Mallory's Camera

Channeling My Inner Randy Quaid

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 16:42:05 GMT

At this very moment, hideous white stuff is coming down from the sky.

The ground is too warm for it to stick—here, at least.

Ten miles away, in Marlboro, the weight of the wet snow has taken down the power lines and closed 9W, the main drag to the Mid-Hudson Bridge.

The bridge will be accessible tomorrow, I tell myself. And even if it isn’t, there are other bridges across the Hudson.

But I am in that high anxiety pre-trip mode, playing and replaying everything that possibly could go wrong.

Meanwhile, though, I'm being productive and knocking those items off the To Do list as though they were pins in the bowling alley, and I was Randy Quaid in Kingpin (an absolutely brilliant movie!)

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The Zombie Apocalypse in the Hudson Valley Will Start in the Ellenville Walmart

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 15:20:52 GMT

Putin just lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons—whatever that means.

Does this raise the likelihood that Russia will deploy nuclear weapons in its war against Ukraine?

They’re saying “No,” but I’m not entirely sure who “they” are or how “they” can expect me to calmly go about my own life with devastation looming. But apparently “they” do—and it’s not as though I can actually do anything about the situation, right? I mean besides having panic attacks.

That’s Cormac McCarthy above, in his 40s and about to embark upon an affair with a 16-year-old lover.

That was the big literary news yesterday.

He looks a bit like Don Johnson in Miami Vice, doesn’t he?

I wonder if he wore socks with his loafers!

True Confession time: I have never read a single word by Cormac McCarthy.

In general, I am not a big fan of Southern Gothic or extreme violence.

But Cormac McCarthy is a literary archetype, so I know all about his life and career trajectory, of course.

Read the interview with one of his X-wives: We lived in total poverty. We were bathing in the lake. Someone would call up and offer $2,000 to come speak at a university about his books. And he would tell them that everything he had to say was there on the page. So we would eat beans for another week.

What a smug asshole, I thought.

###

It’s fascinating to watch the do-si-do between sexual mores from one era to another.

Right now, in 21st century America, having sex with someone significantly younger than you are is a big no-no. Legal if the sexual partner is over 18 and not someone you supervise in some capacity. But still frowned upon. You should read the hundreds of Reddit & ONTD postings screeching about 50-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio’s taste in 20-something models.

Thing is this is not a moral absolute.

I think you could reasonably argue that not having sex with a prepubescent is a moral absolute.

But not having sex with pubescents? No, that really varies with national culture & chronological era.

21st-century Americans are not more enlightened because they so rigorously patrol the age boundaries between romantic partners. They are merely responding to a different set of semiotics, anthropological cues, ones left over, perhaps, from fears of overpopulation & indignation over soaring teenage pregnancy rates, both of which were very big 50 years ago in the 1970s. It made cultural sense to stigmatize activities that led to unwanted population increases, hence also the remarkable & rapid about-face in acceptance of homosexuality.

These days, underpopulation is the Big Bad!

So I think within the next 15 years, you will see a general easing in attitudes toward sex with teenage girls & quite possibly less tolerance for gays.

###

Meanwhile, I spent yesterday Remunerating & panicking over the upcoming California trip. (The plane will crash over Denver! Weather conditions will be so miserable that take-off will be delayed, & I’ll have to spend 29 hours in LaGuardia airport! An undocumented, cat-eating Haitian migrant will stab me on the #4 subway!)

I made it up to the Ellenville Walmart.

If the Zombie Apocalypse ever happens in the Hudson Valley, you know it will start in the Ellenville Walmart.

Today, I must finish this pivotal Remunerative segment, back up my laptop, power up my TaxBwana Chromebook, and get a manicure—since gardening season is over, I can paint my nails again.

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Protective Mimicry

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 15:18:01 GMT

While I was gone, the trees turned those blurry shades of russet and green that are half baby leaves and half mysterious tree flowers.

It’s a beautiful day with a gentle blue sky, and shortly I will go tromping. And maybe even do some gardening though I’m not sure how I fit that in with everything else I have to do today—which mainly is make money. Though I also have to pick up the kiskas and do laundry.

###

Long-Ago Eleanor was in very bad shape when I got to Fort Bragg.

I was actually horrified by her appearance.

She looked like Baba Yaga.

True, she is five years older than me; we’re both crones, which means we’re officially disqualified from participating in the Beauty Game. But she was like the witch that tried to make Hansel & Gretel into a Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte.

