Christmas in Time of Pandemic: A Mirco-Diary

 We Christmas Eve not going anywhere, while I prayed the packages I sent priority mail six days prior would arrive for Christmas.  We awoke and saw nobody except each other. I went out and drove around for two hours, dropping off homemade baked goods to friends...without going near them. I called some people out of state and was told that my gifts did not arrive, as the postal system, now broken to pieces via the present administration, has almost collapsed. I came home and saw some beloved relatives via the internet for about an hour. 

It was a holiday without the presence of human touch and closeness. It sucked. It was soul crushing. But it just seemed like another day in the now endless chain of days without human contact. As I drove around, i saw houses with many many cars parked out front. This meant people were gathering. This meant the virus would most likely spread and cause the prediction of the next six to eight weeks being a hell of misery and death would most likely come to pass...and we have not even gotten to the New Year's Eve gatherings.

Our wait for an exit from this hell is arriving, as vaccines are already being given in this state. But not for those who are healthy. Those who need it the most get it first, and for that I am grateful. I am guessing I will be given the vaccine sometime in late Spring or early Summer. Until then, it is all a repeat of the same day with some variation.

A beloved friend texted me and said we had to go to lunch while he is off work for an extended break. While my soul is screaming to see a truly beloved friend, I just cannot go into a restaurant. Not now. Not when the end is so close. 

I am truly numb from the sacrifice and isolation of the past ten months, but, since the narrative end is in sight, I'll take the punches for the extended chapters I hope to be able to write.

The Daily Numbers... While Waiting for Salvation.

 They are posting the daily number of deaths from the virus while we are waiting for the vaccine to be delivered to the masses. It is a mixed message at best.

I realize that it is surprising that I did not post on the day the first vaccine was released, but it is not that simple. Yes, there is officially a light at the end of the tunnel via two vaccines being delivered to people as I type this. But, these doses are being given to front line people: doctors, nurses, police, etc., as well as those in group homes and the elderly. This makes sense. These people are needed to keep things going and are at the highest risk of death. I have no problem with this part of the present situation.

However, there is a dark edge to the vaccine. It is, in the end, a product, a piece of something that is manufactured and can be bought...for the right price. The political leaders, many of whom were fiercely against the reality of the virus being real,  are the first in line for the shot. No, my friends, they are not so dedicated to their beliefs against the reality of this plague that they would turn down the vaccine against it. This is the very definition of cowardice at the ultimate level. And, it's on tape.

Also, it is no shock that the hyper-wealthy are getting the vaccine because, well, they can pay whatever it takes to get it. There is no equality in such a situation. They will get the vaccine and they will live fine and dandy. The rest of us, however, are getting ready for another six to eight weeks of hell.

The present number of deaths is 318,782 (1,114 deaths today), and that is going to just keep getting higher in the two months ahead because, well, people still choose to gather for the holidays even though the medical community is screaming that people just stay home. But, in this land of personal freedom over a cause for the greater good of all, we will easily hit four hundred thousand deaths before the end of February, and over half a million by the time the theoretical flag of a possible victory in the upcoming Summer/early Autumn.  Over half a million people dead that should never have had to die. I cannot even begin to imagine the amount of joy that would be needed to rise over that literal mountain of dead bodies.

And, yes, there IS a different feeling these days. There is finally a narrative thread that will lead to some ending. This vaccine is the hero to save humanity. This vaccine will set things back to a place where the light of a former normal may begin to arise. We all now know an ending shall arrive. But there is still pain, a great deal of pain that is going to keep coming and not stop when we can all go out to eat again. Personally, my life has been shattered and I cannot imagine what I will have to do to have a new career. Life for those in the lower rungs of the entertainment industry and independent contractors has been a bloodbath. there will be no immediate switch back on to resume where we left off. We will be having to start over within a new landscape that is utterly unknown. 

The hope is now in place that we shall be free of this plague. But, unlike in Camus' book, it will not be as when the town erupted into the mass of joy with the gates reopen and the trains coming back into town. While it may be possible that the virus will simply leave as the bubonic plague did, I do not believe that a virus that is basically a flu shall behave as such. We have been placed in a long game, as this flu will most likely be around for the rest of our collective life. 

This hope, while real, is temporary and fragile because we all know we will have to deal with its shadow past and lingering presence long after we are able to gather together again in public and private.

The Beaches are Full for the Tsunami

 Sorry for the long time since writing, but it is hard to write in a secluded hotel room when the people on the beach are dancing to the tsunami warning.

Thanksgiving was surreal in its lack of precedent and insular nature. To make matters more fun, the supermarket ran out of turkey, so we had chicken instead. A Zoom meeting allowed the seeing of some beloved relatives. But it was insular and rather crushing.

While I chose to stay inside during the holidays, millions did not and we are getting ready to have a massive wave of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths happen. This is going to be made much worse by the fact that Christmas and New Years will cause more people to gather and get infected. The general consensus is that, by mid January, there will be an astounding amount of people in hospitals. Right now, the staff is burnt out from the past eight months and are going to have to deal with something beyond historical reference. This will be soul crushing.

But people are still not wearing masks, not distancing. I was raking leaves outside without a mask because, well, I was alone, outside, and the streets were quiet. I look up, and a jogger comes three feet from be, breathing heavy and without a mask.  I just froze in place. The guy was breathing right at my face! Did I mention there was no traffic and he could have avoided me by at least thirty feet without any effort? With my luck, THIS will be the way I get the virus.

Basically, what is happening is that the states will not shut down again because they need the money in taxes from the businesses. The federal government is giving no support, so things are bad. The Supreme Court just upheld the right for places of worship to stay open. Restaurants are open with limited capacity. It is all about money. Period. End of argument. 

