I was pretty much correct. The day went as predicted. Squirrels were chasing cats, cars stopped dead on the freeway. . . . I missed much of it as I was attending the Mayan ritual of sacrificing the virgins. It was nothing, really. They couldn't find one.
But, you know, hoi-polloi being hoi-polloi, it was a real scene.
My friends who live in the path of the total eclipse claimed they had experienced an eeriness that I am to guess was meant to make the rest of us envious.
"Wow! Was it really?"
When it was over, though, I still had much to do. I went to visit with my mother, but she wasn't home. I called her. She was across the street at the neighbors, so I went there. Talk, talk, talk. It went on for too long so that when I finally got free, it was nearly time to have dinner with the German filmmaker. I had only a moment to feed the cat and drink a Campari.
I got home at midnight. And as predicted, I sat on the couch, closed my eyes. . . .
I don't like staying up so late. And I don't like talking as much as I did yesterday. The more you talk, the better the chance that you will say something awkward, dumb, or just plain wrong. When I was at lunch with my old secretary and her new boss, I was ready to give advice. I mean, I did the job for a whole lot of years. She's been on the job for mere months. She, however, wasn't much interested in my advice. She was in charge now.
"We just have different styles," she said.
Huh. She certainly does. My poor ex-secretary was caught in the middle, between my comedy and her new boss's tragedy. The thing is, I convinced people that I didn't do much, that I was a slacker who let everybody else do the work while I jerked off the few hours I was there.
"I set the bar really low for you."
And that has been the common myth. I am a myth maker, see, a darn good one. The truth is, though, I was just really fucking good at the job which so many others made look hard. The trick to life, I believe, is to make the hard things look easy. The fun of it, though, is to make the easy things look difficult.
It's worked for me.
I tried my "closet Trumper" argument on my mother's neighbors yesterday.
"Well, I don't agree with everything Trump does, you know. . . but. . ." and then they follow with "Biden" or "liberal media" or "AOC" or some other end sweep. Trump's bad, but. . . . That's the argument of the closet Trumper.
The husband didn't take it so well. I thought for a moment I was going to be asked to leave.
The German filmmaker has an affection for me. That went better.
"I don't get to have this level of conversation very often," she told me at the end of the evening. You bet, babe. I'm a polymath. That has worked for me, too, though I only know a little about a lot. Having degrees from multiple fields has been helpful. When I was working on the lit degree coming from zoology and anthropology, sitting with bright people who had only degrees in literature, I would pull some wanky shit and begin using terminology from out of field in my analysis.
"I think if we look back to the avuncular theory of Franz Boaz. . . ."
Faces would freeze into Toltec masks. I would have the floor--nay, the room-- to myself.
Re: Imposter Syndrome?
This was the show that played before my "shuttered lids." It was late. I needed to go to bed.
You know. . . those cheap little plastic sun gazing glasses were made in China, right? I'm sure people will go blind. At least the kid in the photo had the sense to look with only one eye.
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