovered his secret life. I might have forced him to confront his mental problems and saved his life.

Well, maybe that’s why he was allowed to come back from the dead to PROVE to me that there is a God. Like Doubting Thomas, I needed to see it to believe it.

Need I add that due to some quirk of fate, I was also born in Missouri whose motto is the “Show Me” state? Yeah, that’s me all over.

For a Doubting Thomas, acquiring real faith was a many years journey of doubt and skepticism.

In the next posts, I will elaborate on some events that moved me, or should I say, re moved the scales covering my inner eyes of faith.

Time in a Bottle- A Doubting Thomas Part 2

Thu, 22 Dec 2022 21:09:15 GMT

Time in a Bottle

Okay, this blog is about me claiming to be psychic. This topic probably makes me even more uncomfortable than it makes you.

By now, you’re probably asking yourself is this person some kind of weirdo, occultist, mystic or what?

No. Absolutely not. I was raised in the Presbyterian Church. I am a very ordinary, mildly religious person.

I never looked for anything psychic to happen to me, far from it.

It took many years of somebody out there in the spirit world knocking on my very closed mind to convince me to at least consider that there were realities we couldn’t see. I write in depth about the important steps in this journey from scoffer to absolute certainty in my book Bedeviled , The Strange Life and Death of Actor Tom O’Rourke.

Here, I’ll limit myself to a briefer explanation.

Let me start this by saying that when I worked as a model, while being a student in an Ivy League college studying Environmental Biology, one of the things that embarrassed me the most about my job was that all the women’s magazines that I worked for had horoscope columns.

In those days, men’s magazines never had any of that silly stuff. It was so mortifying!

Women! What the heck was the matter with them. They spent small fortunes on their clothes, hair and make-up and then sat around trying to figure themselves out by reading their horoscopes. Well, live and learn.

I was always a very practical person, not the type to ever give the slightest thought to anything paranormal or psychic.

My father was a scientist who, among other jobs, helped design nuclear reactors in many different countries.

You don’t consult your horoscope for answers when you’re building something that could blow up the world.

So, here’s what happened that basically turned my nice, predictable science world completely upside down.

Tom and I were in a very desperate situation financially. He got an offer to apprentice as a director with his old friends on the soap opera The Guiding Light, but we’d have to move from LA back to the New York area for this job.

We couldn’t afford to live in the city, so I was chosen to go fly back to Northern NJ to find something to rent, because I grew up there and was familiar with the area.

It was an emotionally desperate and very low point in our lives. Who would rent to two people with no jobs? How much rent can we afford? Can we even find a feasible place to rent in a town with decent schools for our kid?

As I was on the flight, my overstressed mind sort of relaxed and wandered. Suddenly, looking out the window at the passing scene of the western desert below, I knew that one of Tom’s scripts would be made into a movie.

It was a script that takes place in the desert. And I knew as surely as I knew that 2 and 2 make 4, that Desert Heat would be a movie. It was suddenly there, a fact.

And that was bizarre, because we’d shopped that script around for years, and no one was interested. We’d forgotten about it in the midst all our troubles.

But there it was, this stupid fact, stuck in my brain like any other thing you might know, except how come I knew for sure it was true? But I knew it was. It was all very odd.

And it was the most improbable fact ever, because anyone who knows anything about Hollywood knows there are literally millions of screenplays sloshing around Tinsel town. The odds of getting one made into a movie are pretty much nil, zero, and forget it.

During the next couple of years, we had so much to do in getting resettled that I forgot all about my strange fact. I knew it had happened. I had told Tom about it. But life goes on.

Then, out of the blue, Hollywood called because Jean Claude Van Damme had seen the script for Desert Heat and liked it.

And so, unbelievably, that screenplay was made into an actual movie starring Jean Claude Van Damme.

At some point in all the excitement of our great good fortune, Tom reminded me of my prediction from the airplane.

Now, I admit to being an overly intellectual person. Naturally, for a person like myself, it was always absolutely essential to have a theory of how the world more or less worked. I needed that. It gave me the confidence to carry on with life.

But, if in some weird way the future could be known—and I knew it could, because I had known a future event with absolute certainty—then as they say, all bets were off.

This stupid fact popping into my head and then actually occurring destroyed my entire concept of the structure of reality. It literally knocked me practically senseless.

I had many, many sleepless nights trying to recalibrate my understanding of reality.

The thing is, in the physical world of science, there is literally no theory or any whiff of possibility or any plausible physical model of the structure of the universe that would allow the future to be known and to be predicted. And even more unbelievable, to pop into my brain. How the heck did that happen?

Having something like this happen to me was like having a brain worm, eating at me, night and day. I kept thinking how could that be? What is going on?

And believe me when I say I spent years scouring the library, extensively searching every conceivable resource that might provide some workable, scientific explanation or some model of the universe that could account for the future being known.

When scientists addressed the question of anything psychic, they dismissed the experiences by contriving alternate and very convoluted explanations to disprove anything supernatural.

They also dismissed psychics and mediums as people with delusions, or people who were just making it up.

None of this was any help. I knew I hadn’t made it up, although I often wished I had. And I knew there was no alternate explanation that disproved that I had known the future.

I gave up on scientists and moved on to the psychic and medium crowd to see what they had to say.

Now the problem with that approach is that a lot of the people who are psychic or mediums are often kind of kooky.

I read their books, too. Clearly, they did often have knowledge that must have been acquired psychically.

But their ideas about the universe were usually so limited by their own intellect, and full of such fantastic ideas, like lost Atlantis civilizations, and interplanetary races of demons or whatever, that they weren’t much help in trying to figure out anything.

I spent several years reading everything from the Holographic Universe on and on, so many books; and I never found a satisfactory explanation. It was the most baffling puzzle I’d ever met, and I simply could not solve it.

Were we all operating outside of time?

And what about free will? Where the heck did that fit in?

And how and why had the future popped into my head. Who did that?

It took a long, long time to convince me there was a spiritual world that was far greater and that superseded this world in ways I couldn’t understand.

Now I see that it was God, or some representative of the great One, knocking on my stubborn, egotistical and very closed mind.

I am talking to you, God was saying, and you’d better listen up because I’ve picked you to tell a story for me.

For a long time, I felt like I was breaking a lot of taboos in believing that I was getting psychic messages.

I was afraid of the occult, I mean, wasn’t Hitler into the occult?

It all seemed too odd to even think about, but there was no escaping it. Once that second sight is open, it seems to stay open.

And I couldn’t talk to anyone about it, because no one believed me.

If you talk about it, a lot of people just think you’re showing off or trying to get attention.

I knew it happened, no matter what they thought. And I was stuck with that knowledge, uncomfortable as it was.

Truthfully, and quite obviously, if you think about it, I would never have written a book about how my husband cheated on me for our entire life, unless it had been made pretty clear to me that it was important to tell this story.

I think one of the reasons it’s important is that so many people in the modern world are like me: overly scientific.

I call it having blinkers on, like the things you put on a horse’s head, so it won’t get spooked. Well, I was forced to take those blinkers off, and boy did I ever get spooked.

But this is an age where so many of us are like me, Doubting Thomas’s. That’s why I call myself a Doubting Thomas. I had to feel the wounds in real time in this world to understand and believe in the next world.

I have pretty much proof that what I’m saying is true. There’s the earlier book which I wrote when I thought that the book I was supposed to write was about a happily married actor. It was titled DON’T QUIT YOUR DAY JOB.

Additionally, there is all the evidence of Tom’s wandering and inexplicable choices in his career; and I have the tapes from Pam Coronado.

I pass all these strange events to make it easier for you to confirm your faith in the divine. I spent so many difficult years without it.

There are many, many roads to faith. I hope you find the one that will take you there.

And when I ask why me? Why was I picked for this job?

I think in the first place I have the right skill set. I have the properly scientifically skeptical training and background.

Then, much against my will and inclination, I stumbled into the arts and subsequently got bitten by the theater bug, so I studied and learned how to access a great swath of theater and movies which helped me decode the language of symbols. This made it easy for God and his servants to tell me their complicated stories and to be understood.

Also, I was of a romantic disposition, which helped me toward faith in love.

But last and best, I guess I am just the kind of person God always uses: foolish and weak.

I have bounced through life on a shoeshine and a smile, as they say, seemingly at the whim of fate, always barely keeping my head above water in the surging cross currents of life.

“But God hath chosen the foolish things in the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.”

KJB 1 Corinthians 1:27

Sex Life Vs Love Life

Tue, 20 Dec 2022 13:54:21 GMT

Sex Life vs Love Life

Somehow, in the rush to be the equal of men, women are no longer women, but second-rate men. They value only masculine traits, but they are not men and never will be. However, they scorn femininity and don’t want to be women, either. What’s a girl to do?

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, feminism has become way too much flattery for masculinity, and total contempt for femininity. Feminine women have contributed so much to humanity and culture since the beginning of time, that it’s impossible to even begin to acknowledge its value.

But one aspect of distinctly feminine culture that is singled out for special scorn in the modern world of science is romance. It’s written off as some sort of hormonal response, completely overlooking and disregarding the fact that our hormones respond to our feelings and guess what? Our feelings are informed by our understanding. Enter Romance, as the cultural guidepost to understanding love and how it works.

Romance is a very personal quest that results in most intimate kind of transformation of self and character.

However, for all the usual reasons, with the support of most of our recent American culture, most men regard romance as steamy pulp for sex starved females and not worthy of serious consideration.

But, I, Marcy, the brainy intellectual, have always been hooked on romance stories like Jane Austen, so it’s impossible for me to accept our culture’s denigration of something that to me seems so very central to life. If I like it so much, there must be SOMETHING in Romance that the contemporary culture was overlooking.

Although it’s certainly true that men don’t haunt the romance aisles grabbing up hot new Silhouette Romance paperbacks, romantic feelings are explored in the great literature from every culture in the world, most of which was written by men, until recently. Romeo and Juliet, the epitome of romance, was written by that guy Shakespeare. Romance is as old as the Greek and Roman myth of Cupid and Psyche. The examples of great romantic stories from all corners of the world are too numerous to mention, and I am not scholar enough to be familiar with even a small portion of them.

In our recent desperate battles of the sexes, Romance was one of the first casualties. Romance requires two independent people forming a partnership, in which the whole is greater than the parts. But that requires two distinct people; you know, the old me Jane, you Tarzan thing.

Many people sneer at Romance as escapist frivolity. But, I beg to differ. Romances are the stories of how we connect intimately with another person, which is probably the most essential task of being human. Romance unites one of our basic instincts, the sexual drive, to our mind and our body. And all religions stress that love is how our mind that unites our soul to God. What could be more important than that?

There are genre romance novels and there are character-based romance novels. The usual genre-based Romance novels mainly celebrate our delight in personal differences overcome by sexual attraction. Not a bad thing at all. But romance novels can go much deeper into our psyches.

Because the nature of romance in real life is unique to each person’s experiences, romance novels offer a better way to isolate and understand the mechanism of romance as it operates on character. Austen’s Sense and Sensibility is a perfect example of how to contrast the effect of romance on differing character types. One heroine has an excess of good sense, the other an excess of sensibility. Both women’s characters are wrought to a better understanding of themselves by forming romantic attachments. And since there is only one author of these two characters, we can also say that in many people good sense and vibrant sensibility are always in conflict to find balance in our characters.

This is so much more than the ying and yang idea of masculinity and femininity. That concept is so bland and undifferentiated. People are all different, and each person has a Romance, a romantic history or some sort of romance story in their life. No two will ever be the same.

