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Petrified Protective Amnesia
Feb. 6th, 2026 08:39 amWe had a brief respite from the punishingly cold temperatures: Last few days, temps actually broke freezing. But today, the polar vortex is bearing back down again. The National Weather Service has issued a Severe Weather Alert: Dangerously cold wind chills as low as 20 to 35 below zero expected throughout the quaint & scenic Hudson Valley.
This disinclines me to leave the house 'cause what if—minute chance, but still—my car breaks down on the way to the gym? Frostbite on exposed skin in as little as 10 minutes.
###
In Work in Progress news: We are up to the Debbie Reynolds death scene, which occurs during an ICU code, so I am wracking my tiny brain for status detail.
Then Grazia ends up going to the creepy New Millennium Kingdom mansion, where she spends 18 hours a day praying as the initial prep work for dismantling her personality begins.
Neal rescues her!
Big dilemma: Does Neal rescue her before or after the creepy mansion bursts into flame from a faulty electrical connection? (Decisions, decisions!)
Then Neal & Grazia have to have some sort of Meaningful Conversation on the front porch of Neal's Catskills cabin.
And magically, perspective swirls so that we are back at the very first scene of Part 1 when Grazia drives up there following Neal's memorial.
It would be great if I could tweak the closing prose too, so it mimics the chick lit cadence of that opening chapter, but I'm not sure I have the writing chops to pull that one off.
But after that, we start with Part 2: Daria.
###
I have my own Bad Cult memories, though I'd have to do some serious excavating to access them since they're buried under many decades of petrified protective amnesia.
As a teenager, I had dealings with a cult called Synanon.
Synanon didn't eat me, but it ate some people I cared about back then—most notably, Michael Garrett whom I still wonder about sometimes late at night.
I'm not sure how many of those Bad Cult memories I can repurpose. They're awfully immersive, and immersion is only of questionable usefulness in a passage that's supposed to be 1,500 words or so in length max. Don't really want to distract from the essential story, which is Neal & Grazia.
Here is Michael Garrett and me in 1968:
This disinclines me to leave the house 'cause what if—minute chance, but still—my car breaks down on the way to the gym? Frostbite on exposed skin in as little as 10 minutes.
###
In Work in Progress news: We are up to the Debbie Reynolds death scene, which occurs during an ICU code, so I am wracking my tiny brain for status detail.
Then Grazia ends up going to the creepy New Millennium Kingdom mansion, where she spends 18 hours a day praying as the initial prep work for dismantling her personality begins.
Neal rescues her!
Big dilemma: Does Neal rescue her before or after the creepy mansion bursts into flame from a faulty electrical connection? (Decisions, decisions!)
Then Neal & Grazia have to have some sort of Meaningful Conversation on the front porch of Neal's Catskills cabin.
And magically, perspective swirls so that we are back at the very first scene of Part 1 when Grazia drives up there following Neal's memorial.
It would be great if I could tweak the closing prose too, so it mimics the chick lit cadence of that opening chapter, but I'm not sure I have the writing chops to pull that one off.
But after that, we start with Part 2: Daria.
###
I have my own Bad Cult memories, though I'd have to do some serious excavating to access them since they're buried under many decades of petrified protective amnesia.
As a teenager, I had dealings with a cult called Synanon.
Synanon didn't eat me, but it ate some people I cared about back then—most notably, Michael Garrett whom I still wonder about sometimes late at night.
I'm not sure how many of those Bad Cult memories I can repurpose. They're awfully immersive, and immersion is only of questionable usefulness in a passage that's supposed to be 1,500 words or so in length max. Don't really want to distract from the essential story, which is Neal & Grazia.
Here is Michael Garrett and me in 1968:
