Mallory's Camera

It was great seeing RTT, but I could tell I wasn't in prime Road Trip mode in Ithaca because I kept seeing things in terms of obstacles.

Not Alynn invited us to dinner, how fabulous is that.

But Alynn invited us to dinner. Fuck! That means I'm gonna have to drive in the dark and figure out the parking situation in Collegetown in the dark, and —

I wasn't game in other words. I kept seeing everything as a dreary algorithm with onerous conditions.

In fact, I think you could legitimately call it borderline depression, a headspace that's been following me around since the end of the Schlock gig. Either borderline depression or an actual illness, because I have so little physical energy. Do I have cancer? Lyme disease? Long COVID? Anemia? I keep thinking, If only I could sleep for 12 hours, sleep and dream, it would all be okay, that nascient headache always threatening to bloom just behind my eyes would finally go away...

Brain fog seems to lift to some extent when it's sunny & warm out, which inclines me to think it's primarily psychological (though, of course, psyche and soma do not have a clear demarcation). It rained practically the entire time I was in Ithaca. And it was cold. I didn't pack for rain & cold! Maybe that's why I felt so Not Good.



I like Alynn, and I did have dinner with her one-on-one first night I was there at a not-terrible Mexican restaurant. (Good Mexican food is difficult to come by in New York state outside the City.) She is very smart, blunt, no-nonsense. When I first met her, she was the suffer-no-fools head of the farm-to-table lunch program at RTT's high school, New Roots. I was a parent, so one of the fools by default! Now she's New Roots' operational head, and since RTT dragged me over to her house on Thanksgiving, we are thick as thieves. She was really kind to me that night, and I was in baaaaaad shape, so her kindness was deeply appreciated.

We did the things that would have resulted in bonding had I been in a better headspace. Parsed romantic histories, talked about our kids, shared confidences about our favorite drugs. But I was going through the motions. Alynn was great, the food was great, but I didn't want to be there—although if you'd quizzed me, I couldn't have told you where I did want to be.

In penance for my dissociative state, I picked up the tab for dinner.



RTT is as good as I've ever seen him. The apartment looks great, which I suspect may be due to the domestic talents of new roomie Willow, whom I liked enormously. With three humans, two dogs, one cat, and one snake, it is now the Peaceable Kingdom: Always someone to cuddle! RTT continues to have lots of fun at his Personal Best day job and is taking his City Council responsibilities very seriously.

I went to his weekly City Council meeting. Issue under discussion: Cement spalling at one of the city-owned parking garages that services Ithaca's downtown. Cement has a half-life, and the garage is more than 50 years old. It's very valuable property that could be repurposed in a hundred interesting ways, but the business community wants those parking spaces. Retrofitting the garage would take $3 million, and the repair wouldn't last for more than five years. What should the City of Ithaca do?

It's amazing to me that my kid has a say in that decision.

I'm proud of him!

He's so charismatic! And he's of a generation that, for the most part, is politically disaffected, so he's an excellent role model for his cohort. All politics are local politics!

Interesting sidebar: The mayor is Justine's boyfriend...

When you're in a karass, you're in a karass.

Mostly, I keep depression at bay through counseling myself, Resilience!

Life has always been a slog for the majority of souls incarnated upon this planet, and happiness (or at least contentment) comes from figuring out ways to put a positive spin on that slog. When the sun rises over that garbage dump, see the luminescent peach-colored sky, not the rotting bags of trash!

Yesterday, though, I kinda lost the thread on that one, and ended up feeling quite miserable throughout the day.

Not entirely sure what was up with that.

I put in four hours at the Schlock office in Montgomery, a creepy little village in Orange County, New York, filled with the type of people who eat at Latino food trucks but plaster their own Ford F-150s with "I Stand With ICE” and “Report and Deport” bumper stickers. Trump ran on mass deportations, and Orange County is a Trump stronghold. It's no good telling myself that most Americans don't vote, that only 22.7% of eligible American voters supported Trump. Trump won, so mass deportations are the will of the people.

