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This is basically a writing diary where I write all kinds of stuff that will be immensely boring to anyone who stumbles across it.

So you should go back to Facebook.

Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly. ---- Harry Lime




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The most interesting geopolitical analysis comes from Peter Turchin who sees political instability as a 50-year cycle, driven by stagnating wages, a growing wealth gap, a surplus of educated elites (without corresponding elite jobs), and accelerating fiscal deficit.

His extraordinarily prescient Nature piece was actually published 15 years ago at the height of the Obama Hope & Change hype.

###

I keep reminding myself that it's nuts to fixate on the stuff that's happening in LA because there's absolutely nothing I can do about the stuff that's happening in LA.

I've never seen the slightest utility in signing petitions or petitioning elected officials. And at this point, I'm wondering about continuing to participate in those rah-rah, feel-good demonstrations too. (Although I probably will. There's a big demonstration in Kingston this weekend.)

I want to turn myself into a cypher so I can slip into the deep underground as effortlessly as possible.

Though there's always the issue of how do you identify the deep underground? Do they advertise on NYC subway ads? As an ad flash at the end of Words With Friends games? On billboards along remote highways? Do they post notices on the backs of cereal boxes? Is there some secret tic or flash hand signal I can do while I'm walking around the Galleria that will validate me as prime recruitment material? It's so very Thomas Pynchon!!

And what exactly would this deep underground do?

Smuggle Hispanic workers from Home Depot parking lots in the States to Home Depot parking lots in Canada like an underground railroad?

###

Okay, I'm being facetious & obnoxious.

I think the political situation in much of Central America is appalling, and I completely sympathize with immigrants who are seeking asylum. I also sympathize with many of the folk who are up here for economic reasons: There are plenty of jobs that most Americans don't want to do; if immigrants want to do them, that's a good thing, right?

I also suspect in fewer than 15 years, American citizens will be desperately applying for asylum in various places around the world. Hello! My great-great-great-great grandfather migrated XXX years ago! Take me back!!!! PULEEEEEZE!!!!!

###

Anyway...

It's raining. It's been raining. The New Paltz garden is partially flooded, so no weeding for me today.

I couldn't figure out whether or not I was sick yesterday. My nose was running & I felt utterly exhausted, but it seemed to me that that could have been completely psychosomatic. Malingering, in other words!

So, I toddled off to the gym.

And I'd like to write, And going to the gym made me feel a whole lot better! Except going to the gym did not, in fact, make me feel a whole lot better. Though it did not make me feel a whole lot worse.

While I worked out, I thought about manifesting.

Like if I had this prompt thing down, I could materialize a wish that would net me $15 million—my neeeeeeeds are modest!—without imperiling the welfare of anyone I care about, or causing the destruction of some fabulous place I love, or adding to the misery of some beaten-down population segment.

I'll keep working on it.
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Mr. & Mrs. Neighbor Ed got a present they didn't want.

A birdfeeder. With a digital camera. Courtesty of a well-intended offspring.

It feeds blurry photographs to various nearby digital receivers and has some kind of AI hookup thing that gives you info about the blurry photographs.

"Well, that seems like a perfectly nice present!" I cried.

Mrs. Neighbor Ed made a face. "When the jays grab the sunflower seeds, they knock all the other seeds out of the feeder, and then the field mice grab them and begin invading the house!"

"When your cat was around, we never had any problems with field mice," she added—and I realized, with a pang, that she was talking about the Meezer, dead & gone these—what? seven years? The Meezer had been the mightiest of hunters!

I hoped the Meezer was eavesdropping from Cat Heaven, where presumably there is an endless parade of self-regenerating field mice and squirrels for her to slaughter. It's always nice to hear nice things about oneself.

And I also felt this almost palpable strand of connection. Veritably ectoplasmic! The Meezer had really been the last link to my old life in California, and when she died, that link snapped: I was no longer someone who'd once lived in California; I was only someone who lived here.

That's the reason why I liked living in Dutchess County more than I like living in Ulster County, I thought. In Dutchess County, there'd been... continuity.

And also, of course, in Dutchess County, I had friends.

###$

I prattled merrily with Mr. & Mrs. Neighbor Ed for an hour, and our prattle was lively and hilarious and entirely without awkwardness, no long-time-no-see pauses or fumbles at all.

Neighbor Ed is almost as good at banter as Ben used to be!

I felt as though I was drinking water from a cool, sweet well.

Before that, I'd hung out with Loraine & Buff Ken & Rami on their back porch for an hour, watching the birds & talking about Buff Ken's latest bear sighting on his outdoor camera.

And before that, I'd got to play in the dirt in my garden for a few hours. There was a Claude sighting!

"When eet get hot last week, I water your garden," Claude told me.

"Thank you!" I said. Adding apologetically, "I can only get over here once a week—"

"I know, I know," Claude said, holding up a hand. "Eet is fine."

Everybody was glad to see me. Everybody liked me.

###

Icky was around this weekend. One of the Spawn managed to graduate from high school.

"He just totally ignored me!" Icky declared indignantly. "I came all the way from the City, and he ignored me! The only thing he said to me was how embarrassing it was that I was taking photographs of him!"

And you think I care exactly why? I wondered.

But I am well-trained in the art of making sympathetic sounds to people in distress.

Icky mistook my sounds for encouragement & began lamenting: It's hard, it's really fuckin' hard to be around the Spawn's mother, the Spawn's mother's new husband, the Spawn's mother's relentlessly cheerful father who'd been imported all the way from Texas—

"I was there all by myself!" Icky complained.

I clucked.

I would have expected him to head straight back to the City after this debacle. He's not supposed to be here till this coming Thursday! But, no. He stuck around. When I left for Dutchess County, he was sitting in front of his ginormous living room television screen, glaring at YouTube videos on how to sharpen knives. He had doused himself with cologne. I could smell it all the way from upstairs.

