Mallory's Camera

Slipped off into The Zone for many hours last night while hammering away at a climactic scene near the end of Part I in the Work In Progress.

The Zone is a kind of oneness with the act of creation that can best be likened to a benign psychotic episode. You climb so far inside what you're creating that all your critical faculties disappear. Your brain is tracking imaginary events the same way it tracks real (ha, ha, ha!) events! It's wild. It's fun!

But you have no idea whether what you're writing is good or bad.

And it's a kind of mania, so it's physically unhealthy. When you fly that near the sun, your wings can get burned. Last night, for example, I didn't fall asleep till 1 a.m., but I still got up at 6—it's almost impossible for me to sleep in—so I'm feeling quite brain dead right now.

And I still haven't yet dared sneak a peek at what I wrote last night: Neal's rescue of Grazia just before she's about to be waterboarded baptized by spooky apocalypse cult. What if it's terrible, overly melodramatic drivel? It very easily could be.

###

Plus, we're heading into the fifth consecutive day of grey, impenetrable sky and blank white snow. A grey and white world is hard on the eyes. No doubt, that's compounding my addled, sleep-deprived mind set. Right now in this present moment, there's barely anything that's happened to me in my everyday-a-little-bit-longer life that I don't regret in some way. I line my pillows with regret!

My financial situation is in flux. Schlock isn't giving me the hours I want, and the current Remuneration client stopped communicating with me after making the current Remunerative assignment, leading me to wonder whether this isn't some kind of augury of how they're gonna react when I present my invoice. Shitty behavior! Do I ignore it & keep on working, figuring: Of course, they'll pay me! Or do I cut bait now and keep the retainer?

The Patrizia-torium is an utter mess.

And I'm living in a geographic location I dislike, where I have no friends to commune with or even activity partners to hang out with casually. I have plenty of friends, of course, with whom I communicate through phone calls, texts, & email & at some point during each and every one of those phone calls, texts, & emails, both parties invariably lament: I wish we lived closer...

But the only reason I'm not dying of loneliness is that I'm pathologically self-involved, and thus can survive for looooong periods of time entertaining myself.

Maybe that's all resilience really is: a pathological level of self-involvement.

###

I miss Brian.

The fact that he was so supremely self-confident in his choices, and that one of his choices was to love me, made him a grounding force.

Without him, I feel neither grounded nor lovable.

Real-life Daria bailed on the trip east to pick up Brian's car (which she inherited).

It's all good since real-life Flavia didn't really want to do a road trip to California with her. Can you imagine? Neither of them really likes road trips!

But this meant that Flavia had to go up to Brian's old house to pick up the car. She was gonna Uber from New Paltz to the deepest, darkest Catskills. How much was that gonna cost? $150???

"Don't be ridiculous," I said. "I'll drive you."

So, I did.

###

Flavia & I bonded on my recent NYC sojourn. We have spent a fair amount of time together over the past decade, and I've always liked her, but our styles are quite different. She is reserved, and I am—Well. Me. I could sense that, however much she might have liked me, she found me rather exhausting. But last weekend, we really clicked, took the leap forward into intimacy.

She was not looking forward to spending the night at Brian's old house. Mimi is staying at Brian's old house.

"Oh, God," I said. "I wish I could invite you to stay at my place. But honestly? You'd hate my place—" Trying to imagine Flavia & Icky in close proximity.

Flavia laughed. "It's okay. It's just for one night."

###

Mimi is a problem that's getting bigger.

Mimi has bipolar disorder but refuses to take the standard psychiatric medications for the condition, preferring to self-medicate by smoking massive quantities of cannabis.

This would not be an issue if smoking massive quantities of cannabis was working.

But clearly, it is not working.

Her house in Peekskill got repossessed; she got fired from her job.

Brian helped her buy a kinda/sorta camper, which she parked on some property in Sullivan County, right outside Bethel Woods, owned by a couple who wanted to establish a cannabis spa.

The couple separated; the property is gonna be sold. (In fact, Brian spent the last 10 days of his life installing a new plumbing system in the main house on the property. "I want to help Mimi establish some sort of equity," he explained to me.)

Mimi had a key to Brian's house, and Flavia—who actually owns the house—told her she could keep coming up to the house whenever she wanted to (presumably to commune with the spirit of dead Brian).

Turns out that since the kinda/sorta camper Mimi bought is not really a mobile home, there is absolutely no public property in the State of New York where she can live in it during the winter months. And even if there were some place physically to park it on the Catskills property, Brian's old place is not zoned for it.