Even men, whom the feminists seemed were so bent on imitating and now seem to want to do away with altogether, yes men, used to acknowledge the worth of romance to a life well lived. Mr. Macho Hemingway's books always included romantic adventures which involved women. F. Scott Fitzgerald had his Daisy. The list of romantic stories is endless.

But the point is, if women won’t allow men to honor and experience romantic feelings, if women don’t respect themselves enough to value a man’s love for them as women and mates, then it’s game over: no intimacy, no love, no romance and no deeper understanding of who you are and no motive to grow and change.

What’s left? I can’t figure out what’s left. Even the boring ying and yang idea sort of evaporates into a gray mass.

I’m not positing that women created Romance. I know that many people say Romance was born in the Middle Ages due to chivalry and the worship of courtly love. Anthropologists will tell you no culture lacks romantic tales. For heaven’s sake, even Adam and Eve is a romance.

Women who are devoted feminists end up sneering at themselves for being feminine, instead of standing strong for the womanly virtues. I think respect for femininity is one of the most important pillars of western civilization.

Without Romantic love, what happens to domestic bliss? Who stays home and protects the innocence of children of both sexes? Just because women aren’t doing the wash and cooking from scratch anymore, doesn’t mean that the feminine presence in the home isn’t still pivotal to successful marriages and parenting. Women volunteers used to do a lot of work in communities and the world of culture that now we cannot afford to pay to have done.

What's left is all sorts of weird sexual practices, an overactive and tiresome sex life, without a deeper, more vibrant, more engaging, more enlightening, love life.

King Canute and Climate Change

Thu, 10 Nov 2022 15:21:53 GMT

King Canute and Climate Change

RECENTLY, I happened to be volunteering in a Republican call center where young high school students were visiting on a field trip to discuss the candidates running for election in the recent American presidential election (2016). They were uniformly well-behaved young people, well dressed, attractive and alert. They asked the same tired, old political questions that had been repeatedly canvassed over the last year or so, receiving the same tired, boilerplate answers. But the event did give the students a chance to formulate a coherent question and speak in front of a group, which seemed to me a very worthwhile experience, no matter the triteness of the subject matter.

But, near the end, one student asked a question, and the way she phrased the question provided a startling glimpse into her mind and that of her fellow students and even of the political representatives who were there to respond.

This young lady wondered what the candidates were going to do about climate change. The politicians present preceded to list various measures they advocated to deal with climate change. It was like a game of charades, except it wasn't.

That a high school student could honestly believe that politicians can control the climate was shocking. How could these seemingly intelligent young people be so naïve and gullible as to actually believe that government controls the climate? That the adults who were in charge, who presumably should and do know better, told the young woman their plans to control climate change was like watching theater of the absurd. Please, someone tell the children, politicians do not control the climate.

Then I remembered King Canute and the waves. Canute was the King of the North Sea empire, which included Denmark, England and Norway, from 995 to 1035 AD.

From Wikipedia:

"In the narrative, Canute demonstrates to his flattering courtiers that he has no control over the elements (the incoming tide), explaining that secular power is vain compared to the supreme power of God. The episode is frequently alluded to in contexts where the futility of "trying to stop the tide" of an inexorable event is pointed out.”

“In Huntingdon's account, Canute set his throne by the seashore and commanded the incoming tide to halt and not wet his feet and robes. Yet, continuing to rise as usual [the tide] dashed over his feet and legs without respect to his royal person. Then the king leapt backwards, saying: 'Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings..."

Over a thousand years later, we ought to know that, even today, with all its scientific marvels, no power on earth, manmade or otherwise can do something as simple as halt the tides, much less change the climate.

I am reminded of a quote by that frighteningly cynical journalist, H. L. Mencken who said:

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

I suppose climate change is a wonderfully effective series of imaginary hobgoblins to menace the public with and capable of providing the necessary alarm so that a politician can lead them to safety by voting his or her party into power. Does that make me as cynical as H. L. Mencken? I sincerely hope not quite that cynical.

Danse Macabre - The Dance of Death

Thu, 27 Oct 2022 15:24:19 GMT

Danse Macabre - The Dance of Death Returns

Here is the link to Saint-Saens Danse Macabre Music https://youtu.be/YyknBTm_YyM

The Danse Macabre, or Dance of Death, has been a recurring artistic theme since the 1400’s when the Bubonic Plague wiped out probably more than half of the European population. Death struck all levels of society, popes and peasants all fell victim to the quickly spreading, fatal disease. Death became a constant theme in all the arts, theater, music, painting, and literature.

This is from the Atas Obscura:

"In the Danse Macabre, or Dance of Death, skeletons escort living humans to their graves in a lively waltz. Kings, knights, and commoners alike join in, conveying that regardless of status, wealth, or accomplishments in life, death comes for everyone. At a time when outbreaks of the Black Death and seemingly endless battles between France and England in the Hundred Years War left thousands of people dead, macabre images like the Dance of Death were a way to confront the ever-present prospect of mortality”

Ever since then, every time massive death sweeps humanity, the Danse Macabre, the dance of death, echoes across all our arts and fascinates and moralizes us with the tangible truth that life and glory are fleeting and no one, young or old, escapes the grim reaper.

Sadly, unexpectedly, now, once again, the Dance of Death stalks the world on an industrial scale, as if on cue. Why do we plunge into human devastation time and time again?

Why? Why do we always throughout history reach the point of mass death and mass killing? And the killing isn’t just in ancient times. The mass murder and two world wars of the Twentieth Century and the tens of millions exterminated by dictatorial decree of their own government makes the Twentieth Century a Danse Macabre extraordinaire.

And now the Twenty-First Century has barely begun and already we are deep into another Dance of Death.

What sparks the Danse Macabre? Is life nothing more than a drive toward death? What is the fear and hate that fuels the death drive, the dance of death?

Many years ago, in the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris at age nineteen my carefree, middle-class world was surprisingly demolished by Renoir’s impressionist painting Luncheon of the Boating Party .

That painting, so famous and beloved by so many, has a special enchantment. To me, it was the perfect picture of life as it should be lived, and as it had been lived. Such joie de vivre, such interesting people, fashionable, but eminently bourgeoise, possibly working class, middle-class and artists, at a leisurely luncheon in an easy, colorful, and comfortable setting, all seeming to be distinct personalities enjoying a simple pleasure to the fullest.

I longed to be there with them, and yet, from my Twentieth Century perspective, I knew what a horrible and devastating tragedy was fast bearing down upon their happy world.

Renoir painted Luncheon of the Boating Party in 1882, a mere 30 years before World War One would kill millions of French men and women. Surely, all the people in the picture suffered horribly during WW I, even if they had been too old to be soldiers. Surely, some of their sons were tragically lost far too young in the bloody trenches of the endless slaughter that characterized WWI. And their daughters were left bereaved, cold and starving.

Could they ever have guessed that millions of their fellow men would be ruthlessly and mercilessly exterminated in wars, manmade famines, and concentration camps? Or that their homes, their cities, their families, their country and their entire world would be utterly and irrevocably destroyed forever, never to return.

Being a Boomer, I had heard a lot about that war, and even more about WWII, which followed closely on the heels of WWI.

At first, what kept me coming back again and again to view The Boating Party Luncheon was my curiosity. I was driven to search for some sign of the coming disaster that awaited these very familiar, very ordinary, contented people. I was sure that some forewarning of a human tragedy of such magnitude that was only a few years distant would be visible somewhere in that painting.

Was there something hidden in their faces, for instance, some coarseness of expression that hinted at unsavory character tendencies? Was there a cruel twist of the mouth or dark furrow of the brow to warn of the evil that was to erupt so soon? I searched that painting and those faces for some shadow in their world, some premotion of the imminent destruction in their faces.

But, no. The painting, the subjects in the painting, and even the painter himself seemed entirely innocent of any subtle indications of their fast approaching, and very tragic fate.

It was there in that foreign setting of Paris where I first experienced the disturbing realization that the Danse Macabre could suddenly and unexpectedly throw its deadly shadow across the entire world.

I suppose being an impressionable nineteen-year-old in Paris, alone, walking the very streets that Renoir, Van Gogh, Manet and the Boating Luncheon people had walked made an indelible mark on me. I was on the very soil of France, which just a few years past had absorbed so much blood, so much terrified sweat, and certainly so many bitter tears in the recent wars.

It was all too shattering and too real. The people in that painting were so much like the people I knew in France and in the USA, people I’d had lunches with, too. Would my world someday also be destroyed?

What was the matter with this old world of ours?

I was so very young and when you are young, life is so precious.

I needed desperately to know what caused the world to throw away joy and plunge into the Dance of Death. How did that happen, and why?

And so, I became hypnotically fascinated by Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boat Party . Here were the happy, smiling faces of 1882, a mere 33 years before the massacre of millions swept their country.

They seemed so alive and so at ease, and so pleased with a simple lunch on a sunny day. How could tragedy engulf this lovely world? From what dark miasma does the horror arise, from what terrible impulse does mankind need to kill and be killed? I puzzled and sighed and had to move on with my life, having not the least idea of an answer to that age old question.

Of course, history books are full of explanations of all types. There are political considerations, economic dislocations, national feelings, trade problems, social problems, the reasons are endless. But none of those reasons seems sufficient to explain the destruction of so much happiness and the good life so evident in that painting.

And yet, here we are again, dancing the Danse Macabre of plague, war, and needless starvation, and massacres.

I guess I am not so different from those happy Boating party guests, after all. I never saw the devastation and death that was coming at my country fast and with a vengeance.

These are not happy times. You can’t laugh in the face of so much suffering and death. The Dance of death is not a joyous dance. It’s tragic.

Do we need to be reminded how valuable life is? I still have no answer.

As always, the people who are holding the power of life and death in their fearful grip seem unaware of the death and destruction they are wrecking in every corner of the world. But they do it again and again.

And again and again.

The Danse Macabre. Perfect for Halloween, but not the kind of Halloween that’s happy, the kind of Halloween death dance that’s all too real.

As I look at the The Boating Party Luncheon now, in the midst of our Dance of Death, I do it to remind myself that there was once a time of happiness in the world, and surely it can come again. I hope and pray.

MEMO TO HOLLYWOOD: Make a Good Movie

Tue, 11 Oct 2022 17:38:22 GMT

MEMO TO HOLLYWOOD: Make a Good Movie

The Man Who Changed Music Forever - Louis Armstrong. How about a movie about him?

INSTEAD of making a depressing swing musical like La La Land about a couple of careerists who go to Hollywood to get rich and famous, and don’t live happily ever after, as if unbridled selfish ambition is a compelling story line, how about making a musical about when swing music helped defeat actual Fascism and the real American hero, among many American heroes, who helped?

Yes, writing about Vera Lynn yesterday reminded me of Glenn Miller, one of the enormously talented musicians who was part of the birth of the swing jazz movement in the USA. As a matter of fact, there were so many great musicians of that era whose stories could be told with soundtracks of their fantastic music that it’s almost a crime that no modern movie has been made about any of them. To name a few who could be included in such movies there are Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, The Dorsey Brothers, and Jelly Roll Morton.

What great movies those would be! And not only does the Glenn Miller story include great music, jazz and swing as they burst onto the American scene and then internationally, but Glenn Miller, even though too old to be drafted, joined the Army to bring music to the troops and lift morale! He died a hero flying to France. Here we have a real-life unhappy ending, not like La La Land ’s hero and heroine’s self-induced ‘life is a crap sandwich ending’, where love doesn’t matter.

Yes, a movie about the Masters of Swing and Jazz might be worth making and might even draw a crowd. Don’t be shy, jump on board the new Make America Great movement. Make biopics about the great talents, their musical genius, the obstacles they faced and triumphed over. Seriously, Hollywood, you can’t miss with material like that. These great musicians used their talents and their lives to write the words and the music for you. Just get out your camera and hire a screenwriter.

