Mallory's Camera

Went over the bridge to poke around in the Hyde Park garden yesterday.

Grass clippings seem to be doing their job of keeping the weeds down, plus my lettuce is harvestable. I took home enough of it to keep me in salads for the rest of the week:





Also, most mysteriously, a California Golden Poppy had popped up out of nowhere, and this made me very happy because it made me think I might figure out a way to get back to California one of these days. The augers just keep coming!



Afterwards, I toddled off to visit with Belinda.

We talked about the Israel/Iran situation.

"But Hamas!" she said. "It's a terrorist organization!"

I shrugged. "How do you define 'terrorist'? A political organization that uses violence & fear to achieve political ends?"

She nodded vigerously. "Yeah! That!"

"Well, by that definition, Israel is a terrorist organization."

She stared at me, shocked.

"Here's the thing. For hundreds of years, the people who eventually coalesced to form the nation state of Israel were under Ottoman Turk rule. And then for 30 years, it was a British protectorate. And during that entire time, any organization that lobbied for sovereignty or self-rule for the area was outlawed and so naturally turned to violence to achieve its ends.

"It gets complicated, of course, because the majority of Israelis today are descendants of Ashkenazis who migrated after World War II.

"Still. If you look at the history of the area—the future Israelis were once in exactly the same position as the people of Gaza. That should give them—well. Not sympathy for Hamas. But at least an understanding of why Hamas might seem attractive. And that understanding is key to defusing Hamas's attractiveness.

"Instead, they are acting exactly like the Ottomans & the Brits who opppressed them—"

I could see the rusty wheels start turning in Belinda's head.

Whether or not she ends up agreeing with me is irrelevant.

But I think people need to get into the habit of doing heavy mental lifting on their own.

###

Then we toddled off to the movies!

We saw Materialists. I was curious about Celine Song's follow-up to Past Lives.

Materialists is pretty awful.

But you know, the Hyde Park Roosevelt Theater has stale Raisinettes! And heated recliners. So, I had a good time.

Eighty-five-year-old Tom Gallagher (not his real name) looked just like what Robert DeNiro might have looked like had DeNiro spent 50 years as a dairy farmer in upstate New York & then, when he hit 65, given the farm away to his son and started driving a school bus.

Salt of the earth. Really nice guy.

Unremarkable tax return on the surface...

Just a W2 from the school bus company, a social security benefit statement, and $14.62 from the Aren't-You-Glad-You-Live-Here-&-Not-There Federal Credit Union.

Except...

That social security benefit statement was wayyyy whack.

Tom made $20,000 more from social security in 2024 than he did in 2023, which is just not possible, and also, they were taking out an ungodly amount of money for his Medicare benefits—also not possible unless his other income amounted to $400,000 or higher. Which it didn't.

Someone needed to straighten out this mess for him. Before the end of the fiscal year when presumably Elon Musk will be closing all social security offices.

And there was something else.

Tom fished out a bunch of envelopes with lawyers' names on them.

In 2024, Tom paid $15,000 to discharge a debt—

"They told me the Ulster County Sheriff was ready to serve me with papers—"

I frowned. "What was this debt?"

A second mortgage on a house he once owned. Under the terms of the divorce agreement, his X-wife was responsible for paying off that debt. After all, she got the house. But she'd defaulted on the loan in 2010, and since the loan had first been made in the early aughts while they were married, he had cosigned—

I frowned again. "In 2010? But they had no authority to go after you for this. After seven years, creditors can no longer take legal actions to compel you to pay off the debt—"

"But they told me the sheriff was coming after me—"

Business as usual for predatory collection agencies who buy the original debt at half a cent on the dollar and then partner with crooked lawyers.

I was appalled: This was elder abuse, pure & simple.

Not only had these vultures managed to extract $15,000 from this guy—who clearly was not living high off the hog—but in 2026, they would send him a 1099-C for $104,000, the amount remaining on the defaulted mortgage. And since the IRS counts the amount of discharged debts as income, Tom would get taxed on $104,000. Not good.

"You know, I've lived a good life," Tom said suddenly. He smiled at me. "I really have. It's a beautiful world, and I've been very happy in it."

I wanted to weep.

I excused myself from Tom & his tax documents to go & talk to Patty.

Tom lives down the street from Patty. Patty is the very cheerful greeter who checks TaxBwana clients in before they get assigned to the various tax preparers. Tom was here because Patty had chatted TaxBwana up to him.

"Do you know his kids?" I asked.

"Danny? Oh, yeah, sure. Danny is concerned—Tom's fading very fast. But you know, Tom's feisty. Wants to remain independent."

I explained the situation & added, "Somebody's got to report this to the Ulster County Office of the Aging. I don't know whether they can get him his money back, but it's fraud. He's a victim. And somebody really should follow up with social security—"

Patty said she'd do both. And talk to the son.

Patty is very neighborly.

###

My second clients of the day were a retired correctional officer & his wife. As I've written before, prisons are what pass for industry in this part of the world.

Benjamin Buford (not his real name) was a preternaturally young-looking 70-year-old. Nary a wrinkle or a sag, blazing blue eyes, facial expression etched in permanent disgust. Much of that disgust aimed at his wife who was kind of silly & frowsy and looked as though she was 15 years older than her husband—though they were, in fact, the same age.

He left for an appointment after half an hour.

I continued working on their returns & started drawing her out—which is something I like to do. I love narrative! Any narrative! All narrative.

