Last Night I Dreamed of Manderly...

[mallorys_camera]

Winter finally arrived. The temperature presently is a balmy zero degrees, up from -3 an hour ago. In Monterey, I used to wonder about B’s constant preoccupation with the weather, but I understand it now, it’s a survival skill here and one of those survival skills once learned you can’t shake, you carry it everywhere like a neurosis. I have a thousand of those myself but they’re all connected with having grown up in a dense urban metropolitan area with excellent public transportation.

I thought about the Little Store last night, Slow Burn. The Martin Luther King Day weekend was always a slight uptick in the dead period between the New Year and Memorial Day weekend. It was one of those Last night I dreamed of Manderly flashes, so I immediately repressed the thought – too painful, too painful – and immediately thought instead about the circus which brought with it a particular emotional state. I actually quite enjoyed that period of limbo, the rootless, tinker existence, living in a hundred foot trailer with two other humans, two dogs and a psychotic cat, wandering to a new place every day, and frequently get… Well, I suppose you could call them flashes, mnemonic images of the strange little Minnesota, Iowa, Oklahoma towns we skimmed through. I did absolutely nothing for six months. I suppose I was cognizant that it couldn’t last, that my head was on the chopping block and sooner or later the ax was going to fall, but I pretended not to know it.

The present tense is certainly pretty awful. There were things I knew to do and I didn’t really do them. In that sense, a good deal of what has happened to me, what is happening to me is my own responsibility. But I had no support system. No cheering section. What I labored under was this feeling that I was/am being punished, that the Powers That Be had finally run out of patience for the awful person I truly am and had washed Their Hands of me – You! You deserve to suffer! So suffer!

Of course whatever you may feel in your unspeakably filthy bathrobe, huddled in front of a small electric heater, typing away in your scrivener gloves, surrounded by restive animals to whom you are God and who don’t understand why You have decreed the house must be so cold, is something you must hide from the rest of the world so yesterday I ventured out for the VITA tax training. It’s more complicated than I thought but an awfully useful program. Most people don’t know about the Earned Income Credit which can put literally thousands of dollars in the pockets of low income workers. Perfect volunteer opportunity for me: Good Work plus the possibility of professional advancement! The other people in the training were all Cornell students in law and accounting.

The secret is to try to get these people not to splurge on X-Boxes and trips to the local Indian casino when they get their refunds but to bank it instead, so when (inevitably) their cars break down, they don’t have to apply for a PayDay Loan – they’ll already have the money in the bank! There’s a federal grant program that’s allowing federal credit unions to offer as much as 10 percent interest on savings account over the course of a year, with a minimum deposit as low as $200! Keeping it in the community is what it’s all about.

The tax stuff is neither easy nor intuitive so I’m going to have to study it.

Other than that, tentative coffee date with Garrison Keillor lookalike later this afternoon, housecleaning – how does this place get so filthy? – RTT FAFSA stuff. Really, I want to sit down in a coffeehouse or a bar and spin the afternoon away in intense conversation about the meaning of the universe, the meaning of life on this planet, the meaning of life on other planets, the fleeting phenomenon of consciousness. But I think only college students care about stuff like that, and I’m an old broad pushing 60 uphill – I’m completely invisible to them. Which, really, is how it should be. I suppose.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

:::Really, I want to sit down in a coffeehouse or a bar and spin the afternoon away in intense conversation about the meaning of the universe, the meaning of life on this planet, the meaning of life on other planets, the fleeting phenomenon of consciousness. But I think only college students care about stuff like that...:::

I dunno. The Euro-Spouse and I visited a pal and his girlfriend last night, the deal being they'd buy the food and we'd cook it, with them helping / him learning (he doesn't cook and thinks I know how to.)

And so we met his son's girlfriend, a young woman working for Planned Parenthood in this Buckle Of The Bible Belt, and his younger sister, recently moved back here to Hooterville after living in the DC area.

Great conversations with all of them, none of them college-age.

But I feel you---these times are rather like conversational jam sessions. Sometimes the musicians you sit in with are completely incapable and sometimes they're virtuosos, and everybody gets blown away by everybody else's chops.

I think your "problem," if you have one, isn't that you're invisible but rather that small talk ain't your game and it bores you quickly (which is why I'm astounded you stayed on the phone more than ten seconds with me, because face it, I'm no racanteur.) 99 out of every 100 people we encounter can bore us to tears (a conversation-initiated lobotomy, for all practical purposes) and only 1 out of a hundred will makes us think: OK, fucker, Imma listen to YOU a while.

Needles in haystacks. Use your metal detector, or be a magnet.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

rather that small talk ain't your game

Au contraire! I love small talk, and that's why you should call me up all the time -- well. After Eurospouse retreats back to Austria. You underestimate your own abilities as a conversationalist.

No, my problemo is that I have no social networks whatsoever here. I should have joined a church as soon as I got here for the congregational framework, and I knew that and I didn't. I suppose I stil could.

[christophrawr.livejournal.com]

i am thanking god the snow hasn't hit the city (yet).
once the nest is empty, have you considered moving back to new york proper?

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Oh, Christopher. I would love to move back to NYC. I love the city. I'd have to figure out a way to support myself there. It is, as you know, an expensive place to live.

I have no idea what you do professionally, but if you ever run across any jobs that can be done by a 60 year old woman who can actually do pretty much anything adequately if not brilliantly, please do send them along.

And I think you've dodged the snow bullet at least for the next two days.

