SOMETIMES IT'S THE LITTLE THINGS

I'm not so young anymore, I'm alone and my marriage was in many ways a tragedy that will always break my heart. It's often very perplexing and upsetting to try to live with and understand what was wrong with my husband. I can't even think of his name the same way as I used to. Tom. How I loved that name, so simple, so straightforward, so manly. But now that name seems to have fallen down on itself and become smudged and indistinct.

Then, when I'm feeling low, I'll remember some little thing he did, like set up the coffee machine for me the night before so all I had to do was press the button for my coffee before I left for work. He always left a love letter full of encouragement and telling me how much he loved me. It would be written on oversize legal yellow paper and signed with long rows of x's for kisses and o's for hugs.

And that memory means so much, now. Not that I am deceived anymore about what this meant. I'm sure there was a heaping helping of guilt in this letter. He had spent the night smoking and drinking by himself, festering in his unhappiness and frustration. But I know that those letters came from his heart. It means so much to have a tangible memory that there were moments when his heart did turn toward me, when he longed for us to be happy.

Another great help to keeping my spirits up is seeing that others have suffered from similar problems. I recently watched a production of "The Winter's Tale" by Shakespeare, solely because I am taking the time to get to know old Will better. Strangely enough, "The Winter's Tale" described almost exactly the problem that beset my husband. Fascinating and very reassuring to see in a classical and widely performed play the very same type of mental aberration that my husband suffered from.

"The Winter's Tale" is a tragic romance and a tale. It seems to me that romantic stories are often psychologically symbolic rather than purely stories of individual characters interacting. And when the word tale is involved, it is almost certain to be the story of one person's psychological dilemma. Fantastic things can happen in the world of a tale, like a woman coming back from the dead. That's because we can kill people and turn them to stone in our minds. So these stories are about how we perceive things in our minds. When someone comes back from the dead, it's a clue that we aren't talking about the real world.

The similarity to my marriage is that the hero in this story, King Leontes, suddenly is gripped by a freakish and groundless jealousy in which he believes his wife and his best friend have committed adultery. Though there is no evidence of adultery at all, and no one in the King's court believes the charge, he orders his wife tried and killed, declaring their new baby a bastard.

His wife's transgressions are all in his mind, but because he is king, as we all are of our own worlds, no one can stop him from his grave injustice.

In my own case, my husband's sudden freakish running away from his marriage, even after he was married, is so similar to the king in "The Winter's Tale" that I felt very reassured in my understanding and acceptance of my tragic marriage. No explanation is given as to why he suddenly believes his wife to have betrayed him. Eventually, he realizes the great wrong he has done and miraculously his wife is brought back to life, from being a statue, or perhaps she's just been hiding for sixteen years.

This tale is also similar to the Greek myth of Alcestis, where a king earns a wife only with the help of the Gods, that is, by cheating. He forgets to give thanks to Artemis, so on his wedding night, he finds his bed full of snakes. You don't have to be Freud to know that a bed full of snakes indicates a sexual problem. He should die from the snakes, but is saved by another God for whom he has done a favor.

However, someone must die in his place. His elderly parents refuse, so his wife, Alcestis, goes to the underworld in his place. It's interesting that as a result of losing her, which he soon learns to regret very greatly, he rejects his parents as selfish, because they are old and won't die for him. It seems that a man must stand up to his parents, not necessarily in real life, but to the vestiges of their upbringing that still have sway over who he is. He must reject the selfish acts of his parents and their damaging influence, if he is to be able to properly love a woman.

Of course, the great Herakles arrives. He is an old friend of the king's and wrestles Alcestis from the grip of death, bringing her back to her king for a happy ending. Tales, fairy tales and romances are the stories of our hidden mental battles as we strive to understand ourselves and to be happy, balanced individuals. Usually, no matter if there is a hero or a heroine, tales are applicable to both sexes.