While I was at the Montgomery office, an ICE thug shot a Minneapolis woman three times in the face. She was exercising her First Amendment right to bear witness. She died.

Here's the video:

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1Jqr3UTSqn/

The most horrifying thing about this video actually is not the video but Trump's explanation of the incident: The woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense.

This is very obviously not the case, and so, we are left once more regretting that George Orwell evidently is the 21st century's Nostradamus: The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

Final Dickensian touch: The surname of the woman who got shot was "Good".

Maybe that's what depressed me yesterday. Straw + camel's back. I dunno.

Anyway, when I came back to the house from Montgomery, I was too depressed to do a goddamn thing.

I mean, I was too depressed to watch reality TV, even! And that is saying something.

###

Sleep knits the raveled sleeve of care, etc, etc, so this morning I am back in the saddle, riding that To Do list.

Miraculously, the mental logjam broke, and I have been generating that 1,000-words-a-day + on the Work in Progress with little or no effort. I have no idea whether it's any good or not. My present mood inclines me to think not. But I persevere.

Grazia is currently in the ICU being oriented to the care of COVID patients by cowgirl Debbie Reynolds. (Brian actually had a girlfriend named Debbie Reynolds, and I just couldn't resist.) We need a couple of scenes to establish banter and bonding, & then I will kill off Debbie Reynolds so that Grazia can have her breakdown. I also have to work in Grazia's growing familiarity with the New Millennium Kingdom folk, not sympathy exactly, more Sure, what the fuck as her sense of the permissible breaks down. Needs to have one more phone conversation with Neal, too: And how are your Evangenitals doing anyway?

I have another 1 million pages of tax code to memorize. Depreciation and capital loss carryover stuff, which was out of scope for me when I was a TaxBwana.

There's Remuneration, too!

And shortly, I will be toddling off to the gym.

Still. I'm lonely.

I keep in touch with the People Who Matter through phone, text, & email, but I crave real-time banter. And discounting Neighbor Ed—a champion banterer but unreliable for various reasons—I live 100 miles away from anyone who can provide good banter.

Life seems pointless & grim.

It's on me to change that.

But my recontextualizing superpower appears to be on hiatus.

###

Here's a happy-making photo, though:

Flavia sent me the perfect solstice sunrise:



And RTT got sworn in this morning:

Now that a million people are due to exodus NYC, I'm gonna get my ass a brownstone in the Village, bay-bee!

(Yes, that really is the cover of the New York Post this morning.)

###

RTT won!!!!



Spanberger (Virginia governor) and Sherill (New Jersey governor) won!!!!

Adrienne & Joey did not win, but Adrienne only lost by 45 votes, which, considering that she ran in deepest, darkest Trumplandia, I rather think is a win of sorts. This underscores the importance of voting in local elections!!! You may think positions like School Board member & Village Clerk are unimportant. They're not! They're the pebbles you use to build bigger political alliances.

###

Anyway. I didn't get nearly enough work done yesterday on account of I had to eat half a box of Ritz Peanut Butter Bits and watch Selling Sunset (which makes The Real Housewives look like the Ted Talk on spacetime curvature Albert Einstein delivered to the seraphin upon his ascension into Heaven).

So, now I better get on the stick and start cranking out that Remunerative prose 'cause I'm gonna need to come up with a down payment for that Village brownstone.

RTT got a terrific write-up in The Ithaca Voice.

And I have been scribbling, Remunerating, & avoiding Icky as much as I possibly can.

I'm isolated but not unhappy about it. It's as though the characters in my head are providing me with as much company as I could possibly need. I don't know whether that's creative inspiration or mental dysfunction. Maybe a little of both?

The Patrizia-torium is messy & disorganized, and I should probably do something about that because as Without, so Within.

Back from Ithaca.

I liked Justine, Nelson, Joannah, & Caitlyn—the residents of the co-op house.

And they liked me!

