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mallorys_cameraFinished the assignment – 8,000 words. They gave me a week but naturally being me I did it all in two days. Throw in the usual LawyerBoyZ assignments and I logged 10,000 words in approximately three days – a veritable writing marathon by anyone’s standards.
Topic was actually interesting in a morbid kind of way – I was writing for a big legal firm that wants to go after the remaining dregs of asbestos liability – the longest running tort in the history of American jurisprudence. I don’t know what the American legal profession is going to do when the last mesothelioma victim croaks; probably go after fiberglass manufacturers. Why not? Fiberglass has many of the same physical properties that make asbestos so hazardous; moreover it’s used in 90% of US households thus increasing the reach of potential victims. Have you been coughing recently, hmmm? And you don’t smoke? Fiberglass!
I was writing corporate profiles of the various Bad Companies that used asbestos, all of whom were pushed into bankruptcy as a result. As I say, fun in a way – infusing narrative into the restrictions of the form: a section on corporate history, a section on Asbestos and Bad Company, a section on Asbestos Litigation and Bad Company. Kind of like writing a sonnet.
Of course, the moment I finished I plunged into deep depressive mode. A physiological reaction, no doubt, but again being me I had make it a puppet play of my own life and thus started brooding about Lost Love and Regret and the Inevitable Downward Slope of All Utility Functions which did not make for a pleasant evening despite the fact that I watched the jolly Joan Crawford movie Mildred Pierce and got to see her plug Zachary Scott.
Does everybody makeup goofy little songs about their kids, about their pets, about their microwaves and toasters, or is it just me? Does everybody have crazy little nicknames for the touchstones of lives they share with other people? And what happens to that idioglossia when the other person goes away? And why did he stop loving me – am I not lovable?
Crazy, crazy, crazy. Thoughts not worth thinking. Thoughts that are actually a cover up for the real issues of my life which right now are all financial and dental.
I suppose the problem is that I really wanted to be social last night but not social in the context of a group or a party. I wanted to come home, have dinner with someone, curl up next to them on the couch, plan a Dysfunctional Mother/Daughter Film Festival and then have sex.
I wonder if I’ll ever do that again.
I’m close to 60 now. Yesterday I polished off the last of the mesothelioma pieces in a coffee house. At the table next to me two charmless young women were having a bonding discussion about their jobs and their boyfriends and how it felt to turn 26. Twenty-six! I kept thinking, they’re attractive to their contemporaries… The one girl with her Katherine Mansfield hairdo and her earnest, I-try-so-o-o-hard demeanor; the other, the designated “pretty girl”, who looked like Mark Zuckerberg in drag. They both had beautiful teeth. Now that my own teeth are in such awful shape, I notice other people's teeth.
Depressions like that are like alcoholic binges. I actually feel hungover this morning. And the house is a mess. I know I’ll feel better when I clean it.
Loving the iPhone much more than I expected to except that every time I take a self-portrait, I look just like my mother when she was dying.
Topic was actually interesting in a morbid kind of way – I was writing for a big legal firm that wants to go after the remaining dregs of asbestos liability – the longest running tort in the history of American jurisprudence. I don’t know what the American legal profession is going to do when the last mesothelioma victim croaks; probably go after fiberglass manufacturers. Why not? Fiberglass has many of the same physical properties that make asbestos so hazardous; moreover it’s used in 90% of US households thus increasing the reach of potential victims. Have you been coughing recently, hmmm? And you don’t smoke? Fiberglass!
I was writing corporate profiles of the various Bad Companies that used asbestos, all of whom were pushed into bankruptcy as a result. As I say, fun in a way – infusing narrative into the restrictions of the form: a section on corporate history, a section on Asbestos and Bad Company, a section on Asbestos Litigation and Bad Company. Kind of like writing a sonnet.
Of course, the moment I finished I plunged into deep depressive mode. A physiological reaction, no doubt, but again being me I had make it a puppet play of my own life and thus started brooding about Lost Love and Regret and the Inevitable Downward Slope of All Utility Functions which did not make for a pleasant evening despite the fact that I watched the jolly Joan Crawford movie Mildred Pierce and got to see her plug Zachary Scott.
Does everybody makeup goofy little songs about their kids, about their pets, about their microwaves and toasters, or is it just me? Does everybody have crazy little nicknames for the touchstones of lives they share with other people? And what happens to that idioglossia when the other person goes away? And why did he stop loving me – am I not lovable?
Crazy, crazy, crazy. Thoughts not worth thinking. Thoughts that are actually a cover up for the real issues of my life which right now are all financial and dental.
I suppose the problem is that I really wanted to be social last night but not social in the context of a group or a party. I wanted to come home, have dinner with someone, curl up next to them on the couch, plan a Dysfunctional Mother/Daughter Film Festival and then have sex.
I wonder if I’ll ever do that again.
I’m close to 60 now. Yesterday I polished off the last of the mesothelioma pieces in a coffee house. At the table next to me two charmless young women were having a bonding discussion about their jobs and their boyfriends and how it felt to turn 26. Twenty-six! I kept thinking, they’re attractive to their contemporaries… The one girl with her Katherine Mansfield hairdo and her earnest, I-try-so-o-o-hard demeanor; the other, the designated “pretty girl”, who looked like Mark Zuckerberg in drag. They both had beautiful teeth. Now that my own teeth are in such awful shape, I notice other people's teeth.
Depressions like that are like alcoholic binges. I actually feel hungover this morning. And the house is a mess. I know I’ll feel better when I clean it.
Loving the iPhone much more than I expected to except that every time I take a self-portrait, I look just like my mother when she was dying.
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no subject
Date: 2011-04-02 03:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-04 06:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-05 03:44 am (UTC)We still have plenty of life in us yet!!!
no subject
Date: 2011-04-02 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-04 06:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-02 05:45 pm (UTC)I hope you do feel better today.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-04 06:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-02 08:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-04 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-03 04:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-04 06:46 pm (UTC)yeah black dog sitting right here, too
Date: 2011-04-04 03:36 am (UTC)Re: yeah black dog sitting right here, too
Date: 2011-04-04 06:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-04 07:17 am (UTC)I find it interesting that the social contact you crave is couch time a deux. The loneliest times of my life have been when I was half of a domestic married or quasi-married couple.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-04 06:51 pm (UTC)But I did like being married. I miss that.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-04 11:47 pm (UTC)