In Essence

The distribution warehouse is part of the supply chain that gets your groceries to you. The employees working here are essential. The paychecks earned by the employees working here are essential to them. So essential that one never really thinks twice about working through a cold or cough. Now, two essential employees in the distribution warehouse are positive for the corona virus.

One of the essential managers calls a huddle to announce this fact, to quash rumors, and to reassure and motivate the essential employees. And then that essential manager promptly goes on unplanned leave.

The essential employees are not reassured, or especially motivated, today but they show up for work  because they must. Upper management, who does not know the essential employees personally, called the employee assistance program for a counselor to support the essential employees at the work site. The counselor is not essential, but his paycheck is, so he's happy to respond. The counselor arrives at the distribution warehouse and discovers that he does not speak the same language as seventy-five percent of the essential employees.

The essential employees' faces are brown and black. When the shift leader talks to them  - disseminating what he can of the frustrating lack of direction from corporate - the line supervisor provides the translation. There are a few uncomprehending faces who don't seem to understand either version of the speech.
.
The Wellness Team was supposed to arrive this morning to assist the remaining managers in shepherding the employees through this crisis, but they pulled out when they learned that some of the essential employees were unwell. 

Something for your head

Dribbler

Today it's pissing in a dribble, and I didn't leave the house again. Maybe, after dark, a walk.  I got an invitation to write a story in the round this morning. Five sentences at a time with a handful of other writers. It's something at least.

The idea of reaching out to others, though, seems more and more distant to me with each passing day. I don't want to get on Zoom and socialize remotely and exaggerate having a good time.

I'd like to wrestle in a bed for a while, maybe, with someone and then part company, but that's it.
I'd like to have my children in the same room laughing together and letting me see that, but that's it. I'd like to say, how was your weekend? to my coworkers while earning a paycheck, but that's it.
I'd like to read your cursive handwriting again and feel every word like a kiss or a nail, but that's it. 

When He Gets To Heaven

Reality check

1.

Maybe it's the rain that's making me feel more immobile than usual, or maybe it's just my lack of a plan. Regardless, today I'm going to clean some of this house.

2.

Yes, Barry Manilow, it could be magic. Your soaring strings got me all atingle. Thanks to Midnight Cafe Radio in Flushing, New York for a strangely blissful solo kitchen cleaning experience.

If you find yourself running out of music during your confinement, check out the Radio Garden app. It's free and it gives you access to radio all over the world.

3.

We've decided it's probably better for me not to see my boys this weekend. The household they're living in has been pretty strictly quarantined during the past week. I have been too, for the most part. But why risk it? Contact has become deadly. I'm alone through this.

Thankfully I've been training for this for the better part of four years, so the alone part ain't shit to me. The helpless part takes some getting used to though.

The phone rang early this afternoon and startled me. A coworker just died of a heart attack. He was a brilliant, seasoned, humorous, hard working man and an unrelenting force for good in a world where that's not always recognized or valued. He had the unenviable task of trying to impose some kind of order on propagating chaos every day. He never forgot that beyond the chaos were vulnerable people.

I just learned on social media that the super-human-songwriter, John Prine,  has been intubated. He's got this virus, and it's looking grim for him.

Now it's people you know. Now it's real. 

0

Today evaporated. 

Perspective

What's the purpose? 

You were going through that kind of thing back then. I felt like you were looking for some sort of ultimate, universal response that fit everyone.

You know, the truth.
The purpose of life is x. 

I didn't have that kind of an answer. Camus said something about life being essentially absurd. To find meaning, we have to make it. I agree with the Frenchman.

I'm furloughed. Sitting this thing out right now.
And because I am only sitting, the voice I hear says loud and clear, "The purpose is to help those who need it."

I am thinking about the people who are helping - a nurse putting that long wooden testing swab in people's throats, or the respiratory therapist removing an intubation tube from a newly deceased person, and the housekeeper that will have to change the sheets and clean that contaminated room.

The voice they hear says, "The purpose is to stay alive."

Developing

1.

It's nice to wake with the sun. It was nice to wake with you when you were the sun.

The Catholic priest helping East Los Angeles gang members rehabilitate from that life sent a video message from quarantine. A homie said to him, "love is stronger than this virus," and the priest wanted to pass it on. Love never fails, the scripture says, even when everything else falls away. 