In fact, the three women and I had a pretty remarkable conversation, sitting out on the back porch overlooking the beautiful flower garden (wild flowers, echinacea and black-eyed Susans), sipping lemon water. We talked about conflict resolution and it evolved into a discussion of a highly toxic situation Joannah has been involved with at her chiropractic school where a horrible instructor had taken an extreme dislike to her and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it except stay calm & resolute & stay the course.

Of the three women, I liked Justine, the Cornell professor, best because she, too, has the Bread & Puppets Why Cheap Art Manifesto hanging in her bedroom:



But Joannah has this absolutely seraphic quality that I can't recall ever coming across before. If there are angels who occasionally have business dealings on earth, honestly, they'd manifest like Joannah.

She also has a rare blood cancer that requires monthly interferon infusions on a monthly basis. She walks with death. Literally. Maybe that accounts for her otherworldliness.

"I have a hard time with conflicts," I said. And explained that usually I let conflicts build until they reach some kind of critical mass & I can explode in anger.

"But I'm working on it," I added.

They were all very bemused by this. Why? they wanted to know. Was it because I was afraid people would stop liking me? Was it because I thought what was upsetting me was too ridiculous?

No, I said. It was because I thought the people who were upsetting me wouldn't care that they were upsetting me, that either they would laugh at me, or I would be invisible. Anger gave me the ballistic force to make sure I'd be taken seriously and that I'd be seen.

"Ah, childhood traumas," Joannah said gravely & gently.

###

At the end of the conversation—it went on for an hour and a half—Joannah said, "It's sort of like the future me is looking at the four of us and saying, Yes, we belong together."

And we embraced.

BUT there is a sticking point, and this is it: Nelson is somewhat allergic to cats.

I told him there is an anti-allergenic cat food that is quite successful. RTT, who is allergic to cats, uses it with the kitten he adopted a month ago and reports he is now completely asymptomatic:



And if that didn't work, I'd rehome the kiskas.

"I'll think about it," Nelson told me with a sweet smile.

And I believe he will.

###

Molly & Mabel, though, would actually be very difficult to rehome.

They are such mistrustful kiskas! They hiss at strangers! Not because they are aggressive, but because they scare so easily.

It's obvious they love me in their idiocyncratic kiska way, but occasionally, they will still hiss at me. They must have been abused or otherwise traumatized as young cats.

I'm fond of them.

I certainly don't love them the way I loved Sybyl or Rutger.

But I feel very strongly that the Universe assigned me to be their Protector, and it's a covenant I can't voluntarily break.

So!

What will be will be.

("But you did say you would rehome them if it doesn't work," said Joannah frowning slightly. I think she will advocate on my behalf.)

###

There's a lot more to write about, including the immensely beautiful Airbnb I stayed in and the absolute panic attack I worked my way into on the drive up to Ithaca.

I texted the BoyZ: House interview is tomorrow morning & I am having an anxiety attack a la “I’m such a loser, so who would want to live with ME?” Hopefully my self-esteem returns by tomorrow—

—and the two BoyZ offered reassurance in typically characteristic ways:

Ichabod: Don’t worry about being a loser. I think if this person was going to think you were a loser, they would already and you wouldn’t be going to visit. Also if she thinks you’re a loser it’s not where you want to live anyway so better get that out of the way.

RTT: Don’t be a pussy mom. You got this big dawg. You’re gonna come in there and impress her so much she questions whether SHE belongs there

But I have a huge amount to accomplish today and have already wasted too much time writing.

Birthday trip was fabulous.

Rendezvoused with the BoyZ on Stone Street, which, back in 1658, became the first cobblestoned avenue in New Amsterdam:



Had dinner at a Cuban salsa bar & RTT paid! (An exciting new development. 😀) I was expecting the food to be touristy & pedestrian, but in fact, it was very tasty:



Our fourth at table was Brian, Madeleine's very pleasant BF. (Madeleine herself is in Tustin.)

