Antibodies

Tomorrow, I'll be tested for antibodies and hopefully be working next week. Staff in that hospital feel under siege. Many quit or got sick and now they're short. Most of the patients are elderly with COVID-19. Too many have died too close together. The staff are bruised. I want to help.

Just touching base

We talked on the telephone about preparing for death, walking on a sunny Spring afternoon, my 14 year old boy and I. 

Summary

There's a quiet roaring or rushing sound in my head that goes with a virus. I've got that going on and two fingers tingling all day but nothing else. I took a walk in the sun. I paid the wi-fi bill. I took a phone call asking if I wanted to fill in at a hospital where the social worker just quit. I can still breathe.

There was a girl sitting at the edge of a pond playing an acoustic guitar and singing. I was walking along the nearby road. There was no one else around. I waved as I walked past. She looked away.

I had the distinct impression she was making a video, using the pond as a serene backdrop. Maybe because of the way she dressed and the way she reacted.

Something felt sad to me about that. I had this thought that all of us, right now, are self-obsessed, busy making intimate videos against curated backdrops that no one cares to watch. That's probably shaded a little by who I am and where my head is at though.

I'm sure many people were entertained. Maybe even uplifted. 

Fried Egg Sandwich

1.

You liked a runny yoke. And I liked frying an egg and making a sandwich for you. I liked that very much.

2.

We cannot grasp the changes that are now in motion.

Love

Where did this day go? Squandered, on the face of it. Slept until noon and never left the house.

But this morning a friend reached out on social media after no contact in over 20 years. He escaped what the doctors called certain death not long ago. He endured a surgery that ended his sex life as he knew it, and now he wonders what his wife will do. They have young children together. He's already planning to enjoy nature, if she goes, and to remain a father to his boys. All his close friends have died.

Reminded, yet again, that everything we love, we lose. Everything that brings pleasure or joy will bring pain and suffering when it is taken from us. We leave here holding nothing. It's hard to live keeping that in focus, but we should.

A pair of tufted tit-mice perched on a branch so I could see them close to the empty feeder. They're sending me a message. A robin kept flying up to the windows on three sides of the house.

Messaging intermittently with a friend who has been hibernating for years and is now feeling the excitement and the agony of waking. She sends Sara Vaughan.

And with my daughter, who is putting a book of poems together, trying to figure a way home. She encourages me in my own writing and makes me cry.

We still have the beautiful things I listed for you.
You can probably add a few of your own.
We also have love.

And the greatest of these is love.

Are you the one who I've been waiting for?

A fever came on suddenly last night while I was working. I'd been delivering packaged food, contact free. Sweat through the night with mild throat and chest pain, but I feel ok today. Slept a lot.

Now, I'm headed out for a walk in the sun. 

Propagandize for the public good

They put a screen on the wall to disseminate new information to the employees while they work. Tonight, they featured a well produced rap video, distributed nationally, written and performed by an employee, regarding Covid-19 and ways to stay safe while keeping the food distribution system flowing in, and for, America. It was educational, catchy, patriotic, and to the point. It stressed respect for social distancing. I got a kick out of it the first time I heard it.  Five hours into the shift, by about the 25th listen, I transformed into the savage in Brave New World. 

A tribute to two good people

I want to salute a lady I met recently, Rose Wang Sun. She works as a medical assistant at a hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts. In her home country, she had a career as a nurse and, eventually, a doctor. When she's not working at the hospital, she works with herbs, she paints, and does amazing things with a sewing machine.

For the past month or longer, she's been making PPE at home - masks, caps, headbands, plastic face shields, other innovative devices - and providing them to the hospital staff at no cost to them. I asked her if she could make a few items for some of my friends working in a hospital. She had them finished and ready in less than 48 hours, after working shifts both of those days. When I went to pick them up, I expected to meet an exhausted woman. She greeted me at the front door smiling, happy, and radiant.

A long time ago, I had the good fortune of working with a Yup'ik Eskimo elder and healer. She was well known in the community. People sought her out for healing and advice around the clock. I never saw her compensated for her services. I never heard her complain or saw her turn anyone away. She was also smiling, happy and radiant. So much so that you could not be in her presence and be unaffected.

Once, I summoned the courage to ask her if she ever got burnt out after watching her engaged by ten or more people and their troubles at a community event. She smiled like a little girl and said, no, she never had. She told me that what she did didn't drain her energy, that what she gave didn't really come from her at all. She said that energy came directly from the eye of the universe and that it never runs out. I have never met a more powerful person in my life.

This lady I'm saluting today has some of that same stuff in her. Thank you to you and those like you, Rose. Without you, we'd be lost. 

