The Miracle of Modern Narrative Technique
Aug. 10th, 2022 09:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraThe point at which I started relishing the Sometimes a Great Notion reread was the point at which Kesey starts using one of the more angsty and obnoxious characters as a ventriloquist’s dummy. Has that character crack, And thanks to the miracle of modern narrative technique…
###
But anyway.
Very bad day yesterday.
Proximal cause of the badness: that Last Mile Dilemma thing.
To wit: I live 100 miles north of New York City and the JFK airport, so how am I gonna get there at the early hour of the morning when my plane takes off?
Obvs the sensible thing to do is to book a hotel room.
The TWA Hotel—my go-to—has doubled its rates since the last time I was there (a year ago.). That was just a matter of time, of course. It’s an awfully fun hotel, a destination in its own right.
So, then I started scrolling through the other airport hotels. They all look bleak and hideous. Like they’re places where the air conditioning makes loud noises all night long and they never really vacuum up all the stray pubic hairs and fingernail clippings from past guests out from under the bed.
Plus in these inflationary times when gasoline is more expensive than champagne, airport shuttles are luxury add-ons. Many airport hotels don’t have them anymore.
But finally, I found one that did.
Reserved it.
Looked it up on a map—and it’s four miles away from the nearest M subway station.
It is on a bus line.
So, then I thought about trekking all the way out to the bleakest, ugliest part of Queens and trying to figure out where that bus stop was—because bus stops are not very well marked in New York City—all the while dragging a suitcase and carting a backpack, reshuffling that backpack from aching shoulder to aching shoulder—and I saw myself from the outside for a moment, a struggling old lady on a desperate odyssey.
And immediately burst into tears.
In the midst of my crying jag, Ichabod texted—he is leaving on vacation to Seattle today.
How are you? he asked.
Horrible, I said.
And told him the story.
Well, how much is the TWA Hotel? he asked.
Too much, I said.
Well, how much more is it than the hotel you booked?
I told him.
He immediately PayPaled me more than that amount and told me, STAY at the TWA Hotel. This trip is about you having fun, right?
So, now I am staying at the TWA Hotel.
He wanted to pay the entire TWA Hotel cost, but, of course, I had to do my martyr Mommy act: Oh, no. Save your money to spend on yourself! I’m perfectly happy with this moldy crust of bread…
That struggling old lady on her desperate odyssey continues to haunt me.
Seventy is turning out to be almost as hard for me as forty was.
###
What exactly have I accomplished in the last 70 years?
What has been the point of this particular narrative view, this life?
Well, I did get sane—which actually is a huge accomplishment given how absolutely nuts and dysfunctional my family is. The odds were very much against me getting sane.
But I haven’t left any kind of mark on the world.
Though of course, nobody really leaves a mark on the world. Humanity is a coral reef, and all we are is tiny polyps whose colorless excrescences lend it mass. Sometimes there are mutated polyps that look orange or pink, and you can make them out individually when you’re two feet away.
But step back another foot and you can’t make anything out but the reef.
###
I think moods like this are a waste of time, a type of self-indulgence.
Of course, I think most moods apart from bright cheery beneficence are a type of self-indulgence.
My life is far more good than it is bad, and I’m luckier than I am unlucky.
Moods are merely imbalances in brain chemistry, and I know how to titrate brain chemicals.
It’s been too hot to do anything much outside this last 10 days or so, but finally, today, the heat spell has snapped, so today I’ll be able to tromp—rev up those little endorphin-secreting stations scattered throughout the brain! And garden.
And the endorphins will make me feel better.
###
But anyway.
Very bad day yesterday.
Proximal cause of the badness: that Last Mile Dilemma thing.
To wit: I live 100 miles north of New York City and the JFK airport, so how am I gonna get there at the early hour of the morning when my plane takes off?
Obvs the sensible thing to do is to book a hotel room.
The TWA Hotel—my go-to—has doubled its rates since the last time I was there (a year ago.). That was just a matter of time, of course. It’s an awfully fun hotel, a destination in its own right.
So, then I started scrolling through the other airport hotels. They all look bleak and hideous. Like they’re places where the air conditioning makes loud noises all night long and they never really vacuum up all the stray pubic hairs and fingernail clippings from past guests out from under the bed.
Plus in these inflationary times when gasoline is more expensive than champagne, airport shuttles are luxury add-ons. Many airport hotels don’t have them anymore.
But finally, I found one that did.
Reserved it.
Looked it up on a map—and it’s four miles away from the nearest M subway station.
It is on a bus line.
So, then I thought about trekking all the way out to the bleakest, ugliest part of Queens and trying to figure out where that bus stop was—because bus stops are not very well marked in New York City—all the while dragging a suitcase and carting a backpack, reshuffling that backpack from aching shoulder to aching shoulder—and I saw myself from the outside for a moment, a struggling old lady on a desperate odyssey.
And immediately burst into tears.
In the midst of my crying jag, Ichabod texted—he is leaving on vacation to Seattle today.
How are you? he asked.
Horrible, I said.
And told him the story.
Well, how much is the TWA Hotel? he asked.
Too much, I said.
Well, how much more is it than the hotel you booked?
I told him.
He immediately PayPaled me more than that amount and told me, STAY at the TWA Hotel. This trip is about you having fun, right?
So, now I am staying at the TWA Hotel.
He wanted to pay the entire TWA Hotel cost, but, of course, I had to do my martyr Mommy act: Oh, no. Save your money to spend on yourself! I’m perfectly happy with this moldy crust of bread…
That struggling old lady on her desperate odyssey continues to haunt me.
Seventy is turning out to be almost as hard for me as forty was.
###
What exactly have I accomplished in the last 70 years?
What has been the point of this particular narrative view, this life?
Well, I did get sane—which actually is a huge accomplishment given how absolutely nuts and dysfunctional my family is. The odds were very much against me getting sane.
But I haven’t left any kind of mark on the world.
Though of course, nobody really leaves a mark on the world. Humanity is a coral reef, and all we are is tiny polyps whose colorless excrescences lend it mass. Sometimes there are mutated polyps that look orange or pink, and you can make them out individually when you’re two feet away.
But step back another foot and you can’t make anything out but the reef.
###
I think moods like this are a waste of time, a type of self-indulgence.
Of course, I think most moods apart from bright cheery beneficence are a type of self-indulgence.
My life is far more good than it is bad, and I’m luckier than I am unlucky.
Moods are merely imbalances in brain chemistry, and I know how to titrate brain chemicals.
It’s been too hot to do anything much outside this last 10 days or so, but finally, today, the heat spell has snapped, so today I’ll be able to tromp—rev up those little endorphin-secreting stations scattered throughout the brain! And garden.
And the endorphins will make me feel better.
no subject
Date: 2022-08-10 02:05 pm (UTC)Traveling stress, man. Last mile stress.
Nobody leaves a mark, and those who seem to are collectively created fabrications. What does the human-created concept "Plato" or "Julius Caesar" have to do with whoever those guys really were? Julius Caesar probably spent a whole lot of time preoccupied by, and complaining about, bunions, but do we remember that fact? No.
My nasturtiums are blooming! I'm so happy about them.
no subject
Date: 2022-08-12 01:46 pm (UTC)Nasturtiums!!!! ❤️
no subject
Date: 2022-08-10 06:17 pm (UTC)Hey, I think I've seen photos of that hotel. Is that the restored super-retro jet-age terminal?
no subject
Date: 2022-08-12 01:43 pm (UTC)