The Peculiar La Brea Tarpit Properties of the Present Tense

[mallorys_camera]

It’s still grey and dreary and the house is filthy as ever, but I’m perfectly happy today – go figure.

I have an enormous backload of gee-I-need-to-do-this-or-the-rent-won’t-get-paid type scut work and should line up someone to hang out with this evening. Finishing up Dennis Lehane’s Moonlight Mile, the eh sequel to his very fine Gone, Baby, Gone; about to begin Selina Hastings’ biography of W. Somerset Maugham.

Maugham fell out of literary vogue long ago, I suppose because he’s so closely associated with British colonialism. But he’s a very fine story teller. You can learn a lot about how to structure fiction by reading Maugham.

Oh, and the tsunami is poised to take out the site of what was once the Little Store later this afternoon. Haven’t decided what if anything I feel about that. One of the reasons I’m such an obsessive journal keeper is that in general I have a very bad memory. Oh, every once in a while I’ll be hit by the psycho-sensory equivalent of a tsunami, a scene from my life – usually some throw away moment – rendered in precise, eidetic detail. But for the most part once it’s not happening anymore, it doesn’t exist. So I barely even remember the Little Store! I once ran a temple devoted to chili peppers and hot sauce? How bizarre!

Comments

[saltdawg.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't mind if a Tsunami obliterated some of the places I've loved most in this world. Because of the way it all ended.

And: I KNOW, right? I haven't been writing it all down as much as I should for the past couple of years, but then again, nothing worth remembering has happened in the past couple of years. Or, at least, nothing I want to remember. At least.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

See? Even this comment is so goddam well written! The rhythm of that truncated, enigmatic "at least," and the way it underscores the substance of the sentences that come before it. You probably think I'm poking fun at you -- but I'm not. You have a great ear, a great way of connecting disparate threads. You really are talented and you should be writing something though not necessarily in LJ land.

[a1icey.livejournal.com]

he already has tons of material that's book worthy from the past 6-7 years i've been reading

[saltdawg.livejournal.com]

Aww...Shucks. That's quite generous of you, but keep in mind it took me three hours to compose that comment.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Liar! :-)

[misslam2u.livejournal.com]

Do you recall that you sent me a care package right before Ike was born and you sent some ridiculously hot, steroid-huge jelly beans? Conman ate them all, he loved them and was really annoyed when I said I couldn't get any more of them for his inner chili-fiend. (This is the guy who eats Tabasco on bread.)

My memory is strange too. Like I can recall the exact color of the velvet pants I wore when my father was supposed to come and pick me up when I was 10 but I can't recall much if anything of my early single time after the ex left. Or anything of the 10 days after the twins were born. Anything. Not a single thing. Really really odd, isn't it?

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Now that you've reminded me, I remember that, yes. :-) I sent you Ike clothes, those jellybeans and a book I really love -- Tom's Midnight Garden.

What you're describing almost sounds like selective amnesia. I'm more like Chance the Gardener in Being There -- it's almost an existential phenomenon.

[misslam2u.livejournal.com]

I think in both cases, I was fairly well drugged. Ex had left a gigantic sack of narcs here when he left (oxy and other assorted junk) and when the babies were born, they kept me knocked out because they were afraid I'd have seizures, or so they claimed (I tend to suspect they did it because they knew I would never allow them to do all that stuff to my babies if I could muster ANY kind of fight).

Oh, I don't think there was a book in the package, was there? I like to think I'd have read it if there was. And yes, especially a REALLLLLLY cute little man vest that Ike wore on Father's Day when he was iddy biddy. Imma look around here for a book with that title, perhaps, maybe?

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

I think I sent you that book -- but maybe not, and anyway I should know better than to send a new mother reading materials. After I had Robin, I was braindead for two years. In fact I'm still not sure all the grey cells are firing again.

If you do run across the book, it's a very easy read and one of my very favorite books of all time -- just a hauntingly lovely story.