My own tale didn't have a happy ending.... in this life. But I have faith. Those coffee letters give me hope that my king is waiting for me somewhere.

Such an Appetite for Life

This was Tom's California coup, a postal jeep converted to hot rod by a real California Gear Head. It had a 327 Chevy Engine, Corvette distributor, Engle racing Cams, TRW pistons and rings, Offenhauser head, 350 Chevy Turbo distributor, Eagle Headers, and Oversize Dune buggy Tires. Listen to that throaty engine rumble. Driving the jeep was definitely a great California experience.

Excerpt from FIFTY SHADES OF GRAY HAIR

Athens, Greece: our dream come true trip. I was eagerly waiting for Tom to arrive from New York, so we could catch a shuttle flight back to Crete, where I’d spent two weeks shooting photos for a German fashion catalogue. But the domestic part of the airport was more like an open-air bazaar than an airport lounge. I was surrounded by Greek men who were deeply tanned, outdoor-hardened, and wearing homespun shirts, huge boots with thick wooden soles, and those familiar Greek fishermen’s caps above their stubbly faces. Their carry-on luggage consisted of string wrapped boxes and live chickens in cages. Back in the 1970’s, Crete was still very primitive and undeveloped. At last, Tom sauntered out of customs, wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt, unbuttoned halfway down his chest, and big smile. He was always like that, living life to the fullest, as if the world was his oyster. And I loved him for it. I was the worrywart type.

He grabbed me in his arms and planted a long, passionate, hello kiss on my lips. Then, with an amused glance at the rough-hewn Greeks and their chickens, in his best Dimitri Tiomkin imitation, he said, “We take the men and the guns, and we go to the mountains.” I laughed, because that really was what Crete was like. When the mountain men tried to be waiters and serve our crew of photographers and models, they stared us down, daring us to give them our order. We all just kept our heads down and ate whatever they brought.

When we landed on Crete, I told Tom that I’d had to rent an expensive sedan to drive around the island, because the only other vehicles were small, Japanese jeeps. “A jeep?” he exclaimed, his interest piqued, and I knew I was in trouble. But he was right. That little tin can jeep shivered and shook its way up and down the mountains of Crete with nothing over our heads but the Mediterranean blue sky. We basked in the glory of Ancient Greece as we bounced among the sunbaked ruins of a mythical civilization long gone.

Between the grilled octopus and the ouzo, we snaked our way up to the remains of temples that had been ancient when Christ literally was a corporal; all the while, Tom was doing comedy riffs in his sandal saga, dubbed movie voice, keeping me in stiches. “Let him haul stone in Lato! Maybe that will loosen his tongue.” Yes, he was an actor, a born ham.

Careening up and down dusty roads through the sparsely settled mountains, we stumbled into a small, rustic village and got out to stretch our legs. A weathered bandit of a fellow, with a rooster wandering by his table, offered Tom some homemade raki, exactly the alcoholic concoction our hotel keeper had sternly warned us against. Ever the bold rascal, Tom eagerly sat down to sip the nectar of the gods and filled my glass, too. That home brew raki was potent, alright. We sat at that table for a long time with our Greek friend, solving all the world’s problems until the raki ran out. Tom felt right at home on wild, untamed Crete.

Really, he was such a fun person to be around and had such an appetite for life, that you could forgive him everything. And I have, I guess. However, I think, when he got to the other side, it turned out that he was the one who couldn’t forgive himself for what he’d done to his life, to me, and to our marriage.

THANK YOU LUCY! I LOVE YOU

In the last few minutes of this video, Lucy says things about her marriage to Ricky that are exactly what I figured out about my marriage to Tom, which I have written about in FIFTY SHADES.

Barbara Walters says people don't understand what went wrong in their marriage. Ricky drank and cheated. Lucy poignantly says that she couldn't understand what went wrong, either. They had everything. What more could you ask for? This is exactly what I felt when I found out that Tom had been a lifelong cheater. Why? We were so happy. We had everything. But I got my answer from the world of spirit. No, I'm not crazy, just a little bit psychic. Lucy obviously still loves Ricky every bit as much as I still love Tom. But.