And all she ever wears are the most repulsive puke-green velour pants.

I immediately took her out shopping.

“But I don’t care what I look like,” she objected feebly.

“Protective mimicry!” I crowed.

Because one of her big, big issues is social isolation, a complete lack of any social engagement, despite the fact that she lives in a kind of compound: She rents a house from a close friend of her deceased husband, and he and his girlfriend live right across the street. Instant fellowship!

Except Long-Ago Eleanor doesn’t like the girlfriend. “All she ever does is garden and bake cookies. And when she does what she calls ‘playing the violin,’ she holds the bow wrong. I actually studied the violin for years and years—”

You could use some gardening and cookie-baking, Eleanor! I thought but didn’t say.

Instead, I just kept repeating, “Protective mimicry! Protective mimicry!” with a big bright smile.

This was a concept she could—maybe—wrap her head around.

###

I also tried to get her to a hairdresser the whole time I was there, but in this—alas!—I failed.

Her hair is a fuckin’ nightmare. Long and brittle and grey.

Also, she has developed a weird kind of alopecia. Not the usual kind women our age develop, which involves the crown, but complete hair loss on the back of her head. I looked it up: I think it’s something called alopecia areata, which is actually an autoimmune disease and has a link—not necessarily causal—with dementia.

She really needs to see a dermatologist.

Though, of course, even had that idea occurred to her, it’s doubtful she would have been able to follow through on it since the Lost Coast is what you call a healthcare desert—

Though it may be the most beautiful place on the planet:

So, did I see signs of cognitive decline in her?

Honestly, I don’t know.

“I’m in such despair,” she told me. And when I tried to hug her, she trembled.

She has always been wayyyyy out there on the Eccentricity Scale, a brilliant, multi-talented human with Blanche Dubois-level social skills—an apt metaphor since she grew up in Alabama, and honey drips between every syllable she speaks.

And, of course, I am not playing Mother Teresa here. My interest in helping her is also self-serving: I am looking for a way to get back to California.

The Lost Coast would not work as a California perch for me. It is simply too remote. So the long-range plan would be to move initially to Fort Bragg and then within four months, find a house in the general Sacramento area.

I do love Eleanor. It’s a 55-year-long friendship with an overlapping history that involves acid trips and European forays and shared lovers and all those types of youthful experiences that tend to fuse two human beings.

The big issues for me are:

Numero Uno: Could I survive being in such close proximity to someone who is that depressed without becoming that depressed myself?

Numero Two-o: What happens if Eleanor turns on me as she’s had a habit of turning on other people throughout her life? I am literally the only emotionally close relationship Eleanor has left, but given her history with relationships, this has to be considered as a possibility. Which means if I do go ahead with this plan, I’ll need to have a Plan B.

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The Poughkeepsie Train Station Late At Night

Sun, 28 Apr 2024 15:49:48 GMT

In the first dream, I had a daughter, a little girl, maybe four years old.

And the little girl informed me she wanted to live with her father—who was Ben.

I was furious.

Fine, fine, live with Ben! I thought. I don’t care. I’ll never see you again, and that will be just fine with me!

But first, I was gonna have a word with Ben. Whom I marched up to and confronted: You have systematically connived to alienate the affections of my child! How dare you, motherfucker?? No, no, don’t look over there—because he was doing that shifty thing with his eyes—look at me when I’m talking to you—

And reluctantly, he raised his eyes to mine—

And I could see he was afraid of me!

###

In the second dream, I was out adventuring with a female friend, and we came across this… ruin? something. There was no way around it, and only two ways through it—one was by climbing up this impossible height and the other was by somehow circumnavigating this moat…

My friend just scampered up over the impossible height, easy-peasy, but I knew I’d never be able to scale it—I am deathly afraid of impossible heights.

So I just sighed, grit my teeth, and girded my loins for a plunge into the icy water.

###

So, back from California.

For the most part, I had a fabulous trip though aspects of it were—shall we say—challenging.

Even through the challenging parts, though, I felt as though I was surrounded by love, by people who supported me unambivalently, who cheered me on, who buoyed me up.

Amazing how quickly that changed the minute I finally hit the Poughkeepsie train station last night:

It was 11 o’clock, and there wasn’t a single cab. I mean like none.

There are usually three or four lined up.

The Poughkeepsie train station is not a place you want to be alone at night.

A couple of cops were walking their beat, and I ran up to them, dragging my incongruously pink suitcase—pink!—and asked them, “What happened to the taxis?”