La La Land showed how much people enjoy musicals with singing and dancing; now why don’t you try to make one that has some genuine heart and showcases some of the great American contributions to music?

Memo: to make money, you have to delight the audience. As Glenn Miller observed when he gave up his lucrative career to serve his country and the cause of freedom: “America means freedom and there's no expression of freedom quite so sincere as music.”

Staying Focused - Young People's Dilemma

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 17:16:21 GMT

Staying Focused - Young Peopl'e Dilemma

(Above is Mary Wells Lawrence, who created the hugely successful Advertising Agency Wells, Rich and Green.)

STAYING FOCUSED

THIS next quote from "A Big Life in Advertising" by Mary Wells Lawrence, who was the first woman to run a major advertising agency and to get and keep all the bigtime advertisers, like Procter and Gamble, Alka-Seltzer and American Motors. She came into her own in the late fifties and sixties.

She comments: " ...but in the sixties and early seventies, you had to work a little harder to stay focused, so many large questions had been let loose--protest, authority, war, death, civil rights, women's rights, freedom, individuality."

Today, for very different reasons, I think it's also hard for young people to stay focused because every time they do something good that should be rewarded with approval, kudos, success and money, instead some greedy government bureaucrat sucks up the profits and then shakes a finger at them, telling them that they're spoiling the environment, or hurting somebody who's different from them, or ruining the world SOMEHOW just by trying to live your life.

It's hard for young people to know what's right and what's wrong. It's hard to know what you can throw your energies into with a good conscience. It's hard to feel good about any success you may contribute to, because there is always somebody in government or the media who's got some long story to make you feel ashamed of feeling good.

It's an appalling situation, confusing, befuddling, enervating and really pretty tragic for young people. It creates a kind of malaise of the mind, which, combined with the strange antics of the haters burning up everything, leads to hopelessness and chaos. What a miasma of despair these young people have been macerating in for their whole lives!

Nobody is born knowing who they are. It takes lots of time and experience to begin to develop character and ideas about the big themes of life. What have our young people learned recently except that effort is futile and anger is exciting? If they don't trust that Trump can change things, it's because they have been carefully schooled not to trust themselves and their judgement. It's pretty bleak.

As the song says we must "Accentuate the positive, Eliminate the negative, and latch on to the affirmative, don't mess with Mister In-Between." (Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer)

Our young people are the future. If we don't capture their hearts and minds, we've lost everything.

EMILIE MADE VOLTAIRE LOOK DUMB AND HE ADORED HER FOR IT

Sat, 08 Oct 2022 18:53:19 GMT

Emilie Made Voltaire Look Stupid and He Adored Her For It.

A Love Story for the Ages

IN 1733, in France, twenty-seven-year-old Emilie du Chatelet, a married aristocrat, met the almost forty-year-old Voltaire and became his lover. She had been married off young, French style, to an older aristocrat who could prove four hundred years of aristocratic blood. She'd provided the requisite heirs, and both husband and wife were then free to pursue love wherever they could find it.

She found it in the arms of one of the great intellectual giants of the French Enlightenment, a sometimes hunted man, due to his forward thinking views, which he took little trouble to conceal. A highly educated woman, in a country where women were never educated, Emilie spoke five languages, and studied math with two of the greatest mathematicians in world history, Johann Bernoulli and Clairaut.

She was the first woman to have a scientific paper published by the Paris Academy of Sciences, which sponsored a competition one year to determine the nature of heat, light and fire. Voltaire spent millions, in today's dollars, buying equipment to heat, weigh and take the temperature of molten metals. He broke a lot of thermometers in those molten metals, but learned very little about the nature of heat, light and fire.

His paramour, Emilie, got busy with her pencils and calculated that, if light was moving at a billion feet per second, then if light was a particle, even the most infinitesimal quantity of it bombarding the earth would destroy all living beings. She dared advance the startling and unheard of idea that "light was something that had no mass at all." Further, she had plans to repeat Newton's experiments with the prism, in which he'd separated white light into colors, except Emilie was going to put thermometers in each of the different colors of the rainbow lights, hypothesizing that "different colors of light would carry different amounts of heating power." Eighty years elapsed before anyone got around to trying this, and thus discovering infrared light.

Emilie did not get to carry this experiment out, because Voltaire had to make a hasty exit to escape arrest by the King for advancing anti-Church and anti-Royalist ideas.

From Wikipedia: "In 1749, the year of her death, she completed the work regarded as her outstanding achievement: her translation into French, with her commentary, of Newton's 'Principia Mathematica', including her derivation of the notion of conservation of energy from its principles of mechanics. Published ten years after her death, today du Chatelet's translation of Principia Mathematica is still the standard translation of the work into French."

She made the translation and discovered the notion of the conservation of energy all while pregnant at forty-three years old. Tragically, she died a few days after the birth of her child. It was not Voltaire's child, but another man's, for Voltaire was by then much older and not an attentive lover.

I suppose what strikes me so forcibly about Emilie's story is the idea of this brilliant woman enduring a dangerous, late-stage pregnancy, while translating from Latin into French, Newton's book of mathematics, in which he introduces calculus to the world. Calculus is tough for the best of us, under any circumstances, but she mastered it while pregnant, and in her forties, and not in her native tongue. And additionally, she discovered the idea of the conservation of energy, which she added to her translation.

Seems to me Emilie is proof that women need never apologize that they don't appear in the history books quite as often as men. Having babies either left them with little time for creating works of prodigious scholarship or ended their lives prematurely.

Emilie was an extraordinary prodigy, who overcame all the immense hurdles, natural and cultural, that so often stand in the way of outstanding female accomplishments. And she was loved by another great intellectual.

Long after her death, Voltaire wrote this of her:

"I shall await you, quietly

In my meridian

in the fields of Cirey

Watching one star only

Watching my Emilie."

By Voltaire, "Ode"

The quotes are from the book "Passionate Minds" by David Bodanis. A book about two incredibly daring, intelligent and passionate people, both of whom changed the world in very great ways. It's a great story, very entertaining as well as an informative book, well worth a reading.

The Greeks Invented Theater...And Democracy

Thu, 06 Oct 2022 22:24:54 GMT

The Greeks Invented Theater...And Democracy

THIS IS AN OLD POST ABOUT THE 2016 TRUMP VS HILLARY DEBATES

I applaud the honesty and courage of the NYU professors who sought to prove their premise that Trump had won the debates with Hillary because he was a man and she was a woman, not because he was a better debater.

In order to demonstrate their theory, the professors staged a replay of one of the presidential debates with a woman imitating Trump and repeating his debate responses. And they had a man play Hillary, repeating her responses.

In this brilliant act of pure theater, they shockingly revealed to themselves their own biases. With a woman playing Trump, they could suddenly see how persuasive and charming Trump’s debating performance had been. The man who played Hillary revealed her performance to be unfocused and annoying by contrast.

Using live theater, they saw the irrefutable proof with their own eyes, open for the first time to their own prejudices. Previously, they had been convinced Hillary was the winner, and it was only the outdated prejudices of the audience in favor of men that had designated her as the loser.

And conversely, they had reviled Trump as the loser and found themselves wrong again, when a woman repeating Trump's words easily convinced them she was the winner. Thus, because of their psychological bias against the male sex, they had been blind to the superiority of Trump’s performance.

Everything they perceived about Trump had been the result of a mental bias about sex which made them unable to judge either him or Hillary fairly and without prejudice. Theater revealed their own minds to them.

Since the days of Ancient Greece, down through the Middle Ages and Christian Morality Plays, to Shakespeare’s Elizabethan England, to great American playwrights like Eugene O’Neill, and American musicals like A Chorus Line, nothing is more subversive than theater. Nothing has more raw power to influence a person’s perceptions.

Live theater is one of the great intellectual experiments of Western civilization whose power is to open up the minds of the audience by enabling them to recognize and understand themselves and their world from a safe seat in the dark and share the experience with others like themselves. Don’t forget the Greeks invented theater…and democracy.

It seems to me that today, in modern Western civilization, we ignore and underrate the value of having a harmoniously balanced personality. Imagine what other wrong and harmful choices were made by the people who loved and defended Hillary Clinton merely because she was a woman. Mental biases are signs of unbalanced minds and lead to unintentionally self-destructive behaviors.

Culture and mental health are very closely linked. A country cannot create a functioning and civil society of productive, happy people without a vibrant culture to guide that society. I strongly believe that culture must include live theater that is available and affordable for everyone. We must free theater from the shackles of prejudice and censorship, as well as punishing regulations and excessive costs, so that it can again become a vibrant part of our cultural landscape, healing minds while entertaining. What a great, three thousand year old idea!

I confess to being as bad as anyone in undervaluing theater for many years. It was sheer luck that I grew up near New York City in the days when there was an exciting and affordable theater culture. Birthdays and Christmases always meant tickets to a Broadway show. I regarded it as a delicious luxury, which I adored, but that didn’t detract from its value to my mental health.

As I grew older and tried to find my way in life, I began to realize that theater is so much more than just a good time. Easily and delightfully, it taught me about myself and my fellow man. Theater is the intellect of a society having a conversation with itself. What a joyous way to cure the many dislocations and confusions our minds may suffer from.

And, as the professors who watched the staged debate proved, Trump was the better candidate, regardless of his sex, which I believe also validates the wisdom of the democratic process. Those brave and honest professors have provided us all with a valuable piece of real theater. It’s time to reclaim theater from the stifling grip of corporate propaganda.

The Necklace

Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:38:46 GMT

What a Necklace Taught me

I was a feminist many, many years ago. I was a biology major at Columbia University and a very serious, intellectual student, who was forced to earn my living as a fashion model. Of course, normal girls envied me for being a model. I got to put on make-up, get my hair done, wear pretty clothes and get paid. Like everyone else at Columbia, I regarded these activities as ridiculous and annoying, but the pay was so good I was willing to go along with the gag.

It was while working for Vogue magazine one week that I really became exasperated with these silly, female editors who were having a spat over who got to use a certain silk scarf in their photo shoot. The other editor at her shoot with her photographer had the scarf and refused to send it on to the editor I was working with so we could use it. Consequently, several models, a photographer, and his assistants spent the entire day sitting around while our editor made angry phone calls.

I was bored and angry about the waste of a day, when I could have been doing something important, like studying organic chemistry. These sorts of experiences were all too frequent in the fashion world. Well, after one too many scarf episodes, I got on my high horse. It was appalling that to earn a living I had to waste my days with women whose sole purpose in life was deciding which scarf to wear. These women knew every sign of the zodiac but had no idea what the periodic table of elements was! They were hopeless.

In a fit of righteous anger, I joined NOW, the National Organization for Women. I’d show those silly editors a thing or two, yes, I would. How I looked forward to receiving the free gift that accompanied my new membership. What sort of fascinating and intellectually obscure book or perhaps a really cool compass or some small, but unique piece of technology would arrive that I could take with me on bookings and show off when scarves were being discussed. How I would lord it over the numbskulls I was working with, even if they didn’t get it, I’d know I was engaged in far superior activities, though trapped as a model.

When the happy day came and my NOW gift arrived, I opened the treasured box with a sense of excitement and reverence. Here were women like me, women who cared about serious issues, who thought big thoughts about important things, and who would know that all the elements in the universe were on the periodic table. Yes, I’d found my kind of women.

