Mallory's Camera

Cranberry’s is the town hangout. The geezer hangout. The only Millennials inside the place are a bevy of pastry chefs, three pretty dark-haired maidens looking for a dragon to be rescued from, and the occasional disgruntled grandchild or great nephew with designs upon inheritance.

The three pretty pastry chefs are excellent. And Cranberry’s serves great (and cheap) coffee. I’m thinking of hanging out there in the mornings. Toting my computer over, plugging it in. I used to write in cafes all the time. Eavesdropping and random socializing with casual strangers makes me happy. In the space of just one hour this morning, I did more socializing than I’ve done over the course of the past couple of days. And I think I need to do more socializing – I’m growing ever more cranky and curmudgeonly.

Ed wandered up when I got home. Once upon a time, Ed was a highly ranked official within the Health Department in Albany, but during one of their periodic budget-mandated downsizings, New York State made him a buyout offer he couldn’t refuse.

Retirement hasn’t been fun for him.

“I’m bored,” he announced. “I’ve called everyone I know to see if they want to get together and socialize. But they’re all so tired of me, they won’t even pick up the phone.” He laughed.

We chatted for an hour and a half or so. Ed’s a pretty good conversationalist.

“Well here’s the deal, Ed,” I said when I finally extricated myself. “I often see your car in the driveway when I’m leaving to go hiking or to go off on some other sort of adventure. And I think about asking if you want to come along. But you’re a married man, and I’m an unmarried woman, and I’m never sure exactly what the etiquette is for those sorts of things –“

“Don’t worry about it,” Ed said. “Pat’s just glad if I’m not sitting around the house obsessing about Trump’s most recent poll numbers.”

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I was on pins and needles all day yesterday, wondering whether one particular client would pay me so I could pay one particularly pressing bill.

All day long, I agonized. And beat myself up, too, because, of course, it’s ridiculous that at the age of 64, I don’t have cash reserves put aside to cover me in instances when clients are being flighty. But I don’t. I used to, of course, before I lost everything. That was then. This is now.

The payment came through, my little checking account runneth over, but yesterday was not a very good day.

And that’s what it’s like to be poor in America. I mean, you tell yourself that you’re gonna turn it around somehow, but really? Your options are limited.



The story in the back of my mind all week as been a story about the Llewelyn Davies family. I’m not clever enough to put it into words.

I finally got my hands on The Real Peter Pan: The Tragic Life of Michael Llewelyn Davies, but it turned out not to be the story I wanted to read.

Or rather – it was the story I wanted to read but not told the way I wanted it to be told.

The story I want to read has to do with the imagination and the monsters that take refuge there. How powerful they are. How pitiless.

The book is circumstantial evidence that may or may not prove the existence of those monsters.

I’m also reading Justine Picardie’s extremely fine novel Daphne, which is kind of an homage to A.S. Byatt’s Possession, only the object of the scholarly research is Branwell Bronte, the brother of Emily and Charlotte, the two most venerated saints in all of Gothic literature.

Branwell died young of tuberculosis, complicated by laudanum addiction. Daphne du Maurier, who was something of an academic manqué, actually wrote a little-read biography of Branwell herself entitled The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte in which she speculates that Branwell co-authored Wuthering Heights and that his drug-taking was an attempt to self-medicate a condition that doctors today would dub schizophrenia.

There is a connection here: Daphne du Maurier and the Llewelyn Davies boys were cousins.

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The Llewelyn Davies’ Neverland (channeled through J.M. Barrie), and the Brontes’ Gondal and Angria are some of the best-known examples of what scholars call paracosms, minutely detailed imaginary universes. Tolkein’s Middle Earth would be another. And then there’s Wonderland, Hundred Acre Wood. Traditionally, paracosms have been embedded in children’s literature, but with the emergence of speculative fiction – sci fi and fantasy - as the predominant cultural experiences in contemporary life, increasingly paracosms are the canvas on which adult entertainments unfurl. Westeros, anyone?

The ontogeny of paracosmic narratives is particularly fascinating to me. What types of sand tortured that poor oyster? Why does that pearl shine with such an irresistible but (often) ominous luster? George R.R. Martin somewhat cold-bloodedly plotted his alternate universe, using gridlines from medieval English history. But traditionally, paracosms have been born from obsession and loneliness. Only lonely people see ghosts, after all.

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I think one of the reasons that Pokemon Go is so much fun is that its augmented reality feature allows players to build their own paracosms. There’s something much more than mere game-playing going on there.

At a restaurant the other day, I eavesdropped on a mother and her young son.

“Yep, that’s Drowzee,” said the mother wearily. “Do you want to capture him?”

“I want to follow him,” said the boy. “I want to see where he goes. I want to see his house. Where do you think he lives? I think he lives in the ground floor of a castle. He wonders what’s on the upper floors of that castle, but he’s not allowed to go there. What do you think?”

“I don’t know, honey. I don’t know,” said his mother turning away.