When I got back six hours later, he was still in front of the screen, watching what looked like the same YouTube video.

He saw me come in, jumped up, and immediately began doing pushups on the living room floor!

Like WTF???

He watched me cook my dinner. "That smells very good," he said, staring at my Cajun chicken.

No, fuckhead. I'm not offering you any.

Then he wanted to have a long conversation about changing propane canisters. He ushered me outside and handed me the wrench.

"I'm kind of a dummy about stuff like this," I admitted.

"Oh, no. Not you. You're a genius—"

Well, I am actually very smart, I thought. So you can can the fuckin' sarcasm. I didn't grow up using tools, so there's a learning curve involved.

But, you know. No need to prolong the conversation. And up close, that cologne was overpowering.

I thanked him for the tutorial, ran upstairs, and barricaded myself in the Patrizia-torium.

And eventually, he left.

###

In the past three days, three new place possibilities have popped up through my various real-life-people networks.

I don't really want to move until the fall, so I'm not sure how aggressively I should be following up the leads. But at the very least, they're a good auger, right?
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The immigration demonstrations in LA right now are not the first time the National Guard has been called in to quell a protest.

I'm thinking about the People's Park protests in Berkeley. The National Guard advanced on us with rifles drawn & then the helicopters descended. Was it the National Guard or the helicopters that dropped the tear gas canisters? I can't remember.

I do remember fleeing across campus, pushing the then-toddler Alicia in her stroller, tears & snot streaming down my face. Maybe this is the reason why Alicia grew up to be such a bitch: Exposure to tear gas addled her unmylinated brain!

Still, it's always news when the gub'mint uses military-style force against white people.

And, of course, the People's Park incident happened in 1969. Which is to say a trillion million years ago. I was only 17, or I would have known better than to bring a toddler to a political protest. On account of skipping all those years of school, I actually started at UC Berkeley when I was sixteen.

###

Sadly, I will not be around for the NYC pride parade because it is Lew & Ed's wedding reception weekend, so I will be in Edinboro, Pennsylvania.

I avoided all those Pride demonstrations when they were just about marketing.

But this year, Pride has a political dimension so it has regained its gravitas. I'll go to as many Pride demonstrations as I can stuff into my schedule.



Anyway.

The Pinebush Alien Fair did take place yesterday—rather stupidly because yesterday it poured relentlessly whereas today, the scheduled Rain Day, it's not only dry but pleasantly balmy.

I grabbed an umbrella and drove on up.

The chief joy of the Pinebush Alien Fair is its costumes. But very few people wanted to wear costumes in the rain. I'm sure this dog didn't:



But its mean humans made it dress up anyway.

There were a couple of good window displays:



But mostly, it was just yr typical tacky upstate New York small town craft fair. Disappointing!

###

I went home & spent the rest of the day Remunerating. Because those fuckin' MacArthur Foundation people keep forgetting to send me my genius grant money.

Went for a looooong tromp—five miles!—when it finally cleared up at sunset.

Watched The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem. (Excellent if you don't mind low production values.)

Abluted.

Slumbered.

And then at 3 in the morning, awakened with a bolt & decided to try and read myself back to sleep.

Grabbed the first book at hand from the stack on my night table—Tracy Dougherty's remarkable biography of Larry McMurtry.

Which is even more remarkable on second read:

Consciousness: the sense of self, the voice chattering at us in our heads, the apparent awareness of a presence, a spirit, a soul inside us, distinct from our bodies and the electrical firings in our brains. Scientists and philosophers fall all over themselves trying to explain, define, or locate consciousness. It is like searching for darkness with a flashlight...

“I have felt largely posthumous since [my open-heart] operation,” McMurtry said. “My old psyche, or old self, was shattered—now it whirls around me in fragments … The heart-lung machine allows for biologic survival, but my own feeling is that the person, as opposed to the body, dies anyway … For a certain period of time one is technically alive but in another, powerful sense, dead. Then one is jump-started back into life, but the Faustian Bargain has been made: you’re there, but not as yourself. That self, that personality, lies back beyond the time when you were on the pump. That gap, in my case at least, has proven unclosable.”


I have heard that from several other open-heart surgery survivors, too.

And sometimes you can just look at people like Bill Clinton who've had the surgery & know that's what happened to them.

###

Larry McMurtry wrote one perfect novel—The Last Picture Show—and several flawed novels I have deep affection for—Lonesome Dove, Moving On.

And a whole lot of dreck.

It occurs to me that McMurtry's biographer Tracy Dougherty is a much better writer than McMurtry ever was.

What gave McMurtry the edge, I suppose, was that he was actively elegizing a dying mythology (i.e. the American West.)

Humans revere their mythmakers.
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Oh, this is sad! 😢

The Pine Bush UFO Fair & parade is scheduled for today, and it is raining.

In the mid-1980s, Pine Bush, New York, was the UFO Capital of the Western World. Hundreds of reports described a V-shaped craft adorned with colored lights that hovered slowly and silently in the sky, a sighting that became known as "the Westchester Boomerang" 'cause I guess it was sighted in Westchester County, too.

Of course, Pine Bush is relatively near what was, in the mid-80s, a military base, Stewart Airfield.

I remain agnostic on the subject of UFOs.

And will probably toddle off to Pine Bush anyway in a few minutes 'cause short drive.

###

Meanwhile, despite the humid, hot, sticky weather of the past few days, I have been trying to hold off on AC because AC is terrible for the environment (energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions 'cause refrigerants.)

So, yesterday I bought myself a portable DREO fan, which I gotta say, is just amazing 'cause it keeps me cool even when the Patrizia-torium is a sauna.

DREO is made in China, which I don't like. I've been boycotting goods made in China since forever for a reason nobody really cares about anymore: Tibet.