The square box was really too small to hold a book. Inside there was tissue paper, out of which fell into my hands a necklace with the NOW logo in a circle. I don’t think it’s possible to convey in words the crushing blow this necklace delivered to my whole world as I gazed woefully at my gift from my feminist sisters. Not only had they sent me a necklace, I knew enough about jewelry from my day job to know that it was without a doubt the ugliest necklace anyone had ever created. It was a cheap, shoddy chain with the NOW logo in faux wood. There was no way I could wear it to my bookings. They’d have laughed at me right out of the studio. Even I hated that necklace. Any woman who would wear a necklace as blatantly awful as this one was in a word, pathetic.

I was shattered. I had to rethink everything. Didn't Feminists care about chemistry or world affairs? I’d have been happy with a political manual or a colorized periodic table, but a necklace? OMG The more I thought about it, the more it became clear that a feminist was a person who didn’t even know how to be a woman.

The women I worked with were part of multimillion dollar industry. They knew real stuff, like how to look good and be fashionable. Women and men both liked to look good. I liked to look good, too. My standards were quite a bit lower than theirs, but I wouldn’t have been caught dead in that NOW necklace.

I begin to take the fashion ladies much more seriously and appreciate that while dressing up might not be as important as the periodic table of elements, it was a real skill that often rose to the level of an art. Respect for womanhood and its charms and value was born in my heart and intellect. I liked being a woman. Not only that, I had to admit that nice clothes did make me feel very special. I liked high heels and chic suits. I liked having my hair look good and making the most of my facial features.

Feminists were a sad, fraudulent variety of womanhood. Everyone wants to look as attractive and be as attractive as they can. This doesn’t stop anybody from doing serious work. It’s perfectly fun and energizing.

Well, it was a slippery slope that I was on. First, I bought a few nice designer clothing pieces, then got some great shoes, wore make-up when I wasn’t working, and my descent into femininity culminated in accepting kittens from girlfriends, and I finally even got a puppy. It turned out that being a woman was alright. I even got to have a baby, but that came much later. However, being a mother was the very most demanding, intellectual and important job I ever had, and also the most fun.

Decadence

Mon, 26 Sep 2022 22:46:55 GMT

Decadence

Having made a living in the arts for over thirty years as an actress and married to an actor, and having been a "conservative", but only in the Russell Kirk sense of it as a person concerned with "spirit, character and the inner order of the soul", Having been on the front lines of show biz, I am perhaps harsh in my judgement of contemporary conservatives, but their retreat from engagement in contemporary culture is, to put it mildly, a shameful dereliction of duty. We have abjectly failed in our duty to serve our fellow man, we who believe in the soul of that man.

What our lack of engagement in pop culture has fostered is decadence. Like so many, I always thought decadence would look like an Aubrey Beardsley painting, all dark, drugged out, sinister and amoral. In fact, decadence does look like that, but it is caused by a dominant set of ideas taking hold which no one dares to question or bothers to challenge. What remains to amuse the minds of the general public is trivia and smut, because people do need something to think about. If you don't engage their better selves, their spirit and character, you will find someone else has made a gob of dough engaging their vices. Ergo, the drugged out, sinister, amoral fascinations take hold.

But the point is I’m writing this because American culture has been a Potemkin village created by globalist elites for at least the past thirty years and I want to set the record straight about that. For their own greedy purposes and to line the pockets of their friends and supporters, all cultural outlets in this country have been pure propaganda, even those stars and pop singers you thought were so great weren’t as great as you thought. They were merely somewhat talented artists who were willing to push the party line every day. So, while they may have had some middling talent, in a free market of ideas and talent, they would have disappeared like snow in April.

You have been duped into thinking that these Top 100 songs, bestselling books, box office smash movies, TV stations, newspaper and magazines actually had earned popular approval and were an accurate reflection of what your fellow Americans admired. Nothing could be further from the truth. The American culture scene is a complete fraud and a scam to manipulate the public’s mind for the benefit of the few power elites who are members of both parties. I reject both the Democrats and the Republicans.

The purpose of art is enlightenment, understanding, and refining the sensibility of humanity to better appreciate the works of our creator. There, I'm done, for now. Thank you for letting me vent after enduring about thirty some years of complete frustration with the American culture scene.

Laughter is the Best Medicine - A tribute to Neil Simon

Mon, 26 Sep 2022 21:54:36 GMT

Laughter is the Best Medicine - A Tribute to Neil Simon

If It’s Not on the Page, It’s not on the Stage

At last, a post where I can write about something I really know a bit about: theater, that most capitalist of all institutions, in a free market world. These days Broadway is a very small cottage industry run exclusively by Liberals to make them feel good.

In the days when Neil Simon practiced the art of playwriting, you actually had to earn your fame and box office receipts and Broadway was still very much alive and well. And part of the reason The Great White Way—which I love to say, hoping to trigger a lot of people who think even saying the word white while referring to a cultural platform that began with the Greeks, who are not so much white as sort of dark taupe, but darker in summer, so maybe they don’t count as dead white men—but I digress—The Great White Way referring to the part of Broadway that was always lite up at night in a long, wide avenue of delightful evening entertainment was kept alive by playwrights like Neil Simon. I dare even the sourpusses on CNN and the MSM to attend a performance of a Neil Simon play and not laugh at the play and learn to laugh at themselves a bit, too.

He was a tonic for the soul, a virtuoso of the funnybone, a ringmaster of hilarious characters and most of all he was a very knowing lover of his fellow man. People flocked to a Neil Simon play and still do everywhere his work is performed. Someday, I hope he will be recognized as the true genius he was. When you write a play, you have to deliver real entertainment, or the audience doesn’t show up. At least, before the global corporations took over and ruined the art of theater.

Actors love working on a Neil Simon play. They are as foolproof as a piece of theater can possibly be. But it was far more than that. Your imagination ignited, your understanding deepened, and your acting talents grew, merely by playing his scenes. With a Simon play it was unmistakably on the page, so you had something to carry you when you were on the stage.

Theater will come back, someday, but it will be a very long time before we see another talent so deft, intelligent and remarkable as Neil Simon. I know he is on that Great White Way in the sky now, delighting the angels, and perhaps even the demons are charmed, as they were vanquished here, for a couple of hours as you watched a Neil Simon play.

What a very great man he was.

HAS THE NOBEL PRIZE COMMITTEE CALLED YET?

Mon, 19 Sep 2022 00:04:49 GMT

Fighting Food Fear

HAS there ever been a generation in the history of the world that was more obsessed with what they eat than this current crop of 20- 40-year old’s. OMG! Sugar is the latest arch villain apparently causing your brain to focus entirely on sugar and be unable to think. It's my son and his friends' theory that sugar in the diet explains the entire mess the world is in today. But they want food labeled with the content of extra sugar as opposed to natural sugar. I guess they never saw the label 'unsweetened'.

My son considers me an alcoholic if I have one glass of wine. (Sugar) Eating bread is the road to perdition (carbs turn into sugar), even green vegetables have, HORRORS!!! sugar. No, not meat, too? But, apparently that juicy steak is loaded with sugar. I'm at a loss to know what to eat.

But I am old and I, the gourmet cook, have fought the battle of the ignorant eater before. I never surrender my joy of eating to food fear. When they said butter is bad for your cholesterol, I said phooey! Every vegetable in the world tastes better with a bit of butter. And in my day, eating vegetables was considered good for you. Today, the question is does the goodness of fiber undo the badness of sugar. Well, go ahead, give up cauliflower and Brussel Sprouts and say it's because of the sugar. Your mother knows the truth.

However, recently, they discovered that butter is high in Vitamin D, which is a miracle vitamin that prevents cancer and does so many other great things. No one has said to me, wow, you were right. Butter is so cool and saves lives and makes even broccoli taste great. No. Do I get funding from the government to continue my defense of good eating? No sir. And that, my friends, is a great injustice.

I held out for olive oil when everybody was going on about the saturated fat and advising a switch to canola oil. Cook without olive oil? Good God in Heaven, is the world ending? What's the matter with you people. If eating olive oil kills you, I'd rather be dead. Well, then two decades or so later, they discover that cholesterol has nothing to do with heart attacks and may in fact be good for you. Score another one for MOI! Has the Nobel Prize committee called yet to acknowledge that I and I alone stood for food sanity?

Eggs were another victim of the cholesterol hysteria. But eggs are a fighting issue with me. Not only do I require them for everything from poached, fricassee, soufflé, meringue, and plain old scrambled, not getting my eggs is something that I might actually start an armed insurrection over. Rebellion in aisle three. Woman trashing the phony Egg Beaters in the fridge. Eggs. Vitamin D. Get your facts straight, or just give in and eat what tastes good. If it's well cooked, well-seasoned and eaten without guilt, it's going to be much better for you than some health food served with a heaping dose of guilt and angst.

I have braved the scornful sneers as I loaded my supermarket cart with the quart size heavy cream and two dozen eggs to make honest to goodness eggnog. It’s the perfect thing to have at Christmas with your fruitcake. I am willing to concede that I am the sole human being on earth who loves fruitcake. But everyone loves eggnog and real whipped cream and homemade butter cookies. And both are full of just tons of Vitamin D,

If you have any influence, please call the Pulitzer people or those crazy Norwegians and tell them if they want to do the right thing with their precious Nobel prize, (and really, if it weren't for Alfred and his dynamite, who would even have heard of Norway, I ask you?) I am here waiting to be recognized for standing tall against food superstition and preparing tasty dishes for all and sundry. I feel that my acts of supermarket heroism have been a "great benefit to mankind” or would be if only anybody ever listened to me. But of course, they're too busy scarfing down my six-egg sponge cake topped with boiled egg white icing. Drat.

1981 CLASH OF THE TITANS A PRE-PC RAY HARRYHAUSEN GEM

Thu, 11 Aug 2022 18:24:58 GMT

1981 CLASH OF THE TITANS A PRE-PC RAY HARRYHAUSEN GEM

Above is Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology, symbol of letting our imaginations fly free

Recently, I rented a later Harryhausen film, the 1981 CLASH OF THE TITANS, based on Greek mythology, and rediscovered the genius of Ray Harryhausen. Yes, the monsters and special effects are not computer-generated wonders, but in an accompanying interview Harryhausen makes the very interesting observation that he never worried that his creatures looked not quite real, because he believed that what we enjoy about these creatures is that we know they are imaginary. We don't want them to be real. He also believed that movies are fantasies, pure and simple. Brilliant man, brilliant movie maker.

What a joy to spend an evening watching a movie that delights in the powers of human imagination and celebrates what is best in us, our courage, our kindness, our love, and our wisdom, all without ever being condescending, or preached at, or scorned for our politics.

And I must add that the movie has a stellar cast which includes Laurence Olivier as Zeus, Maggie Smith (You might remember her as Minerva McGonagall in Harry Potter, or Duchess Grantham in Downtown Abbey) as Thetis, Claire Bloom, and Flora Robson.

But the man who carries the movie is the immensely talented American actor Burgess Meredith (Mickey Goldmill in all the Rocky movies). His performance is so subtle, but so outstanding that he is irresistible. It is his impish wisdom and rueful poetry of soul that help bring to life the whole marvelous conceit of the film's Greek mythology.

Writers Who Write Their Truth

Fri, 05 Nov 2021 22:40:59 GMT

Freethinkers Fiction

Here is a list of contemporary writers who bravely swam against the current, defying the odds to be writers in a culture that wants only conformity. They had the courage not to swear fealty to Woke doctrine, insult conservatives or pander to the mob. These writers are willing to write to be judged on their own merits as to their value to readers intellect and sense of fun.

I wish it was a longer list, but I will add as I find more books and writers.

My old buddy Vaclav sums up how I feel about these writers perfectly when he says: “But chiefly, I suppose, it was the exciting realization that there are still people among us who assume the existential responsibility for their own truth and are willing to pay a high price for it.” All Liberal approved culture is nothing but cheap thrills.

