They come to la la land looking for their dreams.  They come to the streets of a modern day Mad
Max, and we will tell you more about outlaws, old cowboys and Mel Gibson later.  Tinseltown...
Rodeo Dr. and the Hills of Beverly, Hollyweird and sharks in the water.  They do yoga and produce
violence on TV and in the movies.  The bands have to pay to play.  You have to have lines in a
movie to get in the Union and to get lines in a movie you have to be in the Union.  Go figure.

Mulholand and Melrose Street and the Sunset Boulvadard ...Hollywood and don't die on the
Vine...that Hollywood and Vine.  Hollywood and Highland now...Hope Kodak does not go
bankrupt, going to look weird at the Oscars.

I came here in 1987 and lived in my camper on a pickup truck hanging out at Kinko parking lots.
Got a phone message service and used the free phones at Kinko, or should I just say my office.
Moved out to Malibu and got a P.O. Box.  Folks thought I had made it.  "Fake it till you make it."

Dreams become nightmares and lawyers and agents swim like sharks.  Runaways and homeless
in the street where the pretty people play.  Reminds me of the movie "Being There."  Am I
working on a movie or am I in a movie.  Or, this should be a movie.
 
 

After my wife had her second affair and kicked me out  of  the house and having to leave my children and then  find myself with no where to live and no car, ole pal L.P.  Brown lets me live in a broken down van that he had in a parking lot in Hollywood at his film company office. He was out of town some and not in the office all the time, so I was able to get some work done in the office on the computer.  Then at night I would go in the van to sleep.

		Damn, I hate getting in a row
d "It's a way of life--paranoia, fear...as far  as I'm concerned, I don't see why we  have to go across the sea to fight a  war on terrorism when we're being  terrorized here."  Said by a LA woman  who was going to move back to Africa to get out of the violence. d	LA's homicide count rose to 614 over the weekend as 6 were killed in the streets. Highest total in seven years	You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.  Colette
click here to see more nightmares in the streets that I experience while in search of a dream		For four years running, cities in California  have been named America's smoggiest in  an annual air-quality ranking released  today by the American Lung Association, which hopes its ''State of the Air'' report will rally opposition to proposed changes  to the Clean Air Act. Los Angeles,

TRIAL OF A DEAD MAN  is about secret corporations and bankruptcy and Mafia
gangsters with connections to the Dallas, Texas mob, Las Vegas hit men and
cowboy mobster casino owners like Benny Binion.  It is about a small Texas Church
town and the evil business men that kill their wives.  It is about crooked small town
lawyers and accountants that swipe with their pens, Wills and Estate battles, and the
aftermath suffered by the children of a dead man, who's CPA and lawyers continue to
swindle them out of millions of dollars of their inheritance, even after he is dead...the
fraud was so real in part of the story that one wonders for awhile if Jack Standley is
in fact dead...

As Benford Standley begins to unravel and research out the Estate of his late step-
father, he discovers that the men who were lawyers hired to help him and his sister,
and the accountant, who is the Estate administrator are in fact in a conspiracy to
defraud them and steal millions of dollars from them.  After he learns of their con-
spiracy and fraud,  they trump up some charges against him and railroad the Grand
Jury in this small Texas town to indite him, and put a warrant for his arrest.  Benford
has to go on the run with  his wife and two children to hide from these men that want
to cause him harm and bring him to ruin or death.

Q: What's the difference between a lawyer and a trampoline?
A: You take off your shoes to jump on a trampoline!

The story is about men who sneak out at night from their families and go to the strip
bars outside of Fort Worth, Texas, and who bet tens of thousands of dollars during
the weekends with their bookies that are tied to the Mafia.  Men who molest their
own children, go to Church on Sundays, and play golf at their headquarters the local
county club where they go to get booze in their small dry community.  To quote a
article in the FW Weekly,

"If Cleburne is Mayberry--Mayberry LSD, maybe--Johnson County is a s close
to Oz as you get, in Texas."