It does not take a genius to understand that gyms, places of worship, and restaurants are the places that give the highest transmission rates. An enclosed area, with and without masks. There you go. People want their old life back, even while their house is burning around them. 

In this part of the country, it will take another flood of hospitalizations to overwhelm the staff to have another lockdown. I believe that will happen and the timing will be horrible. The wave will most likely crash when the senate race in decided in Georgia and the new president will be sworn in. There are still people who believe that the election was a fraud and that the president will somehow be able to turn it around and stay in power. Yes, we are all watching a coup being attempted while we have well over two thousand people die each day from the virus. You just go numb. Trust me.

This stunning death race is a reflection of who we are as a country. The actions people have chosen and not chosen to do is who we are. It is understandable that restaurants and businesses are screaming because of the loss of business and bankruptcy. My own income was cut in half, and it was already anemic before the pandemic. So, I truly understand and empathize. And my life will not be going back to normal any time soon after this breaks. There is a very good chance that I will have to do a severe career change within the next two years or sooner and spending the majority of my life at my craft. While I know I am not the only one to whom this is happening, it is unbearably painful.

We have become a consumer nation and that is how we define ourselves. If we cannot consume, we do not feel alive. With the advent of the digital age and all of the blessings it has brought, we are amusing ourselves to death. And desire feeds desire, so we always want more, no matter what happens to others. This is by no means the totality of the nation, but it seems to be a growing part, perhaps the majority. The past administration and it lack of action to save literally hundreds of thousands of lives is the most stark representation of that attitude. 

Everyone is out on the beach playing and they are using the warning sound of the of the tsunami emergency to dance to.

You Can't Stop Physics...as expected.

 The pandemic is now raging and has begun a massive crescendo into thousands of people both contracting and dying ....as was expected, but didn't have to happen.

There are now 251,445 deaths from the virus and a total of 11,620,037 cases. 1,500 people are dying each day and 160,000 new infections daily, with both the number of both expected to rise with what is being called a very dark time ahead. There is no doubt that we will hit 300,000 total deaths within, if not before, only thirty days from now. I have little doubt that, by the time this all quiets down to where a small amount of a normal life returns, we will hit over half a million deaths. But,....why?

The president was voted out of office with the news happening about two weeks ago. There was literally about 72 hours of quiet before the dam began to swell and finally break with a flood of push-back from the present administration to show that the election was somehow not legal and that the president should remain in office. This is literally half, if not more, of what the news is broadcasting. I will not bother to waste time describing what is going on. The history books will have more to say about it and in greater detail.

Another fraction of the news is about how the present administration, as well as all people within the party, are denying the incoming administration the ability to start setting up for a smooth transition. While no one ever really cared about this before in any real way, this delay (which has never happened before), will have a major impact on helping with the virus after the new president is sworn in. All information and funds are being withheld from the incoming administration so, if this continues, there will be a lag time before things can change in terms of financial aid to the people, a nationwide mask mandate, and the distribution of the vaccines that are being run through their final stages of testing. Each day, each week that this hand-off of power is delayed means thousands of more people getting sick and dying.

I need to also state that food banks are now running dry. There are lines to get to them that are the same as the shots of food lines in the 1930's Depression Era, with the 21st century change of the line being in cars. The economy is in crisis and this dam is breaking but there is little focus on it. There is no way that there will not be a harsh day of reckoning for the stock market which has raged forward to near record highs. It has gone up for no real reason and will fall at some point. It is basic economic cycles, like karma.

We could have changed this mass death count, but we, as a country did not. Let there be no mistake, it was a choice and we chose wrong. The leadership has lacked a central point that would lead by example and do what is best for the nation. This is the dark side of absolute personal freedom without the any caring for the common good. Science, that presence truly starting with Galileo Galilei to take hold, is now being doubted as a reality by a large amount of the populous. How odd that now, within the digital age, we are growing in a belief system from the Dark Ages. However, this mutation in cumulative thought, is only partially driven by religious thought. It is the sin of Pride that is taking this into a new spiritual thought. 

Also, let me say here that there is a low hum of a civil war rumbling ever so quietly within all this. The believers of the present president have a fanatical belief that has been called by many as a cult. He is their leader and will follow him at all costs. With him, and everyone involved, priming the pump with every word and action trying to make the election seem unfair, all the believers with fanatical zeal, it seems that there is no choice that some explosion will happen. It is possible that he could bribe and negotiate to have the electoral college to go against the popular vote. This would cause a wave of rightful protest and empower his followers. If all goes as the law states, he will be gone but both having destroyed as much as he could on the way out and never admitting he lost, enraging all those who believe. This will be a very divided nation for some time to come. I only hope there is no violence, though history seems to predict otherwise.

We were headed towards this dark place, like a snowball rolling down a hill. To be honest, we did not have an option to not have the snowball. But we did have the option of what hill to roll it down. Through pride, greed, and fear, we wound up here, still rolling down the hill, picking up both mass and velocity. And we do not know how big it is going to get and the full extent of the damage. 

It is a very depressing place to exist in a place where the sky is actually falling but no one believes in gravity.

Where It Is and ......

 In brief,... 

 

Around 11:30 AM today, it was announced that, after many days of counting votes, the present administration has been changed. Thankfully, there has been only a slight amount of violence. Right now, the people are dancing in the streets, literally. Yes, I cannot help but think of the ending chapter of "The Plague" where most of the city was out in the streets filled with delirious joy. It is, to say the least, beautiful to see so many people rejoicing.

We are now at 228,223 deaths from the virus and it is literally raging. It has encamped itself in every state of the country and shows no signs of letting go. Every scientist is saying that it is going to get very bad very soon. While the new treatments discovered during the first wave are helping, there were 128,000 new cases just yesterday. We are in for a long and dark winter.

