Mallory's Camera

As it turned out, she did.

And I was floored. Beyond floored. Awed, astonished, amazed, grateful - quite literally to the point of speechlessness. Intimidated even.

Why? I asked. Naturally I was waiting for her to tell me some variation on, Because you are so wonderful. Because I believe in you. But all she said was, Money is only important to those who don't have it. Is that really true? In the end I suppose she was acting as a trustee for the Universe. The Universe, for some mysterious reason, is determined to be kind to me. I don't have a clue why that is; I've long since given up on the idea that there's anything particularly special about me beyond an obstinate compulsion to write it all down. Is testifying a type of courage or sheer pigheadedness? Dunno.



We've been on a Spike Lee bender. Spike Lee hates us 'cause he thinks we're white. Actually, Italians were being lynched all over the South right up through the 1920s and Hitler himself wasn't all that sure Wops deserved to sit next to members the Master Race during those long Valhalla assembly periods.

Even at his most self indulgent, Spike Lee is an interesting filmmaker. He's got a distinctive visual/audio stamp and except for Jungle Fever where the message is unequivocally, Stay away from our proud African men, Honky Beyatch, his social messages are curiously ambiguous.

We watched Clockers last night.
On the drive to I-town, RTT announces - only half facetiously - “I wanna be a clocker!”

“You do? Well, then I think you missed the point of the movie.”

“No, I didn't! Harvey Keitel fucked Strike over! Otherwise he would have been fine.”
“I don't see it that way. Harvey Keitel got Strike out of town. Strike literally didn't have the stomach for that job.”

Not sure how the Clockers analysis metamorphosed into a discussion of RTT's own personality and manipulative tendencies. Robin pushes emotional keys like Paganini played The Emperor Concerto, and not just with me - he does it with everyone. I thought Max set the high mark for girl bait in high school, but Robin's got his older brother beat on all accounts. Girls throw themselves at him. His latest conquest is the pretty daughter of one of Ithaca's richest families. As far as I can tell, he hasn't taken her out on a single date. She drives over a few times a week, they hole up in the Robintorium and have sex. At least they use condoms - I know because I get to clean up his room.

(Do I care that 17 year old Robin has sex with girls in my house? Not really. You can't fight every battle. The one I muster the big armies for is the Drug War.)

When I dropped him off at school, I told him, “You know, Robin, you're very, very charming. The proverbial he-can-charm-birds-out-of-trees kind of guy. But that will only take you up to age 35 or so. You've got to develop some other skills. If you never remember anything else I've ever told you, remember this: You spend more time being old than you do being young in this life.”

“Bye, Mom,” Robin said, climbing out of the car. “Love you.”

He'd forgotten what I'd said to him already if indeed he actually heard it.

###

B has taken the lead on the college application process. That's fine. B is generally an excellent father (except for the times when he disappears for a couple of weeks and RTT wonders whether he's a) In jail or b) has killed himself. And that hasn't happened since Jayne LeGros became the warden.)

RTT is clearly the most important thing in Ben's life. I can't say RTT is the most important in mine. I love the kid dearly and often wish some bus would try to run him over so I could throw myself between him and oncoming danger. But that big blow-out fight we had last summer took something out of me. I no longer think I can save RTT when the Universe prepares to kick him in the balls. And the Universe is gonna kick him in the balls. It's inevitable.

In other news, I got my hair cut á la Twiggy. I like the cut. Nobody else does.

Rutger, Dave's erstwhile cat, has become a fully integrated member of the household with his own personal mythology, (Born in Aix-en-Provence in 1814, Sir Rutger L'Orange's Platonic epistolary friendship with Lady Bianca Rogue - whom he always referred to as The Meezer - has become one of the literary touchstones of the French surrealist movement…) Dave is still dying of brain cancer and doesn't remember Rutger at all. I'm glad we rescued him -- he has an endearingly eccentric personality. He's still scared of the Great Outdoors however.

Hoping to finish first draft of ADA book by Friday.

My own writing is going really, really badly. I'm ten chapters into the novel now and still haven't tweaked the Stegner stories into a format I like. They've gotta be in this next week.

Not feeling the novel at all, just following the very elaborate plot treatment I drafted six months ago and hoping that sheer craft will propel it.

Connie Willis once told me, “Sure, you're talented. Who isn't? But if you don't learn the tricks, you're never going to amount to anything as a writer. Your life is too busy. You don't have the time.”

I think I may have literally have backed out of that conversation, making the sign of the cross.

Five years later, I began to realize, Know what? She was right.

I still don't know the tricks. Consequently, I write like a medium, channeling alternate realities 'cause I don't know simpler methods of evoking them.

Tension is the hardest thing to write.

You're writing the climactic scene where Our Hero gets the shit kicked out of him in a bar. You've got to stop yourself from writing biographies of the neo-Nazis hanging out in the bar. That charming and witty History of Bourbon? Fugettaboutit. Your sentences need to get shorter and shorter.

Then there's description. I don't even know why I bother to write description: It's the kind of thing an impatient reader skims, right? Was reading Ruth Rendell's latest yesterday, The Vault. Rendell is a superb writer, and she does something very clever with descriptions: She strips them entirey of verbs. They're visual compendiums, the highly idiocyncratic world as seen through her POV character's conceptual lens.

Have to keep chanting my mantra. First draft. First draft. First draft. Tension can be edited in on the second draft. But there won't be a second draft unless there's a first draft. So just keep plugging.

Except it’s not Easter. Easter isn’t until the day after my birthday. Huh and huh...

Phone call from Ben at 5:30 this morning – 7:30 Oklahoma time because that’s where he was calling from. The RV had broken down once again.

He thought maybe it was the alternator.

This is why you need money, I thought to myself. So you never have to make phone calls at 5:30 in the morning when you’re stuck on the side of the road in the pouring rain ten miles outside of Lawton, Oklahoma.

I’d been up for hours anyway.

I searched the Internet – auto parts, Lawton, Oklahoma – to see what might be open on Sunday, and of that “what” which might carry an alternator for a 1972 Chevy van w/350 engine automatic transmission. Bingo! My very first call was answered by the excellent Randy who had the part in stock, who was concerned enough when I described my husband’s plight to ask, “Does he have any way of getting into town?”

I am hoping this Randy is a church going man. I am hoping this Randy understands that God guided me to make this phone call, that it is God’s will that Randy hang a “Back In 15 Minutes” sign on his door, drive out to pick Ben up. Who’s gonna beat a path to the door of an auto supply store in Lawton, Oklahoma on a rainy Sunday at 8 in the morning anyway?

I don’t know what Ben will do otherwise. The circus mechanic is in McAllen, Texas running illegal carburators over the border – or maybe they’re timing belts, or maybe they’re guns. Mechanic is not due back on the show till Wednesday, and of course the show must go on, and that “on” is a town seventy miles away.

And also of course, it’s quite possible Ben misdiagnosed his automotive woes, that it’s not the alternator.

Whenever I think of alternators, I always remember a night thirty years ago driving in the mountains just outside of Cloverdale with the Love of My Life. We’d spent the afternoon at the Geysers. Except that there were no geysers, instead there was a sleeping volcano exhaling geothermic steam and feral hippies with speed-addled eyes squatting amidst the ruins of a resort. Anyway, as we were driving along, the stars seemed to get brighter and brighter. But it was really the car’s headlights getting dimmer and dimmer. Finally the car stalled.

“It’s the alternator,” said Steve, closing the hood of the car in a daze.

And there was nothing to it but to hike back into town. An incalcuable distance. And it was cold. And the stars just kept getting brighter and brighter and brighter...

I did virtually nothing yesterday but draw rather insipid pictures of Easter lillies and read Simisola, Ruth Rendell’s take – disguised (as all Rendell’s books are) as a murder mystery – on racism in the English suburbs In the evening I had dinner with Max and Molly, who were driving down to visit the Tustin brood and go camping at Joshua Tree. We had a jolly meal, I quite like Molly who is not a vegetarian by the way. It’s very odd but every time I talk to Max on the phone I come away from the conversation feeling unloved and disapproved of, but every time I see him in person I feel entirely appreciated, loved and supported. Here’s the postprandial trio – note that Max is the only one not blinded by the light. Note too the older I get, the more I look like my mother.

Update: GuyZ back on the road. I am packing. Simisola got generally bad reviews. Odd... I like it quite the best of the Inspector Wexford series. None of the Freecyclers want Uncle Miltie's Ant Farm even though it comes with a stock certificate for Real Live ANTS. I hate to throw it out.