Drinking coffee I made with the French press after grinding the beans in an electric grinder. I did  these things carelessly, without precision or conscious thought. I don't know if I'm drinking good, well made coffee or just expediting caffeine into my system.

Anyway, for now, I'm benched. Furloughed. I'm going to take a walk and think about what next means.

2.

My morning walk revealed a cloudless blue sky and a slow climbing sun gaining in strength.

The activity of grey and red squirrels is more energetic now and that heartens me.

Eight robins stand motionless, watching me, across the breadth of a brown open field. They're ceremoniously arranged in a staggered column - chests out, beaks upturned slightly - in postures of vigorous nobility.

They transmit to me my marching orders. 

Where

I realize I have no idea where you are or what you do these days. I know you're married. I know you have a child. I've been imagining you able to stay home, but I know you can't sit still for long. Are you working in a hospital? Are you exposed to the risk of this thing every day?

Tentatively

Walking at dusk down through the solar panel field into the woods and along the trail. The robins are out in strength, undaunted by yesterday's snow mostly melted now and swelling the creek where I stop and listen to the rushing for a minute or two. The air is cool, on the verge of cold, just cold enough to excite the lungs as it enters. I hold onto the awareness of that sensation for the entire hour. Breathing. Fully inflating my lungs and exhaling. Appreciating the unencumbered vital exchange of gasses that enables this small precious life and all the other ones too.

Not much

The robin sheltered under the stairs for most of the day. Restlessly, at intervals, it flew up into the branches to keep its blood moving or to check the status of the storm. It's the first real snowfall I've seen all winter, and it's spring. I'm sure it's a monkey wrench in the works for the robin.

That was the highlight of the day. Other than that, conference calls. Making ready for the unknown. Waiting. Piling dirty dishes in the sink.

I'd like to know about you. How you are. That you're safe.

Sunday

Went to the supermarket this morning, while it was still relatively early, to see if there was any meat left on the shelves for the boys.

"Thank you for being here," I said to the elderly lady at the register.

"Thank you for having me," she answered. "I'm on social security and I need the hours."

We know something is happening to us, but only dimly. It's at the outer edge of our awareness.

A Saturday To My Self

1. Morning

A round of check-ins.
No one is ill.
Indecision.
Procrastination.
Remain in place.
The sun is shining on an early Saturday afternoon.
Maybe another long walk in the woods.
Best I've got right now.

2. Afternoon

I walked in the woods for two hours this afternoon just to get out of the house. During the first hour, I saw no one else. Scarcely a bird. At the top of the second hour, I encountered a couple on the trail walking their dog. The dog seemed startled to see me. The couple, also startled, reigned in the dog and said hello. The young man said, "beautiful day, isn't it?" while scanning me for weapons.

I felt their presence as an intrusion.

A little later, a mountain biker passed below on another trail without seeing me. I was concealed by pine boughs watching his approach. I felt like a pale, pudgy mountain lion in late middle age. I contemplated taking him just because he was there and because there was nothing else to eat. Now, I'm sitting at the table drinking a beer and eating a Klondike bar. 

Walk

1.

A quick walk in a light rain. It's humid today. Supposed to get to 70 degrees even though there was snow on the ground yesterday.

Change and change again.

There's more activity among the birds now. I heard recognizable sounds like the sharp, clipped chip of cardinals and the softer, frolicsome chickadees darting in a group among the briars. A woodpecker calls loudly, what type exactly I'm not sure. There's someone else. Its simple tune is unfamiliar and  beautifully rendered. He's calling for a mate, and with a singing voice like that, she'll be along soon.

Nature continues, alive and unafraid.

2.

I was remembering something you told me about a trip to San Francisco with your husband. You made certain your hotel was within walking distance of premium espresso. I like the thought of you there in the morning, sunlight behind fog, newly wed and in love, feeling luxury was at your disposal.

Don't you want that for me? 

You asked me that a couple of years later.

Yeah...I do, only I'm not in that picture.

Posted it before, but it's still mighty good

Second Day

Working from home again. Rain has postponed my plan for a long walk in the woods on a mountain bike trail I discovered yesterday. I'm here on my own. I have three children in three other locations. Anxiety builds because I can't see them.