"But Cleburne--a city named after a Confederate Civil War general who, some outside
historians believe, might have been involved in a love affair with one of his men--is the
most peculiar of them all. There are more characters per square foot than any other
American town that comes readily to mind. It is a town in which Republic of Texas
followers, a judge with a Pink Panther fetish, and a schizophrenic flying saucer
abductee all fit right in.  It's a place where dirty laundry is everybody's business, where
a quarter of the people are either in jail, about to be in jail or on probation,  where
black and Hispanic residents are presumed to be "content" to work for substandard
wages and live in shacks and even packing crates on the "other side" of the tracks,
seen but not heard."   Ft. Worth Weekly

If you want to see what I had been through before I got here to la la land in 1997, I
have two connected manuscripts at:

TRIAL OF A DEAD MAN: And the Good Ole Boys
 
 

Back Door Men

So how does a Catholic feel when they find that  their religious leaders like to fuck little boys in the  butt.  I remember back about the time the bones  in the closet of Father Bruce Ritter, who had set  up Covenet House, a home for runaway boys  was doing how the Greek do and men go to their  back door.  Father Bruce The Back Door Man. One of their high priests was a member of  NAMBLA... So is this some dark part of their  secret order.  Is the darkness of their black robes they cover their sins upon the children as some  secret award...part of the cover... Never did like what I saw the Catholic do to the Indians of Guatemala Central America, but that is another chapter. coe down from some long ago past?

Dear God What in the world is happening to our children. While I am tripping around I worked and write on this tragic story to finish a manuscript for a book.

NEWS BRIEF
Hundreds of worms from a science experiment aboard the space shuttle Columbia have been
found alive in the wreckage, NASA said Wednesday. The worms, known as C. elegans, were
found in debris in Texas several weeks ago. Technicians sorting through the debris at Kennedy
Space Center in Florida didn't open the containers of worms and dead moss cells until this
week. All seven astronauts were killed when the shuttle disintegrated over Texas on Feb. 1.
Columbia contained almost 60 scientific investigations.

Damn the news keeps taking away my mind.  While I was healing from some recent surgery I am
in bed a week watching the beginning of WW III, some call it WW IV, saying that the Cold War
was WW III...I just think of what Albert Einstein said when they asked him, "What kind of weapons
will they use in WW III?"  He said, "WW III, I do not know, but WW IV...Stone axes."

While working on the TRIAL OF A DEAD MAN with a new writer that was interested in the
project I go and see the movie ADAPTATION.  First seeing the 333 on the clock startled me, and
nobody knows what I am talking about, and we can get into the number 3, 33 and 333 at another
time in this Cybersequel...While in the theater watching ADAPTATION I took the following notes:

 
There are several stories going on...characters collide...times slide in and out...

I think would be interesting to flash from the hiding I am doing
and the life in Hollywood to the underbelly of Cleburne...

Movie flashes from story he is writing...to real situations to fiction...makes hard to
know where the fiction and the reality exists...from movie he is writing to real life
writing the movie

I can show how hard it was to write because the flashback to the
story becomes so FEAR loaded and makes me mentally ill...

"Humans adapt to circumstances"  Self-awareness...

what is real and what is in the mind...what is real and what is fiction "meta" fiction

I can go into the MENTALNESS that it took me and get more into PTS

I am the writer with a writer writing a movie about what I lived and he is writing about
me writing about what I lived and based on what he knows about Cleburne

First half of movie sets the stage...second half I am living the movie

I am writing the first half of the movie then second half he is writing about what I am living

Living the book writing the book and the mental emotions

My real story that I am living on the run hiding in LA
while I am writing the story...begin to fall apart and go
deeper into to mental states while writing the story...
the confusion and bleeding at my fingers...the madness
of writing of the story...

Article...book...movie...sequil

paranoid-neurotic frustration

MY DOCTOR TOLD ME I WAS SUFFERING FROM: PTSD

A key feature of Complex PTSD is the aspect of captivity.
The individual experiencing trauma by degree is unable to escape the situation.

For individuals with PTSD, the traumatic event remains, sometimes for decades or a
lifetime, a dominating psychological experience that retains its power to evoke panic,
terror, dread, grief, or despair as manifested in daytime fantasies, traumatic nightmares,
and psychotic reenactments known as PTSD flashbacks. Furthermore, trauma mimetic
stimuli that trigger recollections of the original event have the power to evoke mental
images, emotional responses, and psychological reactions associated with the trauma.

Behavioral strategies include avoiding any situation in which they perceive a risk of
confronting such stimuli. In its most extreme manifestation, avoidance behavior may
superficially resemble agoraphobia because the PTSD individual is afraid to leave the
house for fear of confronting reminders of the traumatic event(s).

