![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Tromping around for eight hours a day through dew points that hover in the 70s is just plain exhausting.
When I get back to the Patrizia-torium at the end of the day, I don’t want to read or eat or talk to anyone—though those last two things are unavoidable for as the Oracle Madonna reminds us, we are Material Girls living in a Material World (and doesn’t 1984 seem like a really long time ago?)
I continue to enjoy the work. It’s like putting together a very large jigsaw puzzle in time and space. I imagine I now know more about Hyde Park, New York than any other human being on the planet although knowing about Hyde Park, New York is not a skill that’s in particularly high demand, is it?
Yesterday took me to another mobile home park—this one on the edge of the Last Apple Orchard in Hyde Park, which has mystified me for years:
This area was once all barren farmland and fairly productive orchards. In fact, New York remains the largest apple-producing state in the nation after Washington. Apples were brought over by the Dutch settlers in the 17th century, and the Hudson Valley remains one of the major production districts although in the more southerly parts of the Valley, tract houses have become a far more lucrative crop.
I have no idea why this small orchard is still standing.
Maybe it’s a tax write-off?
Anyway, I jumped the fence and went exploring:
Poor little apple trees! No one prunes them; no one waters them. No one harvests them.
Ben was always complaining that I anthropomorphize too much.
“Rutger does not 'look sad',” he would tell me, rolling his eyes, whenever I remarked that one of the cats seemed unusually plaintive that morning. “Sadness is not an emotional state that cats register. You are projecting.”
Of course, Ben is dead, and I am alive, so thbptttttttt to you, Ben.
Although I think he may have been right when it comes to apple trees. Apple trees do not give a fuck if they’re pruned or watered or harvested.
I’m just being sentimental.
###
Phone conversation with Ichabod in the evening.
I hadn’t talked to him in a bit.
I knew from the last time I’d talked to him that he was feeling depressed, but over on DW, I’d just read a thread complaining about the over-solicitousness of parents, how completely irksome and tedious their concern is, how infantilizing, and I thought, Oh, dear: Is that how I come across?
“Not at all,” Ichabod said. “You’re pretty interesting to talk to.”
But there was nothing I could say that could make him feel less depressed, of course.
I mean—pointing out that the world is well and truly fucked right now and that in all likelihood, come this winter, is gonna be even more fucked, is hardly an antidote for endogenous depression.
In fact, the belief that the depression is endogenous instead of a justifiable reaction to how utterly fucked everything is right now may actually be a defense mechanism designed to make him feel he has some control.
I dunno.
The other offspring seems to be doing quite well!
He texted me a photo of his bleeding foot.
I stepped on a nail at work! he said.
(RTT is doing contracting work.)
You need to get a tetanus shot, I texted.
Don’t have time! he texted back.
Ensued a text exchange in which I irksomely, tediously, and over-solicitously explained all the symptoms associated with lockjaw, which is the condition that tetanus shots prevent.
I particularly emphasized the pain: It’s like having one of those Charlie horses in your calf except it SPREADS throughout your entire body!
And finally, he texted, Okay, I’m here at Urgent Care getting the shot.
Although for all I know, he wasn’t. Just lying to me to stop me being irksome, tedious and overly solicitous.
When I get back to the Patrizia-torium at the end of the day, I don’t want to read or eat or talk to anyone—though those last two things are unavoidable for as the Oracle Madonna reminds us, we are Material Girls living in a Material World (and doesn’t 1984 seem like a really long time ago?)
I continue to enjoy the work. It’s like putting together a very large jigsaw puzzle in time and space. I imagine I now know more about Hyde Park, New York than any other human being on the planet although knowing about Hyde Park, New York is not a skill that’s in particularly high demand, is it?
Yesterday took me to another mobile home park—this one on the edge of the Last Apple Orchard in Hyde Park, which has mystified me for years:
This area was once all barren farmland and fairly productive orchards. In fact, New York remains the largest apple-producing state in the nation after Washington. Apples were brought over by the Dutch settlers in the 17th century, and the Hudson Valley remains one of the major production districts although in the more southerly parts of the Valley, tract houses have become a far more lucrative crop.
I have no idea why this small orchard is still standing.
Maybe it’s a tax write-off?
Anyway, I jumped the fence and went exploring:
Poor little apple trees! No one prunes them; no one waters them. No one harvests them.
Ben was always complaining that I anthropomorphize too much.
“Rutger does not 'look sad',” he would tell me, rolling his eyes, whenever I remarked that one of the cats seemed unusually plaintive that morning. “Sadness is not an emotional state that cats register. You are projecting.”
Of course, Ben is dead, and I am alive, so thbptttttttt to you, Ben.
Although I think he may have been right when it comes to apple trees. Apple trees do not give a fuck if they’re pruned or watered or harvested.
I’m just being sentimental.
###
Phone conversation with Ichabod in the evening.
I hadn’t talked to him in a bit.
I knew from the last time I’d talked to him that he was feeling depressed, but over on DW, I’d just read a thread complaining about the over-solicitousness of parents, how completely irksome and tedious their concern is, how infantilizing, and I thought, Oh, dear: Is that how I come across?
“Not at all,” Ichabod said. “You’re pretty interesting to talk to.”
But there was nothing I could say that could make him feel less depressed, of course.
I mean—pointing out that the world is well and truly fucked right now and that in all likelihood, come this winter, is gonna be even more fucked, is hardly an antidote for endogenous depression.
In fact, the belief that the depression is endogenous instead of a justifiable reaction to how utterly fucked everything is right now may actually be a defense mechanism designed to make him feel he has some control.
I dunno.
The other offspring seems to be doing quite well!
He texted me a photo of his bleeding foot.
I stepped on a nail at work! he said.
(RTT is doing contracting work.)
You need to get a tetanus shot, I texted.
Don’t have time! he texted back.
Ensued a text exchange in which I irksomely, tediously, and over-solicitously explained all the symptoms associated with lockjaw, which is the condition that tetanus shots prevent.
I particularly emphasized the pain: It’s like having one of those Charlie horses in your calf except it SPREADS throughout your entire body!
And finally, he texted, Okay, I’m here at Urgent Care getting the shot.
Although for all I know, he wasn’t. Just lying to me to stop me being irksome, tedious and overly solicitous.