They looked at me as though I was communicating in Venusian. “Taxis? Well. They come right there.”

“Yes, but there aren’t any! How am I supposed to get home?”

The male cop shrugged. The female cop said, “Well. They’re supposed to be there.”

And then they moved on.

And I thought, You fucking assholes! I am giving you the opportunity to preemptively prevent a crime! The mugging of a defenseless old lady!

But they didn’t give a shit.

Like Jack Nicholson sez: It’s Chinatown.

In the end, I desperately texted Neighbor Ed whom I know occasionally reads late into the night because my bedroom window looks across to his house, and I play Rear Window.

He was still awake and happy to pick me up.

But, still.

I couldn’t find a better actualization of the metaphor if I tried! The difference between Life Here and Life There.

There, there are people who actually cherish me.

Here, there is the Poughkeepsie train station.

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Ducks In a Line

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 14:14:08 GMT

Dreamed that Ben & I were watching that old Audrey Hepburn movie, Two for the Road, together.

You know, this is a very good movie, I told Ben. Woefully miscast, true. But with an excellent script and high concept.

Plus that very, very poignant score, he said.

And we just looked at each other.

And then I woke up.

Two for the Road is a movie about the dissolution of a marriage.

Barbara Angell called while I was in the garden.

I had given up on seeing her on my whirlwind visit to the Bay Area—when I called her, her phone switched immediately to voicemail. Ah! She’s on a trip, I thought. She’s off hiking her beloved Pacific Crest trail!

I was totally thrilled to hear from her and to be able to plan to see her for a few hours.

Barbara had some sad news: Her sister Janet died. Very suddenly. Very unexpectedly.

During the 10 years or so that Barbara Angell’s life was inextricably entangled with my own, I had several run-ins with Janet—most notably when Janet hired me to write a paper for her: Janet was enrolled in Boalt’s jurisprudence PhD program and did not like my take on whatever obscure tenet of jurisprudence she’d been assigned to explicate.

I admired Janet, though.

No matter what hard balls life threw her way to try to make her stagger or knock her down, she would always—grimly!—get back up, dust herself off, continue on her way.

###

They had a kind of fairy-tale childhood, Barbara and Janet. A pre-Disney fairy-tale.

I will never forget the first time Barbara brought me to the childhood mansion in Santa Rosa, the fleet of defunct luxury automobiles slowly rusting in that long, long driveway, that enormous swimming pool with its cracked blue tiles and its floating algae…

They were the Durbeyfield descendants of an old San Francisco tugboat dynasty; their father had died; their mother had married again, and the three daughters from the first marriage were forced into a kind of servitude to the two daughters from the second marriage and those daughters' father, while their mother fell deeper and deeper into alcoholism.

Barbara reacted by becoming ethereal and otherworldly.

Janet reacted by becoming sharp-tongued and suspicious.

But it was the same childhood.

The only remnant now of their former wealth is the Petrified Forest, a once-popular road attraction in Calistoga. Barbara and Janet had been managing it together, and Barbara is now managing it alone—and trying to sell it. She could get millions and millions if she sold it to land developers, but she doesn’t want to sell it to land developers; she wants to sell it to someone who will have reverence for those ancient, lost forests.

###

Other than that, yesterday I just lined up the ducks.

You are always anxious before you go on trips, I remind myself.

You always fantasize about canceling everything, going to bed, pulling the covers up over your head, and watching “The Real Housewives” for 10 days.

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Why You Need to Hang Your Keys On the Same Hook Every Time You Go Into the House

Mon, 15 Apr 2024 13:24:55 GMT

Flying into Sacramento on Thursday.

Sacramento & the SF Bay Area are roughly equidistant from Fort Bragg, which is on the coast, in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere.

But the Sacramento freeways are easier to navigate.

###

The fabulous gracegiver has offered me her Sacramento guestroom for random comings and goings, so I’ll spend the night there and then take off for the coast early Friday.

I’ll spend four days with Old Pal Eleanor.

That oughta be enough time to sort out what’s really going on with her, right?

I’ll have to rely entirely on intuition—because one of the big issues on the Lost Coast is that access to healthcare is severely restricted.

Like when Eleanor first got her diagnosis, I asked, “Well, did you get a second opinion?”

But on the Lost Coast, there are no second medical opinions to be had.

###

Eleanor has always been very, very scattered. Exceptionally brilliant. But scattered.