As has been said for all of human history, it is not over until it actually is, and we are not over any of this. There are still almost three months of the present administration who has literally said many times recently that the virus is all but gone. The three months that remain will be critical in stemming the wave of pain and death that will be coming via all that is, at present, not being done. 

Finally, as Camus pointed out in his book, with this now massive change of one part of the narrative, life goes on. When I got the news of the election, I was working and could not stop. Outside, everyone seemed to be mowing their lawns. I just mowed my own lawn as well, as the weather is beautiful outside, warm with the glow of the Autumn sun. I will do laundry later and write a friend.

 This life, so much greater than all of our collective wants, needs, and desires, continues on, regardless.

I am just going outside, and it might be some time....drop by drop.

 When one reads history, one does not live through it...and right now, we are living through it, and it is hell.

As I type this, I just got word that people with the people who support the present administration have successfully blocked the Whitestone Bridge going into Brooklyn. Earlier this day, the stopped traffic on the Garden State Parkway and other places. Please note that this is happening when they believe they can have another four more years of this. All this week, the United States has been averaging about a thousand deaths a day from the virus, while the present administration is literally saying that it is almost gone. The only voice of reason out there is Dr. Fauci who has stated many times recently that, "we are in for a world of hurt in the days and weeks ahead."

In about thirty hours, it will be election day here in the United States and things are not looking good. Businesses in major cities have been told by their insurance companies to put plywood over their storefronts. This ominous visual is usually only seen before a hurricane, but now it is before an election. I cannot stress enough how this day was always and forever boring. There may have been some slight rumble of change in the air, but this, what we have now, is over the top and we have slid into what I have only seen happen in other countries far away. But now, it is us and we must live through it, drop by drop.

Here in new Jersey, things are not as bad as they were at their worst, but everyone has fatigue from the pandemic. The only remote cure for this is, alas, another major hit of the virus and many deaths. People forget and want what they want and it all goes to hell. This does not surprise me, as human nature never changes unless forced to for a short time. My life was literally ruined by the pandemic and I am doing the only thing I can: stay inside. 

The title of this blog post is from Lawrence Oates, an explorer who was on the tragic mission of Captain Scott to the South Pole. To make a long story short, when the crew finally made it to the pole, they saw that others had got there first. On the way back, they had many problems and Captain Lawrence Oates had gotten frostbite and gangrene. Food was scarce and, in order to not burden his fellow explorers so they could survive, he got dressed and went out into the arctic night during a blizzard. before he left, he went to Scott's tent and said, "I am just going outside, and it might be sometime..." He basically killed himself with the hope that them not carrying him  would allow the others a better chance of living.

Okay, fine, I am not going to stopwriting this buw...

I am not sure how or when i will continue this. What lays before me in the unknown soon-to-be is not good. I cannot even think of finding a Camus concept from "The Plague" to tie this together. In the end, however, it ties in perfectly with Camus and rebellion. That i where we are at now,  point of true rebellion. And, it sucks.

So, if anyone reads this and there are no more posts, I extend to you my deepest gratitude for taking the time to care enough to read this. I hope it was a clear testimony to what has happened. I, like Dr. Rieux, did my best to be honest and objective. Take what I have said as words as honest as they can get, for I served them and no one else. That was, and shall forever be,the gift of Camus.

The day of the election is closing in....

I am just going outside, and it might be some time....

May I speak to you sll before too long.

On the Collective Ressonance

 Nine days from now, it will be the day after the United States presidential election, and the collective breath is being held...but not just because of the virus.

I am hoping that nine days from now that I will have the ability to be on the internet and make some report of this unfolding history. It seems that, quite literally, anything is possible. The general consensus of my friends is that there are good odds on the chance that some sort of civil war will happen eight days from now. It could, and most likely would be, very locally based. The FBI has come out and said that they expect, THEY EXPECT(!!!!), violence to happen upon and after the election. Yeah. Please, and I cannot ask this of all of you who read this enough, PLEASE think about that.

We are all within the digital Information Age. History recorded in present tense and now be recorded by the masses. Fine. I have no problem with the absolute egalitarian paradigm of the digital age. But, I must speak my own mind, even if no one reads this while I still have a pulse. I am telling you my narrative within this plague. And, know that I am doing everything I can to be as present as the narrator of "The Plague". I am not taking sides. I write this as someone who is under personal honor to do their job with al this death around the country.

I am asking this: that anyone who reads this after the fact, after the election, after all that follows,... I ask of you this.

Look, I am typing this in present tense. I do not have a clue as to what is going to happen, the same way you are not sure what will happen to you when you awake from sleep tomorrow. While you may awake with the odds with your past and present, I can tell you that I do not. may you never ever know the place I am in, for I have spent most of my life within the space you now have the grace to be within.

A new Supreme Court Judge, who will most likely make severe damage for generations to come, has been placed into office today. This was done via THE RULES. I shall scream to you here and now that THE RULES mean nothing if there is no conscience among those who are in power.

To those who care about the resonance of shall ultimately in harmony within present tense, today, and the next eight days, are within the arms of....not the conductor, but the ones who own the symphony. We play the notes,. But if the space we are to play has been designated as worthless, nothing else matters.

I shall come back here on Election Day. Allow me to say, the number of infections from the virus is more now that ever before. I shall return to give you the tally of those who have bowed to physics to those who bow to human desire. 

This is our collective ressonance.

Convergence of Dissonance

 I just heard on the news that the next four to twelve months is going to be a dark time with the virus. We are also having a presidential election two weeks from today. Make no mistake about it, we are having a convergence of dissonance.

I need to say something here about the news coverage. As one cannot find an absolute centralist view of what is going on, I will say here only that I do not listen to the conservative media outlets. So, while I have no idea what is going on in that world, I can at least talk about the one I know.