But sometimes ya gotta buy what ya gotta buy.
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How pleased am I this morning by my Cassandra-like proficiency at prophecy?

Very, very!

Long before the election, I predicted that if Trump won—to be honest, I didn't know that he would win, so! IF—he would last no more than 18 months in office. I wasn't sure if he'd die in office or be 25th-Amendmented, but I was (am!) positive he'd be out.

Vance is the far better technocrat's ventriloquist dummy, & make no mistake, it's the technocrats' world. We just have the misfortune to breathe oxygen in it.

Vance is a lot more dangerous than Trump because he's not insane & brings a converso's zeal to stamping out individual freedom, that true Yeatsian passionate intensity. Vance should be able to push out the diameter of that widening gyre by several miles.

###

All this takes place against a backdrop of technological revolution.

For example: Consider the plausibility that the reason the now-Trump/soon-Vance administration is so willing to cut funds for scientific research is because the technocrats are convinced AI will soon surpass and supplant human researchers in most fields of inquiry, rendering human researchers both superfluous and politically inconvenient.

###

Anyway, the political theater yesterday was pretty entertaining. Puleeze let Trump & X-Best Buddy stay at loggerheads! I wanna hear more about the effects ketamine has had on Musk's bladder! I wanna hear more about Trump's fixation on pert nipples! (And I mean, who isn't fixated on pert nipples?)

###

Apart from following the world's biggest geopolitical bromance break-up in more-or-less real time, I got more of the New Paltz garden weeded:



I'm up to about half. After I'm done, I'll rototill. I think someone had an ornamental flower garden here at one time because I've found so many outcroppings of iris rhizomes.

It is a lot of work. And by 9:30 a.m. yesterday, it was 80° F, so I had to knock off.

I got a fair amount of Remuneration done after that, but of course, it's never enough. I don't understand why I can't knock off 4,000 words in a single writing session. The fact that I can't seems like a singular failure of will.

I talked to various people by phone & text, and no one in person. I am isolated here!

And I started watching The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, which I like a lot: a saga about a Sephardic family from the time of the Ottoman Empire to the end of the British mandate in Palestine. Such an interesting time in history! The production values are laughable, but the writing and acting is very fine: It stars Akiva, my BF from Shtisel!

More of the same scheduled for today except I'm gonna go to the gym rather than pull weeds.
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A breeze came up yesterday morning & the sky was blue again by noon. And I stopped feeling that air hunger thing—so it really was my lungs not anxiety.

Also, the moon is not full, so that blood-red orb I saw hovering in the West—a very strange position for the moon now that I think about it—was actually the sun setting.

I have a shitload of stuff to do and as per usual, very little interest in doing any of it.

But first I must scamper off to the New Paltz garden to put in a couple of hours of weeding before the temps rise to heat stroke levels.

Slow & steady. Slow & steady. Slow & steady.
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The smoke from the fires in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and northwestern Ontario has hit upstate New York.

The rising full moon last night was blood red.

And the sky this morning looks like a diffractionless opal, a whitish translucent wash with the barest undercoat of blue through which the sun just glowers. I'd planned on taking it easy today anyway, because I kinda knocked myself out weeding the New Paltz plot yesterday.

Before:



After:



Doesn't look like I did a lot, does it? But it was four full wheelbarrows of brambles and other assorted weeds.

Harder work than I thought it would be, & I was kinda achey from all that squatting & pulling. So I figured I'd go easy on myself today. Resume weeding tomorrow, but get there while it's still cool out.

And that turns out to be a good decision because today I'm feeling a kind of generalized air hunger, some shortness of breath with exertion. Though whether that's from the smoky air or generalized anxiety I can't quite tell.

###

Said anxiety is due to Icky being even more of a dick than usual.

Last fall, after I closed down my garden in Hyde Park, I brought all my gardening stuff back here & stashed it in the shed because I thought I'd be gardening here this summer.

Then, six weeks or so ago, Icky announced that he didn't want to garden with me. Was it my breath? My ineffective underarm deodorant? My generally displeasing personality? No! It was that Icky does not like to work or play with others.

Fortunately, the good folk at the Hyde Park garden had just written me a love note: We miss you!

So, I decided to go back & garden there again. (And, of course, the New Paltz Community Garden just found some open spots, so now I'm juggling two gardens!) And I transported all my gardening stuff back to Hyde Park.

###

Then yesterday, Icky went on a tear because he decided all the gardening stuff in the shed belonged to him.

All day long, he fusillaged me with text: Those tomato cages are mine. I’ve had them since before I moved here. I put them all back there after the season

I texted back, As I said, I brought the 10 cages I used in my garden last year to your shed in October last year because I thought I was going to be gardening here this year. After you told me you’d prefer to garden alone, I took those same 10 cages—they were stacked on the left side of the shed—back to Hyde Park. That’s all I know, Iggy.

He texted: Where are my cages then? I put all the cages I used all of last summer in that shed. There are no cages now. I never saw yours in there.

###

This is the kind of petty hammering he does relentlessly & he is so fucking relentless that he usually gets his own way—because who in their right mind wants to spend hours texting about fucking tomato cages?

Finally, he called.

"Look," I said. "We're at an impasse. And I'm at a disadvantage in all my transactions with you since you own the house, so you have the power. Are you interested in some kind of compromise or should we just keep up the text chain till I move out?"

This was said with more bravado than I actually have, of course.

Moving out would be difficult at this point.

I'm an elderly cat lady and the rental situation hereabouts is not exactly clamoring for elderly cat ladies.

On the other hand, I'm an excellent tenant, and Icky doesn't want the house sitting empty for the 20 days of each month he's not on the premises.

And I suppose it's possible that I did grab some of Icky's tomato cages without thinking about it—though I'm certainly not going to admit that to him.

The compromise?