Almost every place she’s ever lived in has been a total disaster housekeeping-wise because she gets involved with projects, then puts the projects down, does not go back to them, becomes involved with other projects, so the clutter layers on top of itself like some kind of adventure in entropic archeology.

Her second husband, Bill, bullied her out of this while they were living together—which she actually liked.

And I can kinda feel her setting me up to bully her, too, as when she calls to ask, Should I get rid of this antique dinner table for eight that was handed down from the plantation the Faulkners (not her real surname) owned either in pre-Civil War or Reconstructionist Alabama?

And I am thinking, I don’t fuckin’ know! How could I possibly know?

I am not much of a bully!

I prefer to deep-freeze my enemies.

But anyway, I am suspecting a lot of her mental anguish stems from an inability to navigate an increasingly disorganized living space and a total absence of any routine, since she doesn’t have to work.

Routines are good! Habits are good! Hanging your keys up on the same hook every time you come into the house is good since it establishes order and saves you countless hours searching for lost keys!

###

Anyway, my mission while I am there will be to sort out how much of what’s going on with her is due to her simply having become overwhelmed by entropy and isolation and living on the Lost Coast far away from civilization, and how much is organic decline.

###

Talked with Public Policy Eleanor for two hours on the phone yesterday.

(Yes, it is difficult having two close friends named Eleanor! Both claim they were not named after Eleanor Roosevelt, although given their age, who else could they possibly have been named after?)

I wanted to let her know that I will be in Berkeley on Wednesday & Thursday—

“Would you like to stay here?” she asked.

“Well, of course, I want to stay there!” I said. “Although being the über-polite person I am, I wasn’t gonna ask, I was gonna wait till you offered—”

Public Policy Eleanor is one of the most lucid people I know; her thought processes are like a textbook on optimal executive functioning.

“If you do decide to live with Eleanor,” this Eleanor said, “and she does, in fact, have dementia, and she wants the option to die with dignity, one of the things you’ll need to be very cognizant of—especially as it pertains to her financial resources, which are greater than your own—is the issue of elder abuse—”

Good thing the top elder law/estate planning attorney in Monterey County is the father of Ichabod’s best friend and a buddy of mine, too!

###

I’ll be back in Sacramento Thursday night, returning to NYC Friday morning.

I am feeling utterly overwhelmed.

Though most of the trip planning is actually done at this point, so really, it's just a matter of hopping on that conveyor belt.

The flight to Sacramento leaves at 6 in the morning, and I still have to figure out whether I want to stay overnight at a hotel near LaGuardia or take a town car from Hyde Park that leaves at three in the morning.

I don’t know!

Really, I just want to close my eyes, click my heels together, and be in California!

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Erotic Vagrancy

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 14:13:22 GMT

The Mood finally seems to be lifting. Though not for any particular reason.

Had a fairly productive yesterday:

Remunerated mightily.

Actually went tromping, though the tromp was interrupted by pouring rain.

Booked the California flight. I’ll be going in and out of Sacramento since that seems like the most convenient point from which to venture forth Into the West. I’m thinking I’ll spend four days with Eleanor, assessing the situation. Return to Sacramento and maybe hop a train to Berkeley and hang out with the other Eleanor (my bestie from Public Policy School) and Barbara Angell (my bestie from nursing school) for a couple of days before flying back to the quaint & scenic Hudson Valley. We shall see!

Began reading a book called Erotic Vagrancy, which best as I can describe it is a 600-page study on Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton as archetypes.

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton remain my two favorite celebrities, which I suppose is me showing my age.

When I say “favorite,” I don’t mean as in "stan"-ning. I mean their lives are such an endless panorama of excess and abandon that they are absolutely fascinating. None of the posturing Instagram bobbleheads of the present tense can touch them.

Did a Friends-and-Family tax return for an acquaintance that ended up showing—ulp!—a $20,000 tax liability on a forgiven debt—

Sidebar. An important thing to remember when you are planning for taxes: If a company tells you, Sure, no problemo! We’ll write off what you owe us!, the IRS will tax the forgiven debt as income!

In this instance, however, as a mutual pal pointed out, a mortgage company wrote off the debt on the short sale house of a foreclosed house, so it seems likely the IRS may exclude the debt as part of one of the pandemic relief packages. I was vastly relieved to learn this as I was extremely worried what effect a $20,000 tax debt was gonna have on this acquaintance’s mental health. True, she will have to squander $500 on a real, live, human tax attorney, but it is likely she will find some way out of this. Good!