At work, testing kits and personal protective equipment are sources of concern. I'm imagining the moment the system gets overwhelmed. I'd like to be able to do more than feel helpless and wait. 

Historic

History is happening and I don't have anything profound to say. As a potential disease vector, I'm working from home today. Doing so made me instantly feel like I did when other marines were deployed into danger and I was not. I should be there with them.

You could focus your eyes on people hoarding toilet paper and trying to make a killing jacking up the price of hand sanitizer and come to the conclusion that we will be rightly annihilated by our greed and selfishness. You could also focus your eyes on the certified nurse's aide who comes to work every day to face untold abuse and exposure washing, wiping, lifting, comforting sick people who can not do it for themselves. She's not getting rich, she's not receiving appreciation, and she lives her days or nights on the front line. Coming in for a shift, especially at a time like this, for not much more than minimum wage is pretty damn heroic.

The first positive Covid 19 case has been identified in the small town I live in. I learned that at the barbershop in town, one of the few that haven't opted to close. I got my hair cut quite short in anticipation of not having access for awhile.

The barber said she thought the whole thing was exaggerated. I assured her it was not. Later she asked with a wry smile if I thought Chinese restaurants were taking a bigger hit to their business than the others. I could hear Fox news in between her words. I said people are stupid.

I won't be going back there. And I've never felt any sense of community in this town. But I'm still hoping they come through this.

Some of us will be larger people when it's over and some of us will be smaller.

Meanwhile, I'm starting to wipe my ass with onion skins. They're all that's left on store shelves.

Eyes of love, it said

Things have changed since the weekend. Gyms, movie theaters, restaurants and bars are closing. Visitors to hospitals are being limited, but not stopped entirely, and this is causing concerns. A highly anxious doctor. The nurses and the CNA's laugh when they're together, but alone, they worry about what they might bring home. The patients are frail, demented, and I don't think they're thinking about this virus. I wonder what changes there will be today.

Outside, I've seen selfish eyes, suspicious eyes, eyes of fear. A voice tells me to show them eyes of love. I try to smile at people. There is a nurse in the doorway of the hospital screening people on their way in. She asks about cough and fever. She makes us sanitize our hands. While doing so, I sing "Don't stand, Don't stand so, Don't stand so close to me'. She laughs and seems relieved for a moment.

Reading about writing. Hemingway recommends writing one true sentence. A light snow fell overnight. That's true. I want to show you how the whitening of the ground and the bare branches
has changed the way it feels here. A few scattered flakes are falling. The sky is a little darker. It's very quiet.

Dream

There's a quickening on the outer edge of this thing. You're not sure if it's something we'll look back on as a medium-sized scare and a relatively minor disruption of the human world or something that will decimate our population. I have become such a slave to this system that, when I think about what I'd like to do before I sicken, all I come up with is paying off the last of my credit card debt. Let me die with excellent credit. 

Ante Meridian

The light wakes me again at just about 7 a.m.. It's a good way to wake up. I'm breathing freely and grateful for that, but I woke twice during the night with kind of a tickle in my throat. Got something to drink, thinking maybe I'm just dry, and went back to sleep. It's still there this morning though but faintly.

I picked up my son yesterday. We went out to breakfast in a not very busy place, walked around town, played Uno and drank bubble tea in a nearly deserted place, spent some time checking out books and DVDs in the public library because it's about to close for two weeks along with his school, went to a second fairly busy restaurant for a late lunch and then I dropped him off at the theater where he met his friend to go to the movies.

During breakfast one of his friends called and said his Mom wasn't letting him go to the movies because the first Covid 19 case has been confirmed at the regional high school in town. I googled it and found the town's website which said, as of that morning, there were no confirmed or suspected cases yet. Last night, I learned it was indeed true - a presumed positive high school student. So now the throat tickle seems a little more significant.

Last night, I talked to two Greeks in Worcester - brothers. They run a small pizza place, told me their business is down drastically in the last week. They're getting worried.

A Facebook friend in Hong Kong sent out a meme saying gargling with salt water or vinegar during the first four days of the virus, when it's living in the throat and before it drops into the lungs, will kill it. Ridiculous, I thought, before I went to sleep.