Carol Golembiewski 3 sci fi books

The Projection Room Two From the Cubist Mist

https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B07922GS82&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_-0OeDb6Q2PXBS

2. The Projection Room - Green Eye Beneath https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B0791ZCVF3&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_92OeDbXYF3HGY

3. The Projection Room - Our Brother's Keeper https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B079213VNB&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_b4OeDbWH37S3R

4. The Projection Room - Forbidden Doors

https://amzn.to/3mOyYgN

Ava Armstrong Romance and female oriented thriller writer Many books

Her author page https://www.amazon.com/Ava-Armstrong/e/B00JRCAQ42/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1488239332&sr=1-2-ent

After nearly two decades in corporate America working for a four-billion dollar company, Ava Armstrong decided to give it all up and focus on her true love: writing thrillers as an independent author. Who are Armstrong's heroes--everyday men and women who do extraordinary things: Veterans, police officers, farmers, hard-working middle-class folks, all striving and struggling to make the world a better place. From homeless vets to women living quiet lives of desperation, Armstrong transports readers to small town America, writing complex characters and stories that often stir deep emotion. Her hallmark, as an author, is writing interesting female characters into thrillers--creating a plot line that becomes a love story wrapped in a tale of espionage.

The Photograph https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B07QJWB2M2&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_o8OeDbYX3N0EJ

Danielle Wedgeworth Lone Star Novels http://www.lonestarnovel.com/#!Sovereign___Welcome___slide_show_2

Thrillers celebrating Hope, Faith,

and Individual Rights!

My goal is to tell realistic stories about ordinary people going above and beyond their perceived capabilities, to overcome extreme odds. Lone Star Novels celebrate individuals relying on each other and on faith, to achieve freedom, and to do what is right.

Jeffrey A. Friedberg Author's page https://www.amazon.com/Jeffrey-A.-Friedberg/e/B002QTHSTO?ref_=dbs_p_ebk_r00_abau_000000

Jeffrey A, Friedberg is an unapologetic, ex-private eye, from South Philly.

He is a writer of horror and science fiction short stories, thrillers, and short story books.

He is a former Owner-Security Expert, Licensed Private Eye with 125 agents, Undercover Agent, DOD Cleared, martial artist, Expert Witness, and acclaimed, daily news columnist.

Red, White and Dead https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B005PFOJCK&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_hEPeDb27FDM92

Ralph Nelson Willett Author page Writing warmhearted, suspenseful and faith based inspirational stories with small towns as the backdrop.

https://www.amazon.com/Ralph-Nelson-Willett/e/B01LTATDXE?ref_=dbs_p_ebk_r00_abau_000000

The Summer Tourist https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B01M5B55WQ&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_oLPeDb8EP2BWN

Thomas Banks INDEFENSIBLE https://www.indefensible.org/books Thomas Banks, in his debut novel Indefensible, has proven, if anything, he is a gifted and compelling storyteller. In Indefensible, Thomas generously invites the reader to become immersed in his vision of the threats and concerns about technology, autonomous machines and corrupt agenda as western society is confronted by a plausible and impersonal threat from the east----fully autonomous micro-drone weapons platforms that are undetectable and indefensible.

Dvd THE LAST MAN CLUB https://www.amazon.com/Last-Man-Club-James-MacKrell/dp/B0766BYQL4/ref=sr_1_1/138-5337756-5132250?ie=UTF8&qid=1508354068&sr=8-1&keywords=last+man+club+dvd#customerReviews

Last Man Club is a heartwarming family friendly road-trip adventure. To avoid a retirement home, a World War 2 veteran escapes to search for the last remaining members of his B-17 crew for one final adventure. As Eagle (James MacKrell) sets out to find his buddies, a beautiful young woman (Kate French as Romy) fleeing her gangster boyfriend becomes an unlikely accomplice to his plan. With police, the mob and now the FBI in hot pursuit, it's a race to fulfill what might be their last great adventure together. Too often it is easy to take for granted or dismiss the service of veterans. Last Man Club is a well-written love story to those who have bravely served.

Juli Caldwell author page https://www.amazon.com/Juli-Caldwell/e/B001K8EGG0

Romance with wit and good plots.

Michael Isenberg author page https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Isenberg/e/B07BK2RJBT?ref_=dbs_p_pbk_r00_abau_000000

George Eliseo Altering Course

Great mystery novel.

My review:

I am a mystery novel addict and have read all the great ones and the just plain good ones, usually many times since it's so hard to find good writers. George Eliseo is pure delight as a mystery writer. He has it all, great plot, tasty observations about life in Southern California, fascinating insights into the world of cops and robbers, great characters who are so real, you feel you met them yesterday at lunch, snappy, original and amusing dialogue, lots of heart, and skewed, but ultimately very interesting sense of justice. I am breathlessly awaiting his next book. At last, a contemporary mystery writer who knows how to tell a story. And oh by the way, he doesn't lob any gratuitous PC insults just to please some elitist publisher. But then, once you've read three pages, you know that Mr. George Eliseo is very much his own man and will kowtow to no one. A dangerous guy with words and gun.

https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B00GCZMC8U&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_Dm3eDbXXBVHH2

Cliff Protzman DEAD AIR https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B0765VNM1K&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_io4eDbW84TBXS Author's own website. http://www.cliffprotzman.com/

Really enjoyed this book myself.

Rachel Summers author page https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Summers/e/B06X3XJ5RN/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1

Twitter page https://twitter.com/summersoleil156

Richard Paolinelli https://www.amazon.com/Richard-Paolinelli/e/B00759HSD6?ref_=dbs_p_ebk_r00_abau_000000

ESCAPING INFINITY

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MU7VO42

Alexa Alhadeff https://alexalhadeff.com/

Miles A Maxwell His website

Author page on Amazon https://www.stateofreason.com/

Lisa Britton Children's books https://www.lisamichellebritton.com/books

Great books and about boys being left behind

Susan Moore Jordan blog http://www.susanmoorejordan.com/

Music as the most important force in universe. Conservative? Not sure, but looks good.

John Rose Putnam website http://johnroseputnam.com/

Author page https://www.amazon.com/John-Rose-Putnam/e/B00E12QJRQ?ref_=dbs_p_ebk_r00_abau_000000

Westerns mostly

L Todd Wood Tzarizm http://ltoddwood.com/

David Joseph author page https://www.amazon.com/David-Joseph/e/B00CS8YPYE/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1423888828&sr=1-2-ent

Kasper Beaumont https://www.amazon.com/Dragons-Revenge-Hunters-Reloria-Book-ebook/dp/B00LHU9WY2

Author page https://www.amazon.com/Kasper-Beaumont/e/B00DQ2JB22/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1

Paul H Yarbrough

https://www.amazon.com/Paul-H-Yarbrough/e/B00MU35EKG?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1579266102&sr=1-1

Why Poetry?

Thu, 04 Nov 2021 19:22:20 GMT

Food For The Soul

Something told the wild geese
It was time to go.
Though the fields lay golden
Something whispered,-'Snow.'

Leaves were green and stirring,
Berries, luster-glossed,
But beneath warm feathers
Something cautioned,-'Frost.'

All the sagging orchards
Steamed with amber spice,
But each wild breast stiffened
At remembered ice.

Something told the wild geese
It was time to fly,
Summer sun was on their wings,
Winter in their cry.

Rachel Field

Poetry divines the very deep and delightful meanings in everyday events and ordinary objects.

Poetry expresses the joy of living and satisfies the need to respect our most personal and sacred feelings of love, grief, sadness, regret, and not to forget laughter, too.

Poetry is the sentinel that stands guard on our precious everyday commonplaces, preserving them from the encroachment of the passing scene and its unending disturbances.

Poetry invigorates and enlivens the intellect with inspiration and fortitude.

Poetry’s fetching lyricism reminds us that being a human is something special.

Poetry is all the songs of life sung in ancient and evocative words.

Poetry revives your spirits and keeps your going.

Poetry ameliorates life’s wounds and memorializes them in a haze of glory.

The oldest surviving love poem is written in a clay tablet from the times of the Sumerians, inventors of writing around 3500 BC, and was called by archaeologists by a very un-romantic name: 'Istanbul #2461'. The author is unknown but is believed to have been recited by a bride of Sumerian King Shu-Sin, who ruled between 2037 and 2029 BC. The following is the start of the poem:

Bridegroom, dear to my heart,

Goodly is your beauty, honeysweet,

Lion, dear to my heart,

Goodly is your beauty, honeysweet.

THE BEGINNING of the world's first truly great work of literature - the 4,000-year-old Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, the poem on which the story of Noah and the Flood was probably based - has been discovered in a British Museum storeroom.

Most of the opening two stanzas have been lost for the past 2,000 years, but research in the museum has recovered vital elements of the first lines of the epic. Scholars have been able to reconstruct the first four lines as follows:

"He who saw all, who was the foundation of the land,

"Who knew (everything), was wise in all matters.

"Gilgamesh, who saw all, who was the foundation of the land,

"Who knew (everything), was wise in all matters."

Beware Depressed Men and Their Mothers

Thu, 04 Nov 2021 18:31:49 GMT

Mothers Can Destroy Their Sons

The picture above is of a mother from a performance of the Greek tragedy THE BACCHAE. It is the picture of Agaue, the mother of King Pentheus, proudly showing off the head of her son, which she had ripped off in ecstasy, believing that she has killed a lion. Even twenty-five hundred years ago, those Greeks knew a lot about life and love.

(Below is the text of the podcast)

As I describe in my book BEDEVILED, Tom was subject to frequent bouts of depression.

The depression episode would begin by his arriving home from some audition or job and becoming almost silent. When I would ask him what was wrong, he’d say he was depressed. So, in my therapeutic way, I would ask him to talk about it. What was bothering him? He would say he didn’t know. When did it begin? Didn’t know. And on and on.

I always hit a stone wall. And this would go on for days. He would just sit there in glum silence, uncommunicative and unresponsive to anything. Nothing could cheer him up. He would describe his feelings as being at the bottom of a well. Eventually, it would pass and he’d claim some incident had triggered it, which was now better.

I really didn’t know what to make of these depression episodes. Of course, I urged him to go into therapy. But he refused to even consider that. In a way, I could understand that. Being in therapy can be used to label a person as crazy and destroy their job prospects.

What I realize now that I know the truth about who Tom really was, is that his depressions were the result of his secret life bleeding over into our life. This secret life was in fact the only life that he was emotionally responsive to.

The depressions must have been caused by fluctuations in the relationships with the other women. These women, like the Merry-Go-Round owner in CAROUSEL, who used Bigelow as a come on for her business, were bad mother figures. And these mother figures were destructive mother figures who had used their sons in a sexually compromising way that rendered them completely dependent on that mother figure for their sense of self.

I know Tom was an abused child. My guess is that his mother found emotional comfort and support in her oldest son and used him as a pawn against her violent husband, and as a stand-in for the man in her life.

She used him and he became emotionally crippled by her. But it was worse than that. This had started when he was a helpless child, rendering him irrationally fearful of losing this unstable and ultimately rejecting woman’s approval and help. He was addicted to rejecting mother figures. When he couldn’t get his fix, he sank back into his depression.

It’s been very painful to know that for all the years we were married, I was never the emotional center of Tom’s life.

Every time he was depressed, it was because another woman disappointed him. Coming home to me was a sign of failure; he was still stuck with me.

Tom’s depression had nothing to do with me or our life. That’s why he never could confess what was bothering him.

What was bothering him was that he was still unable to be free and be himself. Instead, he was stuck with a woman he really didn’t love or very much respect, me, in a relationship that he only accepted conditionally, until some mother type woman would complete his dream of love and success. And those women always failed him, so as he once angrily told me, I had ruined his life. Yeah, just by loving him and staying married to him.