[christophrawr.livejournal.com]

nope, the snow bullet just landed, if lightly.

it's pure numbers. you can do anything here you can do there. and there are always affordable neighborhoods you can live in (read: mine, if only for a bit longer). there are more jobs here than in bumblefuck. save a few grand and then make your play. if half of the dominican republic can live off the government teat (no one in inwood/wash heights buys their food with cash, it is all benefit cards), so can anyone. get in now and you'll lock in rent control while it still exists. you know, for the poors, though i am quickly losing my hold on that card, i suppose.

save. come. reclaim. the world needs you.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Suspect at my age I need a higher buy in.

In the 80s I made a pilgrimage to Brooklyn to see what had once been my grandfather's house on Lefforts Ave. The nabe had changed. It had once been a Jewish bastion, but was now multicultural.

The house was still there, and the current owner, African American, was kind enough to let me in to see how it had changed. Oddly, it hadn't. I think he didn't have the money to remodel. There was still my aunt's name in the linoleum of her childhood room: ANNE.

"Are you Anne?" he asked.

"I am!" I lied. I lie very casually to strangers.

I walked down Flatbush Ave to see if my favorite bakery was still there, apricot hamentashen at all seasons, even out of Purim! It wasn't. But in amongst all these boombox-wielding Bajans and Jamaicans in dreadlocks there was still a little parade of elderly Jews, shuffling, heads down, clutching their shopping bags, obviously terrified. That would be me, I suspect, if I went back to NY on under $100,000 a year. Which, of course, is an impossible figure for me.

horsepucky.

[christophrawr.livejournal.com]

that's a load of bunk. there are plenty of safe neighborhoods, you just have to know how to find them. if you are ambulatory, and find family oriented neighborhoods, or neighborhoods on the cusp of gentrification, or way the hell uptown near major subway lines, you are anywhere worth being in 25 minutes.

brooklyn is a shithole. now it is just a white crusty shithole. it's like newark, nj with a NY zipcode.

even the worst parts of manhattan are still just that - manhattan.

try. fail. try. never give up.

[flaxendandelion.livejournal.com]

Oh man, you are not hyping the New York winters for me ha.

I'm trying to remember if I'd ever heard of the Earned Income Credit. How did the H&R Block tax class thing pan out?

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

This isn't the HR Block training It's the VITA training. HR Block training starts later in the spring.

Do you file an American tax form? I'd be happy to point you to the right boxes to check. You won't get a lot back with EIC -- the big winners are low income earners with kids -- but I daresay you could get a few hundred back.

[flaxendandelion.livejournal.com]

Haven't filled out a us tax form in years, am assuming it won't come back to haunt me. May ask you about it in a couple years :)

[a1icey.livejournal.com]

so glad you posted about tax. :D i am so excited to start training for form preparation myself!

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Seriously, my dear. You should check out the VITA training. I thought of you the entire time in that class.

[millysdaughter.livejournal.com]

I have to do the taxes to do the FAFSA, but we do not have all our stuff yet...

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Most of my -- ha, ha, ha -- income was self-generated this year and my one wage job was with an employer who sent the W2 early. So I'm set to go.

[millysdaughter.livejournal.com]

Yes -- that does make a difference. I am not disciplined enough to work for myself -- I am happier punching a clock. And passing the buck on a regular basis. "Why, no, I do not know that answer...would you like to speak to my supervisor?"

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

I would happily punch a clock if I could find a job. I am overqualified for some jobs -- oh trust me, I apply for housecleaning jobs, food service jobs, but the hiring managers take one look at me and say, "Absolutely not!" For the others, there's a lot of competition. Today, I am applying for a part time secretary job. Wish me luck!

[millysdaughter.livejournal.com]

**crosses fingers**

I got really frustrated before I landed my library -- when I discovered (but I already knew it "was" just not how overrpowering it really was) that the job market does not care what I know, it was far more interested in ***WHO*** I know than in *what* I knew.
Join that church. Make sure it is one with a coffee hour or social after the service.

[sulphuroxide.livejournal.com]

i logged on to lj over an hour ago just to reply to the last 4 sentences of this entry but got distracted by many many many different things i needed to do while online.

im not sure what i had wanted to say, but i do want to say that i'm with ya on the last 4 lines.

its true, its hard to find someone who is deeply interested in talking about things like this.

the problem though, at least for me, is that when i do find someone who wants to speak on this topic, i find that what they do say is far too pedestrian, vague and without reference to anything of significance in the day to day. i mean, saying that god created everything is often without reference to the tax code, for example, or why someone feels sad. if one wants to imbue the universe with meaning then for everything to be meaningful, then i think all must be implicated -- without mystery. that's why movies are deceptive, they can guide us on a thin line and ignore all the naysayers.

i suppose i should make a distinction -- being is different from meaning. explanation is different from justification. argh, fine, i'll write another lj entry.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Yah. The basic question for me is that since matter is composed of tiny protons, neutrons and electrons but mostly of space, how come I can't put my hand through this table?

[sulphuroxide.livejournal.com]

neither your hand nor the table is gas. you're ignoring the fact that there are ionic and covalent bonds between molecubes/atoms that structure both your hand and the table and don't really allow things to pass. it's like running one net against another. it's not gonna pass through if the netting doesn't allow it. science tells us that most of solids are "space" but it's really only space with our conventional ideas of what is "solid" which is different at the molecular level... i'm sure someone told this to you already... atoms carries with it the idea of little particles, but tiny hard stuff only exists at levels bigger than molecubes.. idk... i'm really sure you've had this conversation before...

[sulphuroxide.livejournal.com]

maybe i said it badly. idk. but hand and table are held together by bonds. the whole atom/particle thing explained in school is an outdated and bad analogy.

if you wanted one to pass through the other, you'd have to break the bonds, probably by applying kenetic energy. then with enough force, bonds would break and you might end up badly hurting yourself, the table, or both.