By the time this gets posted, there will be 221,000 dead from the virus. Wearing masks is still very political. What has caught my attention and driven me a bit crazy these past few weeks is how the news keeps talking and talking about the most obvious points that should change but they know it will not. There is a constant flow of redundancy going on and it is not helping matters. Over and over and over all one hears is the obvious and it is past wearing thin.

The problem is that there is an election coming up and most people are holding their collective breath to see what will happen. The present political situation has made any change in what is happening impossible. In the book "The Plague", at least the consensus of political people had a unified measure of attack, even if it was faulty and needed help by volunteers organized by Tarrou. The focus for an aid in the crisis was there. We don't have that now. And it is too late.

We are heading into winter and the flu season. The East Coast got slammed hard in the initial wave, along with the west coast. But now the rest of the states are flaring up and it is going to be messy. The amount of hospitals in the less densely populated states is not near what will be needed. Among the stream of redundancy on the news, this is now becoming part of the verbal wave.

Personally, this is a rough time. I have a bad feeling that the election will cause severe damage, no matter which ways it goes. It will only be a matter of degree as both sides are getting charged up. In all my life, I have never seen such things except on the news from other countries. 

This will sound harsh and perhaps insane, but I am going to say it. Because this virus is not as lethal as a real plague, it is possible that unification of the populous will never happen. The president survived it and is literally traveling the country every day to have rallies in support of the election. No one in power has gotten it and been humbled. Even the famous have been spared,...for the most part. There are a few people who died from it, but, thankfully, it has been relatively untouched.

There is no signal from any major point to somehow make wearing a mask and making sacrifices in the short term so that the long term will be much easier. This pandemic has done what most times of trial do: bring out the worst and best in people. The confrontation with the fear of mortality is either risen above or drowned within. This sea is now boiling with all the ingredients of a storm in place. 

Yes, that all may sound dire, but I assure you that this dissonance is real and makes rest impossible.

When the Long Road Floods

 Even when you are on the long road, floods stop you in your tracks.

I have not posted in some time because a great deal of stress has been going on in my life. Nothing pandemic related in absolute terms, but it has been a painful few weeks. Suffice to say, that matters little to the biology of what is going on. We are cresting and about to surge into new heights of infection. Why? Well, because the desire for what people want to do is far greater than what they should do.

Just so we are on the same historical page, yes, that sounds insane but it seems that is the way the United States has always handled such things. When one looks at the history of the Spanish flu and the AIDS crisis, we have had a history of the same behavior. Having been very much alive and aware during the AIDS crisis of the 1980's, I can tell you that the medical community was literally clueless as to what the hell was going on. How do I know this? My father was a dentist and I can very clearly recall the night he got called to an emergency meeting of the New Jersey Dentists Association. When he came home late that night, he looked rather broken and dazed, yet still stoic as was his usual presence. "Dad," I asked as he sat down slowly on the couch by the back door, "do they know what this is about and what to do?" He paused and said slowly , very slowly, "No. They have no clue."

My bones filled to absolute zero. This was a doctor who worked with spit and blood every single day, the two fluids that carried the then death virus. He was within the inner circle, one that was not touched by the media. When he told me they were basically at the whim of the virus, I understood how screwed this was.

But back then, AIDS was literally a death sentence. If you got it, 99.99% of the time you died a very long and painful death. But it was a virus that was mainly transmitted by acts that were denoted as sins by the politically religious. Sex, gay and straight, along with intravenous drug use (sharing needles with infected persons) was the main cause. basically you had to willing exchange fluids with someone to get it. And, I assure you this was the general vibe from the culture then, if you got this disease, you deserved it. I mean, if anyone chose to live such a lifestyle and contracted it, they were believed to be paying for their "crime". Again, trust me. I lived through this.

It was only after people who got blood transfusions for medical procedures and were inadvertently infected with the death virus when the tide of the media shifted. But they did so in the same way a middle school kid picks sides in a fight: one side is perfect and the other deserving of it. Long story short, it made those whose actions willing placed them in harm's way as the enemy and those who were innocently infected. In then end, when the populace understood that they were in harm's way, they finally cared.

The problem with this pandemic, if you can call it a "problem", is that this is not a real plague. The odds of death are nothing like the Black Death or AIDS. Not even close. But we are finding out that those who survive can have long lasting issues. So, in the harshest of terms, the odds of living are within the fair of the populace. Living. Not being damaged for life. 

What I am trying to get at is that due to the fact that there is a political element to not taking precautions as basic as a facemark (I cannot believe I just typed that reality), we are now about to enter another flood. But, just like the weather, it is not simply one factor. The political climate is literally at a crisis point. No joke, no cute sayings. We are at a definitive crossroads with the political state of this country. But we are also at an economic one. Wall Street is doing amazing, but that must fall to the math of cycles as well at some point. It will fall. And we are also at the starting point of a new wave of infection. We here in the Northern states may be spared another mass grave experience, but one cannot think so kindly towards fate.

We are literally dealing with a flood on this long road. We are crawling towards an election that everyone sees as an intimate game changer in every way. But biology and physics don't care. You get the cute kittens and the rainbows but you also get the spread of a virus. 

Right now, you wait in a safe place and you walk when you can, making each step very carefully so you are not swept away.

We All Must Bow to Gravity

 As I write this, we are officially in the second day of a crisis that we all knew could happen but somehow didn't believe it would.

The president of the United States has come down with the virus and is in the hospital...with very little being said on the situation. To add to the drama, any official information that is being given is contradictory, cryptic, and vague. As the twenty-four hour news channel screams its repetitive drone at me, here is what I know of the situation.

Around 1 AM on Friday morning, news came out that the president had the virus. He is 74 years old, very overweight, does not exercise, barely sleeps, and, according to certain sources, had a mild stroke sometime last year that was never officially announced. These risk factors place him in a very dangerous position as far as his mortality goes. 