Oh, and in Get-Thee-Behind-Me-Satan news, Loraine & Buff Ken were delighted to take the butter cookies off my hands as well as the Easter basket filled with jellybeans and Cadbury eggs that yet another delighted TaxBwana client had gifted me with.

Here’s hoping today is similarly uneventful & low-key pleasant.

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Reissued E-Ticket

Fri, 17 Jun 2022 12:42:34 GMT

Reissued e-ticket arrived last night.

HALLELUJAH!!!!!!

Welcome to travel’s new normal.

I’m not about to stop traveling, so I guess I better get used to it.

Anyway, now I can go back to worrying about whether the plane will crash or a crazy taxi driver will try to convince me that the normal fare between the Falcone Borcellino airport and downtown Palermo is actually 500 € because you have to go through Catania.

###

Woke up in the middle of the night.

I’d had a peculiar dream but I didn’t want to write it down because I wanted to go back to sleep.

Some of it remains this morning:

I was trying to make some sort of rapprochement with DG. He wasn’t buying.

My friendly acquaintance, the Buddhist priest, was there, too. As a supporter of DG?

DG is someone with whom I had a brief fling during that unhappy period in the early 90s.

I actually put some energy into detesting him to this very day—which is totally ridiculous, of course, because c’mon! Thirty years.

True, he was kinda churlish but again, 30 years!

Who fuckin’ cares?

It’s that Scorpio moon of mine. I hold onto grudges forever.

The Buddhist priest is someone about whom I feel a certain amount of ambivalence. She’s pleasant enough. She was once one of those beautiful girls who got into a great deal of trouble with sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, got clean by joining AA, became a real estate agent—and then found Zen Buddhism.

Of course, the whole San Francisco Zen Buddhism scene is—or was—a hopping social scene. I have no idea whether J___ (the Buddhist priest’s dead name) was attracted to the social scene or the mysticism.

She’s a highly performative human being.

So maybe both?

###

Zen Buddhism doesn’t interest me as much as Tibetan Buddhism.

The two are dissimilar enough so that they could be completely different religions.

Guess I just ❤️LUV❤️s me those shamanistic practices!

###

Now I am wondering: Would I be a baaaaad Jew if I sling a crucifix around my neck when I got off the plane in Palermo? I mean, just so the taxi driver thinks I'm a nice religious old lady and doesn't try to cheat me?

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Why You Should NEVER Go On Vacation

Thu, 16 Jun 2022 11:14:35 GMT

Latest with the trip saga: The very pleasant BookingVault agent called me yesterday evening to tell me Swiss Air has booked me on later flights to the same places the same day.

But I have not yet received the e-tickets.

So, who fucking knows?

I do think the agency is acting in good faith. They’re rated well on TrustPilot.

But they don’t control the airline, and who fucking knows what’s going on with Swiss Air?

I’m kinda thinking I should proceed as though the trip is all systems go—except I am so stressed out that I’m highly dysfunctional. Yesterday was one long ordeal of misplaced keys and phones, and general inability to do anything useful.

Today, I should get a PCR COVID test; call my credit cards to let them know that no, that hot rocks massage at L' Essenza del Benessere is not being charged by a Mafia wife on purloined plastic but by me-e-eeeeeee; stock up on cash that can be converted to Euros; and get that 10-day text-and-phone-call add-on from AT&T—because if Swiss Air has fucked up my departure date so grandly, God knows what they’re gonna do to my return flight, right? I could spend my entire vacation on the phone with the pleasant BookingVault agent.

But I am feeling whack.

I am not wanting to do practical things.

I am wanting to spend the day in bed sipping the bourbon that I finally tottered out around 5pm yesterday to buy because it finally dawned on me, You need to be fucked up.

###

I hardly drink alcohol these days. I consider the gummies I popped on a nearly daily basis throughout December and January to have been medicinal: They stalled my seasonal affective disorder. And except for that gummie spree with Max in April, I haven’t done them since.

It’s not that I disapprove of consciousness alteration.

It’s just that I have come to realize that my resting state is already one of altered consciousness.

I think very peculiarly.

It’s kind of fun to think peculiarly.

For me to buy bourbon with the express purpose of getting shit-faced is a major thing.

###

I’m contending with warring internal voices. They’re a pain in the ass!

One of those voices sez, Privilege, privilege, privilege. What the hell does it matter if you don’t get to go on vacation? Are you a Yemeni child dying of starvation? No!!!! Stop whining!

