Mallory's Camera

How pleased am I this morning by my Cassandra-like proficiency at prophecy?

Very, very!

Long before the election, I predicted that if Trump won—to be honest, I didn't know that he would win, so! IF—he would last no more than 18 months in office. I wasn't sure if he'd die in office or be 25th-Amendmented, but I was (am!) positive he'd be out.

Vance is the far better technocrat's ventriloquist dummy, & make no mistake, it's the technocrats' world. We just have the misfortune to breathe oxygen in it.

Vance is a lot more dangerous than Trump because he's not insane & brings a converso's zeal to stamping out individual freedom, that true Yeatsian passionate intensity. Vance should be able to push out the diameter of that widening gyre by several miles.

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All this takes place against a backdrop of technological revolution.

For example: Consider the plausibility that the reason the now-Trump/soon-Vance administration is so willing to cut funds for scientific research is because the technocrats are convinced AI will soon surpass and supplant human researchers in most fields of inquiry, rendering human researchers both superfluous and politically inconvenient.

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Anyway, the political theater yesterday was pretty entertaining. Puleeze let Trump & X-Best Buddy stay at loggerheads! I wanna hear more about the effects ketamine has had on Musk's bladder! I wanna hear more about Trump's fixation on pert nipples! (And I mean, who isn't fixated on pert nipples?)

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Apart from following the world's biggest geopolitical bromance break-up in more-or-less real time, I got more of the New Paltz garden weeded:



I'm up to about half. After I'm done, I'll rototill. I think someone had an ornamental flower garden here at one time because I've found so many outcroppings of iris rhizomes.

It is a lot of work. And by 9:30 a.m. yesterday, it was 80° F, so I had to knock off.

I got a fair amount of Remuneration done after that, but of course, it's never enough. I don't understand why I can't knock off 4,000 words in a single writing session. The fact that I can't seems like a singular failure of will.

I talked to various people by phone & text, and no one in person. I am isolated here!

And I started watching The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, which I like a lot: a saga about a Sephardic family from the time of the Ottoman Empire to the end of the British mandate in Palestine. Such an interesting time in history! The production values are laughable, but the writing and acting is very fine: It stars Akiva, my BF from Shtisel!

More of the same scheduled for today except I'm gonna go to the gym rather than pull weeds.

Had a good time playing in the dirt at the garden yesterday. My strawberries are coming in:



I'm fairly sure Claude is the source of everything that's earthy and solid on this planet:



Neighbor Ed turned out to be in Providence, so my impromptu plan to ring his doorbell and shriek Hi-ii-iiii! was for all for naught.

Instead, I went tromping. Some dead Vanderbilt had a thing for Liriodendron tulipiferae, and I'm so glad they did! The tulip trees were all in bloom yesterday. Though I guess not being real flowers but specialized leaves, "bloom" is the wrong operative verb there:










And the peonies hadn't bloomed yet:



One assumes there must be peonies in Ulster County, but I have yet to see a single one, so I was very pleased to see these:



When I woke up this morning, my computer had come down with a display glitch that irritated the hell out of me, so I started banging systems settings randomly, and in doing so managed to fuck up my computer even more!

It took me five hours to track down & undo whatever random thing I did: It was something under "Accessibility." "Accessibility" is filled with all sorts of deeply weird functionalities.
In the future, I must remember to write down whatever small changes I make to the computer's operating system. My memory just isn't keyed in to retaining random shit like that, even though random shit like that turns out to be absolutely essential to the smooth, background functioning of said tool. I managed to right the most obvious problems, but the damn thing still isn't working well enough for the perfect spontaneous heart dump.

It was sunny & hot by the time I made it to the garden yesterday. And then Claude showed up! Prize-winning chef and former Culinary Institute professor, raised on a farm in post-war Normandy, to me, Claude represents everything that's earthy & solid.



I weeded very happily for a couple of hours, sowed my lettuce seeds.

And then something weird happened. I got suddenly and violently ill, the kind of ill that it involves bathrooms, of which there aren't any at the garden.

No embarrassing accidents, but close call.

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In fact, my usually robust health hasn't been all that robust lately. My lungs feel congested. I find myself getting somewhat winded when I exercise, I cough up fluid, and when I breathe out, I can feel how stiff my lungs are. Classic asthma symptoms. I hate the way inhalers make me feel, so I never use them; I just cough disgustingly.

I've been backburnering a fantasy that I have some sort of fatal but painless disease! Next time I visit my primary care provider, she'll take one look at me and say, "Patrizia, I'm afraid you're suffering from Amaranthinitis. There is no known cure, but here! Let me write you a script for unlimited quantities of morphine!"

I don't care if I cough.

I do care if I feel winded and weak.

But I probably wouldn't if I had unlimited quantities of morphine.

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I'm still feeling kinda ill today, so I have tabled exercise plans. The day is sunny and bright, so I will lounge outside and read. The fabulous smokingboot sent me Hilary Mantel's memoir Giving Up the Ghost last Christmas; it promptly got lost in bedchamber rubble. Recently, though, I unearthed it again & began reading it.

The first two books of Mantel's Wollf Hall trilogy are among my favorite novels of all time. They have a distinctly mannered style that took me around 50 pages to get used to (50 pages during which I didn't like the novels at all), and I guess I was a little afraid that this mannered style was Mantel's voice—which works as a narrative style for novels set in medieval times because we have to assume that people living in those times thought very differently than contemporary people think. I wasn't sure, though, that it would work for a modern-day book.

Not to worry! Giving Up the Ghost does not use Wolf Hall as a style manual.

I'm also piqued because two separate subscribers to my substack told me my prose style reminds them of Hilary Mantel.