Brian was exceedingly impressed that I play D&D! Amusingly so. I could have told him, Why, yes, I did cure cancer, and last year when I was in Oslo accepting the Nobel Prize for literature... and still the most impressive thing about me would be that I play D&D!

After dinner, we went to NYC's hottest production, Life and Trust, which is an immersive event that takes place in a bank, one block away from Wall Street. The bank was originally built in 1931—a bad time for building banks—and subsequently overlaid by a 59-story skyscraper so that the original bank is now underground.

Now, I ❤️LUV❤️ immersive events because they combine all the best elements of theater and museums.

And Life and Trust did not disappoint—although I will say my ❤️LUV❤️ was not entirely unreserved.



Life and Trust centers on a Faustian deal. The action itself takes place on October 23, 1929—the day before the stock market crash that launched the Great Depression.

At some indeterminate point in the past, a man named J.G. Conway sells his soul to the devil in exchange for a recipe for some kind of magical green and highly addictive liquid, which he then mass markets as cough medicine. (This segued into a private Family Joke: I have been telling the BoyZ since they were kids that they were heirs to the DiLucchio Cough Drop Millions.)

Then, in the only spoken part of the show, the devil invites the paying audience to travel back into the Past and watch Bad Things transpire.

Since the paying audience are wraiths in that past, we had to wear these incredibly uncomfortable masks. Mine gave me a headache! Plus it was impossible for me to fit my glasses under it! Plus it was really fuckin' hot and my face sweated buckets!

We also had to do an incredible amount of running around—my FitBit logged more than 10,000 steps—including up and down an incredible number of stairs. My 73-year-old body was barely up to the challenge. (Pretend Nazis are chasing you, I counseled myself at the two-and-a-half hour mark.)

###

The sets were unbelievably wonderful! Bedrooms, parlors, business offices, bank vaults, Dr. Caligari-like labs filled with vials of sinister green liquid & Weird Science specimens, ballrooms, secret gardens, a forest, a lake, a livery stable, a movie theater, a burlesque stage, a boxing ring! All of them meticulously designed and outfitted in the most amazing detail. Dreamlike! You could pick every object up and study it. You could sit in the chairs and lie in the beds. You could work out with the boxing bag! This was my favorite part.

###

I don't know how many characters there were that you could follow around. Dozens & dozens. J.G. Conway. His sister (who is having a Lesbian affair with her maid.) A mad scientist. Many Bohemians, bankers, politicians. A tarot card reader. Several clowns. Cameo appearances from Gilded Age celebrities like Stanford White and Evelyn Nesbit. Mephisto and his various demonic adjutants.

But here's the thing: The characters didn't talk. They danced.

And I'm not that into dance.

And the dance was pretty repetitive. I mean, none of the individual Life and Trust characters had an individual mode of dancing that distinguished their unique personalities or backstories. It was all your basic Martha Graham arm-flinging and back-bending.

And I got—well. Bored. Philistine that I am.

###

Our airbnb was in Brooklyn, and Ichabod had to go back to Brian-and-Madeleine's place in Queens to pick up a suitcase he'd left there (long story), so RTT and I subway-ed alone and got into the Customary Big Fight ('nother long story), which we always seem to get into at least once on every family vacay.

I always forget that as innocuous & defenseless as I seem to myself, in RTT's eyes, I am the Loch Ness Monster, dripping with the kind of deep-water archetypal power that only parents possess!

Anyway.

We resolved the fight, but before we did, we were treated to one of those awful late-night-NYC-subway vignettes that are so massively depressing—namely a homeless guy, crawling with lice, sprawled on one of the hard, fused-plastic subway seats, ostensibly trying to sleep but unable to sleep—the subway car was brightly lit—so he reached down into the crotch of his pants and began to masturbate—

"How's that for immersive theater?" I murmured to RTT.

And we began to laugh.

This guy was once somebody's little pink innocent baby, I reminded myself.

But it was a hard sell.