Even our son has said to me that once he reached high school, it was like his father lost interest, like he was feeling "okay, my job is done, time to move on. Being a dad is over.”

Having been surrounded by depressed people all my life, I often think I should have known better than to marry such a depressed man.

But being raised by a depressed mother and a father who thought men’s fate was to be manipulated by depressed females. I think I was on constant guard against the slightest signs of negativity. I was always the Pollyanna. In my family, I had to be to survive.

If you shed a tear or showed any sign of weakness around my mother, she made it her business to magnify your difficulty infinitely, by blowing it up into Greek tragedy and ending all chance of your ever being happy.

In other words, that you would end up like her, unable to experience any happiness but by making others miserable. It took me years of therapy to be able to shed tears. Then, I went through a phase where I cried all the time. I finally got over that, too.

It’s hard to believe that Tom was so depressed, because he always seemed like such a happy, laughing person; and he was, most of the time, until he ran out of hope that the magical mother person would appear and save him, or that some other woman would make him feel complete.

Tom tried everything for his depression. Pills, exercise and even therapy when he got older. I remember him coming home from his therapist and telling me the therapist just didn’t understand. I guess by then it was too late for him to recognize that it was he himself who didn’t understand. He’d have had to absorb the horrible shock of having wasted decades of his life in useless misery.

My biggest struggle in coming to terms with what my marriage really was is trying to forgive Tom. Marrying me without real love, but more because you were expected to; and then gaslighting and lying to me for decades about what was actually going on in his life really hurts. I remind myself I got so much out of knowing Tom, so I am not bitter, but I do feel hurt and angry and sorry for myself.

Knowing so surely as I do, that there is an afterlife, I wonder if I do want to see him again. I really don’t know how that would work. Maybe all the bad feelings would fade away in the afterlife and we could see each other more truly. Or maybe he doesn’t want to see me.

It worries me a bit, but you really can’t change how you feel.

Does this mean it’s over forever for Tom and I? Yes, I think so, at least for a while. I think that may be the final message of the dream movie CALL OF THE WILD. Love was a brief interlude between Clark Gable and Loretta Young, that ended when summer came, the ice broke, and she found out her real husband was still alive.

We also had a brief interlude of love that lasted about two years. After that, Tom found it convenient and not unpleasant to be married while he waited for his real life to begin…without me.

I think Tom still needs to hear the call of the wild in his soul, the call to be a whole person, independent and free to be himself, before he can really love anybody. So, I’m doing my best to let it go. Blue on blue, heartache on heartache cause I can’t get over losing you.

Why Romance

Thu, 21 Oct 2021 16:50:45 GMT

A Hopeful Romantic

The Painting above is of Cupid and Psyche. This is a very early Greek myth, probably a thousand or so years BC. It was later adopted by the Romans. It tells the story of how sensual love, Cupid, must be united to Psyche, the soul, for a happy ending. This is the most elemental definition of Romance.

This is the introduction to my book, Bedeviled, the Strange Life and Death of Actor Tom O’Rourke.

I’ve thought for a long time about the experiences I had after my husband’s death, which are recounted in my book. I tried very hard to figure out what they mean.

I believe that what happened to me is ultimately and most importantly about the power of Romance. I’m talking about romance with a capitol R, not just a relationship.

Well, after everything I’ve been through, I no longer apologize for being a hopeless romantic.

I thought I was happily married, except for my husband’s depressions. When he died, it turned out I had been wrong about everything, except our romance.

Our Romance connected my husband to me so closely that even death could not separate us. In fact, death opened my husband’s heart and soul to me more fully than he’d ever been able to do in life.

Paranormal and psychic phenomena had always seemed ridiculous to me, until it happened to me.

If you want to know how I know this, read Bedeviled. It’s the true story of a very tragic romance. But sad as my romance was, even my very broken, unfaithful, bedeviled husband was still able to reach out to me from beyond the grave. That’s the power of romance, nothing slight or silly about it. It just might save your soul.

Harrison Ford and Han Solo Forever

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Sat, 02 Oct 2021 17:24:26 GMT

A Hero is Important to a Boy

(Podcast version below)

ONE sunny afternoon in the Sherman Oaks huge public park on Hazeltine Avenue in the valley, way back in the early nineties, I was momming it with the kid, who was five, when a strange group of people showed up in a nearby picnic area.

From a distance, watching them play volleyball, I found it very hard to tell the men from the women. All had long hair, frequently in ponytails, and all were in tight clothing that was shorn of any kind of gender cues in color or style. Bizarre, I thought.

Word went round among the other moms and Spanish nannies substituting for moms that these were Clinton reelection campaign workers celebrating their victory.

The Clinton campaign elders did not mingle with us hoi polloi, but one of the little girls came over to the children's park area where there were all kinds of park equipment to play on, including swings.

The protocol that the park kid regulars had evolved for themselves was that if the swings were full, you stood by the anchor poles and waited your turn. We were in that park almost every day and there was never any problem with this. All the kids understood how it worked, waited for a swing to be free, or changed their mind and played on some other of the park apparatus.

But, this Clinton election kid wasn't a park regular. As one of the swings became free, she raced after it, grabbed it for herself, and plopped herself onto the seat. My son who had been patiently waiting his turn by the side, came over to her and very politely explained that when people wanted a swing they waited for a turn by the side until one was free. He pointed to show her where she could go and wait her turn.

She gave him a haughty look and informed him that it was her swing and she wasn't going to let him have it and if he tried to take it away, she'd go get her mommy who would sue him. Whereupon she put her nose high in the air and prepared to swing.

You may wonder that I remember this, but who could forget a six-year-old child threatening to sue over a swing? I knew we were in deep trouble as a nation when I looked at those creepy lawyer types celebrating the victory of equally creepy Bill Clinton. But it was what came next that taught me to trust my son, pop culture and human nature to come through when it counts.

My five-year-old son looked a bit miffed. Then he gave her a dismissive look, drew himself up and said, "S'cuse me, Princess," Quoting his Star Wars hero and delivering the perfect Han Solo put down with admirable aplomb. Then he turned and walked away with great dignity. He's still a STAR WARS fan and God Bless him and all the boys who admired Han Solo, and God Bless STAR WARS.

Autumn Poem Emily Dickinson

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 18:03:32 GMT

Autumn Poem Emily Dickinson

The morns are meeker than they were,

The nuts are getting brown;

The berry’s cheek is plumper,

The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf,

The field a scarlet gown.

Lest I should be old-fashioned,

I’ll put a trinket on.

When Hollywood Reflected The Heart of America

Tue, 07 Jan 2020 16:35:38 GMT

When You Picked the Stars t

Here is a great video of the kind of genius that Hollywood tossed off every six weeks or so when Box Office mattered and you picked your favorites. Now corporations and the Chinese own financially strapped Hollywood and some bunch of idiots and creeps decide who gets to work and create movies. Hah Hah, what a bad joke Hollywood is especially when compared with what it used to be.

Here's a video to remind you of the glory that was Hollywood and what free markets can produce.

https://youtu.be/M1F0lBnsnkE

The Importance of Being Important

Fri, 27 Dec 2019 13:19:47 GMT

Liberals' Abiding Sin

Over the years of observing liberals, I’ve always felt that the essential liberal character flaw is their driving ego need to be ‘important’. Here is my vindication written with complete lack of self awareness by Amanda Marcotte in Salon magazine. She deems Hallmark movies Fascist because:

“Hallmark movies, with their emphasis on returning home and the pleasures of the small, domestic life, also send a not-at-all subtle signal of disdain for cosmopolitanism and curiosity about the larger world, which is exactly the sort of attitude that helps breed the kind of defensive white nationalism that we see growing in strength in the Donald Trump era.”

Yes, Amanda, we right wingers do disdain cosmopolitanism and are not obsessed with the larger world. It’s hardly white nationalism that makes people of all cultures and ethnicities revere the small pleasures of domestic life. If you are unable to be happy in your own private sphere, then you are simply using the larger world and its volatile, arbitrary and capricious attentions and rewards as a substitute for your lack of self-satisfaction. That makes you dangerous to yourself and others.

Do yourself and the rest of us a favor, get a life.

And yes, Hallmark movies are schmaltzy and trite, their movies and their cards have always been like that. Here’s another culture fact you may not be aware of. Everything Disney has always been ‘Mickey Mouse’. All of their pseudo social justice agenda so admired by you and your pseudo intellectuals is no deeper than schmaltzy Mickey Mouse on a tugboat.

Get down off your high horse before it throws you into the gutter.

Public Schools Destroy Children

Sat, 14 Dec 2019 16:00:11 GMT

What Progressive Education Teaches

Florida boy allegedly pummeled on school bus for wearing Trump 2020 hat

https://nypost.com/2019/12/13/florida-boy-allegedly-pummeled-on-school-bus-for-wearing-trump-2020-hat/

This is not about Trump or racism. This lawless, violent, disrespectful behavior is taught and tolerated every day in our public schools. It's an almost impossible job to counteract the official world presented to youngsters in their public school classes.

Public school curriculum and teachers daily disparage, slander and attack our country, our values, our cultural heritage, basic morality and the distinction between right and wrong. In classrooms there is no order, no discipline, no respect for anything, no incentive to learn, and no education. The goal of those involved in public education is to pad the budget with as many teachers and bureaucrats at the highest salaries as possible and con and bully voters into giving them more money.

I know first hand. My son was in a public school. I learned that he and his friends accepted the dystopic world of public school as the norm of what this country was, and regarded their parents and their values as strange aberrations who had embarrassingly out of date ideas. It's practically impossible to defeat this effect, as the schools are the entire social and cultural nurturing environments for most of a youngster's day from age 5 to age 18.

To blame the parents or the children for this awful violent behavior is wrong, because that kind of behavior is tolerated and standard at many if not most public schools.

And should the parents try to get their child into a better school in a different neighborhood, I remind you of the woman in Ohio who used her father's address to send her daughters to a better school, was spied on by the school system's hired detectives, (good use of school funds, no?) and sent to jail for her efforts. We are becoming the Soviet Union where if you're in jail, you're innocent.

Ohio Mom Kelley Williams-Bolar Jailed for Sending Kids to Better School District

https://abcnews.go.com/US/ohio-mom-jailed-sending-kids-school-district/story?id=12763654

We must have school choice to save our children, who are our future.

Breast Cancer and Irish Skin

Sun, 03 Nov 2019 20:13:31 GMT

Why are there No Tan People in Ireland?

WHY ARE THERE NO TAN PEOPLE IN IRELAND?

THEY DIED BEFORE THEY COULD BREED.

WHY DID THEY DIE SO YOUNG?

IF YOU TAN IN IRELAND, YOU WILL BE

VITAMIN D DEFICIENT AND MORE LIKELY TO GET CANCER OR HEART DISEASE AND DIE YOUNG...

at least that's my theory.

I remember a class at Columbia University (I was at Barnard. This was a class across the street, with the boys.) in Evolutionary Biology.

We studied the relation of skin pigment to sun exposure. Tropical people have lots of pigment in the upper layers of their skin to protect them from skin cancer and deadly sunburns, but pigment in the upper layers lowers the skin's capacity for synthesizing Vitamin D. However, in the Tropical latitudes, the abundance of sun makes a Vitamin D deficiency highly unlikely.

Temperate Zone people have pigment that migrates up and down in response to sun exposure for the same reasons.

IRISH PEOPLE, like me, have skin whose pigment NEVER rises into the upper skin levels.

WHY SHOULD THE IRISH LACK PIGMENT in the upper skin levels? Is there something so important in sunlight that to be even slightly tan for a day or two in Ireland's sunless climate leads to a death too early to breed and pass on the tanning gene?