Persons with post-traumatic stress disorder may continuously experience flashbacks.
During these flashbacks they relive the traumatic event and reexperience feelings of
intense fear and of inability to escape from the traumatic event. Every effort is taken to
avoid actions or thoughts associated with the traumatic event in order to prevent these
flashbacks.

Ultimately, behavior becomes erratic and hyperactive, as if the individual were constantly
defending himself. For example, the person may develop anxiety, have disturbed sleep,
and be easily startled. Over the long run this behavior can lead to complete dysfunction
with a sense of hopelessness, a total lack of self- esteem, and overwhelming fear of people.

PTSD symptoms usually appear in clusters. The major categories are:

Hyper arousal: Sleep may be disturbed. Concentration can be difficult. A person may be hyper
vigilant and have an exaggerated startle response. "PTSD is an anxiety disorder," says Giller, "
and comes with a racing heart, hyperventilation, and digestive disorders. A person's physiological
state is in high gear."  Reexperiencing: PTSD sufferers may have recurrent, intrusive memories.
The memory may not seem to specifically refer to the trauma, but it may be brought on by a visual
image, smell, or sound that reminds you of the experience. Dreams and nightmares may be per-
vasive. Daytime flashbacks in which a person loses touch with the here and now may also be
common.

Avoidance, or numbing: A stricken person may attempt to stop talking, thinking, or even remem-
bering the event. "They avoid people, places, and activities that remind them of the trauma," adds
Giller. "People often become isolated, and that is where agoraphobia, one of the co-occurring
disorders, comes in."

So time came around that I had to move out of  LP's office and could not any longer sleep in the  back of his van.  By this time I was in a true  state of shock over losing my home, my kids and  dealing with my wife having had an affair.  I was  too out of my mind to go to any friends and ask  for any kind of help. The night I could no longer sleep in the van found me walking the streets of Hollywood till about 3  am.  After awhile I started looking for a place to

Later I went down an alley and found an old couch, a door and some cardboard.  You can see a
picture I took of my little night resting place above and to the right.  I got under the door and laid on
the couch and pulled up the big cardboard boxes to cover myself where there was an opening.  I
was able to even fall asleep and get a few hours shut-eye.  Took a picture of my little abode and
headed for Yum Yum Donuts, where I knew that they threw away plastic bags full of donuts early
in the morning and homeless folks would come and get bags of donuts.  I could go into the donut
shop and get me a cup of coffee and a few donuts, a Los Angeles Times and have my coffee, donuts
and read how crazy the world really is.

By ten the library would open and I could go in and use the computer, have a desk to write and a
pay phone to make some calls.  I lived in this state of mind for a few days.  One afternoon I stopped
in the office of buddy Cris Jude's Rockin' Film Company office to chat.  After a little talk he said
that he had a office that had rain damage and they could not use the room, and that if I wanted to
rent it from him for a price that I could not refuse, I could move my things in and use the couch I
had down the street to sleep.  There was a bathroom in the building and if I would lay low I could
call it home office for a short time.  We shook hands,
I gave him my first weeks rent and moved in.
 

"Let your dream devour your life not your  life devour your dream. Your hopes, dreams  and aspirations are legitimate. They are  trying to take you airborne, above the clouds, above the storm"
	Behind the brown bedspread to the right of my desk is boxes of what personal goods I had put in LP's van and had to move out.  I was  able to plug in my computer and get back to  work trying to get my project KICKING UP DUST to someone in Hollywood.

The world fears a new experience more than it  fears  anything. Because a new experience  displaces so many old experiences.... The world doesn't fear a new idea.  It can pigeon-hole any idea.  But it can't pigeon-hole a real new experience. D.H. Lawrence

When this joyful moment comes, the man can say without hesitation that he has
defeated his first natural enemy. It happens little by little, and yet the fear is vanquished
suddenly and fast. Once a man has vanquished fear, he is free from it for the rest of his
 life because, instead of fear, he has acquired clarity--a clarity of mind which erases
fear. By then a man knows his desires; he knows how to satisfy those desires. He can
anticipate the new steps of learning and a sharp clarity surrounds everything. The man
 feels that nothing is concealed.

THE TEACHINGS OF DON JUAN

quack me to continue

© 2003 Benford E. Standley. All Rights Reserved.
This can in no way be copied or distributed.