The other voice sez, You’re just not very important. That’s why things go wrong for you. The Universe doesn’t care about you. Nobody cares about you, if you want to get right down to it.

Bourbon makes those voices shut up.

Though heroin would be better.

###

So, who knows what’s going to happen?

Not me!

Of course, that’s really the way the world always works, isn’t it?

Except most of the time, you’re insulated from recognizing that.

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As Close As We Get To Happiness In the House of Usher

Sun, 12 Jun 2022 12:35:43 GMT

Biden is so far down in the polls that the Democrats are now allowing the canaries (for which read Democrat-aligned pundits) to test the poisonous atmosphere.

Says David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, Biden doesn’t get the credit he deserves… and part of the reason he doesn’t is performative. He looks his age and isn’t as agile in front of a camera as he once was, and this has fed a narrative about competence that isn’t rooted in reality.

Not rooted in reality?

Ya could have fooled me.

I am thinking Biden deserves his own little room right down the hall in the Dementia Home where Annie now lives.

###

This is a huge annoyance because even though I dislike the Democrats intensely, the pending abortion ruling is such a line in the sand that I am gonna have to vote Democratic in the 2022 midterms, in the 2024 presidentials, and quite possibly until I get to join Uncle Joe and Annie at the Dementia Home. I am hoping they serve at least three flavors of jello!

###

What else?

I did in fact end up writing Stew a letter—the kind you put in a mailbox!—because how could I not?

I tried to keep it as clear as possible of those toppling Jenga palaces known as family feuds. I focused on memories. Not happy memories: There are so few of those. Bittersweet memories. "Bittersweet" is as close as we get to happiness here in the House of Usher.

In the middle of writing Stew a letter, Ichabod called. We debated politics for a while, and then he asked, “How are you?”

“Very sad,” I said. “Surprisingly sad. About Annie. Thinking how frightened and abandoned she must feel.”

“Alicia sent me a video of Annie playing her fiddle. Do you want to see it?”

“You tell me,” I said. “Do I want to see it?”

“Well. Probably not,” said Ichabod.

###

I gardened. Those damn weeds in the lower plot are managing to grow even when 30 pounds of cedar chips have been dumped on top of them!

I visited the local farmers’ market for Art Photo™ opportunities:

I Remunerated. In between Remunerative bouts, I watched Olivier Assayas’ 1990-something film version of Irma Vep, which was deeply strange and not something I would recommend to anyone although I liked it.

Assayas has this kind of signature thing he does in films. I remembered it from Clouds of Sils Maria: In the middle of the plot, he starts inserting these random shots, quick takes, of stuff that’s connected to the narrative by only the loosest of strings. In Clouds, they were shots of the Maloja Snake; in Irma Vep, they were shots of Maggie Cheung’s face, scribbled over with a Sharpie.

###

In the evening, I bumped into L in the kitchen.

“You’re just so happy!” L said. “It is pouring out of you! You’re so excited about the trip! You’re radiant!”

“Yes, that’s me!” I said. “Radiant with happiness!”

It’s a kind of point of honor with me: I try very hard not to display negative emotions because I think that’s unfair to the people around me.

Or perhaps because I think it’s unsafe to display negative emotions.

For as my spiritual guide Jessica Mitford once wrote: What it boils down to is putting one’s feelings on a special plane; most unwise, if you come to think of it. Because the bitter but true fact is that the only person who cares about one’s own feelings is ONE.

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Bad Jokes About Zucchini

Fri, 13 Aug 2021 12:58:53 GMT

Yesterday turned out to be a good day. Go figure.

Mostly because of the hour-and-a-half phone marathon with Eleanor B at the end of it.

Eleanor B is one of the world’s great gabbers, such that even her 20-minute description of driving a piano in a U-Haul truck from the Central Valley to the SF Bay area became an epic journey, a kinda Homeward Bound or March of the Penguins for humans: She knows exactly what status details to sprinkle and cautionary life lessons to extract!

This is exactly the type of anecdote that—recounted by a less talented story-teller—makes the person on the other end of the line interrupt, “Whoops! I just remembered my eyebrows need a lice treatment!” and slam down the phone.

Eleanor ended the conversation by saying, “Oh, Patrizia—you make my heart happy!”

Yesterday was definitely one of those days I needed a hundred people to line up and tell me, I love you.

###

Also, I put little red check marks next to items on the To Do list faster than I ever thought possible. Check! Check! Check!

