Have We Met Before?

Posted on April 8, 2020 by Chronicles of a Blogaholic

“Don’t grieve.
Anything you lose
comes round in
another form.”
Rumi

Ryan’s memories hinted, he was a movie extra named Marty Martyn

The nightly national news reporter caught my attention. For a moment, I thought I was watching the “Syfy Channel”. He was reporting about a boy named Ryan who told his mother that he believed he lived as someone else.

Five year old Ryan told his mom, he used to be somebody else — and that somebody was someone who kept company with old Hollywood stars, danced on Broadway, and worked in the movies, according to his dreams and memories.

Everyone is curious about what happens after we die. Some believe in a heaven and hell. Some believe in ghosts. Some believe when we die that’s it, we are gone for good. But, there are some who believe in reincarnation. For me, I need proof to convince me about most subjects, especially on the subject of death. However, the story about Ryan piqued my curiosity.

For more than a decade, Dr. Jim Tucker, associate professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia, studied the cases of children, usually between the ages of 2 and 6 years old, who say they remember a past life. In his book, Return to Life, Tucker details some of the more than 2,500 cases he has studied over the years, including Ryan — who claims he is the reincarnation of a man who died more than 50 years ago. That man, Marty Martyn, was a former movie extra who later became a powerful Hollywood agent.

The following is an excerpt from Tucker’s book and the chapter “He Came From Hollywood.”

We were able to piece together a picture of Marty Martyn’s life, and we could compare it to Ryan’s statements. In most of our cases, people have tried to see if a deceased person could be identified whose life matched the statements the child had made. Here, there was only one guy that Ryan could have been talking about, because he had pointed to him in a picture. We weren’t trying to see if there was anyone whose life matched Ryan’s statements; we were looking to see if Marty Martyn’s did.

What we found was that though Ryan was off on some of the details, a lot of what he said was correct for Marty Martyn. It had seemed unlikely that an extra with no lines would have danced on Broadway, had a big house with a swimming pool, and traveled the world on big boats. But Marty Martyn did.

Marty was born in Philadelphia in 1903. Ryan had talked a lot about a sister and also mentioned another one, and Marty had two sisters. His mother had curly brown hair, as Ryan as said. Ryan was right about dancing in New York, as Marty and one of his sisters went to New York to be dancers. He danced in various reviews on Broadway, and his sister became a well-known dancer there.

Marty then moved to Los Angeles, having a life in Hollywood as Ryan had described. He began as an extra as well as a dance director. He then became a Hollywood agent, not the secret agent kind but a talent agent. He set up the Marty Martyn Agency, where he had notable clients such as Glenn Ford. Ryan had talked about people changing their names with the agency, which would certainly be true for a talent agency. Marty had several connections to Rita Hayworth, and his daughter confirmed he probably did know her. He may well have interacted with Marilyn Monroe as well, as his wife’s family knew her.

Marty was a big sunbather, getting sunburns as Ryan had mentioned. Ryan said he used to take girlfriends to see the ocean, and there are pictures of Marty with girls on the beach. He enjoyed going there and watching surfers, which Ryan had said as well.

Marty was married four times. He became quite wealthy, and he and his last wife enjoyed an upscale lifestyle. Ryan said he had driven around Hollywood in a green car and that his wife drove a nice black car. Well, Marty’s wife didn’t actually do the driving, but they had a custom-made Rolls-Royce that was presumably a nice car. Ryan remembered an African American maid, and Marty and his wife had a number of them. Ryan said he owned a piano, and Marty had pianos in his house. The family lived in a fine house with a large swimming pool, as Ryan had described. Ryan said his address had Rock or Mount in it. And Marty Martyn’s last house, that fine home with the big swimming pool? It was located at 825 N. Roxbury.

So, when I meet someone for the very first time and have a deja vu moment, I always wonder, have we met before?

Shine On

Lift My Spirits

Posted on February 3, 2020 by Chronicles of a Blogaholic

“The mind is everything.
What you think you become.”
Buddha

Positive thinking

If you’re looking to have a more positive 2020, there’s a book I highly recommend, “Wokini: A Lakota Journey to Happiness and Self-Understanding”, by Billy Mills. Translated from Lakota, “Wokini” means “seeking a new beginning” or “seeking a new vision.” This book taught me about myself, and showed me what it means to be happy. It also guided me on my own personal journey to feel more satisfied in my life.

The book is a wonderful blend of modern therapeutic principles, positive thinking; self-awareness; and Native American beliefs in meditation, thought, dreams, and respect for the harmony and balance of nature.

The Wokini way of life and thinking has helped me a great deal this past year. Whenever I feel stressed or angered from the most minuscule thing, I just chant Wokini and do some breathing exercises. This simple chant keeps me from bringing negativity into my life and most of all helps lift my spirits.

Shine On

Rod Serling

Posted on January 27, 2020 by Chronicles of a Blogaholic

“There are weapons
that are simply thoughts.
For the record,
prejudices can kill and
suspicion can destroy.”
Rod Serling

Rod Serling

“You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination—your next stop, the Twilight Zone!”