Lucy says that Ricky was a loser. Nobody knows better than Lucy that Ricky was about the smartest, richest guy in Hollywood, so he was anything but a loser. But she adds, "He had to lose. He won at everything and then he had to lose. He had to fail. Everything he built, he had to break down."

Tom was just like that, too. Everything good that ever happened to him, he had to throw away. Finally, he threw away his life. It was mystifying, until he started showing me things in dreams to explain why.

Lucy then says something that I have also felt so strongly about my marriage. She says that with her new husband she has a home that is lived in. She and Desi had lots of houses, but they didn't have a home.

We didn't have lots of houses, but the same is true. We never had a home, a place where we loved and supported each other. Tom always seemed to have one foot out the door. He was always running away from home.

It took me many months of thought and research to finally understand why Tom why did these things, because, like Ricky, Tom was a smart guy who could have had it all, but he had to throw it all away. It's a psychological complex that seems to persist in the afterlife. All this is explored in FIFTY SHADES in greater detail.

I am so grateful to Lucy, not only for her brilliant comedy, but for her honesty about her love for Ricky and her experiences. Sometimes I feel very alone with my strange memories of a man I loved who did such self destructive and difficult to understand things.

Also, I have tried and tried to enable the comments for these posts. Once again, it does not seem to work, but I am not sure. If you have tried to comment and not been able to, please drop me an email at wister87@gmail.com  I may have to switch operations to Wordpress, because this comment situation has plagued me for years. It seems to work for awhile, then won't let people comment. Thank you for your help in this matter.

WHAT'S PAST IS PROLOGUE

The thing about getting older is you’re looking at life through the other end of the telescope. The things that seemed very big from the point of view of youth are barely visible now. The really important things that were happening to you when you were young were as imperceptible then as a tsunami at sea. From the other end of the telescope, your life story turns out not to be what you thought. Not even close.

I’m a Baby Boomer, part of that wild and crazy generation which rose like a Phoenix from the ashes of World War Two. You remember us; we were the Woodstock Generation, the ones whooping it up to the dulcet tones of Hard Rock, tossing our clothes off, yelling epithets, and taking to the streets to stop the war in Vietnam. We started the sexual revolution and dragged sex out of the closet along with our father's copy of Playboy. But my generation was just getting started. Urged on by that red-haired reprobate and Francophile, Thomas Jefferson, we pursued happiness fervently in every way imaginable, blazing new trails into every kind of experience, relentlessly questioning everything and fearlessly throwing tradition out the window. My generation has been written off many times as merely frivolous libertines, but my backwards telescope sees something very different.

What drove the baby boomers on this quest to understand every ism, overturn every given truth and put all our faith in science? We grew up in the dark shadow of the deadliest bloodbath and wanton slaughter mankind has ever perpetrated on itself. Those events were part of our family’s’ histories. We saw the way our parents avoided dealing with so much and how they suppressed or ignored their desires and emotions, happy to be just like Dick, Jane and Sally in our first-grade readers. They were shell shocked. Just as their childhood ended and they were ready to start lives of their own, it turned out those lives were already forfeit. The whole world exploded in a rage of death. All our mothers had lost their first young loves in the gruesome war, or knew someone who had. In the first bloom of youth, all the fine young men had been dragged from the comfort of home and thrown into a fight to the death against a merciless horror and sickening evil that had suddenly erupted. Life became a desperate struggle, just when it should have been sweetest. Millions of those young men and women endured terrible hardship, injury and disease; hundreds of thousands never got to come home.

