The Alien Corn

[mallorys_camera]

The other thing I hate about upstate New York?

How much housework I’m always having to do.

It’s not just entropy -- last night’s dinner dishes, the animal-related stuff, the coffee stains that magically appear on kitchen counters. It’s also the bugs. Quite literally if you don’t go over every corner, sill and ledge at least every other day with industrial strength spray stuff, your house becomes one vast arthropod Forest Lawn, decorated for Halloween all year long!

I hate doing housework. But as without, so within, right? You cannot sustain any kind of orderly and serene mental processes if you live in a dump.

So go ahead – drink from my toilet!

###

Susan wrote me a long email about Occupying Oakland and so I woke up this morning with a lump in my throat, that really disorienting sense of I shouldn’t be here. She emailed me photographs too: Broadway on a beautiful, warm, sunny day. I wanted to cry! Here in Buttfuck, New York we’re in the last queasy days of autumn before the first Big Snow. It’s been actually a really lovely fall this year, something I don’t remember at all last year – the hills an amazing montage of reds, yellows, oranges; the leaves falling quite suddenly when they finally fall. Only the willows and a few of the oaks still have leaves. Fall Creek is swollen, all the beave dams swept away though that strange solitary heron still haunts the creek bend. He should really be thinking of taking off: We haven’t even actually had a hard overnight frost yet, but it can’t be too far off.

###

Been writing bios of Middle Eastern potentates for one of my jobs: Sheikha Mozah, Emir Hamad, King Abdullah! For the other, I am reading and annotating building codes.

I would really, really like to find some time to do my own work this weekend – in fact, the only reason I bother to write here is to keep me nimble enough so that maybe, maybe, I can write there – but I’m not sure I’ll be able to.

I left off describing Alvarado Street during Prohibition. The strange little dress shops with spiderwebs trailing from the gingham gunnysacks in the dirty front windows because the shops were really just fronts for upstairs speakeasies. I get so caught up in these long elaborate descriptions that no one is actually gonna read anyway.

###

I miss my home. I miss my home.

I don’t even know where my home is anymore.

But I miss it.

Comments

[a1icey.livejournal.com]

i remember always feeling very stressed about the build up of bugs at shu (house on long island). i was the only one who gave a damn and there was no cleaning regimen at all out there, so every month or so i'd go around with a vacuum cleaner and get all the corners.

then one day we had the house painted, and every critter was gone.

would your landlord paint the place? would save you some headache.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

I painted the bathroom and the kid's room this fall and it does help. Thinking of painting my bedroom nook and the kitchen now. If I leave it to the landlord, he'll use some horrible industrial white and I want color.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

I had a good time at Occupy Oakland yesterday. Some pics on my lj.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

I always read yr LJ! Yr pix made me nostalgic. What do you think? Is there substance to the Occupy movement?

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

Definitely. People complain about hippies and the usual suspects and whatnot, but really the "organized left" is almost nowhere to be seen. It's real.

[anais-pf.livejournal.com]

I remember that feeling of missing my home, for years after I moved away from the DC area. I felt it even after I moved into the first and only house I actually (co-) own. I finally do feel at home in this building if not on this island, which is why it's difficult to decide whether to try to keep it even though I may not be able to afford it.

You haven't attached yourself to where you live now but you've sort of detached yourself from where you used to live. That's difficult. I've got no answers for you. Sounds like you'd be happier in NYC though.

*flash of brilliance* I may need roommates in order to keep my house. Hmmmm. And we don't have many bugs in the house.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'd love to be yr roommate. And I'm sure we'd get along. But are you really committed to keeping that house?

[anais-pf.livejournal.com]

I'm still thinking about it. And I won't really have a good idea how realistic it would be to try, until I see what kind of income I'm going to have.

One of these days I should write an LJ entry about what this house means to me.

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

Building Codes of the Middle Eastern Rich and Famous. A sure best-seller!

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Actually both are fairly interesting. The Saudi stuff particularly -- the very recent death of their Crown Prince could create major destabilization in the Middle East considering everything that's going on and the fact that their King is on his deathbed.

[auntysocial.livejournal.com]

If I had any money, I'd hire you to photograph the graves of my ancestors around there.

Why did you move?

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Loooong story that takes up many entries in this LJ.

Short version: I lost my business and all my money and became dependent on my husband who wanted to leave CA. We ended up here where he grew up. Four months after we got here he ditched me for his girlfriend from the 4-H club 40 years ago. I stay because my son refuses to live with his father and I wanted him to stay in one place for high school. He graduates in June and then I am gone!

[auntysocial.livejournal.com]

What a scoundrel!

[cake-o-rama.livejournal.com]

For some reason I had a dream the other night about being under the overpass in Oakland right before you go to Alameda where they keep the cop cars...and I felt okay. Which should be creepy. I get it.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know that underpass! The one through the tunnel, right? Spooky dream!

[nodressrehersal.livejournal.com]

Holy crap, those last three lines pack a heartbreaking punch.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Part artifice, part craft, part sincere emotion.