Max Plus the British Royal Family

[mallorys_camera]

Celeste took some excellent photographs of Max.

Here’s another:



Max has asked me to help him stay organized in this final push month before he graduates from law school, so I’m making myself available as general secretary-slash-amanuensis. I have executive, organizational superpowers; he tends to overthink. (The Hamlet syndrome.)

I tell him, All first drafts are shit. Everything good comes in edit or post-production. Just dew-w-w-w-w-w-w eeeet!

Maybe he listens. I don’t know.

###

When I look at Max, I think, Well… you didn’t fuck up everything.

I was a good mother.

I am a good mother.

###

It was freezing cold when I went out running yesterday, but run I did with the result that I was so tired when I got home, I could barely keep my eyes open and so fell asleep at the ungodly hour of 8pm.

It’s not uncommon for me to barely be able to keep my eyes open between 6pm and 8pm. If I don’t give in to the fatigue, I get a second wind around 8:30, and I’m up till two or three in the morning.

But last night, I gave in.

And woke up at something like 3am.

In a peculiar mood.

Loss.

Transience.

Was it a dream I’d had that I’d instantly forgotten upon awakening?

Loss. Transience…

I wanted to weep.

Now, loss and transience are things I always think about but usually not in such an emotional way. Because it’s the ultimate paradox, no? The fact that transience is a constant.

Anyway, I was awake; I wasn’t going to go back to sleep. So I ended up sipping whiskey and watching a BBC "documentary" on Netflix, royalist propaganda put together to commemorate QEII’s 90th birthday.

That documentary really did a number on me.

It was so sweet! Cribbed from the miles and miles of celluloid reels the Royals must keep in vaults underneath Buckingham Palace next to the jewels and the Corgi mummies.



Charming home movies! The little princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, frolicking in the castle gardens. The huge extended family at play! The aunts, the uncles, the cousins, opening crackers round a Christmas table where everybody’s seat has been designated by placard in formal caligraphy. What merry hijinx – look! Cousin Alexandra is switching the seating cards. Look! There’s George VI! (He stuttered, right? I saw it in a movie.) Look! They’re horsing around in fake beards! They’re slipping down a water slide on the royal yacht! They’re just like us except we don’t have Gothic copperplate seating reminders or royal yachts!

I had to keep forcibly reminding myself that the reason why this enchanted life had offered itself to this particular set of people was their ancestors had ruthlessly extorted that possibility from millions of other human beings.

Untold millions had been exploited, swept aside, dehumanized, stripped of their birthrights so that this line of human poodles, no longer even bred for any redeeming qualities, could carry out their charmed lives.

Subtext: They’re having a magical childhood, so you don’t have to!

(It’s a tough job etc.)

This understanding did not make the BBC documentary any less charming, though.

In my next life, I’m going to lobby strongly for a commission as a British Royal.