I'll bring back any extra tomato cages and check the slag heap at the Hyde Park garden where old tomato cages go to die. Bring him those.

###

The situation is highly anxiety-provoking because it reminds me how little control I have over my life.

Of course, because of the way I was brought up, it never occurred to me that one could control one's life simply by making wise choices. I was a waif bufffeted about by forces I couldn't control! And then as an adult, I kind of mythologized that choicelessness! Turned it into a philosophy. Became fatalistic.

I don't know what the answer is.

I do know many people who have organized their lives around making wise choices, and for many of those people life has worked out well, but for just as many, life hasn't.

The random factor is very, very powerful.
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G4 geomagnetic sun storm in effect last night. Very, very, very dimly, my naked eyes espied the Aurora Borealis:



Like I said, I spent five hours yesterday getting my computer to do what it was doing perfectly well at the beginning of the day before I started fucking around with it, so I was in a pettish mood all day.

That mood was exasperated by the fact that I didn't do a good job saving for taxes last year and now am paying off the not-huge-but-still-significant amount I put on a credit card. Disposable income is down this month, in other words. I must ration my little treats!



Antonio Delgado is taking on Kathy Hochul in the Democratic gubernatorial primary.

Good!

He's a strong progressive candidate who believes in universal child care, expanded rental assistance, stronger investment in community health centers, higher minimum wage, all well and good things in themselves, but he also has the potential to beat Elise Stefanik, the rumored Republican candidate, who is creepy, creepy, creepy in every imaginable way. Delgado could carry New York City; I don't think Hochul could.

Delgado has done his prep work.

I don't think there's a county fair, volunteer fire department celebration, or Lion's Club picnic throughout the entire state—and New York State has some real backwaters—that Delgado hasn't shown up at over the past five years. The picture above of Delgado & io truly was taken at the 2018 Hyde Park Fourth of July parade.

###

Also, I watched the Pee-wee Herman documentary on HBO. It is very sad. It made me cry.

I am more of a fan of Paul Reubens as a conceptual artist than I am of his conceptual art. I prefer my kitsch with a lot of white space—which his didn't have. Pee-wee's Playhouse is a bit too frenetic for me.

But I do think Pee-wee's Playhouse captures two tendencies of childhood extremely well: (1) children's tendency to take metaphors & other figurative constructions very literally, and (2) children's tendency to anthropomorphize. (I well remember Mr. Light whom I got to talk to in the bathroom as a three-year-old whenever I had to have my hair washed.)

Pee-wee Herman is childlike, but he is not childish.

Big distinction.
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Had a good time playing in the dirt at the garden yesterday. My strawberries are coming in:



I'm fairly sure Claude is the source of everything that's earthy and solid on this planet:



Neighbor Ed turned out to be in Providence, so my impromptu plan to ring his doorbell and shriek Hi-ii-iiii! was for all for naught.

Instead, I went tromping. Some dead Vanderbilt had a thing for Liriodendron tulipiferae, and I'm so glad they did! The tulip trees were all in bloom yesterday. Though I guess not being real flowers but specialized leaves, "bloom" is the wrong operative verb there:










And the peonies hadn't bloomed yet:



One assumes there must be peonies in Ulster County, but I have yet to see a single one, so I was very pleased to see these:



When I woke up this morning, my computer had come down with a display glitch that irritated the hell out of me, so I started banging systems settings randomly, and in doing so managed to fuck up my computer even more!

It took me five hours to track down & undo whatever random thing I did: It was something under "Accessibility." "Accessibility" is filled with all sorts of deeply weird functionalities.
In the future, I must remember to write down whatever small changes I make to the computer's operating system. My memory just isn't keyed in to retaining random shit like that, even though random shit like that turns out to be absolutely essential to the smooth, background functioning of said tool. I managed to right the most obvious problems, but the damn thing still isn't working well enough for the perfect spontaneous heart dump.
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Except that it never did stop raining yesterday.

All day long, I registered the raindrops hitting the mud puddles in Icky's garden. The raindrops slowed down in the afternoon. But they did not stop.

Me being me, I castigated myself: If you weren't such a wimp, you'd go out tromping in this!!! What's a little water???

But, no. I may not have much sense, but I do have enough sense to come in out of the rain.

This morning, the sun is herding puffy, pastel clouds across a blue sky, though it is extremely soggy. Good day for gardening.

###

I was diligent yesterday. Got a lot of Remuneration done and mostly staved off the feelings of worthlessness and impending doom that accompany every day without full-spectrum sunlight for me.

My knee is almost back to normal. So, since I am the pivot around which the Universe revolves, it's very clear to me that the Universe made it rain to enforce another of rest & recuperation for my knee.

###

The world at large continues to horrify. Ukraine. Gaza. All those people dying. Wars—with the possible exceptions of World War II & the Vietnamese annihilation of the Khmer Rouge in 1979 — are beyond senseless. Fifty years after every war that's ever been fought, enemies are allies again, boundaries have been renegotiated by treaties, trade is brisk. So what exactly is the point? Is the blind territorial instinct some sort of failsafe on Mother Nature's part to periodically kill off millions of potential sperm donors and keep the global population down?

###

In the here & now of Trump's America, Trump is a fulminating piece of shit, of course, but his economic policies are pretty easy to understand if you see them as a game of cost-shifting: Trump promised to cut individual taxes, and cut individual taxes he shall (probably), but, of course, the U.S. needs that money. So, now instead of extorting it from individual citizens via an IRS 1040 form, he is extorting it from individual consumers via specialized excise taxes (i.e. tariffs).

One could make a strong argument, in fact, that that second way of funding the government is actually fairer since the individual has no choice over whether or not they pay income taxes, but they do have a choice over whether or not they buy a made-in-China washing machine, or a new Hyundai, or an avocado at the supermarket.

And actually, I support Trump's plan to shift millions in funding for colleges & universities to trade schools.