I don't agree, but I kinda, sorta see how they got the idea: I break the fourth wall in sort of the same way that Mantel does. In her prose and my prose, there is a very strong sense that the writer is talking to a specific someone (who is not necessarily you, gentle reader.)

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And, of course, the AI video experiments continue.

Today, I animated the cat marginalia on a medieval manuscript:



I wouldn't say it works. Ideally, all the cats would chase the mice as the mice scamper off the page.

Is the limitation my clumsy prompt or the clumsy AI (NightCafe in this instance)?

Dunno, but I may try the same experiment in Sora tomorrow.

The garden has been a bone of contention twixt me & Icky.

Six weeks or so ago, he informed me he did not want to share the garden in back of the house.

"I know myself," he told me. "I want to do things the way I want to do things—not that I couldn't learn from you," he added in a gratuitous attempt to sound gracious. (Gratuitous because nothing can make Icky sound gracious.)

He offered to put in a kind of annex garden where I could putter & grow.

I made inconclusive murmuring noises.

The whole thing was extremely weird, I thought: There's such a lot of work involved in planting and tending a garden, why wouldn't you want to share that with someone?

Then the Hyde Park Community Garden folk emailed me asking me to come back, & I thought, Providence has solved my dilemma!

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A couple of weeks ago, he was gonna get one of the neighbors over to tractor the garden (much more efficient than rototilling) and asked me how much square footage I would like.

"That won't be necessary," I beamed. "I found another place to garden."

Weirdly, this seemed to upset him!

Where was this place, he wanted to know. He asked four times; I ignored him. But clearly, he was put out.

The day the neighbor was supposed to come over, it rained. And then she didn't come over on any of the subsequent days (Probably because you didn't pay her last year & made no noises about paying her this year either, I thought. I wouldn't think Icky is close enough with the neighbors to get friendship favors.) This put him in a glowery mood, too.

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Then last night, I got a text from him: Go ahead and plant what you want on the side of the house or the garden fyi. I’m going to be coming up there a lot less I think.

Did something happen? I texted back.

I am not happy coming up there to sit around all week with Gus’ door closed on me. He won’t do anything around the house or with me. I don’t want to be up there under those conditions.

Little Susie Sunshine that I am, I texted back, It’s a difficult situation, yes. But I HAVE seen the two of you bond. I know it’s none of my business but even if he is pushing you away, if you LET yourself be pushed, it’s going to feel like abandonment to him.

I need to protect my mental health, he replied.

What mental health? I wondered.

Of course, I also knew that he was acting out, having the 63-year-old-man version of a temper tantrum, informing as many people as he can about his grievances. I'm 90% certain that he will be back up again next week on the usual date, and it will be as though this text conversation had never happened.

Still. The whole thing made me nervous.

Like am I gonna have to start thinking about filling the propane cannisters, mowing the acreage, making sure Black Chicken is fed & watered? That's a lot more work than I signed up for.

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He does have a really dreadful relationship with the Spawn, but then I had a dreadful relationship with RTT when he was Gus's age, and today, we are besties, so go figure.

As a parent of teenage children, consistency is the most important thing—consistency & a commitment to far-sightedness, goals in the long term: Gus is incapable of seeing three years ahead because Gus is 15, and three years is one-fifth of his lifespan—figuratively the equivalent of 15 years to me. I can't see 15 years ahead!

Also, Icky has this ridiculous notion that being a parent is kinda like being a super-friend. If I didn't dislike him, I'd almost be touched by the way he begs the Spawn to let him play video games with him—video games? you think that's what fathers do? are you mad?

And then there are all those mornings when Gus refuses to budge from his bed, literally pulls the covers up over his head, while Icky screams, "This is ridiculous! Get the fuck up! You have to go to school!"

Only Gus doesn't get up.

One imagines him beneath his covers with a small, sly grin on his face. Punishing Daddy by punishing himself.

A toxic situation.

But honestly?

The Patrizia-torium (which I like quite well) is sheltered from the rest of the house, the kiskas are happy, and it's none of my business.

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Anyway, I did get over to the Community Garden on Thursday and weeded happily for an hour before it began to pour. (Not in the forecast.) Got the strawberry patch weeded. Will go back tomorrow to do the rest of the weeding and put in lettuce & beans.

This year, I have the space to attempt germinating my own seedlings, so I have various heirloom tomato varieties percolating in tiny peat pots.

Today, I am running the bounce house at Vision of Wallkill's Duck Derby.

The fun part of the day, the actual race of the rubber duckies down the Wallkill River, has been canceled due to safety issues: The Wallkill River is at flood stage.

And I can't say I am looking forward to chaperoning a bunch of brutish Trumpie tadpoles—'cause that's what the citizenry of Wallkill hamlet are, brutish Trumpies.

But I committed to it and must follow through.

Sigh...

Protective mimicry, I remind myself.

Found this as I was cleaning the nettles and the Creeping Charlie out of the strawberry patch.

I would have noticed it if it had been there last year. So, it wasn't.

I am always on the lookout for messages from the Universe or any of its signatories. I spend most of my time in subways & waiting rooms willing my mind to be still, the better to pick up telepathic PingZ! from fellow passengers. Alas, I never have.

I have no idea why the Universe wanted to tell me yesterday, A great pilot can change sail even when his canvas is rent.

But apparently, it did. So, it must mean something, right?

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Other than that, I had a pleasant enough, though extremely solitary, day yesterday.

Combination of sunshine & small amounts of cannabis seems to be keeping me emotionally balanced.

Trump's popularity is plummeting. If you look at the Daily Mail headlines as indicators—even I have given up reading the damn thing—they have backed down from All MAGALand! All the Time! and are now back to pedo step-Moms, Ozempic, Blake Lively (that cannot be her real name, can it?) and all the rest of their regular programming the way God intended.

I still feel as though I'm missing a critical piece of information, though.