Divide

I took the bait and ended up arguing with two guys I served in the Marine Corps with long ago on social media. I live in the East. They live in the West. They think  COVID-19 is no worse than the flu. They're opening field hospitals in this area. They're digging mass graves about 300 miles from here.

Those boys are glad to see armed white men on the steps of city hall exercising their right to bear arms and defend us against the tyranny of public health experts. I think they're a bunch of douche-bag-wanna-be-terrorists who get to have their picture taken making defenseless people nervous, posing like tough guys with their body armor and assault rifles.

We didn't make much progress. 

Dry run

Try to paint a portrait of the waiting room
Detail your time in transit
Commuting from there to here which is
Existence
Day dreaming, but vaguely
Wishing, but half-heartedly
Not really doing
Much at all
Really

You thought you might be one of these squeeze-every-last-drop-out-of-life types early on.
Maybe you dried up before it did.

Looking back

I haven't been in contact with him in over 30 years. Tried locating him more than a few times. Failing in that, I assumed the worst.

I still laugh thinking of things we said and did. I also worry, remembering things we did and might have done. Ours was not a sustainable lifestyle. That road ends at the precipice, or a few thousand feet below.

Last night, I sent a message to his wife through Facebook. How I managed to find her so easily now and not before, I don't know. This morning, she replied.

They're not together anymore. Their baby is thirty something and a beautiful woman now. She is sad that they couldn't make it work. He fell on hard times after the split, but seems better now. He moved north. Married again.

We were on the same path once. He was a little older and a bit further along. The second to last time I saw him, he put a gun in my hand. A gift. It was my birthday.

I saw a demon in his eyes when he handed it to me.

I gave the pistol back to him. Then I got in my van and took a very long drive, during which I decided to take a different road entirely.

A few years later, I saw him again. Home from war. Stories about friends from our old unit who were killed there. Where he was. Where I should have been.

That experience felt like a wall between us, because I didn't bear it with him.

He was about to do something he shouldn't do, but I couldn't reach him. I didn't have the right to interfere.

Despite choosing a different road, I never forgot how to get back on our original course. It's always been just a few steps from where I am.

Sometimes spring snow breaks your back. Other times, it's a gift.

April snow. The dazzling white covering seen through the bedroom slider made me think of you the instant I opened my eyes. "Snowed in" together. Many of the details are blurred, but I remember making breakfast together, making espresso, making love. Time alone with you. You got restless after not very long and wanted to do something else, but I could have stayed right there happily for several days more.

That time I shoveled at least a foot of snow out of the entire driveway (you noticed!) while nervously waiting for you to arrive. And the time we woke to "harsh conditions" after the last of the heating oil had burned away. While you were sleeping, I covered you with every blanket I had. Then that time I was trying to get up the hill to your house on balding tires after a blizzard. You heard me cursing a quarter mile away. I'm a little ashamed of that one.

That was always a sacred thing to me though. Being invited into your home. The magical place you made and lived in with your loved ones.

Gig

The world of takeout is out of control. Tonight I stood with at least 25 people waiting for food in a small BBQ restaurant. Some had been waiting two and a half hours. The restaurant I visited prior to that had a line almost two city blocks long. The restaurant workers are under pressure and working their butts off. The public is mostly patient and understanding with an entitled and uncomprehending minority. There are a lot of delivery drivers out there - Grub Hub, Uber Eats. Postmates, DoorDash. Most of them tonight were frustrated and standing in line. 

Neighbor

Last night a coyote started howling loudly right outside my bedroom's sliding door. I turned on the outside light to try see him, and he stopped in mid-howl. I heard the sound in his throat, him bounding away through the brush.

I was immediately sorry I'd turned on the light. But I remember thinking vaguely that the coyote's celebration combined with the nightly owl wing-ding would draw the unwanted attention of the neighbors, then someone would complain, and then someone might come and interfere with your visitations.

I hope, coyote, you understand I was not trying to run you off. 

Words

Sometimes writing feels like talking. I get sick of doing it and stop. You get used to not talking and not listening. Then, when it's time to do it again, you don't want to. That feeling of not wanting to infects your writing too.

I remember you saying something like, "I thought you said you didn't talk much."  That was early on, when I started to regain consciousness.  When I was coming back to life.

I can't feel that tonight. I only feel those words you said.

April 14

1.

Slept in a little and woke to this quiet house. The past two weeks provided a different routine, a different reality, a different sense of myself. For now, I'm back to getting used to the silence of this place. The ringing in my ears.

The rain has stopped, the sun is out. I'll walk today, clean up, catch up on neglected tasks. Side step the quicksand - lethargy, depression.

One day at a time. Today is all.

2.

Hospitalist. Worried.

Mike Pence is a satanic robot

All this rain lately. One of these days, it's going to hit 70 degrees and then there will be an explosion of green and a mass blossoming.

