Fog this morning. The sun wants to burn through overhead and the fog lifts in the early afternoon, but still curtains of fog drift through the trees very much like the setting of a Shakespeare play. You could find witches or a pair of lovers at cross purposes: a maiden dressed as a youth, and a youth looking for a nurse to carry a letter. It’s that kind of day.
At some point I have to ask myself just how much of this not being sure of the future can I possibly take. But I suppose I’m pretty well set up for it. Jan is working from home. I am working from home, and my publishing company “is taking a pause” whatever that really means. I’m not spending money on trips or restaurants or frivolities. I make almost a whopping thousand dollars a month on my retirement, plus I get health insurance which is great. Our house is not quite paid for but it works out okay as long as the rent comes in. We are not home free but we are good, is what I’m saying. I stand to make hundreds of dalliers from my writing this year. We are good. I can get Dot a job, I’m sure there is something she can do. Night watchman, Rat catcher… something to bring in a dime or two. But just not knowing how to plan, how to imagine that blank space over the horizon. That is beginning to bother me.
Now they say they are going to open up. Well I’ve never been one to care much what “They Say”. I suppose I will let them open up and I will stay tucked in here with Jan and Dot and see how it goes. I will watch the numbers and stay tucked in for a good long while after that. I will do my part for the economy. I will buy local, as I have always done. But I’m not going crazy. I’m not going to any crazy gatherings or raves where I’m bouncing around with glow sticks and sweat. Not that I was doing much of that before Christmas of 2019 anyway. We do have to go to Seattle to get Jan a new battery for her brain. Her deep brain stimulation control battery needs to get swapped out and then she needs a whole bunch of tests to see how her Parkinson’s Disease is progressing. We will stay at the Inn at the Hospital which is always a big Hoot. But It’s better than going back and forth from a Hospital and infecting my family. So that is a plan of some sort.
At some point I will have to devote more time to writing a book. Which may cut into this nice routine I have of blogging. But… as Scarlet O’Hara would say, “Oh fuck it. I’ll do it tomorrow.” She said that didn’t she?
More color sneaking into the wild garden.
Summer is a good time for putting things off usually but now everything is all strange. Things have been put off and now odd things are popping back up on the calendar. Is this going to happen or not? This seems to be the question. Is there any sense for rescheduling anything? I pity the organizer. People that I know that actually DO things all report zoom fatigue. Which I get. I don’t like it much. Seeing someones facial expressions twitching several micro seconds slower than real time is surprisingly unhelpful. It is to intimacy like kissing through a tea towel. I mean it’s something but not something I would recommend.
I get why people are all antsy to open up. I would love to go out for a cocktail, and sit across from some one I barely know and talk about something interesting and new. I’d like to hear a whole new set of jokes from somewhere. I’d like to laugh really hard without a mask on. I’d love to hear some live music and sit close to the band. I’d like to flirt with my favorite wait staff and tip them big. But no… I don’t want to do that if there is any chance that I might get them sick or they would get me sick or they might get Nancy Ricketts sick, cause that’s how it might work isn’t it? Some slippery little bug might just stick from some visiting Sitka to work in a Fish Plant to the wait staff to me then me to Nancy. Boom. Nobody means any harm but one of my dearest friends in the world and a cultural treasure brings a plague into a rest home, where culture treasures of Alaska are sheltered. Fine. I’ll be careful, and I won’t put that off.
And that’s not just being a worry wart. This Virus is sticky. It gets into an area no one can control it. There is no way to cure it. We still don’t know how it works on different populations even.. You can’t blame the Republicans for the virus. You can’t blame the Democrats, you can’t blame the Chinese… I mean you CAN… but it won’t stop anyone from getting sick. So we are left with the same problem; what is the best way to approach this problem of people getting sick and dying? So far 180K and climbing in three months. So far it’s: social distancing, testing, tracing, isolating the sick and those in contact with the sick. It’s very old school and slow. In the age of miracle cures and immediate results it seems unfair, but there we are.
Dandelions
on the green lawn
turn their faces
to the sun
rolling its way to the western
side of the horizon.
As the sun slides down
the flowers close up
for the night.
They do not know anything
about a virus which kills
human beings
but still they wait
head’s down anyway,
without moving
until sunrise
and then their bright
dumb faces open up
smiling patiently:
“Hello
you!”
jhs
Here is a recording I made from a recent crime novel by a wonderful woman writer named Mette Ivie Harrison. The novel is His Right Hand. It is both a who done it and an exploration of the Church of The Latter Day Saints and a meditation on Gender. It not like anything else out there.
