I watched a fluffy, 10-year-old movie called The Intern.

I liked it! Robert DeNiro plays a grandfatherly 70-year-old who gets recruited as an—auk!—intern at an e-commerce startup run by the ever-dazzling Anne Hathaway. (In another life, she married Shakespeare!)

It's a charming movie in many ways, though not without massive holes in its script.

But the parts that fascinated me, of course, were the interactions between DeNiro and the e-commerce Millennials.

###

Old people really are a separate human species to young people. Kinda like Neanderthals.

The media—and the American culture at large that media curates—tries to disguise this fact by positioning it as a generational clash, Boomers versus Millennials. But I don't think the clash has anything to do with demographic characterizations. I think it's simply that young people do not like old people. Young people think old people smell bad, have weird teeth, are ugly with all those receding hairlines, wrinkles, crepe neck, & unsightly hair sproutings.

Worst of all, old people are needy: Ancient Mariner-like, they are constantly trying to collar young people to explain to them what it was like back-in-the-day even though back-in-the-day is totally irrelevant to young people because they hadn't been born yet so, properly speaking, the world did not exist.

When Millennials hit 70, Generation Beta & Generation Delta will find plenty of excuses not to like them, too.

Young people would prefer not to interact with old people.

###

Of course, this is hugely relevant to me as a 73-year-old person searching for housing.

As I have bored all 4.3 of my readers by repeating numerous times, I like living with other people. But since collective households are mostly a phenomenon found in people under 40, do other people like living with me?

There are numerous threads on Reddit: Would you want a Boomer as a roommate?

You know they'd try to "take charge" of the house, writes one Redditor. Sorry old man, you had all the economic advantages of growing up in the strongest economy and now you're at my level? Yeah, no, I'm not taking your advice, you had a headstart and flubbed it, the only reason I'd listen to you is so I know what not to do. (Seven upvotes.)

Writes another: WTF? Who would want to run an adult daycare just for the cost of rent? Pull up your bootstraps and take care of yourselves boomers. (23 upvotes.)

I don't even know what to feel when I read stuff like that.

Old people are definitely the one marginalized class that it is absolutely politically correct to dump on.

There should be some satisfaction in knowing that sooner or later, everyone—including those Reddit posters!—is gonna be a member of that marginalized class.

But when that happens, I'll most likely be dead. So, there isn't.

###

In other news...

Yesterday: Remuneration, gym.

Sky was totally opaque with the smoke from the Canadian wildfires.

There is a moment in Henry James's novella The Turn of the Screw where the nameless protagonist—the reader is never sure whether she is mad or ghost-sensitive—glances up at a tower in the Gothic house to which she has been dispatched to serve as governess to two charming but very peculiar children.

The governess sees—or thinks she sees—a man standing on the tower. He leers at her—and the day just...stops... The sky turns dead white, the birds stop singing, and though he is 500 feet away, the governess sees the features of the man's face as clearly as though he were standing next to her.

Peter Quint, you devil! the little boy in the governess's charge cries at the end of the novella before promptly dropping dead.

Though it's never clear whether the little boy also sees the man in the tower that the governess is forcing him to see, and whether you devil is a description of the governess or Peter Quint.

Anyway, yesterday was a Peter Quint, you devil! kinda day.

Interview with the T-burg household is now a definite for 8/16.

Which makes me feel somewhat less invisible.

I mean, feeling invisible 'cause you're emotionally distraught is all kinds of crazy! For one thing, it makes you even more emotionally distraught; for another, it's not a useful kind of invisibility that might allow you, say, to rob a bank or slash the tires of your enemies.

No, one must strive to keep distraught emotions in check. Stay the course! Do the prep work! Chop wood, carry water—or is it the other way around?

###

Anyway, yesterday was rough because I entered into my eighth straight day of Not Hanging Out With Anyone In the Flesh because there is absolutely no one to hang out with here (Brian is dead, Brian is dead) though my little tentacles stretch wide with texts & phone calls throughout the virtual universe.