The news yesterday started with statements that he was fine. It then went to the announcement that he had a slight fever, was fatigues, and was given an experimental plasma therapy treatment. Hours later, it was told he would be taking the helicopter to the hospital. This was a move done to make the pictures look good and not have him seen weak. He walked to the helicopter, dressed in a suit, looking a bit fatigued. And that was pretty much then end of all the news about him for the day. 

While this was spinning around in the late night, more and more people in the inner circle of the president were told they have the virus. Within minutes, people were connecting the dots and showing the web of people he was around and how it may have gotten passed to people. The people at the events were without masks, all standing in defiance of the science of masks and distance help stop the spread. These meetings, especially one in the Rose Garden of the White House for a Supreme Court prospect announcement and a very very expensive donation meeting for the president in New Jersey the night before the announcement, seem to suggest that this whole thing has become a super-spreader event. On simple terms without judgement, a core group of wealthy and powerful people who flaunted their position that the virus was a joke are now getting the news of having it. 

The narrative of this plague has done a shift that I cannot articulate, except to say that there seems to be a collective hum of schadenfreude and caring about what the hell is going to happen. Everything feels different, like we are all finally on the same page in some way. The instability of reality within the collective consciousness is now resonating with the singular moment of the leader having the virus we have been fighting against. Just two days ago, it seemed we were just swimming within the murk of the pandemic reality. Now, we are all focused on a singular person with it.

I am not going to be nasty or opinionated about this situation. That is not how Camus wrote "The Plague" and I will follow his lead. But this crisis has placed us all within the story of watching a character who raged against the reality of this pandemic now in a hospital under absolute secrecy as to his condition. This character seemed to believe he could drive recklessly in traffic and not be hurt. At some point, chance and gravity shake hands and the crash happens. As I am typing this, I am hearing all the past news clips of him ranting about how it was all a joke, a lie, a crisis long gone. The crash happened and now we are all craning our necks to see what the hell the damage was.

I don't look at his getting the virus as an act of cosmic vengeance. I look at it the same way I do wing suit flyers, people who dive off anything very high up wearing a suit that, when splayed open, makes them look like a flying squirrel. It is dangerous, very dangerous. They know they are tempting fate by doing this, but do it anyway. Their deaths are usually gruesome, especially when they attempt to fly through formations at full speed. They are doing something dangerous and the odds of something bad happening are increased exponentially. This is what the people who have denied this virus do and carry themselves with similar hubris.

But there is at least one difference between the flying squirrel people and the virus deniers. If a diver dies in a crash, outside of family and friends mourning a deep loss, no one else is effected. That is to say, their actions will not kill anyone else, even if the thrill seekers survive. The virus can harm and kill others without knowing. You could be doing everything you can to stay safe and if someone has the virus and it somehow gets past you, well, things will change. 

I have said over and over again that what we are dealing with is chemistry and physics, regardless of how one chooses to view the concept of the existence of a Supreme Being. There seems to be this belief that one can deny physics via faith. While I will not negate the possibility of miracles and the deep thoughts of C.S. Lewis, by definition, miracles are exceptions, not the rule. We bow before God, asking that the laws of nature be suspended.

But we should be humbled each day and bow before gravity because science shows we were not able to survive without it.

Let it be known....Numbers and words

 When the pandemic crossed over 200,000 deaths, the news I watch made the font bigger.

People are talking about the virus, but the literal dumpster fire of problems going on now has made that just one piece in a mandala of crisis pints. 

They made the font bigger, and nothing has changed in getting this pandemic under control. 

Let it be known that this is what they did when a number was crossed and the nation was not on the same page to unite in stopping the deaths and violence seems to be an inevitable point of arrival for this society.

I cannot....I do not...I have no words for this.

I'll keep using the same font to prove the power of words, not graphic design pandering to a situation where numbers now mean nothing.

There is No Line To Cross

 It is Sunday, and tomorrow we will cross the 200,000 dead from the virus...and it is not what everyone is talking about.

In The Plague, Camus sets up a town that is run by a functioning local government and a stable central government. While there is a severe problem with the living conditions of the Arab population, as is stated when Rieux talks to the reporter for the first time, the town in presented as stable. The chaos of the plague grind against the stability of the city. That is to say, the reference point of sanity can be returned to when the plague is over, a return to the political and culture stability that runs beneath the crisis.

Here is the United States, we don't have that option. This pandemic is running within the chaos of a political crisis that is beyond what we have ever experienced. As this is woven into the 24 hour news cycle which itself is polarized, there is no way to stay stable. The point beneath or feet is changing so fast that is has made us blind to it. There is no point of reference from the past, only the next crisis that seems to hit us each day.

But this is different than in The Plague. It is reported that the main thing people cared about during the raging of the plague was the amount of dead reported, each week at first, and then every day. While the people of Oran seemed to even grow numb to this after a time, there was still a singular point of reference for the level of the crisis. Not so here this time around. We just lost a Supreme Court Justice whose presence was deeply needed to maintain a sense of equality of political voice. There now seems to be a full court press to get a new Justice into place with an opposite political view from its deceased predecessor. This will have an effect on the laws of the land for decades to come.

Tomorrow, the number of dead from the pandemic will reach over 200,000 and, while it will be noted with harsh voices, there will be many more problems, new and recurring, that will be focused on. This huge number of dead should cause a pause, a moment of silence, political outrage and screams for change. But that will not happen. Things will continue to roll onward as they have.