Some years ago, I had a conversation with a beautiful chemistry teacher in the Detroit area. She told me bluntly that the reason why so many high schools had shifted their curricula to college prep was not because their administrations had become more aspirational about student intelligence. No! It's because the college prep curriculum is significantly cheaper than shop classes and what they used to term "home economics."

Given the dismal reality of massive student debt that has turned vast numbers of college graduates into indentured servants and the fact that AI is rapidly replacing all those entry-level, white-collar jobs (that barely pay $45,000 a year with no health insurance) college prepared these poor babies for, I'd say the higher education system in the U.S. is pretty much a scam these days. It needs gutting.

###

Enough blather! Off to the garden.
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Woke up yesterday with a throbbing—& slightly swollen (medial collateral ligament)—knee.

This is something that happens from time to time.

I'm fairly certain it's due to an ancient right ankle injury that causes me to pronate overly when I'm wearing the wrong shoes & not paying attention. I really should go to Montano's, which has a pedorthist on staff, to buy a pair of shoes that will correct for the pronation.

Anyway, because my knee was throbbing, I did not go to the gym, which, of course, was the sensible thing not to do. But I put myself through all sorts of mental punishment! Surely, if I were a real trouper, I'd soldier through the discomfort! I was just being lazy! Blah, blah, blah.

Thing is I am very lazy. Left to my own devices, I would lie around on my sofa all day long scarfing chocolate hazelnut truffles and watching Halt and Catch Fire on continuous loop—except for when I was reading some movie star or movie mogul autobiography. And I would thoroughly enjoy myself.

I'm not sure from whence this Calvinist sub-personality emerged that won't let me do what I like best.

###

Also, Mabel the kiska is really pissed off at me.

The enormous mat on her back is responding to the detangler solution, but she hates when it's sprayed on her and has begun running away or lashing out at me when I try to spray it on her. I now have a big scratch on my left arm.

Mabel the kiska is one distrustful cat.

I figure she was severely abused as a kitten. I am fond of her despite her intractable personality; I'm sure—just like the rest of us—she'd rather not be intractable—but she is, it's what her life has taught her to be. I'm one of those people who enter into covenants with companion animals, so however much I would prefer a cat with a more placid, loving personality—oh, Sybyl! I will always miss you!—I would never dump Mabel.

I guess I'm gonna have to end up taking her to the vet to get the mat shaved.

Which does seem like a waste of money—because, honestly, I could take care off it by myself if only she'd let me.

###

Other than that...

It rained all night, but the sky does seem to be lightening.

If it clears up by 2pm, I'll be able to make it over to Hyde Park to put the finishing touches on the self-sustaining garden.

Next week I'll tackle the New Paltz garden!
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One of Icky's side hustles is dog-sitting.

He showed up here yesterday with an absolutely adorable spaniel mix, an eager-to-please guy named Tofu.

Pity the poor animal that is abandoned to Icky's care! Think puppy version of Oliver Twist at the orphanage or a canine Jane Eyre at Lowood.

I felt so sorry for poor Tofu that I volunteered to take him for a walk.

We hit the rail trail in a drizzle. But practically the moment we got out of the car, the sun burst from the clouds & within five minutes, the sky was blue & in my red sweater, I was overdressed for the heat!

My mood-o-meter swung from bleak to benificent in a heartbeat.

Which makes me think I do not have Seasonal Affective Disorder.

I have Angst-When-the-Sun-Isn't-Shining Affective Disorder.

I really should move to Nevada or Arizona or something.

###

Otherwise, I spent the day Remunerating & reading Barry Diller's autobiography, which I found quite fascinating.

When Who Knew first came out, it racked up huge amounts of press because Barry Diller is gay but Barry Diller is also Mr. Diane von Fürstenberg. (I must note here that back in the Jurassic when I was modeling, my two DVF wrap-around dresses were my proudest possessions, & I just love Diane von Fürstenberg to death!)

For years, the assumption was that Diane von Fürstenberg was a beard.

But, no, sez Diller in his autobiography. The two met & fell in love back at the dawn of time. They had passionate sex just like any other two people in love. And in between dates, Diller continued to have sex with guys.

Forty years later, they got married.

I don't understand why this is so hard for the maintream media—I am pointing my finger at yew-w-w-w-w, Daily Mail!—to comprehend.

Personally, genitalia has never been the determining factor in who I fall in love with.

I fall in love with men, I fall in love with women. And anyone I fall in love with, I want to have sex with.

(Although it occurs to me that I probably should have written that in the past tense because I doubt very much I am capable of falling in love with anyone anymore.)

Obviously, sexual desire is a spectrum.

But more than that, terms like "gay" and "cis" are essentially marketing categories—"gay" considerably more than "cis" because show me a marginalized group, & I'll show you a business development opportunity!

But anyway, Barry Diller's sexuality & love life don't interest me.

No, Barry Diller's horizontal leap from Hollywood mogul to digital tycoon is what interests me.

Today, Diller owns InterActiveCorps (IAC), a media fleet that used to include Match.com & Tinder, and still owns a lot of B-list cyber-publications. (People! Barry Diller owns People! I used to work there!) Diller also owns Expedia & all its subsidiary vassals like Tracelocity, OrbitZ, Hotwire, etc.

How do you end up owning all these companies?

Well, you start out in the William Morris mailroom, just like everybody else. And you devote the first 10 years of your career swinging from salary-star to higher salary-star, spending relatively little on status details.

And after you accumulate a stake, you start buying the little pieces of the Rube Goldberg machine that the tastemakers ridicule or overlook but that you see potential in because you have vision. Barry Diller bought the decidedly low-rent QVC because when he looked at it, he immediately understood that screens could be used for purposes other than telling stories.

That was genius-level insight.