When it was over, the lucky ones who survived just wanted to forget. The good life was a TV dinner, a new car, and a cookie cutter house in the suburbs. Their only safety was in everyone doing their part and pulling together. Big ideas were anathema; they wanted Good Housekeeping and Better Homes and Gardens. They knew something terrible lurked in the hearts of mankind, something that could flare up and condemn millions to grisly death; something which no amount of talking or excellence or tears could stop. Only killing could stop killing. And that must be avoided, at all costs.

The unimaginable horror our parents had lived through and witnessed firsthand was terrifying and permeated all our youthful perceptions. It reared its frightening head in television shows and news programs, in the newspapers, the movies, and in the parades where the veterans marched. War was the wound that was just starting to heal. It was the chilling and very recent past we heard so much about and never wanted to repeat. It haunted us like the monsters that lurk under a child’s bed at night, threatening always to leap out of the dark and devour our happiness and our very lives, the way it had done to our mothers and fathers. Only science seemed able to provide real and tangible benefits that might outrun the devil. Progress was the buzzword; better living through chemistry; see the USA in your Chevrolet.

It was left to us, their children and consolation, to try to figure out what had gone so terribly wrong in the hearts and minds of humanity to make them viciously and eagerly kill tens of millions. We looked for reasons everywhere, in history books that spoke of economic woes, racism, nationalism, fascism, and communism, in churches to find out where God had been hiding, and in our own homes for signs of incipient violence and discord. But we knew there must have been something deeper at work to cause civilization to nearly self-destruct. The great question was why; why had the world descended into mass murder on such a gigantic scale? That was the question we urgently needed to answer.

And our answer was science. Science was life examined, a discipline capable of deactivating all violent emotion. Pure rationality was the tonic that could cure the deadly war germ. Consequently, we disowned emotions, explained them away and longed for a world subject to the far superior artificial intelligence as our salvation. Humanity was flawed and ugly, only science was pure and clean. Human hearts and feelings were excess baggage that intelligent people should wisely discard. We saw people who didn’t seem to know what was best for them and imposed scientific solutions. We developed a monomania for rationality, rules and scientific studies, believing that anything with numbers must be truth.

Only science could save us from ourselves. Scientists were the new gurus. We were all going to be Scientific Americans. Too late, we realized that if science could save us, it could also destroy us in startling new ways scientists had only just devised. Science had conferred unlimited power on mankind. We needed one science to obey and believe in, one rationality that all must submit to, or the monster would come out from under the bed. Before we knew what had happened, we were right back where we’d started, at the crossroads of kill or be killed. And so, we went the way of all flesh.

Just like everyone else in my generation, I had a vague fear of a worldwide cataclysm breaking out again. But other than that, my youthful ambitions were fairly normal and modest. Of course, I wanted a taste of adventure, to see some of the world, and to do great things. But I would happily settle for doing work that I was proud of, falling in love with a good man and having a happy family. Those really didn’t seem like impossible dreams, not for one of the children of progress.

However, by the beginning of the third act of my life, the plot was mired in calamity, and nothing had worked out. My contentious family was an ongoing disaster. My husband and I had spent most of our life in what we called survival mode, trying to do what we loved and barely getting by. Then, after thirty-five-years of marriage, Tom passed away, and I got lost in a dark night of the soul. I couldn’t figure out what had happened to us or why. Then, just when it looked like the final curtain was about to ring down on all my hopes and dreams, the end of the third act had a plot twist that turned my world upside down for a surprise ending that I still find hard to believe.

You have to be old to write a story like this. If you were young, no one would believe you.

MAKE A MEMORY

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This "make a memory" kick started because I read about how important it is to make good memories with those you love in a book by Allison Dubois. Something about that got me thinking. I am so often caught up in just getting through the day that the idea of consciously making a good memory had never occurred to me.

Maybe we're all like that. Or maybe I'm just too goal directed and don't know how to enjoy life. Or did I just forget somewhere along the line that life is supposed to have happy moments? Maybe I'm just getting old and grouchy.