###

RTT had to leave at the crack of dawn to accept the Working Families Party endorsement back in Ithaca on the Day itself. It meant so much to me that he went to all that trouble to make the trip down for such a short time!

"What do you want to do on your birthday?" Ichabod asked.

What I wanted to do on my birthday was visit the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, which is a touchstone in my personal mythology, a place where I spent many happy, happy hours when I was a kid.

So, that was what we did.









We had lunch at a Jamaican restaurant that had the best mac 'n' cheese I have ever tasted. It had a texture like kugel! Except... It was mac 'n' cheese!



And absolutely amazing banana pudding ice cream at the Ample Hills Creamery.

And then went back to the airbnb and watched all six episodes of the just-dropped seventh season of Black Mirror.

###

Yesterday was hard, hard, hard because saying good-bye to my kids is always so hard. I love them both so much! Not just because they're my kids but because of the people they are. It's like when I'm with them, the world is in color.

There are other people who turn on color for me, too (one or two of whom may actually be reading this.) But I have to say, most of the time, I float in a world that, if not exactly grey, is deeply unsaturated.

And also—WT-fuckin'-F???—it was snowing in the quaint & scenic Hudson Valley! Hideous White Stuff From the Sky!!! I passed six accidents on the country roads as I wended my way home. The roads in Ulster County were unplowed and covered with about three inches of slippery slush. I drove with my knuckles in my mouth, absolutely convinced I was gonna end up in a ditch.

But I didn't.

And today, I have an enormous amount of work to do and very little interest in doing any of it.

What else is new?

Busy, busy, busy.

Also anxious, anxious, anxious.

###

I was doing Mrs. Baldoni's tax return when I snuck a peek at my email. Mrs. Baldoni (not her real name!) is a cheerful 97-year-old widow who was led into the TaxBwana sanctum by a caretaker. She was with it mentally but completely deaf. Her only sources of income were social security and interest on multiple bank accounts.

EZ/Peazy, thought I.

Except that each of the interest statements was for $15,000 or so, and no federal or state income tax payments had been set aside for any of them.

Wow! I thought. Interest is—what? At best, 4% of a total deposit? Who keeps that much cash around in a time of inflation?

I was not about to give financial advice to a 97-year-old woman with $750,000 sitting around in various bank accounts, though. No, no, no, no! She should be giving financial advice to me!

I'd just delivered the bad news about the accumulated tax liability—a hefty sum—which I was relying on the companion to relay to Mrs. Baldoni.

My phone pinged: New email!

I looked: Icky sending me January's electric bill, which, according to Central Hudson, was in excess of $1,000.

WTFUCK???

Interestingly, I did not freak out.

Instead, I completed Mrs. Baldoni's return and then dashed off an email to Icky, typing very clumsily because my phone has an itty-bitty keyboard & my fingers are quite big.

We need to sit down and have a conversation about this, I wrote. If the high electricity bill does not represent a mistake on Central Hudson’s part, then it represents the use of the space heater after you did not order heating oil in a timely manner. I do not want to be penalized for your error – – particularly as next month’s electric bill will also reflect this.

If the bill was accurate, my part of that conversation was going to be, Fuck you, I am taking you to court.

As it turned out, the Central Hudson bill was not accurate: Central Hudson had tacked on 1,000 additional kilowat hours. This was rectified.

But the incident did bring to the forefront how deeply I dislike this guy.

I do like my space! And he's only up here for 10 days out of every month.

Still, I really do need to think about not being here next winter.

Sigh...

###

Other than that... I spent the morning—which I should have devoted to Remuneration—working on Adrienne's campaign. There are a lot of tedious details that need to be CC'd and BC'd to God knows who. It's massively time-consuming.

Also, RTT did get the Working Families Party endorsement, which practically makes him a shoo-in for the Ithaca City Council seat.

We are quite the political little family!

At least, we are not fulminating in futile rage over Trump. We are trying to do something constructive.

And it's Max's birthday today! I could not love him more or be prouder of the person he is and what he's accomplished.