While I am on the topic, people think that once there will be a vaccine introduced, all will return back to normal. This imaginary line seems rather dangerous. While a vaccine would be amazing and a blessing to be sure, it is not going to be an immediate panacea. The efficacy and safety of the vaccine needs to be shown and, with a mass treatment, problems are bound to show up, not to mention a rather long process of getting the majority of the population treated. There is no insane return to the old life. At best, this will take years and by then society will have started being rebuilt upon memories of the old and the habits of the plague years. Economic reasons and cost cutting measures will change the way people work. More and more people will now work from home, at least part time. Most small concert venues will close and the ones that remain will have to figure out a new business structure. The habits of being insulated and singular at home will remain in one way or the other in some degree and the value of outside entertainment/diversion will have to be recalibrated. To put it exactly, the life before this past March is gone without our expectation. Our lives have been changed forever overnight and hopefully we will remember that is always possible every time we wake up in the morning when this is over.

The line in the sand happens everyday and I hope we never forget that when this is over.

The Mandala of the New Religion

It would be too easy to say that the center can no longer hold within the deep crisis of this pandemic. But there is a center and it is holding...and it is not pretty

As of this typing, there are 197,397 deaths from the virus since the counted started earlier this year. As in Camus' "The Plague", we too have all grown numb to the numbers, though I believe that when it crosses over a large enough point, things may get serious for a short while before it gets drowned out and imaginary like it is now. I have been pretty much entrenched in the house for 99% of the time, with the exception of going to the post office and driving around to nowhere so as to not go insane. I don't even bother to turn on the news anymore because it is all the same: a mandala of utter chaos and no sign of a real end to this.

But there is a center within this that refuses to budge. The once dominating organized religions have been on the down slide for decades for reasons that are both obvious and illusive. But as this country is losing moderate toned religions, the extreme versions have been on the rise. I do not say this as a slight to anyone, but simply as a statistic based fact. The United States has had a deep religious bend for some time and that longing for something to believe in and others surrounding them with the same zeal is very much alive and well.

Briefly, religious faith cannot be proven by science, which is why it is called "faith". That being said, many people, including myself, can point to more than one instance where what has happened to us could not be explained by physics or biology. And I love science and physics deeply, so please do not assume I have an extreme bias towards one or the other. When one starts going down into the subatomic level, it is still very much a mystery, to say nothing of the workings of the brain, the weather, and the Universe itself. There was and shall always be more to learn and explore. It seems both religion and science work within the concept of infinity.

The United States leads the world in deaths from the virus for many reasons, but one main cause of infection is the lack of mask wearing. While I have addressed this before as a belief in person freedom, it is time to note that the present political situation has become a cult. I am not new to saying this, as it has been on the news for many weeks and said by many people. 

In brief, a cult is a group of people who, for whatever reason, take everything their leader says as Truth and will make excuses for any faults the leader has in order to not break the foundational belief that ties it all together. Here in this country, there are people who are choosing to follow the leader and refuse to wear a mask and, to make it more interesting, get into literal physical fights with people about wearing them. You must have a great deal of fear inside if you are willing to literally assault someone over beliefs.

This core community of believers have not budged one millimeter since Election Day four years ago. They believe at all costs and those costs have and will include non-believers. The number of dead will hit 200,000 most likely on or before Sunday, which shows that all actions have consequences. Also, there is now a rush of people who survived the virus going to NYC hospitals with severe problems. They are counted among the living but have damage that may last the rest of their lives. You just don't see that when looking at numbers.

If the power structure in this country is allowed to continue on the same course due to the present cult, which represents itself as very angry, very armed, and ready for a bloody revolution, the minority of people shall have done damage beyond numbers because of a false faith. However, this is nothing new within the realm of human history, as it has happened all the time and shall continue to do so. The chant from most people, unspoken but constant, is, "Well, that will never happen to us!" which is exactly what Camus said in the book.

We did not believe a pandemic could happen to us. We did not believe that a cult would form over a political leader and have that entwines with the corporate and financial structure. We still do not believe in the severity it all with almost 200,000 people dead. 

All of this shall be defined by its ending, and I hope and pray I live long enough to see an ending where caring and compassion are greater than blind belief.

The Gravity of the Calendar

 When I was young, I worked with an old man who said, "After the Fourth of July, it all goes by quickly." It took many years to lose my fight against that statement.

It is now September and Labor Day is passed, the unofficial end of Summer has come and gone. I honestly barely remember the past season because there was nothing similar to all the past Summers. Say what you may, but we are creatures of habit that pull on the past to navigate the present. But, like everything else this year since the middle of March, we are within a circular present that we have no reference for, simply inventing it as we go along.

The number of deaths since this started, 190, 589 people have died from the virus. We are headed for 200K very fast. The reason for this is because we have chosen to open colleges and schools. As an added bonus, the biker gathering in South Dakota caused a spread of about 250,000 cases. 

Let's be clear here, the colleges have opened up for one reason and one reason only: money. Period. They knew that is they did not open up and have the students arrive for their classes, there would have been an outcry over the fact that the students could have gotten the same cyber-education via an online university for literally 1/6 the cost. What an I so sure of this? Simple: Princeton announced months ago that they would not have regular classes. (I think Yale and Harvard did the same.) How does this prove my point? If you graduate from Princeton, the cache of that institution holds value regardless if you do it online or by Morse Code. The people there KNOW that they have the name to carry the value. All other places, outside of perhaps a few more, know they do not and are charging insane sums for their "college experience". So, they took the students in like sheep to keep the cash. If someone gets sick and dies, they can go, "OHHHH OHHHH we TRIED to have classes but we can't and have to go online!! Sorry! You still owe all the tuition..." This is capitalism without a moral check valve using the youth as a commodity, a literal canary in the cash mine. 

As for my own life, I was told about a place that is doing outdoor gigs and someone asked if I wanted to do it. I am, at best, very uneasy. I have been performing for well over half my life in situations that ranged from beyond hellish to silly to (very few) that were life affirming. I have realized over the years that, while I do love performing, I am not driven to perform like actors, dancers, or lead singers. yes, I WANT to perform, but......... what is the cost benefit analysis?