So, Mimi promptly moved into the house.

She assumed she would be inheriting Brian's arrangement with Flavia—Brian didn't pay any rent, & Flavia paid the property taxes & utilities. And Flavia is going along with this because (a) Brian did love Mimi, so Flavia feels some obligation to care for her and (b) Flavia has some guilt over being wealthy.

Mimi did snag a new job—at a dispensary in Woodstock. I don't see that lasting through the winter. Woodstock is a tourist town; it shuts down in the winter. Plus the country is on the verge of another recession—$1 trillion added to the national debt in the last two months alone!—& I kinda think dispensaries are gonna be dropping like flies.

###

"I said she could stay till April," Flavia told me over the weekend.

"Ummm," I said. "I don't think she'll last that long. I mean, the Catskills in the wintertime? A house that's only heated by a woodburning stove? I don't see Mimi out there splitting lumber in the snow. Do you?"

"Where else does she have to go?" asked Flavia.

"I wish Brian had just left her some money," I said. "Then you wouldn't feel like she was your responsibility."

"I know," sighed Flavia.

###

Flavia took the Trailways bus up from Manhattan. I picked her up at the terminal in New Paltz—which also functions as a taxi depot and the Village Grounds coffeehouse where they make an excellent cappucino. (New Paltz's taxi fleet is one of the things that make it an exceptionally cosmopolitan village!)

And no sooner had Flavia stepped off the bus when she got a text from Mimi: Brian's car won't start.

The one thing Flavia had asked Mimi to do was start Brian's car every week or so, so the battery wouldn't run down.

"Oh, my God," I said. "I hope it's the battery! If you have to get the car towed for actual repairs, you might be stuck there for days."

We stared at each other in horror.

We'd had plans for a leisurely drive up, but these, of course, these plans were short-circuited.

The drive itself, though, was spectacular. Peak foliage moment on edges of the Minewaska Preserve and the Catskills Park, the sugar maples scarlet and all the other trees golden. I recited Gerard Manly Hopkins as we circled higher & higher.

"Listen," I said. "I'm going to stay with you at least until we're sure the car will start. If it doesn't, I'm entirely at your disposal. I do not want you getting stuck there."

###

Roadside assistance had been summoned from Kingston and was on its way, Mimi informed us as we stepped out of the car. She looked horrible. Unkempt. Has gained at least 20 pounds since July.

The house...

I cannot describe how appalling the house was. It was like a hoarder house.

I'd had a hard time being in that house in July because it reminded me so much of Brian, but no vestige of Brian remains—except his books, which I have volunteered to take to a used bookstore in Middletown just as soon Mimi gets it together to pack them in boxes.

The kitchen island where Brian used to prepare gourmet meals was loaded with boxes of Cheese Nips and half-empty bags of candy. The only chair in the house that was not piled high with Mimi's stuff was permanently occupied by Mimi's ancient cat, Mojo, who seems to me to be actively dying, so there was no place for Flavia and me to sit while Mimi launched into her monologue. We cowered in corners.

¬"—and I am paying $500 a month on that camper! Can you believe it? $500 a month! And another hundred for storage in Peekskill. And I'm only making $2,000 a month! So, I'm gonna transfer my storage up here and sell the camper—"

"Do you really think selling the camper is a good idea?" asked Flavia diplomatically. Meaning: You are going to need another place to live come April.

"It's a great idea," snarled Mimi. "And fuck Nick—" the male half of the cannabis spa couple. "—he's a horrible human being. I hope his dick falls off."

"Moving out," in other words, does not appear to be on Mimi's list of options. And I am a little worried about that.

###

I felt awful leaving Flavia there after roadside assistance started the Prius.

"I'll be fine," she assured me. "I'm going to take the car out for a nice long drive to charge up the battery. And I'll be out the door at the crack of dawn tomorrow."

She texted later that evening: It’s only 7 pm, but I’m in bed in the bug room because there’s no place to sit downstairs.

The "bug room" is the cottage's second bedroom, which even during Brian's lifetime was infested with Asian lady beetles.

Oh my God, Flavia, I felt so HORRIBLE leaving you there. Will you be able to sleep?

It’s really fine. I did everything I needed to do, and will happily head out in the morning
(although I did cry when I saw the garden, which looks like it misses Brian as much as we do).

I do miss Brian. Though I can't help thinking his involvement with Mimi was a considerable lapse in judgment.