This morning I'm trying to remember how old the cider vinegar in the cabinet is.

Saturday

It's a chilly morning and the curtains are open. The early morning light woke me. I'm breathing through my nose easily right now. Full breaths. Noticing. It's not to be taken for granted.

Listening to a crow.

You can now specify, when you are ordering restaurant food and you want it delivered, that you'd like a no contact delivery. This means that the driver leaves the food on your porch or your doorstep or even on the curb, if that's your preference.

The world is changing fast, that's the perception. Something is about to happen. 

Ten and a half hours of grief

He died in an accident at work in the middle of an ordinary day leaving his wife and four teenagers in shock. His coworkers, union brothers and a few sisters, got together to mourn him and support each other the next morning. I felt the power of them sitting together, many of them crying freely.

They arrived one by one and greeted each other. Most were careful not to shake hands because of the circulating new virus, so they fist or elbow bumped a little awkwardly instead. By noon, after many people had gotten up to speak and cried and talked among themselves, they were all hugging, and the fear of germs was out the window.

His wife asked why God was angry with her. Why he would do this to her and her kids.

This is the problem with the God thing. God blessed us, someone says, when something goes well. Well, why would he bless you and overlook someone else? Because you deserve it?

That's a little easier to swallow than a loss. When according to that worldview, the Giver randomly and cruelly takes away your love. Did you deserve that too?

I don't touch that whole mess.

We die, that's what I think. It's not your fault.

Someone said, God never gives you more than you can handle. I clenched my teeth.

Was that you?

Drastic measures. A travel ban with Europe. I fell asleep, wanted to stay that way, but now I'm getting up for work. My son will not return to campus after spring break, but will continue his freshman year of college on line, probably while living at home.

Writing about you, I have forgotten my original intent for doing so. At times I was trying to write you out of my system. But maybe, more recently, writing about you and remembering has been an effort to keep you there.

I used to believe I could feel your moods change remotely. Maybe not moods exactly, but your closeness and distance from me. That started happening again recently. There were a couple of instances in which I felt us occupying the same space and time, for just a moment. I felt closeness. But for the past several days, I feel that awful distance. As though you've gone again. Those disappearances of yours. How dismal things become.

Either way, whether I write what remains of you out of me or you choose to stop remembering me, I lose you again. I thought all that had been finalized, but something must have happened. Things seem bleaker now.

Out of an abundance of ...

The state I live in has declared a state of emergency as a result of about 50 people contracting the Coronavirus at a biotech conference. I take no issue with this. In fact, I don't really know what to think. Wash your hands, avoid crowds if you can, cover coughs and sneezes well, and don't freak out. That's the best I've got.

Stories of price gouging and hoarding are already circulating. Our president is a shit head incapable of empathy and unable to get beyond feeling the virus is treating him, personally, unfairly. Don't expect guidance or leadership there.

People haven't really started dying here. Right here, I mean. No one I know. So it's still easy to be a little flip and cavalier. It's not real to me yet, but it's certainly real in the objective sense.

Germans have a reputation for being kind of humorless. It's a stereotype. This morning, Chancellor Merkel announced that Germany can expect about a 70% infection rate. I thought that was cool. A rational leader telling the truth rationally to rational people so they know what to expect and can rationally prepare. We Americans seem incapable of facing reality without the aid of some escapist fantasy, blind panic, or viciousness. Asian friends are getting dirty looks and worse over here.

People are having fewer restaurant meals delivered. This I know for certain. Airfares for the daring have dropped significantly. It's a good time to refinance your home mortgage. Gloves and masks are disappearing from hospitals rapidly.

The powers that be have agreed to call this a worldwide pandemic, and I'm living exactly as I usually do. That is to say, marginally. Good luck. 

Missed it

There was one of those super moons visible in the sky last night, but I didn't see it.  I'd been watching it grow toward fullness for a few nights prior, but just didn't have what it took to wait for it to rise or to get up early enough to see it set. I went outside, though, just prior to going to bed and felt the warm night air of premature Spring. 

Inappropriate Affect

Just as often as not, I feel like that green vomiting emoji I see in use.