IRELAND is very far north, roughly the same latitude as Sitka Alaska, and thus even the summer sun is weak; in winter daylight sinks to 7 1/2 hours per day, and the misty isles of Ireland are in the middle of the stormy, northern Atlantic, with lots of overcast skies.

On the JERSEY SHORE, in my youth, everyone striped down to bathing suits and got gloriously tan. Even my mother's Swedish friend. I had to be covered up, swim in a tee shirt and hat. And even then, I usually got some painful sunburn somewhere, my nose, my arms, my feet, the back of my neck. WHY WOULD ANYONE HAVE SKIN THAT COULD NEVER TAN???? IT'S PRACTICALLY A FATAL CONDITION.

In the 9th Century, (800 AD) and on, the Vikings raided Ireland and settled it extensively. And yet by at least 2013, and most likely even earlier, there are no GOLDEN TAN SWEDISH MODEL TYPES in Ireland. No, very quickly those with the gene that lets you tan were WIPED OUT COMPLETELY. The tanned, golden Swedish, Norwegian, Danish Viking types who conquered Ireland must have died in great numbers before they could pass along their tanning gene, leaving only those descendants who had the 'no tan gene', which seems to be associated with red hair.

SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT. If an IRISH PERSON, living in a land with absolutely minimal sun, gets even lightly tan, even briefly, they die before they can pass on that gene.

Research shows a connection between cancer tumors and Vitamin D deficiency.

DOES THE INTRODUCTION OF SPF, which inhibits the skin from producing Vitamin D, combined with the dietary exclusion of the high Vitamin D containing foods, CREAM, BUTTER AND EGGS, to lower cholesterol, provide some insight into the rise of breast cancer after 1980?

Why did breast cancer rates begin to rise significantly around 1980, the same year that SPF sunscreen became widely available from Coppertone?

Why did only one of my mother's, (born in 1923), friends die of breast cancer, and that one was a woman whose mother, grandmother and sister had died of it also. They had the breast cancer gene, which is pretty rare.

Why did NONE of my mother's other friends and sisters, (she had two), who were all quite overweight, had babies at forty, drank regularly, rarely ate fish, fresh fruit or vegetables, ate butter, cookies, eggs, fried food, some smoked, none jogged or exercised, and yet they never got breast cancer?

Why suddenly in my generation, (1950) and beyond, did so very many women get breast cancer?

Was it the difference in breast feeding habits? I found my mother's hospital record for breastfeeding me. She did it partially for six weeks. I can't imagine her friends were much different. Formula was practically required by doctors in those days.

I panicked about getting breast cancer. What can be causing this EPIDEMIC?

After panicking, I put together all the facts I could think of, even from my distant college past, and came up with my theory.

I'm writing this because of all the wonderful women who died of breast cancer and those of us who live in horrible fear of breast cancer. And for the lovers, husbands, and children who lost their precious women to this terrible disease. It's just my 'I WONDER'.

Every Kid Outdoors

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Fri, 04 Oct 2019 14:27:03 GMT

The Classroom of Real Life

CONFESSION: I hated sitting in a classroom at a desk for hours and hours.

When I was finally freed from classroom bondage in college, I took as many classes with field trips as possible.

Here’s what I learned to respect from doing, not talking and listening.

My professors could see and identify birds that were completely invisible to me, even with binoculars, even after many minutes and knowing exactly where they were. It was only if the bird flew away that I could finally verify that indeed there had been a bird there. It seemed like a superpower to be able to see them. It was the result of those professors’ long experience, knowledge and practice. It was only one of many super powers that only real life experience can give you.

In my hydrology class, we went out to evaluate a parcel of land to understand the drainage situation. The first problem was to measure the amount of water flowing down a small stream. This stream, like every stream, had a variable rate of flow and an irregular stream bed. How could anyone possibly calculate accurately how much water was flowing down this stream. We were given a complicated formula to achieve a reasonable estimate. But until presented with that problem, it had never occurred to me how impossible it was to measure water flow in the wild.

But it is not only in the great outdoors of real life that young people can learn to respect knowledge, experience and practice. My son was fortunate enough to be in a school where music was a daily class from fourth grade on. He played the cello. In high school, that rebellious time of life, he despised his music teacher for being so strict. However, by graduation, that music teacher was his favorite, because he’d learned that to make beautiful music required close cooperation and discipline. Real life experience is of almost inestimable value.

Great Job Melania!!!!

Meryl Streep is a Fraud

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Sat, 21 Sep 2019 15:01:13 GMT

What Great Roles Has She Done?

Above is Denzel Washington starring in the movie he directed, from the play he starred in. Did he win Best Actor for his outstanding performance in a movie still widely watched and highly regarded? No. Did FENCES win Best Picture? No. A movie called MOONLIGHT won. Ever hear of it? No. Neither did I? Why Not? It was a big zero. Why is Hollywood terrified of Denzel Washington? Because they don't own him.

A quote lavishing praise on Meryl Streep that regularly makes the rounds of the Mainstream Media: "WIDELY regarded in the industry and by the public as the greatest living actor "

BALDERDASH!

If she's such a great actor, (notice she is gender free, like all liberals, she doesn't even know how to be a woman, much less a human being,) where is her interpretation of any of the great and defining female roles?

Where is her Lady Macbeth? With fourteen Academy award nominations, she had only to pick up the phone and it was a done deal, money no object, give her anything she wants.

And don't try to defend Hollywood with the tired canard that the public won't show up for high brow stuff. In 1913, the great and distinguished actress Margaret Anglin toured the nation in Euripides MEDEA, IPHIGENIA IN AULIS and ELECTRA to sellout crowds. Yeah, it wasn't the public that got small, it was the actors. But of course, Margaret Anglin was a real actress.

John Barrymore became a household name for his performance in HAMLET. Lynn Fontanne was famous for THE TAMING OF THE SHREW and Eugene O’Neill’s STRANGE INTERLUDE.

Katherine Cornell played the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning to acclaim in THE BARRETS OF WIMPOLE STREET.

Julie Harris towered in the one woman show THE BELLE OF AMHERST in 1976 when she transported audiences, on Broadway and nationwide, to the intellectual community of Amherst in the Nineteenth Century, enchanting them with the most delicate murmurings from the soul of the poet Emily Dickenson. And she managed this prodigious feat all by herself on stage using only some props, some lights and her ACTING. A real actress.

A friend has just reminded me of Anne Bancroft. Who can forget her iconic performance as Annie Sullivan in THE MIRACLE WORKER?

As another friend reminded me, what about the superstar actress Elizabeth Taylor, who married enough rich men to spend her life sipping champagne and munching bonbons. Well, let’s see. She played Maggie the Cat in Tennessee Williams CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, the daunting role of Martha in Edward Albee’s WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF, and Shakespeare’s TAMING OF THE SHREW with Richard Burton, among many other demanding and serious acting roles. Taylor was everything: superstar, super actress and dedicated humanitarian.

Or Denzel Washington in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING? In anyone's book, this man is a serious contender for the title of 'greatest living actor.' Why? Because he's a dangerous actor, which makes him exciting to watch. He takes chances. He's not another Hollywood lap dog, and they know it and fear him. No chance of him getting the title of greatest living actor until he's safely dead or senile.

So, you can't blame the audience. They showed up for all that highbrow stuff in the past and they surely would again. And, no, the Russians didn't hack Meryl's Blanche Dubois in STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. She's never done any of the great American playwrights on screen. No Tennessee Williams, no Eugene O'Neill, nor has she done any Russians. No Chekov, except on the New York stage where she was a critic's darling, who was assured of great reviews no matter how mediocre her performances.

What do we get from Meryl in the movies? We get impersonations of Margaret Thatcher and Julia Child. Impersonating someone is a parlor trick, not acting. It doesn't illuminate that person's character, it merely reminds you of them by copying their speech patterns and physical mannerisms.

When has Meryl Streep EVER shed any light on the human condition, the agony and ecstasy of life, the moral and physical challenges that make being alive such an exquisite glory and terror, so capable of nobility and depravity? You know what I mean, when did she ever do any ACTING???

Don't fact check all the spurious awards she's received from liberal newspapers and organizations. Mere rubber stamps, easy calls. Who will argue with them? More lies, just like the #FakeNews always lies.

She's the queen of the fleshpot called Hollywood. This means she doesn't have to pee or get naked and have her private parts rubbed by other actors on the screen to get to work. She's the designated 'great actress'.

But really, what great role is she associated with? What great acting has she ever brought to the stage or screen?

Trump is absolutely right, only he didn't go far enough. She's not just over-rated, she's a complete fraud as an actress. She doesn't act, she pompously preens.

And if you think I'm wrong, remember Ava Gardner, who never got an Academy Award, in Mankiewicz’s THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA or Tennessee William’s NIGHT OF THE IGUANA or Hemingway's THE SUN ALSO RISES. She may not have been the best actress ever, but she was damn sight better than Meryl Streep. And she was a woman, all woman.

Or Katherine Hepburn in one of the most touching American classics Booth Tarkington's ALICE ADAMS, where she plays a young woman who loves her family, but they are an embarrassment that holds her back in her career and social life. Heartrending.

Or Irene Dunne in I REMEMBER MAMA. Or Irene Dunne in PENNY SERENADE. Or Irene Dunne in anything.

Let me be crude for a moment. MERYL STREEP WOULDN'T MAKE A PIMPLE ON THE ASS OF ANY OF THOSE GREAT ACTRESSES!!! There, I've wanted to make that point for years.

(Now that Harvey Weinstein has been, you’ll pardon the expression, exposed as a put out or get out kind of producer who regarded actresses as his personal stable of honeypots, Meryl’s many Academy Award nominations can’t save her from the perception that she took the bribe of the his support in giving her the great actress accolades in exchange for hiding his misdeeds behind her superstar actress status. "Harvey Weinstein is a god", she is on record as saying. Yeah, right, Meryl.)

You Gotta Have Heart

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 14:10:17 GMT

Why Pop Culture Matters

I wrote this as the Academy Awards show approached, and the attendees had been admonished to be less political, as if that were possible for the current crop of Liberals, who seem to be in the act of spontaneously combusting every time they hear the words President Trump. But seriously, even if they don't overtly mention politics, their movies are often little more than anti Conservative diatribes, tricked out as a sorry excuse for a movie.

However, the fault is not entirely due to Liberal prejudice. This is my answer to Republicans who complain that Liberals in Hollywood, in book publishing, and in music don't represent Conservatives. I have to laugh whenever I see that point of view in my social media feed or in some lofty and very serious Conservative publication. Guess what, Conservatives, you are in all the movies, all the television shows, all the novels. Haven't you noticed? You are the villain. You're the bad guy. Your ideas are mocked, misrepresented and scorned, because that is how Liberals see you.

For the last thirty years, Democrats have characterized Republicans as mean, greedy, ignorant bigots and worse. And yet the right leaning Washington Examiner is "especially interested in publishing tightly reasoned, factually based and timely op-eds." But, as Blaise Pascal has observed, "The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know." Why do Republicans show so little interest in the heart's reasons? Are they all like "Dragnet's" Joe Friday? "Just the facts, ma'am," no emotions allowed?

It is difficult to gain people's trust and admiration, if you lack the confidence to speak from the heart and about matters of the heart, the very matters that contemporary culture alone can address. If Republicans are ever to regain their own as well as their country's confidence, they must toil and moil in the lowly furrows of everyday life: pop culture.

All pundits live in Punditville, where their days are spent dashing off one thought provoking essay after another on the passing political scene. Great events are important and interesting, but most of us find deeper meaning in our daily struggles, and a story or a song can be just the thing to speed us along toward our goals. This is what culture provides: guideposts, encouragement, sympathy, dignity and enlightenment.