After having earned my stripes over decades of performing, I believe that I am a qualified worker just like a plumber, dentist, and welder. I have a craft, a vocation. And, just like everyone else, I believe I should be paid for what I do. I am not even sure of this gig even pays! It is a coffee shop so, at best, they will pay $30 for two hours work. I doubt it would be that much because there will be less people and they will be bleeding money from the months of being closed. So, I am to perform outside and sing and risk getting sick with a virus that can kill or make me violently ill and/or make someone I know the same way, for no money. 

And please, before you jump down my throat for sounding like a capitalist pig who only cares about money as a creative person, I would ask you to reflect on why you believe the people in the creative field where you find enjoyment should work for free? This, my friends, is a capitalist society, and it shows respect via money. Period. If you don't like the painting, don't buy it. Same with Music and the rest. But if you like it, show respect and pay for it. By the way, Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and every other composer you listen to when you are in the mood wrote all that stuff because they were getting paid. It was their job. End of argument.

Also, it was a horrible life as  a maker of original Music before all this started. What broke my back was a place that wanted three hour of Music fo no pay. And if you didn't have people show up, you didn't even get free coffee. Lovely. Like it was in the 1960's and 1970's, you could not find a place to do original Music. It was all cover bands. So, it was abysmal before this hit and now it is just obscene.

Time is doing what is can only do: move forward. The fading light that started on the first day of Summer can now be felt as it dwindled over the past two and a half months. Autumn is coming and with it the change of the seasons which has happened before humanity was around and after humanity is gone. I now realize what the man told me was something he never thought about. The light begins to fade in the middle of the candor of the year. On any calendar that is spaced three months or four months in a row, you can see the middle point of the of geometric space. Both in feel and visual representation, the first half is over.

The weight of passing time is hitting harder this year and, while gravity is a constant in physics, it seems much strong within this year of non-motion and anxiety.

Frogs in a Pot of Water: Plague Rebellion Edition

 There is that story we all know and believe that is you put a frog in pot of cool water and slowly turn up the heat, it will not notice the change in temperature and die. Well, it is scientifically not true, but I am banking that part of you still wants to believe it is.

Right now, there is an amount of insanity going on that is beyond comprehension. Perhaps simple butler points will suffice for an introduction:

1) The federal government is stating that it will have a vaccine ready to go and start being administered on November 1, 2020, two days before the presidential election. That is under two months from now.

2) Colleges have been sending students back to school with the provision that they have the students keep STRICT pandemic hygiene rules in order. Each day, there are reports of hundreds of college students getting the virus and there seems to be no end in sight.

3) Schools with grades 1-12 are starting to open up now. Teachers have been given paper or cloth masks for themselves (nothing industrial grade in the slightest), are told to keep the windows open at all times to help with circulation, and will be fired if they do not return to school to teach. (Note that this information is from a teacher I know in New Jersey.)

3.5) Bars, restaurants, and gyms will be open in a few days. While all with have a theoretical reduced capacity, diners will not be wearing masks. In movie theaters, you will be asked to wear a mask when you are not eating. 

4) A Christian wedding in Maine, where no one wore masks or distanced themselves, has caused a super-spread of the virus in a town that previously had no cases. The pastor who did the wedding flew to and from the wedding in his private plane. He returned to his parish and, in the course of a week has infected everything from nursing homes to the prison in the town. As of this writing, he is stating that he will never wear a mask and shall continue to hold services where people take no precautions at all in church,

5) The federal government has stated at some point this week that it is choosing to combat the virus via "heard immunity", meaning that they wish to have the virus spread as it will so that the bulk of the populous will get infected, the majority becoming immune, and the others die.

6) The current president of the United States has heard many rallies where masses of people have gathered to support him. Neither he, nor 99% of the people pushed together at these events, wore masks.

7) Wearing a mask has become a political statement. Not wearing one means you agree with the president, wearing one means you are an enemy to them. Many many fights have broken out between people in stores and other places over mask wearing.

8) There are continual protests against the police deaths of African-American men and women all over the country. At night, these peaceful protests turn violent via looters and radical militia-groups who come in with guns saying they are going to protect the people of the city and the businesses. A seventeen year old male shot and killed two people in such a situation. He walked around with a semi-automatic assault rifle in front of police who let him walk by, all the while people were screaming that he had just shot two people moments before. Also note that the police offered him water and food earlier in the evening and supposed his presence. Finally, as of this writing, he has received over half a million dollars in money for his legal defense via strangers online.

9) For the first time in the history of the United States, the upcoming election is in jeopardy and its outcome will most likely be challenged in ways ranging from legal battles to open gun conflict in certain areas.

I could go on for pages with all this, but you get the idea of what is happening. And this was the past few days. There is more, MUCH MORE, than what I am stating here, but I just want to give you a taste of what every single day is like, with all of us knowing that things are going to get worse and worse for the rest of the year. Even if, at best, the problems with the government get resolved peacefully, the virus will still be out there in 2021.

Is it any wonder why so many of us are having a hard time just existing? The blessing of mass and immediate communication has bloomed its shadow side in many ways during all this. If this were happening a hundred years ago, we would have newspapers and perhaps a radio to tell us what is going  on. Now, we are drowning in a pool of news every day. And even if, EVEN IF, you do not watch any news and are going past all of this in your own world, your old life is gone, whether you like it or not.

We have been sitting I this pool for decades now, with the advent of 24 hour news and then the internet. For the most part, the temperature was steady and we were fine. But since the pandemic, that temperature has been slowly been heating up to the point where all of us can see that we will be at boiling point soon and that we have no control over it. Camus states that we must rebel if we are to be fully human. But that is the problem with this situation, how do we rebel?