But the spiritual psychic value of doing things that are special with those in your family who you love somehow had gotten lost over the years. (See my book "Fifty Shades of Gray Hair - Second Sight" for a full explanation of what happened to my marriage.) My son and I do see each other quite often. He stops by for his dinner break from his job. He keeps some of his wardrobe in my closet. But doing something special and something that we would always remember as a fun time seemed very important. Mom wants to make a memory together.

I mentioned the idea to him and he was very enthusiastic, got on the computer and got us tickets for the Seattle Symphony, Rimsky-Korsakov with their Grammy winning violist soloing. The son was lucky enough to be in a school where every child had a music class every day from fourth grade on. He learned the cello. It was the very best thing that he ever studied. Consequently, he loves music and especially string instruments. I love music and as son pointed out, Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade is a very romantic piece of music, something you'll love mom. Well, he has me pegged as ridiculously romantic, and he's not far wrong. But how perfect. Violins and Scheherazade.

So we're on for a big adventure with my twenty something son overnight in Seattle. Got the hotel, a nice, reasonably priced one within walking distance of Benaroya Hall, got Amtrak tickets for early trip down and back the next evening.

And then I had a "Tom" dream. The son and I were in a taxi cab going up an extremely steep hill. Walking the other way on the sidewalk, I saw Tom in his Hawaiian shirt. He didn't look at us, I was about to call hello to him, but our cab took off up the hill and it was too late. When Tom appears in my dreams, I always sense him as a presence, feel his spirit, or something like that. But it's always very different from dreams of just passing images. This dream had that psychic impact that often tells me to pay attention. Well, I thought, he's glad I'm doing something good with our son. The marriage may have been a bust, but we both loved being parents.

Everything goes great. Eight am Amtrak ride is delightful. We go to Pike Place Market. Great lunch. Aquarium. And when we are exhausted, at the bottom of the very steep hill that leads to our hotel, miraculously a cab drops off a passenger right where we are standing in the middle of the street. We grab it, and head up the 45 degree hill, just like the dream. I laugh to myself. Hi Tom.

As we walk over to Benaroya Hall, I share with my son very good memories of before he was born, when Tom and I used to go to the opera at Lincoln Center. His opinion of his father goes up. In later years, Tom gave up on all that kind of thing.

Concert is fabulous. We have an incredible time. Great late supper after the symphony, much intellectual discussion of music, culture, and our new lives on the west coast. Son and I bond; we're still trying to figure out what happened to us when Tom died, but we rarely touch directly on that topic these days. Too heavy. This is fun trip.

Next morning, hotel was perfect, but neither of us slept that well. We're tired out from our big day yesterday. And then we realize we have to check out of the hotel by 11 am. The train home doesn't leave till seven something. Houston, we have a problem. The idea of spending eight more hours bouncing around Seattle, even if it means the Space Needle and the EMP Museum, is just more than either of us can manage. I've made a mistake. I should have booked the bus home at 11 something am.

We're both getting cranky and I am in a panic. Are we going to be vagabonds carrying our backpacks around Seattle for the next seven hours? Yesterday was great, but this is going to spoil the "memory" I was making.

We are trudging along when suddenly I notice that I'm pretty sure we are on the street where the Bellaire Bus that goes to our town has a stop, if they have passengers to pick up or drop off. It's almost 11:30, but I don't remember the exact time the bus is due at this stop, just that it's around 11 am. And I don't remember exactly what building the stop is in, either, but I've taken that bus several times from the airport and am sure I can find that building where the bus pulls off the street to pick up passengers. I think.

I race up the hill followed by son. Then, miraculously, I see the bus ahead of us. It turns into the entrance of a building a little further up the hill. If we hurry, we can catch it. We charge in after it. It stops. They are running twenty minutes late. They have room for two unscheduled riders. We get on. Thank you Tom. I don't know how you do these things. But coincidence? I don't think so. My son and I had a great memory of a great day in Seattle doing things we love and enjoying life and each other. We miss our guy who left us a lot. Even if I can't totally forgive him, I guess I still love him. We both do. And I am sure he was there with us on our "make a memory day" in Seattle. In fact, he saved the day. And wearing his Hawaiian shirt, no less.