Today is the last day of my work assignment at the warehouse, unless I am extended. Frankly, the bilingual guy who can't stop talking is more useful there than I am. Unless of course someone strangles him for talking too much. I pushed them to find a Spanish speaker, so probably talked myself out of a good paying job, but that's what they need.

I still have a part time gig delivering crab rangoon and burrito supremes to the hungry populus. I will wring sustenance and a sense of purpose out of that for now. I also need to get to the store for twenty five pounds of rice and a bunch of dry beans.

May your breathing continue untroubled, friend. 

Easter

Easter was a phone call to my youngest son and a message to pass Happy Easter on to his older brother and company. I texted my daughter. And I worked an eight and a half hour shift along with a Mexican born EAP professional who never once stopped talking. At least this broke the ice with a lot of the Spanish speaking workers who seemed more receptive to my presence after that.

For them, it's a twelve-and-a half hour shift of repetitive manual labor. They are picking, packing and loading individual orders of groceries and household goods. They are from all over Africa, the Caribbean, Central and South America. They work steadily, they don't complain. They socialize a little during breaks, maintaining an enforced social distance, heating their fragrant homemade meals in the break room microwave ovens. They worry. Some admit to having trouble sleeping. Some don't know what a virus is. My bilingual partner is more than happy to explain (at great length, employing many, many, muchisimas, words).

On my way out, I say, "Bon nuit, Mesdames," to two of the French speaking women from Central Africa, and their stoic faces brighten into smiles. 

Maria

It would be a good thing if someone drew the curtains and let her sleep in. It would be even better if someone made breakfast for her two boys while she slept. It would be really great if someone held her in his arms when she finally got up after she was completely rested and not in response to someone else's demands. She'd lean against him, feeling safe and loved. As though she had a partner she could count on.  

Health and sickness

During my third meeting, I realized that these women were all in the same boat. Their circumstances were almost identical. I asked her what she thought about meeting as a group to talk about what kind of things they are doing to cope with all of this. That way we can all learn from each other, I suggested, feeling pretty damn empowering. She was polite. She said, "Yes, that's a good idea, but some people get kind of happy that you're struggling. It's a type of envy."

I'm not going anywhere

It looked like a day of military triumph for the advancing virus with it's cold demoralizing rain and an endless hoard of low gray jagged clouds on the charge. There's little but virus on the shelves of Dollar General and a shitload of discarded latex gloves and surgical masks in the parking lots and gutters, stuck into wire fences. It lends the look of contamination and filth.  Medical waste. There is virus in between our jokes and virus particles on her unbelievably form fitting runner's tights. The Kenyan-American at the door who checks every outgoing bag for stolen merchandise is watching the count rise every few minutes on the CDC screen. Just before sunset, the sun broke through, lighting the clouds from below, making it all seem less threatening. People kept on ordering their takeout. Chinese takeout too. 

Poor excuse for a post

Seems like someone has been unscrewing the light bulbs in my world lately. Fuck it. I'll walk in the dark then.

Signs and Portents

1.

A sixth positive case was revealed on my job site yesterday, but that person had not been in the building for over a week which is before I started. Five of the six are recovering well at home. I was drowsy all day, low energy, and thought I felt a strange buzzing in my sinuses. After work, a long postponed trip to the nearly empty laundromat and some chicken curry to go.

"Stay healthy," the man said. But by 10 pm, I was pretty certain I was getting sick. At midnight, I woke up parched and got up for water. Two owls were making a hell of a racket in the trees tops in back. Mating season - birds are establishing territory, nesting, coupling. Not me.

I watched a couple of episodes of a TV show on my laptop. One of them featured a professor explaining Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights to a detective. 

On the edge of the painting was a naked man embracing an owl that was much bigger than the man. The owl stared evenly out at the viewer. The professor explained that the owl was a symbol of evil, and the painting was ultimately about man's choice to embrace it.

Now, it's becoming quite clear that I've got evil itself raising hell in my backyard and a fever coming on. Not good. But eventually sleep carried me off, and I woke this morning without perceptible symptoms.

Except for the curry insisting to leave.

2.

Wondering how many Americans understand that so many of the essential workers keeping us fed are women who have brown skin, speak Spanish, bring home their family's only income, are not only head of the family living under their roof but also the rock for the rest of the family back in their country of origin. They have no one to lean on and everyone to be strong for. Self-quarantine, for them, means two weeks without a paycheck. But they are also afraid to bring this virus from their work place home to their families. They have no real options.

3.

Tonight the full pink moon rose before the sun could even set.

Another Monday (not taken for granted)

Funny how we reset. I woke this morning to a feeling of normalcy. I'm thinking of you out there, now, hoping you're safe.