Dunno why I was so worried about asking to stay in the Spruce St manse while I am in Berkeley.

Honestly, I had constructed this scenario in my head in which Janet and Haley would respond to my lodging request by saying, “Sorry, Patrizia—Donald Trump and the ghost of Adolph Hitler have dibs on the guestroom that weekend.”

But instead, it was, Of course! It will be great to see you.

Huh?

Great to see me?

###

Sam gave me a zucchini from her garden:

Of course, I loathe zucchinis, but I didn’t think it would be polite to tell Sam that, particularly not after our merry 15-minute riff about dildos and Jolly Green Giantesses. Plus, if I don’t take her zucchini, she won’t take my tomatoes.

So, I made zucchini boats:

They weren’t great, but they weren’t bad.

Under the pretense of generosity—“Oh, there’s enough for everyone! Please! Mangiare!”— I got rid of all of them and won’t have to face zucchini leftovers.

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Why Snow Isn't Beautiful

Fri, 06 Dec 2019 14:19:43 GMT

I have decided to forgive Max.

After all, forgiveness only enhances the luster of the crown I’ll wear in heaven, right? And propels me to the first rank of paragons of maternal self sacrifice like Mother Machree, Mother Courage, and Joan Crawford.

As a sign of my renewed maternal love, I gave Max the password to my Criterion movie account.

Robin took some good photos of me-e-e-e-e-e! (He has a fabulous camera eye.)

Well. I guess somebody else took that first one. But with his camera.

I took this cozy domestic shot:

I almost beat Max! But in the end, the value of my extra tiles had to get subtracted from my score, so I lost by three.

“Nobody beats Max at Scrabble,” MaryAnn told me grimly. “I refuse to play with him anymore.”

###

I should probably write up the trip adventures at greater length because otherwise I’ll forget them, but that’s not gonna be today and that’s not gonna be tomorrow either.

My jet-lagged sleep cycle is still very weird. I keep waking up after fabulous cascading dreams and thinking, I should write this down! And then falling back to sleep before I can.

It’s very grey and bleak outside. Everything covered under 10 inches of snow.

I know most people think snow is beautiful, but I think snow loans a discouraging ubiquity to the landscapes it covers. When it’s covered with snow, every single thing looks the same; there’s no individuality, no unique quirks.

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Last Mile Dilemma

Wed, 04 Dec 2019 20:17:31 GMT

As with Amazon deliveries, so with travel: Thus, there is always that Last Mile Dilemma so that it always takes you two hours longer to end up in that deserted train station at 4am 150 miles away from JFK than it did to travel those 3,000 plus miles from California to New York.

Never mind, though. I did it.

Though I am certainly paying for it today.

###

I wouldn’t say it was a good trip.

In fact, if I were being strictly truthful, I’d have to say it was a bad trip.

Part of that may have been that I wasn’t writing regularly in my journal. At this point, I have become so habituated to that weird split between narrator and character that journaling alone offers that when I don’t have it, I lose my balance.

Part of it almost certainly was that I found myself hating Berkeley, a place I have always loved.

But most of it came from Max. On two separate occasions, he enumerated my various failings as a parent at great and exhaustive length. He’s in therapy! I suppose in his mind that gives him permission to demand accountability for all the ways that he thinks he was mistreated as a child.

I tried really, really hard to be a good mother to Max. I wasn’t prepared to discover that he thinks I wasn’t.

In fact, it kind of broke my heart.

And I don’t know what I can do to make myself feel whole again. It’s a cold day, a grey day, and the usual distractions aren’t working at all.

Really, I guess I’m wondering why I wasted all that effort trying to be a good parent.

Why I wasted all that effort trying to do anything.

It’s gonna take me a while to recover from this one.

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You, Too, Can Be a Ukrainian Gangster!

Fri, 29 Nov 2019 19:43:42 GMT

So-o, my airbnb hostess in Tustin is this tragic Russian piano teacher. She has taken a shine to me, so she spent the morning feeding me delicious cherry and whipped cream pastries and recounting her life story.

She was married at 19 to a Ukrainian gangster. They migrated to the U.S. and settled in Chicago where the gangster set up a profitable Medicare fraud scam. The scam proved so successful that soon they were able to move to Southern California where the weather is fabulous and the malls brim over with disposable goods.

Side bar: Is Southern California the only place in the world where they still build malls and the malls are successful?