She told me what it was like growing up in the Wallkill Valley & at first, it was quite charming, stories about the cows, the chickens, the apple orchards, the river where frogs harrumphed & lazy fish lolled under rocks. Summer evenings where kids played stickball & a million fireflies flamed, flickered, and flamed again.

But then she began complaining. Things were so different now. Her voice dropped confidentially. So many black people. So many people speaking languages other than English. So many Jews.

She leaned across the table. "But Trump's gonna change all that."

O-kay!!!

Good to know.

I cried in the car all the way home.

This is all too much for me. The center is not holding, and I have no glue.



Once home, I rewatched Anora & liked it just as much the second time.

This time, since I knew the plot, I focused on the thematic underpinnings, what makes this script a brilliant script. The script is online.

There's a heavy—though subtle—mythological overlay.

For example: Ani is Persephone. That becomes obvious once Igor tells Ani that her real name, Anora, means "pomegranate" & "light"—pomegranates are Persephone's fruit, and once Persephone eats six pomegranate seeds, she is forever bound to the underworld where she must spend six months every year.

Another example with mythic resonance: Ani & Igor both love their Russian grandmothers, benign Baba Yagas—or are they benign? We really don't know.

###

The actual rom-com part of Anora's script is not Ani & Vanya at all; it's Ani & Igor, the softspoken hitman who would rather be doing anything in the world other than breaking open the candy jars at the actually very famous Williams Candy on Surf Avenue in Coney Island.

Igor tries to rescue his name!

IGOR
I like Anora.

Ani turns and looks at him with a “WTF” face.

IGOR (CONT'D)
The name. Anora.
(beat)
The name. More than Ani.

She turns back to face forward.

ANI
Says the fuck head named Igor.
(beat)
Fucking... Igor.

IGOR
Igor means warrior. It's a good
name.

ANI
Yeah? Igor means hunchback weirdo
you, fucking clown. Can you shut
the fuck up, please?

—and in the very last part of the film, after Igor gives Ani back the engagement ring, and she initiates sex with him, it is Igor who catalyzes Ani's breakdown by moving to kiss her.

A kiss is a type of emotional intimacy in a way that a fuck only sometimes is. No one else in the film has wanted emotional intimacy from Ani—not the patrons in the club where she dances (desires aptly cataloged in the opening collage), certainly not Vanya whom she marries in an irrational moment because not-so-deep down inside, Ani is a little girl who believes in fairy tales. (Note that she wants to spend her honeymoon at DisneyWorld in a suite designed for Disney princesses.)

Igor sees & understands Ani.

It's clear, though, that Ani wants neither to be seen or understood: She begins to slap and punch Igor and finally collapses on top of him, crying. He holds her while she cries. The crying scene breaks off after about two seconds, and the movie ends with only the sounds of the windshield wipers underlying the credits—an extraordinary bit of film-editing, that one, because in the actual script, there is more dialogue that thankfully didn't find its way into the movie.

Ani reminds me a great deal of June Miller, the protagonist of my Work in Progress.

###

Anyway.

Today, I must Remunerate, and tonight, the Girl Squad is demanding my presence. I blew them off twice last week. It's really hard for me to focus on anything right now other than how quickly the world is falling apart. And that doesn't make for good bar chat.

Staggered home after TaxBwana on Monday so aggrieved over the state of the world that I immediately began researching how to acquire an industrial-sized tank of helium.

Inhaling helium is really the most painless (& therefore practical) way of killing oneself.

Researching painless ways of killing myself is something I do—well: not often. But often enough.

Am I depressed when I do it? I wouldn’t know: I am completely disengaged from my own emotions, a veritable Queen of Dissociation. What I feel on a day-to-day level is mostly ironic detachment, punctuated by bursts of affection for specific individuals and a general admiration for anyone who fights the power. Small acts of gallantry move me to tears.

Fortunately for me, my many idylls with psychedelia early in life created a kind of personality split so that one part of my psyche is always playing Nanny to the other parts of my personality.

And the Nanny part of my personality intoned in a brisk, no-nonsense voice: Stop this foolishness! Distract yourself! Watch a movie!

So I watched Nosferatu.



Nosferatu is an exceedingly strange movie, but it fit the bill because however awful life under a Trump presidency is here in the US of Ay circa 2025, life in the imaginary German city of Wisborg circa 1830, under siege by the nightmarish Count Orlok, is far more terrible, so you know—count your blessings, girlfriend!

At its heart, Nosferatu is a film about the Victorian suppression of female sexual desire. Its heroine Ellen is described as “unusually receptive” (or words to that effect) and such a lonely child that early in life, she psychically summons an incubus—the vampire Count Orlok. (The word “Nosferatu” is a transliteration of the archaic Romanian word “Nesuferitu” meaning “he who is offensive”—& if you squint, you can see the Latin there.)

The director Robert Eggers chooses to impose Victorian attitudes & explanations onto Ellen’s intense sensuality, & that is such an interesting choice because, of course, with a different set of attitudes, the plot becomes Twilight.

The acting, the art direction, the cinematography are all superb—darkness is almost another character in the film. And the ending—Ellen literally consumed by love and the vampire dying in her arms as for the first time, sunlight breaks through the dark Gothic gloom of the German city, is a fascinating take on a particular type of obsessive sexual love that, yes, I have experienced personally, and yes, is utterly transformative & ego-annihilating.

###

Then yesterday, I staved off the blues by working out more intensely than usual, so I was awash with sunshiney endorphins all the live-long day!

It would be great if I could work out every day, but I can’t because I’m old & I need those refractory periods, and anyway, I have stuff to do—like in 15 minutes, I must scuttle off for more TaxBwana-ing.