[misslam2u.livejournal.com]

I was pretty brain dead after the twins, and for quite a while, but not so much after Big and Ike were born. I hadda find a good job when he was only 8 months old, so I was pretty motivated to get my shit together. I wasn't about to sit around holding my baby while we all starved to death. Fuck that.

My foot is whacked, so I didn't even look in the library for the book yesterday. I'll let you know if I find it. This place is fairly clean, so when I can muster 20 minutes topside, I'll probably know fairly quickly if it is here.

I wish you lived close, so you could come over and talk while I sit here with my foot up in the air in the cryo-cuff, which is about the smartest invention of the lat 5 years, or it at least ranks right up there with the Nissan Leaf.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

I wish I lived close to you too! This feels like the kind of friendship where we sit around for hours doing each others' nails, doesn't it? Even though we don't. Plus even though i like to cook and consider myself -- in a modest way -- a good cook, every time you write about food, I have to force myself not to genuflect because it's obvious I'm in the presence of a Master. And I'd lo-ove to watch you in yr groove there, maybe edit your cookbook!

[misslam2u.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't THAT be fun!?!
Since everybody and their fat cousin writes about food lately, I tend to think the sponge is over-saturated and therefore I'm disinclined to add anything more to the sponge, but I have this crazy long list of ideas for the make up over 40 column you mentioned. Imma work on developing it some when I can sit up for more than a few minutes without my foot threatening to explode.

I think cooking (and of course eating) is what I'm missing while I lay about too. I love Oxo, and he's a pretty good cook too, his technique is basically good, but he makes THE MOST UNHOLY MESS YOU'VE EVER SEEN, I swear to God. But his take on ingredients is stunted in the strangest fashion of anyone I've ever cooked beside for any length of time. In the 8 years we've been together, I've not been able to break him of his Campbell's soup habit, nor his love of that stuff sold at the grocery store called (amazingly) Cooking Wine. It is the most horrific a fake wine EVAR. He basically cannot face a pile of veg and create anything edible. I guess that's not fair, he can make, reliably, a very nice Brussel's sprout dish with lots of garlic, but that's it. And he's very very very very very SLOOOOOOW, in a way you are just not allowed to be in a training program or a restaurant or when you have 3 little kids.

Since I've been down (Operation Foot happened on March 2) we've had pizza 3 times, and I'm not even counting Hot Pockets. And pizza kind of makes me sick, for some reason. I mean, battery acid burning inside my belly sick, so Imma suggest we have peanut butter for dinner tonight, because Papa John's Pizza is gonna be the death of me, not anything to do with my foot surgery.

He even tried, bless him, to make a Caesar Salad the other night, and it was such a mess.... Giant romaine leaves, really greasy croutons (!!! I mean HOW do you even do that?), the chicken was ok, but even Col. Sanders couldn't fuck up one of those delectable organic chickens.

If I ever have to do this kind of thing again, I'm for sure gonna make more frozen meals, because once those were gone, I was at Papa John's mercy. And that is some suck ass pizza.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

I hate pizza myself which kind of makes me anti-American, I suppose. The only kind I can eat is the Margherita with the fresh basil and mozzarella.

RTT essentially lives on Hot Pockets. It doesn't give me much of an incentive to cook although I did produce an awfully tasty faux barbecue pork last night.

I think if we could figure out a marketing catapult, you are well-positioned to become a brand. Write over 40 five columns on spec and then let's start sending them out.

[robby.livejournal.com]

The tsunami has hit, and reports are that quite a few boats docked in harbors along the California and Oregon coast have been destroyed.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Some damage even in Santa Cruz. But most of it's along the Oregon border, up Cresent City way.

An amazing picture coming out of Emeryville:



Very defined wave edge.

[robby.livejournal.com]

Some surfers rode the tsunami, and they didn't care much for the actual waves, but they now have bragging rights. If you had a boat docked, the thing to do is take it out to deep water.

[sarahk809.livejournal.com]

"Maugham fell out of literary vogue long ago, I suppose because he’s so closely associated with British colonialism. But he’s a very fine story teller. You can learn a lot about how to structure fiction by reading Maugham."

True, that. Maugham should be spoon fed to anyone who can read English.