It was triggered today by receiving notification that I now once again have good credit. I'm a real person, a valid human being. Congratulations! This is instantly followed by loan offers, credit card offers, a raise in my credit limit. Wooooooooo! Join the party!

Umph-eh-rawwwwwwwwr! Pardon me, and no thank you. Sorry if I got some on your shoes.

Tonight, a message from a beautiful woman. She's been thinking of a future for us, she says. Waking up together, having breakfast. This is something that should make me happy. Instead, the room starts to spin, I'm sweaty but feeling cold, my heart is pounding in my head, my stomach is about to explode its insides out. Slow. Slow. Please. Slow.

Yeah, I want to run. Maybe we could just meet for a drink. A pleasant evening with no greater expectations.

The author on the radio was right. No one talks about the twenty-second century. Still, I'm going to make an effort to make my yard more friendly to pollinators this year. 

Bug

Tomorrow's travel for work canceled due to concern over this virus. I saw a headline yesterday saying that it seemed to be sparing children, unlike the flu. Who knows if this is true, but I sure hope it is.

Makes me want to believe the thing is selective and has a certain moral intelligence. 

Children

I woke up grinding my teeth after learning I'd scored a 75 on a math test. And the unsympathetic, unmotivated teacher said there weren't going to be anymore tests this quarter. There would be no chance to improve my grade.

An old friend from junior high school tells me we have gone well past the tipping point, as far as the climate - and everything else - goes. I too believe this, on some level, but I also think it's wrong to accept it. Given this, I don't know why I'm still worried about math.

There are children in the world. Many, many of them. We owe them our best.

I think of you the way you were back then, having nothing else to go on, but things have changed and you're a mother now. I wonder how that experience has changed your life, and if it has changed your heart.

Once, when we were together and things were good between us, I daydreamed about you and a little girl. I saw the two of you holding hands. She was three or four years old and tiny, but she moved with confidence like you do. She had thick black hair, was holding your hand, and looking up at you. You were both smiling and full of mischief. I could see the strength of your connection and that made me feel very good. 

March walk

This is more like what I expect of March. A bite in the wind that stings your face and hands and makes your eyes tear while you're walking. Iron grey skies and bare trees. An occasional whiff of wood smoke. Chickadees making their small sounds, maybe whimsical maybe lonely. I think it's your childhood that determines that.

When I hear that sound, I remember early years. The old neighborhood was on a dead end street. We kids had the run of it. No yard was off limits, and we roamed the territories at will. One day I heard these early Spring birds. I was on my own, between our house and the neighbors, and the sound made me feel alone and hopeless. There were other things going on in my life, but it's the birdsong I remember.

I felt a little like Thoreau today out there walking, pretending I was in some great wilderness, just a few hundred yards from town.

Mood

Walked for an hour and a half this afternoon down through the woods and around the pond. It's a bright day, warm for early March, and the sun and the moon share the sky. A bald eagle glided from the tree tops above me out over the lake where it circled high while I stopped and watched. That's the first one I've ever seen around here, and seeing it stirred something in me.

Later, I left the trail to walk through a stand of very tall maples and came upon a big porcupine rooting aggressively in the leaves. It picked something up in it's hands, sat back, and brought the morsel to its mouth. It ate with efficient ferocity, tearing whatever it was with a quick jerk of its head like you might do while eating beef jerky. There were fewer than ten yards between us, and it never noticed me there or simply didn't care.

A few minutes later, I came out of the woods on to the road and found what might have been its mate in the ditch among a winter's worth of strewn nips, beer cans, and empty pints of Mr. Boston. Too bad. But it was otherwise a good outing.

The walking, the sunshine, being in nature (of which, I remembered, I am a part) - everything feels different now. 

Something about choosing, if there is a choice

A liminal state after death and before birth - bardo. These aimless days of replaying memories and trying to taste them - play, rewind, play, rewind, play - trying to touch them. Waiting without object, eyes cast back, a shirt hanging in a closet.

You cannot pass through this place if you do not first let go of that one.

Thinking of your peace of mind. How you longed for it so earnestly. How I wished I could give it to you, cupped in my hands, like a tea light or a butterfly.

Outer Life

Yesterday was the suicide thing.

Handgun access + alcohol + domestic argument = sudden, irreversible death + shattered loved ones.