The kiskas are good girls though not what I would call good company in times of emotional duress because they are not snuggly in the slightest—though Molly follows me all around the house & spent an hour and a half last night, meowing plaintively while I sat outside, chattering on the phone, counting the fireflies and watching a pine tree pin a blood-orange crescent moon. (There is a lot of smoke in the air.)

And Black Chicken has developed Horrible Habits! She has become a Welfare Chicken! Instead of ranging freely across the property when I let her out of her coop in the morning, she runs to the house & sits on the porch & clucks at me: Feed me tortillas! If I sit on the porch reading, she pecks at my toes!

###

The gym is a great solace. Endorphins, doncha know. And I suppose it's just possible I'm getting physically stronger (though I think it's more likely I am merely slowing down entropy.)

And books—I just reread Gone Girl and read Sharp Objects for the first time. Interestingly enough, Sharp Objects is the more accomplished novel. (That's interesting because it was Gillian Flynn's first novel, and usually, first novels are not as good as the ones that follow.)

And phone conversations—chattered away last night with a good friend who is recovering from Major Medical Issues. He will recover in full, but omyGAWD, what he went through, plus the conversation evolved into a discussion of assisted suicide—possibly not the most tactful conversational segue on my part—and from there into non-assisted suicides: We started talking about that man my friend knew who'd committed suicide in the parking lot of the Grand Rapids airport—

And the phone went dead.

Just like that!

It took a couple of minutes to reestablish the connection.

"Well, I guess he doesn't want us talking about him," I said.

"No shit!" said my friend.

So we started talking about Larry McMurtry instead. Who wrote lots of books. And didn't kill himself.

Firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics—he didn't like the new jobs numbers!—may be the worst thing that Trump has done yet, because it moves us right into that 1984 reality: The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

In 1937, Stalin ordered the execution of census officials for statistics showing population declines due to famine & purges.

During China's Great Leap Forward (1958 to 1962), Mao Tse Tung (who somehow changed his name to Mao Zedong while I wasn't looking) sent statisticians to reeducation camps for reporting true famine & crop failure statistics.

Henceforth, you cannot believe a single number coming out of the Trump administration. Not the jobs numbers, not the inflation numbers, not the number of voters casting their election ballots.

Moral of the story: Statistician! Not a safe job.

###

Meanwhile, chattered to Ichabod on the phone for about an hour yesterday & texted with Daria.

Hearing Ichabod's voice took me straight out of the rather awful & claustrophobic here-and-now into some happy place where I felt whole and competent & reasonably together.

In the less than satisfactory here-&-now, I use cheap, flimsy Scotch tape to keep myself together.

At one point, I was talking about my conversation with Public Policy Eleanor, how impressed I had been by her remarks on her marriage to Glenn, and Ichabod said, "Right! And that's why I don't want to be in a relationship until I'm feeling more emotionally self-sufficient. I am so over this co-dependency thing!"

And the little lightbulb floating over my head pinged into high beam!

Right!

My entire life, my definition of a successful romantic relationship has always been another voice in my inner dialogue. Telepathic communion. One soul with two hearts. The very definition of codependency.

And that just does not work.

In fact, it's destructive.

It's too bad I'm learning all these Important Life Lessons too late in life to actually do anything with them.

But at least I'm learning.

###

With Daria, I talked about Brian.

Brian had a real gift for friendship, and in particular, a gift for friendship with women.

His friendship with Daria may have had a sexual component. (Mine did not.) I've never pried. But it was essentially friendship, not some strawberry flavor of codependency.

I’ve had a couple very rough days, Daria texted. A lot of the time I feel that my heart resists the reality (the finality) of it, as if I had compartmentalized the understanding and mostly can’t face it. At moments it hits me in full force, the gates open, and I feel bereft and confused

...as if I had compartmentalized the understanding, I repeated. Excellent phrasing. Yes, the grief has escaped from its box.

OMG, I had a total breakdown yesterday, for the first time, Daria said. I sobbed like a fucking animal. Was with my girlfriend, thank god. Oddly, the only words I could get out were “where is he, where has he gone? I still feel him but he’s so silent.”

