Mallory's Camera

I was hiking around the Vanderbilt estate in a mental state that wobbled somewhere between self-pity and an over-appreciation for dead plants.

I was listening to Ford Maddox Ford’s very awful Parade’s End. In his day—100 years ago—Ford Maddox Ford was considered modern, maybe the equivalent to someone like David Foster Wallace today.

That’s really difficult for me to wrap my head around. You can practically see the crumbling red bindings of those moldering volumes when you listen to his prose, hear the flutter of the moths as they land on some particularly fruity constellation of coy adjectives.

But I needed to listen to something to keep myself marching around. And I don’t do James Patterson (the library’s only other listenable choice.)

Hiking in the snow! Good for you but never fun!

Then B texted: Luke Perry’s dead.

And why should you imagine I care? I thought grumpily.

But eventually, I texted back, sparking an hour-long exchange about Beverly Hills 90210, the Rise and Fall of Western Culture, and death—my three favorite topics!

Maybe the deal he made with the Devil to snag that 90210 role finally came through, I texted.

There IS that possibility, B texted. Those seven-year extensions DO eventually run out.

And this is why I can’t quit B entirely: It’s like having the Algonquin Roundtable in my very own iPhone!

###

Anyway, it’s true that the next six weeks or so will probably be a bit of a slog. I need to get serious about revenue generation. I need to continue acting like a grownup about other practical matters.

Neither of those prospects fills me with anticipatory joy, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do, blab la bla.

I worry, of course, that revenue generation will slake my creative edge.

But the truth is that when I set aside whole days to indulge in my creative edge, I’m seldom very productive.

I work best when I work in the margins. When I’m stealing time from something else I oughta be doing.

###

In the evening, I watched Michael Moore’s Faherenheit 11/9.

I watched it because my admiration for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez grows bigger every day, and he includes some snippets from her 2018 campaign.

I get that Moore is a propagandist and that all propaganda is bad—whether it’s propaganda that plays to your own biases or propaganda that advocates on behalf of the eeee-vil people who disagree with you.

So. Where’s that salt shaker again?

Nevertheless, parts of this movie are really chilling. Particularly the parts that deal with the Flint water crisis. Moore grew up in Flint, so one has to assume he knows what he’s talking about here.

No terrorist organization has figured out how to poison an entire city, Moore points out. It took the Michigan Republican Party to pull that off.

Indeed.