I was around during the early days of the Internet, too, & I never had that insight! Although, of course, today—a mere 35 years later—it seems so-o-ooo obvious.

Also, Barry Diller refused to feel bad about his own failures. I mean, he registered them and felt disappointment, sure. But he refused to dwell on them. Describing a mega-deal-fallen-through to someone, he commented, They won. We lost. Next.

Which I think is a demonstration of extraordinary emotional intelligence.
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In a Mood—chiefly because of the weather, which is all opaque white sky & rising ground mists. Since I know The Mood is entirely due to the weather, it seems to me I should be able to control it, force myself into a better mood, and the fact that I can't contributes to my general sense of failure: Like if I were a Real Human Girl, I would have planned better! I wouldn't be in this place I so clearly don't want to be.

Yesterday was filled with small frustrations. The propane tank ran out, & the wrench I've used before to change it didn't seem to want to fit over the joint—initiating a testy email exchange with Icky. At the gym, the spinning bikes were all occupied, so I didn't get to do a complete workout. Mabel has this enormous mat on her back near her tail, which she won't let me loosen with detangler & brush out even after I try calmly to explain to her that it will be a lot more traumatic if I have to take her to the vet to get it shaved off.

None of these things would bother me if it were sunny out.

###

RTT has been logging on to his father's FB account, which is weird because I see Ben's name popping up on the list of People Now Online, & I think, Wait! Aren't you dead? And haven't you been dead for—what? Six years now?

This inspired me to look back at some of the many, many Messenger chats I'd had with Ben, preserved for all eternity in Facebook amber.

We messaged each other often between 2009 and 2019. I'd forgotten all about that. And I suppose if I really wanted to go all archeological, I could exhume all our texts—I have the same phone account now that I had back then.

###

In 2010, I wrote him this letter:

Afterwards I turned on the radio. And you know what was playing? The end of Prekoviev’s Romeo and Juliet. That strange effect with the bassoon breaking through the violins that’s exactly like the sun rising after a night where you imagine everything’s changed but really nothing’s changed because there’s the plow horse, there’s the torturer’s dog and for them it’s just another day above ground.

I used to snoop around quite a bit when we were together. I never found out anything much. Once I ran across a letter you’d written to Shari. I will always love you, you’d written. Nothing’s changed for me. Words to that effect only much better written. It was a very romantic letter. That hurt. Not because you loved her – did you use the word "still?" I don’t remember. But because I didn’t know you loved her.

Another time I found an email you’d written to a friend describing an imaginary day we’d spent at the Skywalker Ranch. (Did you have a long conversation with George Lucas about cigars? I can’t remember now. Maybe I’m embellishing.) That one made me laugh. That one was more your garden variety confabulation, akin to your career as a keyboard player for Flipper.

It was Lucius who first used the word. “Ben,” he chuckled and shook his head. “That guy is just the King of Opaque.”

You remember different things than I remember. You remember me sinking into despair. Calling Cynsa. Calling Andrew. What should I do? She wants to kill herself. But that was after Reno, wasn’t it?

I remember driving to Reno. Your storyline unraveled bit by bit and each change in the script did things to my heart I didn’t know could be done. The cliché turns out to be the best description after all. Your heart literally sinks. The elevator stops and you get out. “Welcome to hell!” says the greeter.

I didn’t understand it. You were supposed to be my redemption. I was supposed to be yours.

And it kept happening.

It kept happening.

Kept happening.

Here’s the thing: you probably did me the biggest favor anyone’s ever done for me in my life to leave me. Because I was the man with my arm in the bear trap. The only way I was going to survive was by cutting off my arm. But I couldn’t. It was a part of me. I was miserable but I couldn’t cut off a part of me. So you did it for me. Surviving’s easier than being miserable. It’s hard to be that miserable.

I’ll never forget how you followed me into my labor with Robin. I don’t know what it was like for you really, I suppose, but for me it was like you were walking right there beside me listening to the wolves howling on the dark side of the moon.

But I could never trust you.

I couldn’t trust you because I knew you’d shaft me given the slightest opportunity. At first you’d shaft me just because you could, I suppose – the Reno thing with the stolen license, the novel contract you never bothered to pursue, that whole web of deception around the Time Warner remuneration.

Was it then that I became such a bitch? I suppose it was – our survival was at stake and that pronoun “our” included two dependent children. Once I became a bitch, there was a reason to lie to me, I suppose. I was such a soul-sucking bitch, wasn’t I? I probably deserved it.

Thing is, I still feel with the arm that’s been hacked off. I still hear your voice in my head. It stopped for a while. But it’s back now. Though I suppose you’ve found your next redemption. My guess is that you’ll marry The Girlfriend in another month or two, when the divorce comes through. What jolly trips the two of you will make in the Girlfriend-mobile – whoops! I mean the Spouse-mobile. And she’ll pay for you to get your teeth fixed too because otherwise how’s she gonna introduce you to all her family and friends?

You have some serious fence mending to do with Robin.


###

Whoa! I thought upon reading this letter. You wrote so good back then, girlfriend!

And that was really my only reaction.

I don't love Ben or his memory anymore, and the 17 years we spent together are actually an embarrassment. Like: What were you thinking? How damaged were you?

Which means, I suppose, I'm considerably less damaged now.

And that's a good thing.
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The Wall Street Journal has an absolutely fantastic article on AI movie-making this morning (which I think I am offering to you unlocked!)

Apparently, on VEO & Runway, you can get AI to model video characters after real-life people if you subscribe at the very highest tier ($200 a month.) As someone whose disposable income is prone to disappearing acts, I have been experimenting with the lower subscription tiers that don't offer all the features, so I always assumed there was a blanket prohibition against using real-life people. As a safeguard against Deep Fakes & revenge porn!

I am very tempted to splurge for a single month, though, to see what I might be able to create!