Then she added, Don’t know why I say animal, animals don’t sob, I felt like an animal because I was unmoored from my reason. All I felt was the incomprehension of death.

The incomprehension of death...

###

Brian read my journal every day. Brian talked to me about what I wrote. Brian really saw me.

Brian's death doesn't render me invisible exactly, but the reflection in the mirror has lost detail somehow. It's like Corinthians 13:12 sez!

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

Dozed off last night.

And then I was awakened by cramps in my legs. Weirdly specific cramps!

Of course, many old people get leg cramps. They're related to vascular decline and muscle deterioration. I've had those types of cramps. These weren't that. These were in my shins.

Quickly, I reviewed my mental Rolodex of differential diagnoses:

Intermittent claudification: Probably not. I'd been sleeping, not exercising.

Vascular insufficiency: Possibility. I do have varicose veins.

Parkinson's disease: I've been wondering about that one for more than a year now. I do have an intermittent tremor in my hands, particularly pronounced when I'm nervous or insufficiently rested. My mother had it, too, so I always assumed it was some idiopathic condition related to the high anxiety of intergenerational trauma. But hand tremors are a Parkinson's symptom, as are leg cramps.

Electrolyte insufficiency: Another possibility. I probably don't get enough potassium & magnesium in my diet.

Shin splints: This seemed like the most likely explanation. I went for a longish tromp yesterday, and I am out of the habit of longish tromps since to justify my gym membership, I've been going to the gym several times a week. Going to the gym has cut down on my tromping habit.

My feet are pretty flat, and my tromping shoes, old. Bad arch support!

But if this was shin splints, it certainly didn't feel like what I imagined shin splints would feel like. I imagined shin splints would be a steady aching pain. This was more like an arpeggio of pain; pain ripples that would start from nothing, build, peak, and then diminish—only to start up again.

Anyway, I spent an uncomfortable night. Didn't fall asleep till after 2am.

###

Brian was my only real friend in this area. We'd hang out a couple of times a week, and our banter was so lively & fulfilling that it completely satisfied my here-and-now social needs.

In his absence, I have absolutely no one to hang out with in the here & now.

Oh, I'm always texting and chattering on the phone. Which actually does fulfill many of the needs for companionship.

But I begin to feel like a scientist in a remote Antarctic outpost. Or like the protagonist of E.M. Forster's The Machine Stops.

There's organizational clatter. The Shawangunk Dems are always on me to show up at some demonstration or other, or man a table at the Blueberry Festival. But such activities never culminate in a cozy Scrabble game, or an invitation to a dinner party, or a fabulous one-on-one tawk fest.

Either the people here are complete boors or all their friendship slots are filled so there's no room for me. (There's a third possibility, of course, and that is that I am repulsive! 😀 But let's not go there.)

Anyway, so far I am maintaining my equanimity, but this is not Mentally Healthy.

###

I've been looking at Ithaca craigslist postings. Interestingly, housing is significantly less expensive up there—I suppose because by no stretch of the imagination can Ithaca be termed an NYC commuter town.

Also, because I strongly suspect, the Cornell and Ithaca College student populations—which the Ithaca housing market expanded to support—are going to decline significantly. Double whammy of the Trump administration's War on Cornell and the decline in importance of a college education, doncha know.

Even if the collective household doesn't work out, moving to the Ithaca area seems like a smart idea.

I have the basis for a friendship circle in Ithaca: Molly & Derrick are well-connected and would be happy to introduce me to all their friends. And RTT is there, and he is an Energy Center, a true "Connector" in the Malcolm Gladwell sense. When I was up there last, RTT took me to Personal Best, the brewery-cum-bar where he works, which has something of the feeling of the bar in Cheers. Everybody there—including many people my age!—was like, Wow! You're RTT's Mom! Instant celebrity!

So, yeah.

Much better place.

Yesterday, it rained. And rained. And rained.

