Mallory's Camera

Do I give a shit that an American contractor was killed by members of the Iraqi militia?

I do not.

I figure that’s one of the risks you take if you wanna be a mercenary when you grow up.

One of the few positive things one could say about Trump was that he saw no upside to an ongoing Middle East conflict.

But now, somehow, his ego has become involved. So, he’s revving up for WWIII.

President Spanky, I would like to submit that that shriveling you feel in your balls is actually a known side effect of all that Propecia you dump on your head! Yes, yes, it does cure male-pattern baldness but it also fucks with your virility and makes you grow man-titties!

The assassination of every last Iranian general on the planet is not gonna help you get it up again. Unless you stop using Propecia!

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If we wanna have panic attacks about Human Extinction Events, though, I think what’s going on in Australia right now is the far more likely scenario.

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Meanwhile, my little life continues to putter on, far from the shadow of the volcano. Temps rose into the high 40s yesterday, so I went for a five-mile tramp. I saw two red-tailed hawks:



You’ll have to take my word that they’re red-tailed hawks because you really can’t tell from this bad phone photo.

Also added another 1,000 words to the work in progress. The visit to the premies at Young’s Pier ate most of that though I did finally get the opportunity to introduce Rita La Roy who in another 20 years or so is gonna steal June’s second husband.

Here’s what Rita La Roy looked like in the 1940s at the height of her husband-stealing:



Kind of a hard face, no? Girl who’s seen a lot of the world from the vantage point of a pool of vomit on a bathroom floor. Or maybe I’m biased because, after all, Rita La Roy is a minor villainess.

Saw a rather adorable little fox in the woods yesterday. Maybe a vixen with a litter of pups nearby. Mangy-looking coat and out in mid-afternoon – which at first made me think, Rabies! But she or he moved well, and when I read up on foxes, I found out that though they’re crepuscular hunters, it’s not uncommon to see them out in the afternoon. Also, they molt in April.

The fox just curled up beneath a tree like any dog in a patch of sunlight. Too far away for a photograph.

Woke up this morning to another installment of winter. Except that this is actually more snow than we got all winter.



Spent the weekend working on the novel. But in such full-on Crisis of Faith mode that I wondered why I was working on the novel. Surely, it is no fucking good at all.

The best times writing – at least from the writerly point of view – is when one gets so totally caught up in the alternative reality that one is creating that some part of one’s brain is living it.

This weekend didn’t feel like that.

This weekend felt like mortaring bricks.

Were the bricks building anything at all?

There’s no feedback loops for projects like this and seemingly, they go on for-fuckin’-evah. Plus nobody reads anymore. It’s kinda like I’ve spent my life in service to a ruined god.

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Long conversation with Max who seems to be doing really well though “leave of absence” is not entirely off the table.

“I’ve been sad all this week,” I told him. “I finally realized, Right… My mother died this time of year. And Tom died this time of year.”

“Do people do that?” Max asked. “I mean associate people’s deaths with the particular time of year that they died?”

And I immediately realized: Right. It’s something old people do. Not young people.

Like being trapped in one’s very own special Ingmar Bergman Wild Strawberries snowglobe. Or somethin’.

So, it's official: I'm old!

More adorable pix of RTT auditioning for Entourage: The Syracuse Years:

So Reuben showed up for our ESL lesson yesterday – which was great since I haven’t seen him in something like three weeks. Been a busy time at the foi gras factory. He wanted to take me out to eat so I suggested Wegman’s.

What does it say about me, I wonder, that when the prospect of a free meal is dangled in front of me I pick cafeteria-style dining at the local park and shop?

Reuben was in deep torment and his English was definitely not as good as the last time I saw him, the effects of spending 18 hours a day inseminating ducks, seven days a week.

He’s explained the duck insemination process in lurid detail. I will not repeat it here.

The place he does his work is apparently filthy and the filth impacts the ducks. The floor, for example, often has standing water so the humidity in the air makes it touch for the egg shells to hatch.

“Tough situation,” I said, speaking slowly, loudly and clearly. “You have two problems. One is that your business is in the heart of the Animal Rights kingdom and if the locals find out that you are mistreating animals, they will shut the business down. Second, is that you are producing food under unclean conditions which means it’s a potential source of disease. If public health inspectors get wind of that, they will shut you down.”

“I tell my cousin that,” Reuben said miserably. “He laughs. He say business is good for five more years. After that, he don’t care.”

His cousin is either the manager or the owner of the business – after nine months of learning far more about foi gras production than I ever wanted to know, I still haven’t figured out which.

“Not a good way to run a business,” I said. “Businesses should be sustainable.”

“Sustainable?”

Not quite a buzz phrase. But I honestly didn’t know how to explain it.

“My cousin, he don’t care about the right way to do things,” Reuben said. “He care about fancy car, good clothes.”

“But you care.”

“I care.” Reuben shot me a wry smile.

“You’re so smart, Reuben,” I said. “You know if your English was better, you could get a job as a manager. And then you could change the way things are done. But now, you know. Do you understand everything I say to you?"

“Yes,” he said.

“But I only understand 70 percent of what you say to me. And that’s because I’ve learned to understand your accent. I think most people would understand much less. Have you still been listening to those English tapes?”

“No time,” he said wearily. “All the time, my cousin say, ‘More ducks, more ducks!’”

“How long do you work every day?”

He shrugged. “Twelve hour. Fourteen hour.”

“You know the way to get people to change the way they do things? You go to them and say, This will save you money. Do that and they’ll listen to you.”

Reuben regarded me with a half smile. “You are very honest. And very smart. I appreciate that about you.”

“I am very smart,” I agreed merrily. “Fat lot of good it’s ever done me.”

Reuben reached over and patted me very tenderly on the arm.

###

Back in Freeville, I took Mr. Milo for his final walk of the day. There’s still some light at 8pm but the late summer smell is everywhere. All summer long the stalks of some plant have been inching upward in the huge field in front of my house, and now I see that they’re goldenrod, ten thousand goldenrod, amassed for summer’s last hurrah. Everywhere plants are berrying – the wild grapes are purple, that honeysuckle-like flower that bloomed in May is thick with red fruit. Besides the goldenrod, summer’s last flowers are chickory, Dutchmen’s breeches and the delicate cranebill. I haven’t seen the Beave for weeks and weeks; a heron seems to have taken over the old dams, and it startles me to see him, I’m so used to thinking of herons as ocean birds –

I can appreciate the progression of the seasons on an intellectual level, but I am so not, not, not looking forward to another winter.