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Sep. 23rd, 2012 12:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraThe way seasons work? The robins disappear. Who the hell knows where they go. One day, you look out the front window and a flock of blackbirds have descended upon the front lawn. The next day it's the fall equinox, and a few days after that it's Yom Kippur.
Then, two months later, it snows.
Who knows from this season shit? They didn't have seasons back in California.
I'm happily continuing my perfectly boring existence. Not that my perfectly boring existence hasn't been without its own little intrigues and kinks. As for example, this entire last week I've been beset by this odd sort of lethargy. In order to get anything done at all, I had to break my life down into a series of algorithms.
The Getting Up In the Morning Algorithm:
Open eyes.
Go into bathroom. Void bladder. Ablute.
Walk down stairs. Say, Good Morning to Mr. Coffee.
IF adorable cat is meowing, let him out.
IF less adorable cat is meowing, feed her.
Etc.
I mean, literally. If I didn't break down everything in the day into action sequences, I'd sit in one place with my eyes slightly unfocused, thinking absolutely no thoughts whatsoever, and watching the pattern of the light upon the wall.
In the past, when I've gone through phases like this, it's signified the onset of an intensely generative phase. As though I was bulking up mentally for some intensely productive period of time. Now that I'm old, of course, there's always the possibility that sitting in one place with my eyes unfocused is merely my ground state.
###
As testimony to my new found mental health, I can report that when RTT tried to guilt trip me into buying him an iPhone 5, I merely laughed at him. Not with him. At him.
###
The California news is rather sad. Rik's docs don't know if it's Alzheimer's. It's some kind of dementia. Does it matter what kind? Are there medications that are specifically for Alzheimer's, and not for other kinds of dementia? I ask because I don't know. Gerontology was always something I strictly avoided, because like the vast majority of Americans, I find old people slightly creepy. No less so for being old myself now.
The photograph is of Annie and Rik. Taken in 1962, I believe.
It's a great photograph, isn't it? They broke up because it was the sixties, and they did the wife swapping thing. Rik fell in love with the wife that he swapped for because she knew how to sew buttons on to shirts! What is with men and shirt buttons anyway? This is exactly the reason Ben gave me for falling in love with the hamster-faced Jayne LeGro! After he had moved in with her, of course, and she'd already begun supporting him. She picked my shirt up out of the laundry basket and began sewing buttons on it, and that just… moved me… What the fuck? Haven't you guys ever heard of Chinese laundries?
Anyway, Annie became so distraught that she fell in love with the woman's husband. And then she wrote a novel about it. The novel got published; Annie and Rik got divorced. So then she wrote another novel that was well enough received that she was actually able to buy her little place in Soquel for $25,000.
That was a lot of money in the early 1970s.
Before the real estate crash, it was valued upward of one million.
Janet, Rik's current wife, isn't handling the situation at all well. Of course, she wouldn't. Janet is not only ten years younger than Rik, she was once his student. There's always been a considerable amount of paternal transference -- in the really classic psychiatric sense of the word -- in that relationship. So, I think, yes -- it's going to be a tough transition for Janet. Role reversal, from daughter to parent.
Janet apparently wants to take Rik back up to Orcas Island, which is like the beginning of a Stephen King novel. No, Janet, one wants to scream! Do not go out into those woods –
Unfortunately, my strong-minded cousin Alicia is not great at the kinds of psychological coddling it would take to get Janet to make a more reasonable decision.
I mean, if I were there, I could do it in two seconds flat. All Janet really wants is for someone to tilt their head, stare soulfully into her eyes and say, Poor Janet. You are just so brave and wonderful…
Families. Always so much Grande Guignol stuff going on behind the placid exteriors.
Then, two months later, it snows.
Who knows from this season shit? They didn't have seasons back in California.
I'm happily continuing my perfectly boring existence. Not that my perfectly boring existence hasn't been without its own little intrigues and kinks. As for example, this entire last week I've been beset by this odd sort of lethargy. In order to get anything done at all, I had to break my life down into a series of algorithms.
The Getting Up In the Morning Algorithm:
Open eyes.
Go into bathroom. Void bladder. Ablute.
Walk down stairs. Say, Good Morning to Mr. Coffee.
IF adorable cat is meowing, let him out.
IF less adorable cat is meowing, feed her.
Etc.
I mean, literally. If I didn't break down everything in the day into action sequences, I'd sit in one place with my eyes slightly unfocused, thinking absolutely no thoughts whatsoever, and watching the pattern of the light upon the wall.
In the past, when I've gone through phases like this, it's signified the onset of an intensely generative phase. As though I was bulking up mentally for some intensely productive period of time. Now that I'm old, of course, there's always the possibility that sitting in one place with my eyes unfocused is merely my ground state.
As testimony to my new found mental health, I can report that when RTT tried to guilt trip me into buying him an iPhone 5, I merely laughed at him. Not with him. At him.
The California news is rather sad. Rik's docs don't know if it's Alzheimer's. It's some kind of dementia. Does it matter what kind? Are there medications that are specifically for Alzheimer's, and not for other kinds of dementia? I ask because I don't know. Gerontology was always something I strictly avoided, because like the vast majority of Americans, I find old people slightly creepy. No less so for being old myself now.
The photograph is of Annie and Rik. Taken in 1962, I believe.
It's a great photograph, isn't it? They broke up because it was the sixties, and they did the wife swapping thing. Rik fell in love with the wife that he swapped for because she knew how to sew buttons on to shirts! What is with men and shirt buttons anyway? This is exactly the reason Ben gave me for falling in love with the hamster-faced Jayne LeGro! After he had moved in with her, of course, and she'd already begun supporting him. She picked my shirt up out of the laundry basket and began sewing buttons on it, and that just… moved me… What the fuck? Haven't you guys ever heard of Chinese laundries?
Anyway, Annie became so distraught that she fell in love with the woman's husband. And then she wrote a novel about it. The novel got published; Annie and Rik got divorced. So then she wrote another novel that was well enough received that she was actually able to buy her little place in Soquel for $25,000.
That was a lot of money in the early 1970s.
Before the real estate crash, it was valued upward of one million.
Janet, Rik's current wife, isn't handling the situation at all well. Of course, she wouldn't. Janet is not only ten years younger than Rik, she was once his student. There's always been a considerable amount of paternal transference -- in the really classic psychiatric sense of the word -- in that relationship. So, I think, yes -- it's going to be a tough transition for Janet. Role reversal, from daughter to parent.
Janet apparently wants to take Rik back up to Orcas Island, which is like the beginning of a Stephen King novel. No, Janet, one wants to scream! Do not go out into those woods –
Unfortunately, my strong-minded cousin Alicia is not great at the kinds of psychological coddling it would take to get Janet to make a more reasonable decision.
I mean, if I were there, I could do it in two seconds flat. All Janet really wants is for someone to tilt their head, stare soulfully into her eyes and say, Poor Janet. You are just so brave and wonderful…
Families. Always so much Grande Guignol stuff going on behind the placid exteriors.
