I had a blog post written, about humor. But then a couple of days have gone by and I don’t feel like being amused right now. That’s how things go. A roiling, pitching world this is. I appreciate Trevor Noah’s gentle and humane humor, and minutes after, I watch the Rotterdam Philharmonic performing together, player by player, each in their own home, and I’m wiping away tears. All this is virtual, of course, except the tears.
As per Milton, “When I consider how my light is spent. . . .”
I took our down-the-hall neighbors half of the lovely sourdough loaf I risked my health to buy at Bay Bread. My son tells me not to do this anymore. I tried to order online, but the websites were jammed. I am out of my recently beloved Bell’s Two-Hearted IPA beer, which ever since my back started hurting, has been my medicine. Beer does ease muscles remarkably, you know. Today we’re going to go on an excursion to find some. I will be the one who dashes in. I’m insisting that Jerry, who has had pneumonia several times in the past, stay out of stores.
Grand Traverse Commons is shut down. All downstairs shops are closed. Starting tomorrow we’ll have to use a key to get in the building.
Last week at the grocery, there was a yellow line at the checkout, so you wouldn’t step too close to the cashier. The staff were all cheerful and helpful. The shoppers were grim, their heads down, turned away.
I miss my bi-weekly massage, which along with the beer and P.T., has done wonders for my back. Meanwhile, people are losing their income, worried sick about what’s next. Meanwhile, some people are stuck in tiny studio apartments in New York with roommates they may not even like. Or stuck at home in a contentious marriage. Or lying in the hospital struggling to breathe, waiting for a ventilator. Or ministering to desperately sick patients without enough masks to go around. I get angry.
How my light is spent: walking, meditating, writing (but not so much). I can feel the press of thousands of people out there, writing their hearts out at this moment, and it feels overwhelming to me. I think I do best when I feel my words are filling a gap in the universe that I alone am somehow strangely assigned to fill.
At the moment I am boiling chick peas to make hummus. I find I have the ingredients, dried chickpeas that have been on my shelf forever. Frozen cubes of Meyer lemon from my Texas sister’s trees. Tahini that needs using up.
I’ve read through the stack of old New York Review of Books a neighbor has placed on the bench outside our door. I’ve read uncharacteristically large swatches of every new New Yorker. I’ve downloaded the YouTube app and watched old Carol Burnett skits, the aforementioned Trevor Noah and Saturday Night Live cold opens. I am reading Hillary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light. I have downloaded Annie Dillard’s Holy the Firm and an old book of poems, Messenger, by Ellen Bryant Voigt. These are things I had a sudden yearning for. I am sorry, dear local bookstores. I have no excuse. I have bought my share of real books and will again. I trust that we will all learn to survive in our way.
Right now the whole world is available. I can tour every major art gallery in the country, for free. I can listen to the world’s best orchestras, I can watch comedians, I can Zoom with our friends, laugh and toast each other with our cocktail of choice. All behind glass.
Like King Midas: you get to have everything you want, only it’s made of gold. It’s a hard surface.
Also like the Matrix: in which the real world is long forgotten by most as they live their lives entirely virtually.
Shocking. Don’t you have this feeling that we’ve been asleep for a long while, maybe since World War II? I know there’ve been other wars since, but not one that threatened our existence, and had world-wide implications and required sacrifice. It touched us physically that way.
“The terrifying suddenness of the now. ”
And now the immutable forces have touched us again. Look, the earth is still the earth! It’s made of dirt. If we were born, we’re going to die. We’re that real. Something strangely satisfying about that. Not optimistic, not pessimistic, but, well, satisfying. We’re not made of plastic. We’re real.
“We’re bound to earth / and wear each other’s scars.”
I’ve trimmed my hair a bit. Today I’ll cut Jerry’s. Lucky for him I’ve been cutting his hair all along. Mine will just get crazier. I quit coloring it, so that’s an advantage. No worries about roots. Such small things. What will I do today, besides the haircut? A Zoom video with friends this afternoon. We’ll do the wash. I’ll read the local paper, the actual paper, and the New York Times online.
I’m re-calibrating. If any decent writing happens, it’s it’s going to have to emerge like leaves on a tree, that just sprout. Looks like my job is to be the tree. I’ll just stand here, taking in the rain and sun and wind and hail.