Maybe I should have a long talk with the cats: Do you really need to eat? And what's up with all those catnip toys? They always end up under the sofa!

###

Meanwhile, the sky is rapidly darkening even as I type, and a quick look at the weather forecast affirms we are in for five fuckin' days of rain! So! Do I kill myself now, or do I subject all 4.3 of my faithful readers to five days of angsty rants before I step in front of that speeding bus?

Also, the New Paltz Community Garden finally offered me a space! After I'd already started gardening again at the Hyde Park Community Garden.

I drove to New Paltz to check the garden out. It is really spectacular: five acres, 150 plots, right along the Wallkill River, which floods the garden regularly, providing the garden with that ultra-rich river silt. The whole garden is surrounded by an electric deer fence & an obliging hawk keeps the vole population in check:



There are something like 200 gardeners, a real community. So, I thought, Okay! If you really want to connect with other humans in the real-life here & now, this is your chance! New Paltz reminds me so much of Berkeley circa the 1980s, I figure it's gotta be teeming with sympatico souls.

The extremely nice Plot Coordinator showed me around. The full plots are huge, 20' x 10', and the three he showed me were completely overgrown with (ugh!) deep-rooted nettles that would take me a solid week of hard labor to clear out. So, I settled for a half-plot:



This one, I estimate, will take me three days to clear out. That's doable.

Because of the driving distance involved, I'd already set up the Hyde Park garden to be as labor-free as possible. Planted tomatoes & chili peppers inside a marigold border. Piled on lawn-mowings over the plot to reign in moisture & keep down weed growth. Self-sustaining was my goal!

This garden I'll use for veggies that require a bit more nurturing. Basil! (Gotta guard against premature bolting & aphid infestations!) Cucumbers! (There's a weird kind of fungus that always seems to attack mine.) Flowers! (I ❤️LUV❤️ bouquets in the Patrizia-torium, so consider flowers an essential crop.)

It'll be a summer of hard physical work.

Assuming it ever stops raining.

Apart from all these mundane happenstances of a small existence, I have this sense that things are changing very fast. Planetary collapse? Nuclear annihilation? Dunno. But something.

I can't do anything about what might be going to happen.

So, the feeling is unsettling.
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[profile] lifeinroseland & fam braved the Holiday Catskills last weekend.

Is this not the most beautiful nuclear family you have ever seen?



My first time meeting her children in the flesh. Her little son has the most amazing vocabulary for an 18-month-old, and Princess Star is as fiery & independent as she is beautiful & intelligent—which I suspect presages difficult teenage years but a mega-successful adulthood:



It was so good to see them!!!

###

GPS decided to give me a complete tour of the Catskills on my way to Phoenicia. The Catskills were insanely beautiful on this, the unofficial first day of summer.

An abandoned barn:



The Ashokan Reservoir. They drowned 10 villages to make it when they dammed Esopus Creek in the early 19-aughts. My fantasy is that cottages, church spires, & apple orchards are floating around beneath its waters. (Probably not, though.) It supplies 40% of New York City's water:



Today, I have a shitload of errands to do in addition to the usual Remuneration & gym workout. And no desire to do any of them! But it is gorgeous out! So, you know. I'm cheerful.
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This was a difficult week.

It rained every single day, & then my only two pals in the area were MIA for various reasons.

And I ended up experiencing SOCIAL ISOLATION (intoned with a kind of echo chamber effect), which is different from garden variety lonesomeness: Lonesomeness feels like a temporary condition that is not your fault; SOCIAL ISOLATION is a disease of the elderly brought on by their own bad habits. Socially isolated people do not proactively build social connections! They do not join clubs, volunteer, wave the Stars & Stripes at community events! They don't strike up conversations with the harried checkout clerk at the Shop-&-Drop. If they do finally manage to capture the attention of a real human person, they natter on & on about some obscure rock star from the 1970s or their bursitis or how much stuff has changed in the last 50 years.

The absolute worst habit of the elderly, though, is that they are old.

###

I suppose no one ever feels old, though when you look at them, you wonder: Why the hell not?

That person I catch a glimpse of in the mirror when I'm not mugging it up self-consciously? That's not me, that's my grandmother.

And I'm one of those old people who's in pretty good shape.

Thing is I probably have more friends than most people. Friends with whom I resonate on an intimate level and who have my back.

They just don't live here.

But, of course, I live here.

I make my most important social connections online, which is kind of an ageless milieu. My prose is sprightly; sprightly signals "young." I meet a lot of the people I bond with online, and those meetings often turn into friendships. I won't say "age" doesn't influence those friendships, but it's just one factor in a whole lot of factors: I am X years older than you, and now let's chatter about books and movies and music and the meaning of the Universe, your children and my children, shoes, ships, sealing wax, cabbages.

But here, I must make social connections the old-fashioned way, face-to-face. And whatever delusions I may have about my age-defying demeanor, I am clearly a member of the pariah tribe, the Senior Citizens.

###

The irony about SOCIAL ISOLATION is that it feels like something you oughta be ashamed of, which, of course, is even more isolating. SOCIAL ISOLATION is sticky and heavy, and that weight makes it difficult to cleave to all those wholesome routines—exercise, engagement, good nutrition—that make you feel good about yourself.



All moot points today because (finally!) it's gorgeous & sunny out. And warm! And so, I am perfectly content.
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Not only has it been raining for the past two days, it's been cold! It's not even supposed to break 50° F today. I've been forced to haul the space heater back out.

My life continues to be ver-r-r-r-ry quiet. I don't lack for friends, but few of them live here. There are days when this is a source of agita for me, but fortunately, today is not one of them.

NightCafe gets no ❤️LUV❤️ from the Kool Kids, but I like it since I prefer bringing animated illustrations to life to so-called photo realism. Fantasy R Us!!!

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My lungs cleared up! I can breathe again!

