Mallory's Camera

Very long, intricately plotted dream, which I mostly can’t remember except that it involved some sort of elaborate heist, a merry caper á la those old Cary Grant/Audrey Hepburn movies.

But at the end, I looked up at the sky at the moon—and the moon looked like a perfectly fried egg!!!!

Which, I know, sounds prosaic except, in the dream, this moon was a thing of rare, unparalleled beauty…

###

Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, I’d say we are roughly six months away—if that—from all of Europe becoming engulfed in the Ukraine War, which will make it officially World War III.

Plus, some doofus California congresscritter—a Democrat, if that matters—has introduced legislation regulating Artificial Intelligence. The punchline: The legislation was written by ChatGBT.

So, you know. Humanity is trying its very, very hardest to become extinct.

I’m split between scrambling to find a bullhorn through which I can bellow, Get away from that cliff, you morons! and standing on the sidelines snickering, Try harder!!!

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After clear skies at dawn, yesterday rapidly devolved into what the brilliant rebeccmeister has dubbed “the slop.”

Not cold. But so grey, so uninviting with that 10 mph wind torturing the tops of the bare trees, that I could not motivate myself to go on that invigorating tromp even though I knew said tromp would make me feel a hundred times better.

So, instead, I bought my plane ticket to Guatemala.

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Flights to Guatemala are mostly an afterthought on the part of participating airlines. Like, you know, if I want to go to Guatemala, I should do the illegal migrant thing, right? Only in reverse! I should hop a Greyhound to El Paso and then hire a coyote to ferry me across the Rio Grande in the opposite direction of the fleeing migrant caravans! We can wave to each other in the middle of the river.

Flights to Guatemala tend to take off and arrive at inconvenient hours.

Since I do not want to arrive in Guatemala City at 3 am, it took some maneuvering and finessing to find flights that would actually get me to and from at a decent hour.

Those flights were considerably more expensive than the other flights, so by the time I was done booking, I was trembling and cold and reaching for what the brilliant lookfar calls “video nepenthe” (which, in yesterday’s case consisted of endless episodes of the original Law & Order.)

I wanted to let the boys know about my plans, which meant I had to have a tactful conversation with RTT: I know that since you’ve been laid off, money is an issue, so you may be having second thoughts about the trip. I’d be happy to help you with the plane ticket, and I know Ichabod would, too—

And this precipitated a longish conversation—

He is anxious.

He is depressed.

His erstwhile boss wants to bring him back but Americans For Truth, Justice, and Superman’s Way is scrambling to come up with the $$$ to fund his position, and meanwhile, a scuzzy roommate stiffed him on January rent (RTT’s name is on the lease—)

###

Over the course of my colorful working career, I was laid off twice from jobs I was very, very good at.

The first time was because Dan Okrent (may his hemorrhoids be bothering him this blustery morning) thought the Internet had no future.

The second time was because my boss Maria stopped schtupping the head of a then-powerful and celebrated international talent agency, and in retaliation, he pulled the plug on the division she was helming.

I can’t tell you how awful it feels to be laid off from a job you are very, very good at.

Time went on to prove that the two fuckheads who instigated my layoffs were wrong, wrong, wrong.

Time Inc and People Magazine were early, early Internet adopters, and I was working hard to allow them to take full advantage of that. I mean, I did a complete 50-page five-year plan!!! Instead, today, Time Inc and People Magazine are the flimsiest of scraps at the bottom of the bits-and-bytes waste bucket.

And say what you want about Maria—and I do!—she was absolutely, Steve-Jobs-level visionary, and all her whiteboard skying about the future of digital media has come to pass.

All this, by way of saying I knew exactly how RTT was feeling.

He was feeling bad.

###

I must have boundary issues.

Whenever my kids are feeling bad, I feel bad.

And yesterday, while I was talking to RTT, I felt terrible.

I Venmo-ed him money. It was the only tangible assurance of my affection that I figured would mean anything.

And then when I got off the phone, I did a job search for jobs similar to the one he got laid off from.

And what do you know? There are dozens and dozens of them! And they pay the Big Buck$$$.

But they all require people to know how to drive.

And they all require people with a college degree.

RTT is one class short of his degree. In these days of George Santos, you can no longer get away with saying you have a college degree if you don’t have a college degree. Even if you’re only one class short.

And he has absolutely, resolutely, refused to get his driving license—even though I used to offer and offer to pay for driving lessons and nag him ceaselessly about that one remaining chemistry class.

Self-sabotage on his part, in other words.

I know a lot about self-sabotage, too.

###

Anyway, it is frustrating and heartbreaking to see him so miserable when relatively EZ fixes are at hand.

But he is an adult.

You wish you could somehow pass your own hard-learned lessons to your children.

But you can’t.

Everyone has to make their own mistakes, apparently.