Between heat advisories where Real Heat Indices soared above 100° and torrential downpours where a 15-second dash to the car produced the same effect as standing under an open shower spigot for 15 minutes, the weather this week has really sucked. I've been housebound & very isolated.

Not good!

But I'm not sure if there's anything I can actually do about it. Except put my nose to the grindstone (because money creates future opportunities) and try not to see it as an existential crisis.

Brian has been dead for 30 days.

I miss Brian.

###

Two-hour phone conversation with Public Policy Eleanor yesterday.

She'd sent me an email: The UC Berkley Goldman School of Public Policy is having its annual alumni reunion in September, & I should come! Blah, blah, blah.

Public Policy Eleanor lives in a world where dropping a grand on a weekend trip is eminently doable.

I do not.

Public Policy Eleanor made far better life choices than I did. Of course, I love her, so chide myself for setting her up as some kind of rival in the great Life Sweepstakes. I'm not even particularly competitive! But the part of me that was trying to console myself kept whispering, You, my dear, have lived an extraordinarily interesting life! And aren't kids these days going for experiences rather than material possessions? That must account for your youthful outlook!

We made tentative plans to travel to India together some time in the next 18 months.

We've done road trips together before. We travel together well. That's because we're so comfortable & familiar with each other that we can ignore each other without either party taking umbrage.

"You know, that's when I realized that Glenn was the person I ought to marry!" Eleanor told me. "Because I was comfortable ignoring him, and he was comfortable ignoring me. Though, of course, we also liked interacting. But there was no frenzied rush for fusion. We gave ourselves permission to be our own separate selves, to think our own separate thoughts—which is what people really want to do, if you get right down to it."

"Yes, you were smart," I replied. "I married twice, two men I was madly in love with, and both marriages were disasters. Though I did get two wonderful children out of it."

Of course, Eleanor had two parents who were sane and who modeled good life choices for her.

Whereas I was raised in the House of Usher by a madwoman.

###

My fantasies right now are all about rescue.

Some stranger will see me sitting, purple-haired & dreamy, in a café reading Amusing Ourselves to Death, or come across my many messages in a bottle, and be inextricably drawn to the fabulous enigma that is moi.

But that is unlikely to occur. And if it did occur, then I would be beholden and most likely to someone to whom I don't want to be beholden.

No, I must figure a way out of the current quagmire myself.

To that end, I am thinking I should be sending tentacles out about housing situations other than the potential Ithaca one.

I actually have a very good feeling about the potential Ithaca housing situation! My Spidey Sense sez it shall come to pass!

But many eggs in a single basket, blah, blah, blah. Never wise when you think about it. Broken eggs make floors very slippery.

And I do need to get away from here.

Yesterday was even hotter than the day before.

I was up late watching the miniseries John Adams (based on the David McCullough bio)—quite excellent—and slept in till 8. By then, the air was the consistency of chicken soup & temps were in the low 80s. So, no tromping. Instead, I spent the day huddled up against the AC window unit, Remunerating.

The AC unit sounded as though it was struggling, and, of course, Remunerating is Not Fun. But I tell myself: You are spinning straw into gold. You are transforming hours where you are somewhere you do not want to be into a fungible substance that will enable you to be somewhere you do want to be in a future that, after all, is not so very indeterminate.

And, in fact, I was incredibly productive. Knocked off 2,000 words.

###

When temps finally dropped below 90, I went outside to read in the shade and watch Black Chicken strut around. Such a sassy little thing! I feed her tortillas. If I don't feed her quickly enough, she flusters her wings and doesn't exactly fly but somehow rises high enough to snatch tortilla bits out of my fingers.

Did you know that chickens are the closest analogs to dinosaur DNA in the modern world? Decendents of small flying dinosaurs called Velociraptors.

The sun grew long & golden. The fireflies came out. The fireflies don't seem as numerous as they did in previous years, but I can't tell whether that's a real phenomenon or just me doing my Old Person, Things were so much better when I was young.

Black Chicken started wandering off in the direction of her coop.

And then.

An animal sprang out of the copse at the property's edge.