A few people came in to talk. They're worried about all kinds of things - coronavirus, work performance, addicted kids, relationships drama, panic attacks, pet deaths - and now they're trying to figure out how to carry this too.

Talked to them about focusing on basics. Small steps. Drink water, eat well, avoid excessive drug and alcohol use, exercise, sleep, stay connected to the people closest to you, be kind to yourself, look out for each other. Grief looks like all kinds of things. Grief will do what it must.

After, I tried to just go with the flow of bovine rush hour traffic to the polling place. No road raging today. Working cases like this, I'm always reminded how hard it is for everyone. The days in which you pass unscathed are actually the exception. Why make trouble?

Voted for the candidate I like and for major systemic change. That is to say, heartbreak. We will likely loosely coalesce uneasily around mediocrity in the end. Change is often slow and not what you'd hoped, but someone has to believe it's possible and push it forward.

Hadn't eaten more than a cup of coffee all day, so I went to the Chinese restaurant in town and ordered egg foo yung, beef teriyaki, scallion pancakes. A little light on the vegetables, but what the hell. Stopped at the corner store for a six pack.

At home, the mailbox extends credit offers and loan offers. I decline them all into the recycling. At the table, I tear into the food packages and wolf it all down. When I'm finished, I look at all the spent plastic, see colossal landfills in my mind's eye, acres of it on the surface of the ocean, baby belugas with their guts full of it.

The fortune cookie reminds me that success is a team effort.

Another ghost

This morning I'm going to a work place in the wake of a suicide to see if I can support the survivors. Sometimes companies will hire someone like me to come in and be available to their people when something like this occurs.

I'm remembering a woman's face from the last time. She looked so deeply sad, and she hadn't even known the young woman who died. She found herself afraid to come in early to work, which was her habit, because she believed she might run into her ghost. She was afraid if that happened she would not know the right words to comfort her.

3-2-20

Head full of static, nonsense dreams, the anxiety of every day things neglected. A single bird, the morning's first soft light, go back to sleep for another hour. I saw the length of your naked back and ran my fingertips slowly down, wishing. 

Neither here nor there

I remember having a sense of who I was and what my life was like that was fairly consistent. There were images and feelings attached to these ideas.

I could be somewhere else remembering myself or my life, and the same sorts of images and feelings would come to mind to reenforce that sense of identity. Those images and feelings comprised the setting and the context for myself and my life.

The point I'm getting at is, I don't have that sense anymore. Who I am is undefined. My life is much the same. The images and feelings I used to refer to have been changed and scattered. The setting and the context are in continuous flux. I'm this, and my life is that. That's all. But only for now.

I do wear that jacket you gave me. And you come to mind each time I put it on.

There's a lot about you and I that I can't romanticize. Things time hasn't softened. Like the misery of the feeling that came with the distinct impression that you were looking past me when we were out together. The knowledge that you had your eyes peeled for an upgrade.

It feels good to give what you have, to be whole-hearted, to someone you're in love with. It becomes hell, though, when the sum total of you is clearly not enough for that person. But then again, in a material sense, what are you really giving when you give love? It won't pay the electric bill.

So, yeah, there's a lot of shit there. Some say I dodged a bullet with the way it turned out. So why does it still feel like I got shot?

But it's not so cut and dried. There's a whole lot to consider. What happened between us wasn't part of anyone's plan. I was significantly older, had baggage (yeah, you called my children baggage), and was in the divorce process which would soon divide my meager estate into two tiny portions. You were trying to emerge from tragedies of your own.

You never signed or promised anything.

Maybe no words you could have said would have made any difference. I guess I respect that you didn't tell me a bunch of bullshit at the end. But man, that's a hard way to do a friend.

I think about you softly most of the time. I hold no bitterness for you.

Mostly, I'm thankful for the time we had - the time you gave me - and for the way you lifted me when I was very low. Cinderella, the Blue Man Group, walking lower Manhattan in heels.

Tonight there were memories of hot pot, anchovies and peanuts with chopsticks, egg tarts.

No, it was never a playground like you joked it was. It was always heaven.

In sum, I guess I was dreaming something beautiful and didn't want to stop. Don't blame me if I want to return.