The tragic Russian piano teacher was a member of the Russian intelligentsia —into art and classical music, in other words, instead of crooked, anonymous shell corporations. It had been an arranged marriage and there were certain… shall we just say sexual kinks… on top of the basic incompatibility between otherworldly musician and hardened crook.

Anyway, she was determined to rat him out and win her freedom. I think she must have been around 30 at this point with two small children.

So, she went to the FBI with her story.

The FBI agent kept yawning and stealing peeks at his watch while she recounted her tale and finally he interrupted her. “Here’s the thing,” he said. “Six million dollars is not a huge amount of money. With six million dollars, you can maybe buy a house, buy your wife a diamond ring. But you can’t do much. Now, if it was sixty million dollars, it might be worth our while to go after the guy. But for six? Nah.”

So, now you know!

All those small-change larceny schemes you’re contemplating to augment your revenue stream?

You can probably get away with them!

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B-B-But VENICE Is Nowhere NEAR JFK!!!!!

Mon, 18 Nov 2019 14:51:51 GMT

I should be thinking Icarus, but instead I’m thinking Venice.

Venice doesn’t survive is what I’m thinking.

The only real suspense is when “they”—there’s that pronoun again!—realize this and start rehoming the treasures.

Same logic with New Orleans.

Same logic with just about every coastal city.

###

RTT is 25 years old. He should know how to arrange transportation that will get him to the airport, right? I don’t need to expend the valuable psychic energy that I will need tomorrow to keep the plane in the air upon visualizing every step in his journey from Tburg to JFK.

Plus, I have travel insurance.

It will All be Okay.

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A-R-R-A-I-G-N-M-E-N-T. Arraignment!

Thu, 07 Nov 2019 14:56:37 GMT

I am trying to decide whether I should blow the Big Buck$ on a night at JFK’s new TWA hotel, which is the old, exquisitely reconfigured TWA terminal. The cocktail lounge is a salvaged Lockheed Constellation. There’s a rooftop pool with a view of the tarmac.

We’re flying out mid-morning, so this hotel would save a lot of wear and tear on my nervous system.

Plus, you know, that retro-modern 60s style is so-o-oooo gorgeous. Think of all the Art Photo opportunities!!!

Money! It’s a renewable resource.

I mean… Right?

###

In other news, there was a Darryl-related crisis yesterday.

Slight emergency, RTT texted. Darryl’s about to potentially go to jail.

Say wha????

The details involved an arrest warrant and an X-girlfriend whose car got keyed—

“Do not tell me the details,” I said. “I do not want to know.”

“Issue is how much I’m gonna have to spend on bail—“

“Call Meryl,” I said.

Long-time readers may remember Meryl. She is a fabulous human being who lives in Ithaca and has had long-term relationships with practically all of the Lost Boys in RTT’s orbit. She’s a lawyer. She provides these kids with legal advice, a place to stay, and a reason to live whenever they need it.

And, no, Meryl is not woo-woo or officious or a pedophile or saccharine sweet in any disturbing way. She happens to like troubled kids in the same way that I like cats and 19th century English literature.

Of course, RTT was hoping I’d say, Darryl’s bail? No problem! Here’s $5,000!

Ha, ha, ha, ha.

I adore Darryl whom I’ve known since he was 14 years old but (1) I am not Darryl’s mother, (2) I am not Meryl, and (3) Darryl should get his shit together.

“Plus Robin, do keep in mind that you are about to embark upon a two-week vacation,” I said. “And while the second week of that vacation is choreographed, you’re on your own that first week. I’m gonna be off with friends pretending I’m 30! You’re gonna need money. You can probably crash with your brother in Berkeley, but he’s in school and working till the day before Thanksgiving.”

“I know, I know,” said RTT.

Darryl called Meryl who put him in touch with a lawyer who called the court to arrange an arraignment—and guess what?

No warrant.

Plus Darryl knows how to spell “arraignment!”

Which really makes me want double down on Point # 3 above because Darryl ain’t no dummy.

But, Point # 1! I am not Darryl’s mother.

I am RTT’s mother, so I said to him, “Look, Robin. I’m kind of the polar opposite of your Dad in the sense that I don’t give a lot of advice about what you should do or how you should live your life if you don’t actually ask me. That doesn’t mean I don’t have ideas about what you should be doing. Helpful ideas—“

“I know, I know,” said RTT. “Wow! Kentucky and Virginia! Look out Mitch McConnell, we’re coming for you!”

We are gonna talk whether RTT wants to or not.

That’s what long plane rides were invented for.

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