Bill Withers has died. Maryanne Faithful and John Prine are very sick with COVID-19.

Good things are hard to let slip, but they will slip. Cherish them while they're here.

I'm glad, remembering my time with you, that I was old and wise enough to do that. There's much I didn't get right, but I did cherish.

Trabajo mucho

Another shift working here. The crew gets smaller every day. People are afraid to come in.

I talked with two ladies by putting our broken Spanish and English together. Maria's got a boy at home with a toothache and nowhere to take him. Everything is closed because of this virus. She's hoping penicillin will do the trick. 

She said she slept only three hours last night because he was up and in pain. He's seven. 

She'll be cleaning for another twelve hours today; disinfecting surfaces over and over again.

I ask her about her husband.

"No have esposo. He go home," she says, smiling a little flirtatiously behind her surgical mask.

The two of them giggle as they leave the office and continue wiping down the hallway walls. 

They'll make it. 

Camper

I took a short walk along the bicycle path that runs beside the river during a break in the rain. You can smell where the sewage overflow enters the river. If you somehow miss the smell, there's a city sign marking the intersection. Right there on the river bank is a makeshift shelter made of pallets, plywood, tarps and canvases. It looks like a single room house and it's more than tall enough to stand in. I noticed several other hooches down in that area built in among the old industrial foundations and ruins. Ramshackle combinations of tents, tarps and blankets.

Later, I was leaving for the day, it had been raining steadily for hours and was about 40 degrees. A woman was panhandling at the intersection very close to the encampment. She wore a hooded jacket, but she was soaked to the skin and shivering. I remembered times like that - cold, wet, and miserable with the feeling that absolutely everything is relentlessly opposing you. No relief in sight. No way to get warm or dry. Bleak.

When I stopped at the light, I handed her a five dollar bill.  It felt like kind of a lot when I removed it from my wallet. She thanked me and told me she'd ask Jesus to bless me every time I happened to cross her heart in the future. She smiled - broken teeth, manic blue eyes, rain streaming off of her hood.

That five dollar bill suddenly seemed embarrassingly small. 

After the shift

A fifth case emerges at the end of the day.

Monday, she was walking, talking, laughing, working - just another shift. Thursday, she's on a ventilator in critical condition. Thoughts and prayers.

The guidelines are still: keep six feet apart, avoid spending more than 15 minutes in close proximity to others - like in the same office, wear gloves, wash your hands frequently.

Several employees have been cleaning and disinfecting continuously for days now. More surgical masks are being made available. In two weeks, there should be medical personnel taking temperatures at the door.

Orders are two weeks behind. They're told their work here is essential.

The manager feels it when he says,"You're my second family. For God's sake, if you're not comfortable, stay home."

But most of them can't do that. They have their first families to feed. 

Help is where you find it

You can sit in the conference room all day long and no one comes in to talk to you. But if you walk the warehouse floor with them, they might. People are worried about family in New York. They are worried about taking the virus home from work to frail parents or young children they care for. They fear for loved ones in other countries where international travel has been stopped.

When they speak in Spanish, I pick out the words familia, trabajo, and infermo. 

I talk with one man, wearing a respirator,  who explains that he has been protecting his sick mother, who lives with him, from the rest of his siblings. But now he himself might have been exposed to the virus at work - last week.

What if I've actually been exposing her to it this whole time while trying to protect her? 

He is worried about panic in the streets and a complete break down in civility between people. I try to bring him back to right now, using a calm voice, to his next breath. One full inhalation and one full exhalation. Deal with one minute and then the next  minute - one thing at a time. I tell him this while I'm actively urinating. 

Supply chain

I stayed in the house for the last week or so, coming out only to walk and go to the grocery store once. Yesterday, I drove down into the city to start a new work assignment. The change in elevation transported me from Winter to Spring - brilliant yellow forsythia in bloom, trees budding. Change in perspective. The sunny morning showed no signs of virus.

Working feels good, but I'm not yet entirely sure how to make myself useful. I'm maintaining distance. I'm encouraging the managers who are caught in the typical squeeze between the workers and the top. They're scared too. One is in his 60s and has smoked most of his life. The other is younger with a wife and three young kids at home. No one wants to get sick. Everyone's afraid to die.

I saw how fragile the balance is. This warehouse has received more orders than the staff can fill. They don't have the stock available or enough time or people power to do it in the allotted time frame. They are moving quickly, efficiently, but the number of orders is unprecedented due to the boom in on-line shopping for essentials. They depend on long distance truckers to keep them stocked. They also depend on local delivery drivers, like UPS and Fed Ex, to get the orders out.

If workers at any link in this chain sicken, panic, or get good and pissed off,  all of it grinds to a halt. And then you don't get your Cheetos.