Shortly, I am scampering off for lunch with Belinda, my Trump-loving pal.

And after that, I must get my windshield wipers replaced.

But when I get back from that, I must sit down & make some money.

I slept very, very poorly on account of reading this analysis from the redoubtable Heather Cox Richardson on NIH cuts, which will result in a loss of millions and millions for universities all across the nation, which in turn will have a trickle-down effect on college towns.

RTT lives in a college town—Ithaca.

His main gig right now is bartending & managing a popular brewery.

Breweries and bars depend upon disposable income, and there won’t be any disposable income in Ithaca in another year, and I am frightened to death for RTT—though he’s young & male & charismatic, and so has better chances of landing on his feet than many other people in that situation.

I am very, very scared right now.

I don’t know what to do about that fear because it’s not a psychological issue—it’s a rational response to the danger that’s rising slowly but implacably all around me. Exactly like flood water.



Meanwhile, I met up with the fabulous BB yesterday, & we bickered & chatted companionably about shoes and ships and sealing-wax and cabbages and kings. A good time was had.

And in the evening, I chatted on the phone for about an hour with TaxBwana Linda. First time we’ve talked in a year or so. The first part of our conversation was very studied on both sides: Everything is good. My, how good it is!

But as the conversation progressed, we grew more honest—no, it is not good. She has a Swiss passport, & is making a trip to Switzerland after TaxBwana season ends, ostensibly to see relatives but really to check out the viability of moving there—

“I’m 68 years old, Patrizia. I don’t really want to pick up stakes and start all over again at this point in my life,” she said.

But she is afraid that her diplomatic corps pension may be in jeopardy.

As for me, I need to get serious about pursuing that Italian passport. And start studying Italian again on Duolingo.

Some good news: RTT’s political career continues apace. He is putting the cart in front of the horse here because the primary isn’t till April, and the actual election isn’t till next November:



But nonetheless, I find his promotional activities cheering.

###

Other cheery news: It stays light till 5:15 pm. But the weather remains daunting. Like icy rain is forecast for today—exact timing uncertain—and I’m thinking I don’t want to drive to the gym over back country roads frozen over with half an inch of black ice.

###

Not very much sunny news otherwise. The news that Trump apparently hopes to build an immigration concentration camp on Guantanamo was entirely superseded by the Big D.C. Crash, which Trump blames on air controller hiring policies that encouraged dwarves to apply.

I. Kid. You. Not.

It is such a fucking shit show.

It dawned on me yesterday that Trump has attained global name recognition at a level probably unseen since Genghis Kahn, and that made me want to hand in my membership card in the human race.

###

I am relying on long phone calls & endless episodes of Law & Order for moral support.

After I walked off a cliff in 2009, my creditors went after me. I should have filed for bankruptcy, but I couldn’t afford a bankruptcy lawyer, and I knew I lacked the emotional resilience to organize a bankruptcy myself: Honestly, I would have killed myself.

So, instead, I took the advice of a seasoned circus lion tamer who’d been in the same situation a few years previously: If you can stick it out for seven years, it will all go away. That’s the length of time credit bureaus use to report that kind of debt.

The lion tamer was right!

And today, I have an excellent credit score.

But I essentially spent those seven years hiding out from dunning phone calls. Flinching every time my phone rang. Having nightmares about phone calls.

(I couldn’t ditch the phone entirely because RTT was a teenager & needed a way to contact me so I could rescue him when he got into trouble.)

But anyway, after 10 years, I no longer fear the phone, which is good because long phone conversations about movies (Tom) and descriptions of the Horrible Life Situations of People I Don’t Know (Ellen) are what’s getting me through this exceedingly bleak patch.

###

I wonder at what point the technocrats start moving to take Trump out & replace him with Vance?

The Trump fascists are still in a straight file behind him, but I’ve got to imagine the Independents who voted for him are rapidly becoming disillusioned. Trump’s ranting about the D.C. plane crash was very dementia-y.