My husband was an actor, so I have witnessed the power theater has to cast a spell over a sea of disorganized, curious, various spectators and turn them into an attentive audience who hunger for answers. What makes us laugh? What makes us cry? What inspires us? To what do we aspire? What is justice? What is generosity? What is truth? What is love? And most important, who am I?

Creating and supporting culture is a service to our fellow man. I doubt if human life is possible without culture. It is every bit as important as government, science, religion, economics or any of the other pillars that keep society from descending back into barbarism.

Since Republicans rarely even bother to comment on the arts, let alone participate in their creation, they have no street cred. They have no widely read and trusted periodical to speak authoritatively and persuasively about the contemporary scene. If some poor artist were unwise enough to waste their time and talent telling a story from a Republican point of view, it would require nothing short of divine intervention for that effort to succeed.

Republicans should remember that, though they may revere the classics, those classics were once contemporary works of art. Choosing silence today is choosing to leave no legacy tomorrow.

The Democrat collectivist mentality can produce only propaganda, not art. It seems long overdue for the Republicans to share and celebrate the triumphs and heartbreaks of individual achievement, acts of faith, courage and love, in all the myriad manifestations of story, song and art. What better way can there be to restore our country's confidence in the beguiling power of freedom to lift individuals and nations to the highest possible greatness and goodness?

"But truth is most likely to be exhibited by the general sense of contemporaries, when the feelings of the heart can be expressed without suffering itself to be disguised by the prejudices of man." Mercy Otis Warren, playwright, poet, historian, the "Muse of the Revolution".

As to the argument that the Conservative temperament is not inclined to be artistic, I say PHOOEY. Did Hollywood not produce Ronald Reagan? John Wayne? Shirley Temple? And there are many, many more. Even today, there are numerous Republican actors in Hollywood, but to admit it is to be branded with the mark of Cain in all social media. Throughout history, there have been artists in all fields passionately telling Conservative stories.

If you believe the arts are inherently prurient and that people of high moral standards don't sully their hands with such things, you've been misled. Art in all its forms has always been an integral part of Western culture, and walked side by side with Christianity, freedom and individual rights. So, hogwash, Conservatives, I won't accept that excuse. We must speak for ourselves and tell stories that move us, if American culture is ever to become vibrant and inspiring again. Yes, indeed, this is another way we can Make America Great Again.

Jordan Peterson and the Agreeable Woman

wister87@gmail.com (Marcy O'Rourke) — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 13:46:33 GMT

Chaos, Angry Wrens and Lobsters... But Women?

MY son and I try to remain au courant with the popular ideas that seem worthwhile. He, being a young man, and realizing he must never again enter an elevator alone with a woman, was naturally drawn to Jordan Peterson, a brilliant and extremely well read and knowledgeable college professor, who has some very potent arguments against feminism and many other popular ideas that don’t quite wash. We both watched some Peterson videos on Youtube with great interest. Then, we bought the book, 12 Rules for Life – An Antidote to Chaos , and he could hardly tear himself away from the pages long enough to eat.

Very impressed that my son was so enthralled by the book, I began to read it, but just couldn’t get into it. When I couldn’t get beyond the lobsters and angry wrens, my son was somewhat hurt and puzzled. In an effort to explain, I tossed off the thought which had haunted me ever since the interview Peterson did with the TV woman, where he advanced one his pet theories that there aren’t as many female CEO’s of major corporations as there are men because psychological tests show most women score higher on being agreeable than men do and that being more agreeable kept women from getting ahead. That just didn’t seem right. As I blindly groped my way deeper into my uneasiness with Peterson’s theory, I hazarded my impression that in fact it had never seemed to me that women were more agreeable than men, not at all.

A deep furrow appeared on my son’s brow and as a dark shadow crossed his eyes, I knew exactly what he was thinking: he was remembering several previous girlfriends. I remembered them, too. Is it just because I’m his mother or did those young women all take an inordinate pride in always being as disagreeable as possible?

Realizing we were both having the same flashback, he leaped to the defense of his new favorite guru, saying “Well, he’s Canadian. Probably the women in Canada are different.” Yes. I do hope the women of Canada don’t take that the wrong way. I myself still laugh till I have tears in my eyes when I remember that moment.

Because, you see, if you’re not a professor and a scholar, and you haven’t tried to defend yourself against feminist rancor and privilege on the college campuses until you’re positively punch drunk, you’d know what all the rest of the world already knows: there is no such thing as an agreeable woman. It’s a contradiction in terms; it’s like water running uphill; it’s like the cure for the common cold. Impossible.

It’s just not in the nature of women to be agreeable. It’s not that they don’t occasionally act agreeably, but they always reserve the option of being thoroughly and completely disagreeable, should circumstances dictate.

Men can be agreeable. They have to be. They are physical creatures, given to expressing their feelings, sometimes even to the point of fighting, so if they didn’t know how to compete agreeably, they’d all kill each other in a day or two and that would be that. To compensate, men play games. Women play for keeps.

For women, life itself is life or death. Maybe it’s because women are young and beautiful and fertile for such a short time. I don’t know. But I do know that I worked in the fashion industry, a business dominated by women, and, let me be crude, you don’t fuck with women in power. When they say this is the way it will be, that’s it, the end. Women take no prisoners. And men in business know this and make allowances.

Woman may behave agreeably to achieve their purposes, but this is not because they are agreeable, far from it. There is nothing a woman won’t do to get her way. You have heard of Boadicea? Well, she’s the archetypal disagreeable women. And as a Canadian, Jordan Peterson should certainly be familiar with her. Or how about The Taming of the Shrew? The question is who tames who? And who ultimately wins exactly what she wants? Hint, hint.

Feminism is the extreme version of the disagreeable woman. Is there any human being, male or female, more consistently disagreeable than a feminist? And truly, they’ve got it all wrong. Only stupid women want to be 80 hour a week, nose to the grindstone CEO’s. The woman with even half a brain marries the CEO, and has all the perks, the status, the spoiling at the spas and none of the drudgery.

I’m a woman myself and think women are terrific, but I say to you, an agreeable woman is categorically impossible and would be a freak of nature.

"The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Nazi"

Sat, 07 Sep 2019 18:30:24 GMT

New Auschwitz Photo Album is Found

While these young people were laughing and gay, the largest mass murder in human history was taking place all around them. The experts on the Holocaust are studying the psychology of how seemingly normal people could be led to commit such horrific atrocities and yet look like normal people, happy and celebrating. I'm sure it is a complex study with many factors to explain how and why this massive crime took place. But I think I can add one interesting observation from my own experience.

I lived very near the epicenter of the Northridge earthquake, a 6.9 quake, whose destructive power was massive and terrifying. When the quake hit, it sounded like a bomb going off and our whole apartment building rocked so much that you couldn't run a straight line down the reeling and upheaving hallways to escape. Shelves poured out their contents, shattering dishes, walls cracked spraying a fog of plaster dust, and people were screaming. We had lost complete control of our whole world. Once outside in the parking lot, safer, suddenly and bizarrely, everyone began laughing hysterically. I'll never forget it. It was so odd. Survivor relief, yes, but also an emotional release of the terror we felt at our total helplessness as everything we knew was falling down around us.

In these photos, could it be that these low level Nazis experienced the same kind of hysterical fear resulting in their strangely grotesque hilarity? Could anyone remain normal as they watched and participated in the slaughter of millions? Can you be so close to such wanton destruction of all normal morality standards and not feel total helplessness and hysteria? Just a thought. Not an excuse or an exoneration. But clearly, madmen had complete power over the world these Nazi's lived in and knew.

Here is the link to the video referenced above: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUvcmGbtHWA

Child Protective Servies

Thu, 29 Aug 2019 15:59:16 GMT

Godless Social Workers With Unfettered Police Powers

Did you know that the state makes billions of dollars when they separate children from their families? Thousands of high status, high paying, tenured state jobs depend on a steady supply of children to "take into state custody".

Oh, yes, your child is a money maker for the state once they take it away from you. Social workers have completely unregulated, unfettered police powers, no evidence or witnesses are legally required, nothing but a social worker's uncorroborated testimony to a judge in a secret courts. Parents have no legal recourse whatsoever. Judges routinely rubberstamp child removal.

Minorities in lower class communities are easy targets because they don't have the resources to defend themselves and are due to racial profiling are assumed to be guilty of violating some state law or standard of childcare. It's my guess that to make their quotas come out right, the social workers picked on this white family to get more white kids in their clutches.

Read the true news story from Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit here: http://bit.ly/2Pnu37U

Read my novel RUN FREE OF RED ROCK about three sisters who combat the godless, greedy state bureaucracy, which tragically destroys their family. The story is a compilation of research into many true cases of Child Welfare family destruction. https://amzn.to/30ai6DF

Red Flag Laws and Psychiatry

Tue, 27 Aug 2019 16:22:15 GMT

Some Psychiatrists are Great

Mr. Paul H. Yarbrough has written an excellent piece on how Brian Stelter Raised the Real Red Flags on Gun Control in www.commdiginews.com

I always love Mr. Yarbrough's writings and couldn't agree with him more when he critiques Dr. Allen Francis, a top psychiatrist in this country, who has written the book Twilight of American Sanity, which advances the theory that the election of Trump proves American society is dangerously mentally ill. Of course, Dr. Francis is the usual ivory tower intellectual, a man who is naïve and very ignorant about how the real world works.

As someone who benefitted from a terrific psychiatrist over 40 years ago, before cultural paralysis gripped the USA, I am appalled by the incalculable harm that psychiatrists like Dr. Francis do to their profession and those they are supposed to be helping. However, it is instructive to recall that great chemist Louis Pasteur was exiled from Paris and threatened with execution by the French Academie of Science because he demonstrated again and again to the disbelieving doctors of his age the existence of microscopic living bacteria as the cause of infection.

If Pasteur's much mocked tiny creatures who caused disease really existed, it meant that all practicing doctors were unwittingly killing millions of their patients with dirty instruments. Wealth and prosperity can lead to an ossified culture just as easily as they can lead to progress. Pasteur's discoveries eventually freed humanity from the scourge of disease and needless death. While Dr. Francis is in fact just as deadly to those he believes he is helping as those French doctors, that doesn't prove that psychiatry is bad, only that Dr. Francis is trapped in a cage of wrong ideas.

To have some idea of how terrific a psychiatrist can be, you have only to look at the picture above of my psychiatrist, Dr. Frania Pizitz. Hers is a face that radiates good sense, understanding, humor, and patience.

The Big Lie

Mon, 26 Aug 2019 01:03:29 GMT

Where are the Magazine Covers?

Whenever I see a picture of Melania Trump, the stunningly gorgeous Melania, who has learned how to maximize her already unforgettable features and style making her even more bewilderingly beautiful than ever, I get discouraged. Not because I'll never be as beautiful as Melania. No, I've been pretty enough and around enough models to know that physical beauty without inner beauty is laughable in about 5 minutes.

What discourages me is the frighteningly intransigent resistance to this obvious, flagrantly, irresistibly lovely creature. It reminds me of Churchill's quote about socialism being "the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the dogma of envy, whose only virtue was shared misery." Appreciating beauty refines our senses and lifts our minds to the ideal of truth and beauty in God.

I write novels about human beings with feelings who are searching for happiness. Clearly, the only happiness approved by the left is the joy of shared misery. What a rat hole to live in. I know my work and the response to it has been deliberately suppressed because I write happy endings of love and love of life and God.

If they can keep Melania off of every magazine in the world, what chance has a aspiring novel write like myself got?