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mallorys_cameraI tromped.
I wear a mask around my neck when I tromp, and if I see anyone at 20 paces who is coming toward me and wearing a mask, I pull mine up. Not because I believe in the effectiveness of masks because I don’t. But because I want to signal: I am a good person! Not like those people who ride motorcycles to South Dakota, listen to heavy metal, and sport offensive tattoos.
I think I should get mucho points for my civic-minded behavior.
Instead, I tromped up to this one woman yesterday who scolded, “You are wearing the wrong type of mask.”
WHAT?
“Your mask loops behind your ears. It should fasten around the back of your head.”
Listen, you fucking mask-Nazi, you’re lucky I don’t rip off this mask and spit on you, I thought.
But did not say.
Instead I smiled vaguely—which, of course, she could not see because… mask!—and went on tromping.
And tried to rationalize her behavior.
Everybody is going nuts, I told myself. Everybody wants to act out. You want to act out by going all Sicilian and Scorpio moon; she wants to act out by being a big Bossy Pants. But really it is the same impulse.
This hardly assuaged me at all, though.
I gardened! I made the acquaintance of this merry fellow! (That sinister, blurry presence on the far left is an evil cabbage worm that in the space of less than 24 hours turned one of my collards into a lace doily.)
We’re in high tomato harvest mode now:
Then I got in my car and took off to Pawling where the National Counting Project has set up its regional office.
My drive took me through Union Vale and Freedom Plains, once Quaker settlements, big names on the underground railway, now just dreary little hamlets—a single auto repair garage with peeling paint; a cluster of mobile homes peeking out from behind an Ailanthus grove. En route, I rehearsed insults: Should I tell them to shove their fucking smartphone up their ass, or should I tell them to sit on it and twirl?
The receptionist wouldn’t let me resign, though. “You need to see IT,” she said.
I need to punch you in the face, I thought, but I realized I was dangerously close to going postal, and that is a step off the flat edge of the earth one never wants to take no matter what siren song that combination Scorpio moon and Sicilian DNA is singing.
The IT guy said, “Oh. You need a new phone?”
And gave me one.
So, I guess I am still one of the feet on the ground in that glorious patriotic endeavor, the National Counting Project.
I do feel better having gotten that resolved. Plus I’ll get paid for that round trip to Pawling. And there’s approximately 60 hours of—ha, ha, ha—training modules I get paid for before I ever have to leave the Patrizia-torium.
###
What else?
I’ve been listening to an audio version of The Go-Between while I’ve been tromping. It’s a book I deeply love it, but I’ve read it so many times, I didn't want to read it again.
Listening to audiobooks is often an excellent complement to reading a book just because voice actors often emphasize different things than your eyes do when you’re reading, and this gives the book whole new strata of meanings.
The Go-Between is read in a plummy high-U accent, which for the first 10 minutes or so put me off, but then I fell in love with it because at its heart, after all, the novel is an almost Proustian meditation upon memory propounded by a man in his early 60s. It follows the stream of consciousness of the 12-year-old boy the narrator once was so closely that it’s easy to be misled into thinking that it’s the 12-year-old boy’s words that you’re reading. But it isn’t!
Anyway, a truly terrific book and an excellent audio adaptation.
The universe can’t be all horrible if it produced a novel as wonderful as The Go-Between, can it?
But I’m still crying. Maybe that’s my New Normal.
I wear a mask around my neck when I tromp, and if I see anyone at 20 paces who is coming toward me and wearing a mask, I pull mine up. Not because I believe in the effectiveness of masks because I don’t. But because I want to signal: I am a good person! Not like those people who ride motorcycles to South Dakota, listen to heavy metal, and sport offensive tattoos.
I think I should get mucho points for my civic-minded behavior.
Instead, I tromped up to this one woman yesterday who scolded, “You are wearing the wrong type of mask.”
WHAT?
“Your mask loops behind your ears. It should fasten around the back of your head.”
Listen, you fucking mask-Nazi, you’re lucky I don’t rip off this mask and spit on you, I thought.
But did not say.
Instead I smiled vaguely—which, of course, she could not see because… mask!—and went on tromping.
And tried to rationalize her behavior.
Everybody is going nuts, I told myself. Everybody wants to act out. You want to act out by going all Sicilian and Scorpio moon; she wants to act out by being a big Bossy Pants. But really it is the same impulse.
This hardly assuaged me at all, though.
I gardened! I made the acquaintance of this merry fellow! (That sinister, blurry presence on the far left is an evil cabbage worm that in the space of less than 24 hours turned one of my collards into a lace doily.)
We’re in high tomato harvest mode now:
Then I got in my car and took off to Pawling where the National Counting Project has set up its regional office.
My drive took me through Union Vale and Freedom Plains, once Quaker settlements, big names on the underground railway, now just dreary little hamlets—a single auto repair garage with peeling paint; a cluster of mobile homes peeking out from behind an Ailanthus grove. En route, I rehearsed insults: Should I tell them to shove their fucking smartphone up their ass, or should I tell them to sit on it and twirl?
The receptionist wouldn’t let me resign, though. “You need to see IT,” she said.
I need to punch you in the face, I thought, but I realized I was dangerously close to going postal, and that is a step off the flat edge of the earth one never wants to take no matter what siren song that combination Scorpio moon and Sicilian DNA is singing.
The IT guy said, “Oh. You need a new phone?”
And gave me one.
So, I guess I am still one of the feet on the ground in that glorious patriotic endeavor, the National Counting Project.
I do feel better having gotten that resolved. Plus I’ll get paid for that round trip to Pawling. And there’s approximately 60 hours of—ha, ha, ha—training modules I get paid for before I ever have to leave the Patrizia-torium.
###
What else?
I’ve been listening to an audio version of The Go-Between while I’ve been tromping. It’s a book I deeply love it, but I’ve read it so many times, I didn't want to read it again.
Listening to audiobooks is often an excellent complement to reading a book just because voice actors often emphasize different things than your eyes do when you’re reading, and this gives the book whole new strata of meanings.
The Go-Between is read in a plummy high-U accent, which for the first 10 minutes or so put me off, but then I fell in love with it because at its heart, after all, the novel is an almost Proustian meditation upon memory propounded by a man in his early 60s. It follows the stream of consciousness of the 12-year-old boy the narrator once was so closely that it’s easy to be misled into thinking that it’s the 12-year-old boy’s words that you’re reading. But it isn’t!
Anyway, a truly terrific book and an excellent audio adaptation.
The universe can’t be all horrible if it produced a novel as wonderful as The Go-Between, can it?
But I’m still crying. Maybe that’s my New Normal.