Cat? Fox? I have seen foxes on the property, and, of course, foxes are crepuscular.

Black Chicken began squawking loudly.

"Hey!" I yelled. "Hey!"

And ran toward the coop.

The animal, whatever it was, ran off. I couldn't tell whether it had something in its mouth, and it was actually smaller than Black Chicken. Still. By the time I got to the coop, Black Chicken was nowhere to be seen, and my heart took a lurching elevator ride to the very basement of my heart.

Black Chicken!!!!

But she was fine. She'd run off to the high grass behind the coop, and stared out at me with her beady, suspicious dinosaur eyes and would not be mollified until I fed her more tortilla bits.

###

I don't know much about chicken IQ assays but I kinda think Black Chicken is pretty smart for a chicken. Which is how she's survived the various predators who took out the other members of her flock.

One time I was feeding her tortillas near the porch when all of a sudden for no reason I could tell, she zoomed under the porch.

What the... ?

I looked up at the sky and saw three tiny specks. Hawks. Or some kind of raptor. Her first cousins! Ten thousand times removed.

I don't know how common it is for chickens to scan the skies for potential predators, but my inclination is to think it's not.

###

John Adams is the Founding Father nobody cares about very much because he was neither magisterial like Washington, nor charismatic like Jefferson, nor witty like Benjamin Franklin.

He was short & stout & blunt. And cared very much about instruments of governance and national debts and balances of power.

The HBO miniseries is extraordinarily interesting, particularly as a backdrop to the political horror show of today where the United States of America is quite literally falling apart and everything that was good about it evaporating.

Those early experiments in governance, before it got so codified and the props became so expensive, were touchingly amateur hour.

I was struck, too, by how hard everyone worked back then.

In comparison, hardly anybody works today. We sit on desk chairs and consume content, and possibly repackage content into new data sets for other consumers. We call that work. But is it?

And are people happier today?

Spent many hours yesterday on the phone—with Ichabod, with my sister Jeanna.

Hadn't spoken to Jeanna in an incredibly long time. Some years back, we had a Falling Out. I remember the underlying issue well, but I won't dignify it by describing it here because the real issue, of course, is that I like to nurse grudges. Scorpio moon, doncha know.

Anyway, Ichabod is good, and Jeanna is good though uses a walker now: Her knees gave out. This made me sad. Back in the day, Jeanna was a veritable mountain goat. She used to take me hiking in the vast La Liendre canyon, filled with petroglyphs, arrowheads—Jeanna has a museum-quality collection of Native American artifacts—a Civil War fort, and a strange little ghost town, also called La Liendre, complete with cemetery.

La Liendre is the only place I've ever been where time stood still without the use of psychedelics.

In 2014, Destination Thanksgiving was Albuquerque, and I took the BoyZ up to Las Vegas to visit Jeanna—Las Vegas, New Mexico is a Very Different Place from Las Vegas, Nevada—and we all went hiking in La Liendre together:







High point of that adventure is that we stumbled upon some clandestine operation & got warned off by gun-toting men in 10-gallon hats. Very Breaking Bad!

###

Jeanna's my half-sister. Same father, different mothers. In fact, my father produced quite the litter with Jeanna's mother, seven children in all. I met some of them as a child at my grandmother's house in Pittsburgh, and some of them as adults. Of course, I was curious! And, you know—ever on the lookout for potential kidney donors.

Two of them are dead now—Ted, who actually had a fairly successful career as a contractor in Lancaster, California, but an equally successful oxycodone addiction on the side such that his liver gave out in his early 50s and Dale, physically one of the most beautiful male humans I have ever seen, who was a low-ranking mobster in the Nevada Vegas, and found dead in his car one day under mysterious circumstances.

The rest of them are all either born-agains or Trump supporters or both—except for Jeanna. She's the only one I talk to.

Jeanna is far more woo-woo than I am, but smart, in fact has far better business sense than I do. In some ways, in fact, she reminds me of Annie. She cultivates a sense of befuddlement to keep the Darker Forces at bay.

Anyway, I was glad to be back in communication with her.