Model with Eileen Ford - Sex and Spirituality

I notice a lot a people claim they were Ford Models, but offer very little proof. So I decided that I'd better show you that I wasn't just blowing smoke. Below are some samples from my modelling days. I was a model before I was psychic, or even married to an actor. Even though I may look a bit dreamy in some of these photos, if you'd told me someday I would see the spiritual world behind this real world, I wouldn't have listened to you for a nanosecond. Ah, how very wrong I was about so much.

Notice THE FORDS logo in lower right hand corner

Photo by Richard Noble for Revlon

Hiro for Harper's Bazaar

Same shoot - Hiro for Harper's Bazaar

Hiro for Harper's Bazaar

Hiro for Harper's Bazaar

Concord watch Ad

Vogue Beauty Issue

Composite head shot

Vogue Beauty Issue

James Moore Harper's Bazaar

James Moore Harper's Bazaar

Hiro for Harper's Bazaar

Elizabeth Arden

FIINDING PETER: A TRUE STORY OF THE HAND OF PROVIDENCE AND EVIDENCE OF LIFE AFTER DEATH

This is an Amazon review of the book written by the man who wrote THE EXORCIST, William Peter Blatty.

This review is from: Finding Peter: A True Story of the Hand of Providence and Evidence of Life after Death (Kindle Edition)

I gave four stars because you have to work a little at this book to fully enjoy it. Blatty is a novelist, not a reporter. His story is unfolded like a delightfully discursive novel, chatty, amusing, full of small, but telling details at a leisurely pace. He uses this story telling technique to prove to us that there is life after death. I think he succeeds and provides a very good read while he does it.

As the author of 'The Exorcist', he has much to work against in telling this story, because of the huge impact that his movie has had. Blatty carries with him already the aura of otherworldly occurrences, scary and divine. But he handles all that with a great sense of humor.

His own life story is so interesting and so unique, that knowing it does make his experiences communicating with his deceased son after death more believable. Sometimes, I felt that he was so worried that you wouldn't believe his unusual experiences and their deep meaning, that he works too hard at telling the incident and can be a little confusing. If he had a movie crew and actors, it would be easier for him to get across the impact of his experiences with the paranormal. But, his heart is in what he's doing, and he has a moving, spiritually uplifting story to tell. He is a man of great faith, and that faith illuminates his story and makes it reassuring, rather than threatening.

Having communicated with my husband from beyond the grave and tried to write about it, I know how difficult it is to establish your proof. To prove something, you have to weigh the feelings unemotionally, along with the other evidence. At my blog, marcycasterline.blogspot.com I do try to do that as I relate my experiences.

I bought this book immediately, because it is a subject that I have been interested in for years. Mr. Blatty has a distinguished career in film, a world that my actor husband worked in. I very much enjoyed all his Hollywood gossip mixed in with his psychic experiences.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable book that helps to reaffirm one's faith in God.

Okay, it's Sunday, April 19, 2015 and the most amazing thing just happened to me through the grace of William Peter Blatty, I think. Last night as I read in bed as I usually do, I got to the part at the end of the book where friends of Mr. Blatty's son, who had passed away, asked for roses from Peter to show he was there. Even Mr. Blatty asked for a blue rose, impossible color for roses, but got it. All the friends got the roses they asked for. I felt a little sorry for myself, because I knew I would never have the guts to ask for a sign like that. I guess I was afraid to be disappointed. But somebody heard me and I got my rose and big hug today. Apparently it's red rose day at Fred Meyers. But I didn't know this. I checked out and said hi to one of FM friends, she said 'I'm just going home now. I want you to have my last red rose." I cried all the way home in my car. I can't believe it. Thank you Mr. Blatty for your tremendous faith in God.