One of the most iconic openings of any television show in history has got to be THE TWILIGHT ZONE. It’s world renowned and often unsuccessfully emulated. Created and written by Mr. Rod Serling. He was a writer who was intuitive, talented, charismatic as well as sexy. A prolific writer who wrote about our mid-twentieth century world, its vulnerability and how we impact this world.

I find it eerie how the subject matters he wrote 70 years ago is relevant today. You could take any one of his stories he wrote and apply it to our society today. My guess is Rod Serling would be horrified at some of the events happening in the world today.

We’ve all seen THE TWILIGHT ZONE introduction at least once, right? Well, if you’re a huge fan of Rod Serling like I am, you’ve probably binge watched all the episodes on Netflix, right? At any rate, after I watching all the episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, I became preoccupied with Rod Serling, the writer. Who was he? What did he write? Who and what inspired him to write?

In my quest to know more about Rod Serling, I checked-out every book at the library he wrote and every book written about the man. What I learned about Rod Serling only made me admire him and his work even more. If you are one of the few people on the planet who has never watched THE TWILIGHT ZONE, or are unfamiliar with Mr. Serling’s body of work, allow me to briefly introduce the great Rod Serling.

Rod Serling color
He was known primarily for his role as the host of television’s THE TWILIGHT ZONE, Rod Serling had one of the most exceptional and varied careers in television. He was a writer, a producer, and for many years a teacher. Serling challenged the medium of television to reach for loftier artistic goals. The winner of more Emmy Awards for dramatic writing than anyone in history, Serling expressed a deep social conscience in nearly everything he did.

Born in Syracuse, New York in 1924, Rod Serling grew up in the small upstate city of Binghamton. The son of a butcher, he joined the army after graduating from high school in 1942. His experiences of the working-class life of New York, and the horrors of World War II enlivened in him a profound concern for a moral society. After returning from the service, Serling enrolled as a physical education student at Antioch College, but before long realized that he was destined for more creative endeavors.

Changing his major to English literature and drama, Serling began to try his hand at writing. As a senior, after marrying his college sweetheart, Carolyn Kramer, he won an award for a television script he had written. Encouraged by the award, Serling started writing for radio and television. Beginning in Cincinnati, he soon found a home for his unique style of realistic psychological dramas at CBS. By the early 1950s he was writing full-time and had moved his family closer to Manhattan.

Serling had his first big break with a 1955 television drama for NBC, called PATTERNS. Dealing with the fast-paced lives and ruthless people within the business world, PATTERNS was so popular it became the first television show to ever be broadcast a second time due to popularity. Throughout the 1950s he continued to write probing investigative dramas about serious issues. He was often hounded by the conservative censors for his uncompromising attention to issues such as lynching, union organizing, and racism. Considered some of the best writing ever done for television, were Serling’s dramas REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT and A TOWN HAS TURNED TO DUST.

Fed up with the difficulties of writing about serious issues on the conservative networks, Serling turned to science fiction and fantasy. Through an ingenious mixture of morality fable and fantasy writing, he was able to circumvent the timidity and conservatism of the television networks and sponsors. Self-producing a series of vignettes that placed average people in extraordinary situations, Serling could investigate the moral and political questions of his time. He found that he could address controversial subjects if they were cloaked in a veil of fantasy, saying, “I found that it was all right to have Martians saying things Democrats and Republicans could never say.”

THE TWILIGHT ZONE, first episode, “Where Is Everybody?” premiered on CBS, October 2, 1959. The show was incredibly popular, winning Serling three Emmy Awards. As the host and narrator of the show, he became a household name and his voice seemed always a creepy reminder of a world beyond our control. The show lasted for five seasons, and during that time Serling wrote more than half of the one hundred and fifty-one episodes. But for Serling, television was an inherently problematic medium—requiring the concessions of commercials and time restrictions.

Rod Serling at home in February 1972

For much of the 1960s and into the 1970s Serling turned to the big screen, writing films that included a remake of REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT (1962), THE YELLOW CANARY (1963), and ASSAULT ON A QUEEN (1966). His most famous, however, was the classic PLANET OF THE APES (1968), co-written with Michael Wilson. Similar to his early work on THE TWILIGHT ZONE, THE PLANET OF THE APES was a moralistic tale of contemporary life told through a science-fiction fantasy in which Apes have taken over the world. Dealing with question of how we act as a society and how we view ourselves as moral beings, PLANET OF THE APES was a culmination of Serling’s career-long interests as a writer.

By the early 1970s, he found a job teaching in Ithaca, New York. Continuing to write for television, he sought to impart a sense of moral responsibility and artistic integrity to the new generation of television writers. Unfortunately, In June of 1975, he died unexpectedly of a heart attack.

Now, over forty years after his death, Serling’s legacy continues to grow. His television and cinematic works have reached cult status—enlivening a new interest in one of the great early writers of American television, Rod Serling.

Shine On