Before my lungs cleared up, I had no idea how compromised I was. I mean, I could feel the stiffness in my chest, and logically I know I know that if you can't breathe well, you don't take in enough oxygen, which leads to air hunger, which leads to shortness of breath with physical exertion—but I wasn't connecting the dots.

I was thinking the fatigue I was feeling when exercising was due to some sudden acceleration in the physical aging process! I am 73! And after all, that is old!

And 73 continues to be old—but still, when I went to the gym yesterday, for my weights circuit and 30-minute cardiovascular workout (spinning), I felt great!

Though two days before, I'd been laboring for breath and my muscles had actually been aching with the lifting effort (lactic acid buildup.)

I have no idea why my lungs cleared up. Did some lethal allergen finally disappear from the air? Did some nasty virus finally run its course?

But I am grateful, Universe!

###

Other than that...

I've been busily generating income, watching instructional videos on making AI videos, and trying to think of ways to expand my social life in the here and now.

Basically, I'm resentful about the first because I think I deserve a MacArthur Genius Grant for pursuing the second, and if the kiskas and Black Chicken would only learn to speak English, I wouldn't have to worry at all about the third.

###

I'm trying to identify the video creation service with the best bang for the buck, but that's difficult because right now AI video is in its gold rush phase. There is no available enterprise software; there are literally dozens of AIV engines attached to subscription services, new workflow and pipeline technologies are constantly raising the bar, and the state of the art is changing on a weekly—sometimes daily—basis.

This one was done on the Chinese AI video engine Kling. I reused my calico cat prompt. I actually like the one I did on NightCafe (same starting prompt) better for sheer fantasia. But there's no denying this one has a higher degree of photo realism.



Thing is, though, I'm not big on photo realism.

I much prefer fantastical imagery and animation.
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In the middle of the night, I dreamed that Ben had come back to tie up loose ends, shut down an apartment where (presumably) we'd lived together. He was cold, sardonic, demonic; I couldn't quite understand what was going on. RTT was a very young child, not present, but an issue between us.

Then I was in a bar with M____ S_______ (in real life, Ben's very pleasant cousin, the one who told me many years after: We all knew what Ben was. But what could we say to you? You'd made up your mind.)

M____ was very sympathetic: Let me buy you a drink.

And then I remembered the pets, our animals: the two dogs, Milo & Xena, and a cat of whom I was very, very fond—only I couldn't remember the cat's name or even what the cat looked like—

I've got to go back for them, I told M____. Someone's got to walk those dogs. I imagined the abandoned house filling slowly up with shit.

He didn't tell you? M____ asked. And then she described how Ben had poisoned the dogs. With a specially formulated dog food, evidently manufactured for the sole purpose of getting rid of no-longer-loved pets.

I believed her, but still I wanted to get back to the house—my cat would still be there. So, I started wandering through the streets of a city. (I think I've dreamed about this city before, though of course, dream cities always come packaged with extra echoes & deja vu.) The streets were wide and unfamiliar. I thought I saw the building—very grand, made of limestone with imposing pillars—and then I thought, No, that's where Rik lives—

###

Was that a nightmare? I wondered when I awoke. It lacked the grand guignol imagery, the horror movie ambiance.

But it had certainly been disturbing enough so that I never fell totally back to sleep. Instead, I grazed on sleep, a little casual brain nourishment, so my Fitbit would register eight hours this morning.

###

And musing about the dream now, I'm thinking that of all the awful things Ben did—their names are legion, though to counterbalance that, he was the world's best banterer, & I love banter above all things—the absolute worst was reneging upon his offer to take Milo when I left Ithaca.

I absolutely knew the moment I left Ithaca, I would be perfectly fine.

But I also knew there was no way I was going to find a place to live closer to New York City with two cats (Rutger & the Meezer) and a dog.

So I begged Ben: Please, please, please take Milo.

And at first, Ben said he would.

But then he wouldn't.

And I didn't know what to do.

Except then I had to take Milo for a vet visit, & the vet told me, He has a very virulent form of cancer.

And I had to have Milo put to sleep shortly thereafter.

I knew Milo died to let me live.

###

I have a history of pets dying at critical turns in my life.

Like in 1993, a week before I left for Clarion, Dennis Hopper and Hedda Hopper—my two angora rabbits, whom I used to let run around all day long in my wild tangle of backyard—leapt so high, they broke their spines.

Me being me, of course, I entertained a fantasy: I would cancel Clarion! I would find a carpenter who would construct the bunnies little platforms on wheels that they could propel around on; I would pilfer tiny catheters from the NICU and once a day drain their urine. I would live out the rest of my life as the caretaker of my paraplegic rabbits!

Before the rabbits jumped and broke their spines, I had been agonizing: Who will take care of my bunnies while I'm gone???

And then I realized: The rabbits had broken their spines, so that I could get away.

###

Morbid morning thoughts!

Anyway.

Yesterday's Adrienne meet-and-greet was great fun, chiefly because it was held in a historic house built in 1750 by one of the minor Dutch patroons in these parts who threw in his lot with the rebel army.





The house is owned by a billion-year-old psychoanalyst who led multiple tours through its sumptuously appointed interior, regularly stopping at the little nook where he used to see patients & waving airily at the reclining couch: "If you squint hard enough, you can still see all their dark thoughts swirling towards the ceiling!"

All those rewatches of The West Wing have not been in vain! Pretending to be a staffer, I was a fuckin' rockstar!

Even the decidedly ungracious Adrienne texted afterwards, You were a gracious host and an awesome presence as so many people remarked!

Well. Not so many people, I'm thinking. The turnout was small. But the longest journey begins with but a single step, the winning campaign starts with but two people in a room, blah, blah, blah.

Here I am in my newly purchased, high-waisted, floral Pride & Prejudice garb looking suitably triumphant:

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