Mallory's Camera

Whatever else you can say about the Wallkill Valley, this one thing is true: It is heartstoppingly beautiful, particularly in the spring when all the greens are tender and fresh, and the breeze carries the scent of stone fruit blossoms.

This weekend was the Gardiner Art Studio tour. Gardiner is suburban New Paltz, and New Paltz is a hippie preserve, where the last hippies roam free, practicing the ancient arts of organic farming, artisanal cheese-making, and handcrafting hideous tie-dye teeshirts. Please to note that in our rapidly technologically mutating world, anything over 20 years old is "ancient," particularly, or should I say, especially moi.

The Gardiner Art Studios are not in Gardiner but scattered along the backcountry roads that crisscross the plateau just below the Shawangunk Ridge. So, the tour basically gave me an excuse to explore the countryside. It was a gorgeous day. A bit cool, so the air had a prismatic quality.



The art was nothing to write home about. But, hey! It was art. Its creators poured their hopes, dreams, & fears into it. I would have bought it all for vast sums of money if I could.



I also spent time at the New Paltz Community Garden. There was a meeting for new gardeners. Technically, I'm not a new gardener. But after joining last year, I did nothing with my half plot after weeding out the five-foot tall nettles—first, there was a hot spell for two weeks where you would basically succumb to heat stroke after five minutes if you ventured forth there even at 6 in the morning, then the person in the other half of the plot planted a bunch of her own tomatoes there. I could have raised a stink about it—That's my land!—but figured, Why?

Also, Brian was dead. Which dampened my enthusiasm for just about everything.

Anyway, they gave me another half-plot this year. I'm on probation, though.

I will wander out there for a few hours today to finish the last of the heavy weeding and transport some dirt. The New Paltz Community Garden is right next to the Wallkill River; the Wallkill River floods periodically, displacing huge amounts of rich, river-bottom soil. The Community Garden elders arrange to have that soil collected in a huge mound, free for the having. It's kind of a hassle transporting it to your own garden site, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do, etc., etc., etc.



I also need to pack & prep for my trip to Ithaca. I'm going up tomorrow to hang out with RTT for a few days, which should be the Big Fun. Haven't seen him since November! He has some political pow-wows scheduled, and he's gonna take me with him, so I'll get to see him in action.

I note that RTT seems to have adopted Zohran Mamdani as his personal style icon.

Hmmmm...

Craziest stretch of executive power I’ve maybe ever seen, RTT texted to our group chat channel.

That's because you weren't alive in 1990 when the U.S. invaded Panama & took out Noriega, I texted. I don't think there's gonna be huge unrest over Maduro's removal. At least not in the short run.

I think U.S. citizens who don't like Trump, Canada, and maybe Europe are the only ones who will care about it, Ichabod texted.

Oh, I’m pretty sure the relatively recently elected leftist govt of Colombia cares about it, I said. And Mexico.

This is all a psy-op to take attention away from the real war, said RTT. 49ers versus Seahawks in 7 hours and 10 minutes.

I suspect Trump’s solution to the economic slowdown, thanks to his tariffs, is to float the economy with much cheaper Venezuelan oil, I said. That’s how he’ll lower the skyrocketing consumer prices that have made his approval ratings plunge.

Insane to do that when he could simply print 30 trillion dollars and bet it all on the 49ers tonight, said RTT. We would solve our deficit in one day.

###

But my major life crisis at the moment has to do with how to navigate three-point turns on the icy driveway so the front of the car points toward the road when I get in it to drive anywhere.

It's hard. It's stressful.

Everything else is kind of secondary.

Scene 1 (Very vivid in my brain):

An outdoor tent at the fictional Wiltwyck Hospital under which people gather when they think they have COVID. The tent is pitched right outside the very oldest part of the hospital complex, the original building constructed in 1874, and it fronts a grove of very old trees (sugar maples? red oaks? white ash?) where birds sing and squirrels scamper, so the whole scene is very surreal, like a demented Hamptons garden party.

Since the pandemic went official, Grazia has barely been inside the hospital. Her job is to assess patients who score positive on the antigen test. Most of them are dispatched home. A few are culled from the herd and sent inside. It's kind of like a conveyor belt job in a donut factory. Simple. Mindless.

The 2020 summer in upstate New York was the hottest summer since they started keeping records. (That record has since been broken.) Inside her scrubs, beneath her full-isolation drag, Grazia is sweating like a pig and her breath rises up from her surgical mask & fogs the non-prescription glasses she's taken to buying at the Dollar Store because the hospital is too cheap to spring for protective eye gear.

She wants an N95 mask. The hospital won't spring for those, either. She even goes to a strip mall Home Depot for painter N95s though she knows they don't reliably protect against fluids.

She buys the last one anyway, wears it to work one day.

When she takes it off that night, her face is bruised.

###

Scene 2 (a jump):

The ER Director tells Grazia she is being floated inside the hospital because they're short-staffed. She objects to no avail.

Status detail about how the interior of the hospital where the ER once was is practically unrecognizeable—temporary space dividers cordoning off the space in weird ways.

###

Scene 3 (murky!):

The ICU. Six COVID patients. They look like extras in some weird science fiction movie about what happens after the aliens invade and start doing weird experiments on humans. Grazia is not taking care of the humans, she is taking care of their medical equipment. After all, the humans die. But the medical equipment can be reused!

Lots of grim medical status detail.

Grazia befriends a nurse named Julie. They do black humor banter.

###

Scene 4 (not thought out at all):

Julie gets COVID & ends up in the ICU, where she dies.

Grazia has a mental breakdown & ends up joining a religious cult.

Scene 5 (not thought out at all):

Neal rescues Grazia from the religious cult and nurses her back to mental stability.

Last bit has to be a conversation on Neal's front porch in the Catskills—so the prose can segue back to the opening scene of the novel when the five women are congregating there.

###

The religious interest is already pretty well foreshadowed, but I'll have to do some serious foreshadowing around the cult itself, plus decide: Is it a Christian cult or some weird Eastern Yoga cult?

When I first began tromping the local rail trail, I was flabbergasted to discover a Muktanada temple abutted it. Muktananda, an Indian yogic transplant, had a huge temple complex in Oakland; I once actually had a boyfriend who was a devotee. Muktananda's spiritual superpower apparently was the spontaneous awakening of kundalini in others. He particularly liked to awaken kundalini in underage female acolytes.

So, you know. A weird yoga cult appeals!

Except weird yoga cults are rarely evangelical, and I think Grazia must first become conscious of the cult because they set up some kind of recruitment station on the outskirts of the hospital's COVID tent.

But, hey! It's my party, and I can write what I want to. (Cue Leslie Gore.)

###

In other news...

Submitted a client invoice, which means I'm going to spend the next five days having massive anxiety attacks. (What if they never pay me???)

Also, the nearest train station to Betsy's house, where I will be spending the weekend, turns out to be on the Harlem Metro North line. Which means I'm gonna have to drive there.

At least the weather is temporarily warmer: Rumor has it temps will hit 50° today!

And RTT moderated a meeting between Ithaca's mayor & the downtown merchants last night. He looked spiffy: