Real-life Daria invited me to participate in her biweekly Zoom Finnegans Wake book club.

Sounds horrifying, doesn't it?

But actually, it was fun!

We take turns reading each other paragraphs from Finnegans Wake and then babble about anything that comes into our heads. Riffs on the weirdly haunting & allusive words Joyce invents. Rants about how since public libraries no longer maintain stacks, of course no one is going to love reading anymore since the the only way the love of reading can be implanted at an early age is if you can sit at one of those ancient, battered oak tables and browse your way through a huge stack of books. I got to play-act the complete plot of Tom's Midnight Garden!

I have no intention of actually reading Finnegans Wake. But I can see what Joyce was trying to do in it: Just as Ulysses is the story of a single day, Finnegans Wake is the story of one night. Its phrases actually do have the allusive quality of dreams, its made-up language leaves little residual streaks in one's consciousness, each word a shooting star.

Joseph Campbell's Skeleton Key to Finnegan's Wake arrives Wednesday. (Joseph Campbell's Masks of God was a hugely significant work to me in my 20s, and of course, I wrote around a third of a novel about Campbell's affair with Carol Steinbeck when Joseph, Carol, & John all lived together in Pacfic Grove during the Depression.)

And I'm trying to recruit Carl A________ to join the group. Carl is one of my old People Magazine colleagues and a huge Joyce freak. Has a pretty fascinating backstory of his own, as well as a rent-controlled apartment on W.86th St. in the City to which he keeps issuing invitations—Come hang out!— which I keep declining because the last time we saw each other was 20 years ago when we were young(ish) and beautiful(ish), and I'm not sure I could accommodate the changes.

###

Apart from that, I Remunerated, studied tax law, and tromped. I got all sweaty when I tromped, and thought, Really? You're in that bad a shape? And it wasn't until I drove by the electronic Bank of Wallkill sign on my way home that I noticed the temperature was—ulp!—88°.

I'm storyboarding the action for the Work in Progress's third chapter. I think it takes place durig COVID, and it must involve Grazia being floated to one of the wards where she's surrounded by gurgling, Cheynes-Stoking COVID patients who all die while she's watching, thereby setting her up for some kind of spiritual conversion process. Fifty Shades of Mucus!

And then, at the very end of the chapter, I'm gonna have to somehow circle back to the proximal present, the sister wives on the porch when they decide to take a road trip to scatter Neal's ashes.

Gotta foreshadow Mimi's suicide attempt somehow 'cause she sure as hell ain't goin' on the road trip. Maybe turn Tracy, Flavia's cousin, into L___ S_____, real-life Flavia's friend? Cutting down on extraneous characters: always good.

And-d-d-d-d-d Chapter 2 is done.

I have no idea if it's any good, but it's certainly been fun writing it. And a bit of a lifesaver, too, because instead of feeling sorry for myself because I'm living in fuckin' Wallkill where I know absolutely no one & could go for weeks without having a single in-person conversation with anyone but store checkers, I can pretend I'm at an exclusive writer's retreat where everything has been arranged to give me perfect solitude for my art!

Anyway, Chapter 1 is here.

And here is Chapter 2:

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Part 1: Grazia
Chapter 2

I was born and raised in New York City.

New York City is like no place else on the planet, and when you grow up there, some unquantifiable but enormous part of your brain is assigned to cracking the City's various codexes. The map of the subway, of course, but also the conversations on the subway, voices chattering away in a thousand different dialects that some magical gift of urban telepathy allows you to make sense of. The discombobulated dance step you have to learn so you can weave in and out of the crowd coming at you whenever you walk down a city street. The litter of unexplainable objects on every city street, like fall-out from some highly selective Rapture: passports, wallets, Hermes scarves, Apple watches, Argentinian pesos. The sirens, horns, screaming voices, pulsating bass notes, which you must learn to love like a lullaby.

Once, I saw a woman walking a pigeon on a leash; it was an ordinary pigeon, and it was an ordinary woman.

( But wait! There's more! )

Yep, exercise makes the difference to sleep and full-spectrum sunlight makes the difference to jocularity—though God knows, we need the rain: The Hudson's salinity point is now up to Poughkeepsie; they are actually warning people on low-salt diets not to drink tap water. And algae blooms are blossoming on every tidal inlet up through Garrison.

I have been toying with the idea of visiting Jeanna in New Mexico over Christmas.

Christmas is generally the holiday that makes me the most lachrymose. I often spent it with Brian doing the Jew thing, Chinese restaurants & movies. Last year when Brian was off visiting the real-life Daria in California, I moped about & felt very sorry for myself.

Of course, visiting Jeanna might make me feel even more sorry for myself, 'cause you know—I'd be visiting Jeanna! 😀

Anyway, no deep thoughts on tap this morning.

But if I get the next big chunk of Remuneration out of the way this morning, I can spend the afternoon puttering with the Work in Progress. Those boring landscape descriptions of the tiny, historic city of Kingston won't write theselves!

Difficult day yesterday & insomnia at night.

I am incredibly isolated here, having absolutely no one to hang out with or do the rough-&-tumble cosmic littermate thing with. But I've been isolated for weeks now without it making the slightest dent in my general bonhomie.

No, I'm thinking this depression has to do with the declining daylight. Hello Seasonal Affective Disorder, my old friend.

Managing SAD is gonna be a challenge this year.

For the past four or five years, I've managed it by staying absolutely blitzed on cannabis for three months, but I can't really do that this year on account of I've been hired by IM Schlock to do taxes, and so must maintain a clear brain.

###

I didn't exercise yesterday. Maybe that was part of the depression.

###

Did manage to write a 1,000 words on the Work in Progress.

Didn't feel connected to what I wrote at all, which means I'm kind of like an airplane pilot flying by instrumental controls rather than by sight. At this point, I just have to trust that craft will get me through it: I am very good with words, and that excellence is there whether I'm emotionally tapped into it or not.

Neal & Grazia have finished meeting. Neal has been properly humiliated for his sexual boastfulness. There is some other moderately sexually explicit stuff.

In the final Chapter 2 coda, we explore the Neal/Grazia friendship. The coda ends with a scene in which Grazia gives Neal a backrub, looks at his naked back, wonders, Should I pounce? And decides, Nah...

Chapter 3 will be Grazia working at the hospital during COVID. I don't have the foggiest idea what happens except it starts with Grazia scoring N95 Respirator masks from a crack cocaine dealer at 4 o'clock in the morning. At some point, Grazia has to have a complete psychological breakdown, and then she has to have some kind of spiritual awakening & recover. Of course, it is actually Neal who rescues Grazia from her psychological breakdown, but she doesn't realize this. The reader must, though.

###

Anyway, apart from Work in Progress, it's all a bunch of Remuneration and tax class slog. Which I must commence with right now.

Bogged down with a tremendous amount of Shit I Must Do, most of it attached to Dates I Must Do It By, so I am not a happy camper this morning.

This is basically the way my life is gonna be for the next six and a half months, & I am gonna have to figure out a way to live—and thrive—inside of it.

Ugh.

Out canvassing yesterday, Adrienne & I hit the foothills where road frontage gives few clues to the great tracts of land behind its ramshackle houses.

We only talked to three people, but we talked to them at length.

First up was a vigorous man who looked to be in his 70s. His accent placed him as an Eastern European transplant. He lives in the Peaceable Kingdom! Cats, goats, sheep, hens, and peacocks wandered the property; no dogs or horses, though, which I thought was an interesting choice.





He lives in the Decker House, which was built in 1730—very old for the New World!—and has its own New York State Historical marker:



He had a grievance: Over a year ago, the golf cart he uses to haul feed to the sheep who live on the back acres of his property was taken for a joy ride by some miscreant teenagers & ditched about a mile from his property. A neighbor discovered it, and not recognizing its provenance, alerted the police—who in this part of the boondocks, are actually state troopers. The state troopers hauled the golf cart 40 miles to Kerhonksen and are now demanding $400 for its release—which does strike me as horribly unfair! I mean, why should the victim of a crime be financially penalized as a result of that crime?

"They hear my accent, so they think I'm not real American," he said. "They say, 'Drop charges and we will give you back.' But I will not drop charges. I was psychologist, you know. I come over here, and they say, 'You cannot be psychologist, you must wash dishes.' So, I wash dishes." He shrugged. "I am not afraid of work. Work is good. I work hard. I am a happy man."

I doubt very much that Adrienne can do a thing for him, but, of course, we didn't tell him that.

###

The second person we talked to was a pleasant man with an eye-catching mustache that he actually waxes, who told us—a bit challengingly—that he worked as a guard at the maximum security prison up in Ellenville. "I'm 44 years old," he said. "I can't change careers. If I did, we wouldn't have this—" His sweeping gesture took in a paddock where horses stood flicking their tails and a small pond on which ducks & geese were getting into each other's faces. "We'd be crammed into a one-bedroom apartment in Middletown. I work 16-hour shifts. You're lucky you found me home today."

This guy almost certainly voted for Trump (I didn't ask), but he heard us out with good grace, remarking, "I think both parties suck frankly. I vote for individuals."

###

Our third conversation was with a man whose face was utterly unreadable. He had long grey hair but that is no longer a clue to anything.

About 10 minutes into the conversation, we were joined by his wife—who evidently had been waiting on the sidelines to make sure we weren't Jehovah's Witnesses. She was a lot more forthcoming and gave out old hippie vibes.

We talked for half an hour. About environmental matters, about the municipal water supply in the hamlet of Wallkill, currently under a boil advisory due to bacterial contamination, an issue that has gotten exactly zilch publicity. (It doesn't affect me; Icky has his own well.)

As we were leaving, the old hippie lady, Margaret, said, "I'd avoid going to the house next door if I were you. Our son lives there. He'll wave a shotgun at you. He's big on Charlie Kirk. In fact, he's blocked me on social media and cut off all communication because I think Charlie Kirk was an asshole." She laughed merrily.

###

The political situation in the U.S. is ominous. The Pentagon is mulling over making Turning Point chapters into military recruitment centers. That's all the U.S. really needs, right? An army of Christian, right-wing, white supremacists.

The FBI is apparently preparing to designate transgender people as “violent extremists.”

There's so little I can do about any of this.

I guess we will have to start doing what Black people in this country have been doing for the past 160 years: code-switching and being very, very careful not to make waves unless you 100% know that making waves is gonna lead to a productive end. The era of virtue signaling is over.