The simple answer is that we rebel against our fate by doing all that we should to stop it, just like the characters in "The Plague" did. In the oddest twist, this virus is (thankfully) not nearly as ferocious as that Black Plague in the book, so the enemy is not hammering down hard and long enough to make us feel a collective sense of urgency and brotherhood against it. There are no corpses in the streets, no wards filled with victims in every free building, no screams coming from houses. No. We are all on our phones or online if we do not have a job. We speak with others that are only of our like minds and nothing else. We watch news of the kind we only agree with. But, I am afraid to point out, many cities who are going through a blitz of deaths from the virus have been using their crematoriums all day and all night to take care of the victims. The book got one thing right, I guess.

The whole idea of the frog dying in water due to them not fearing danger due to the heat changing slowly enough to go without notice was proven wrong. As was stated: If you put a front in boiling water, it will die. If you put a frog in cold water, it will live but will jump out once it hits a certain temperature. The frogs, you see, don't like to sit still and they will jump out to survive. But, the scientist noted, you can't have a pot on the lid because, well, it will escape if it allowed to.

After these past few days and looking at the road ahead, I am certain that many people place the lid on their own pot.

The Garden of Babel

 We are in a world that is flooded with more words being said, spoken, typed, read, and listened to than in all of human history, and because of this we are drowning.

 As I type this, 183,374 deaths from the virus have been reported. People keep saying the numbers but very few really want to embrace it. In this country, where desire is the true ethos, the cases are growing. Nineteen states have increased numbers, but this all seems like sports scores rather than what it is. In "The Plague", Camus speaks of how everyone finally grows numb and stops caring. However, the grind was different because the town was closed and everyone was on the same page. Here, within this land, we are on millions of different pages with desire being the editor.

Colleges are opening and trying to start classes with students in the flesh. If this is ever read by anyone some time from now once this is all over,  I am sure you are wondering why, given the number of deaths stated and the infection rate on the rise, why would a mass collection of people do something so foolish. I have but one word to tell you: Pride. To be more exact: Hubris.

In the Old Testament, it was pride that caused both the fall of Man and the Tower of Babel.  In the garden of Eden, it was said that Adam and Eve had everything, literally a Paradise. They had everything except ONE thing, and that one thing became greater than all else. The situation is the same here and now. I will not be so foolish as to say we live in Paradise, but we to possess a technology that even two  hundred years ago would may have been perceived as Magic, something beyond the realm of human ability. But, we are very much within this Magic and unsatisfied.

We are in the middle of what could very well be the defining moment of the United States and the virus is having an impact. How could it not? The problem is that we have become a country divided by words and desires instead of being pulled together for the common good. The virus, that will most likely kill almost 250,000 by the day of the election, has become nothing more than an inconvenience we should no longer bother with. 

If you doubt my statements about hubris in the face of plague, allow me to state the following: gyms and restaurants for indoor dining will be opening here in jersey with a week. Yes. You read that right. Any person with even the slightest knowledge of virology knows this is a bad idea. But we a re doing it regardless. Why? Because the majority of our personal desires outstrip our belief in sacrifice for the common good.  Everyone in charge knows full well that things will get worse and it will all shut down again, with the wake of the carnage being the cost of this spoiled child decision.

There is a clause that states what these places can only work at 25% capacity. Please note that restaurants and gyms are rarely at 75% capacity at full swing. The legal capacity and the amount of seating is different. If you doubt my words, please go to any bar or club at FULL capacity. 

But let's say that they actually do keep it at a 25% that is to the scale of the seating. How could this economically be feasible?! While gyms are simply large spaces that make money whether you go or not via their monthly fee, restaurants are not. The food service industry is known for having razor thin margins and having a tough time during the best of times. It just does not make sense in the same way that trying to have children in school wear masks and keep the needed precautions. And, for the record, even if all the precautions are being done, it will still spread to some extent. This is biology, not desire or ideology.

We have more than any people in the history of the world, a garden of technology and words, and our fall shall happen as do all the falls before: from pride.

Revisiting the Sun God, Pascal, et al.....

 To paraphrase the late and astoundingly amazing  scientist and philosopher Steven Toulmin in the epic series "A Glorious Accident", "The British were horrible at anthropology because they were always going, ' Well, why aren't these backwards people more like US." 

We are now at over 181,000 deaths for the virus with the colder months very much on the horizon. Here in New Jersey, gyms are opening to allow a 25% capacity, which means business as usual, as the floor space is normally massive and they are never remotely within the legal limit in normal times. Sure, it may LOOK crowded, but remember that there is space between those exercise machines, those weights, those benches, etc. The limit  for a space is factored in to have those within be able to escape within a fire or other event. Having been a musician most of my life, you would be amazed at the math of it all. So, let's just say that it is business as usual for gyms. 

Schools are also opening up here in New Jersey and all over the country. It would take a complete fool to not realize that they are literally gambling to save face and show support to ensure state approved money. There is a reason that school is called "SCHOOL" and not "AN OPERATING THEATER". Students are varying degrees of "young" and do not comprehend consequences over the long game. You did it. I did it. We ALL did it. But that is the blessing of youth, you are insane. That is  the place where the fire is and how amazing things happen. But also tragedy, as you can't have one without the other. Don't blame me, blame physics.

Students in grade school are not going to keep their masks on. Masks on? Really? have you ever taught a first grade class? A middle school class? I have and I can assure you that even basic hygiene is a stretch. As for college students? If the assumption is that the entirety of college students will wear masks and stay far from each other at all times for an entire semester, then.......................... you have never been to or known a college student nor been in a dorm or college apartment. Basic hygiene is about as common as an albino three legged unicorn. Please, stop deluding yourself. College is and has always has been, for lack of a better term, gross.

In case you were wondering, here is the game being played across the board: Colleges (and every other institution)  have tuition that is beyond reprehensible and are having their students back to gamble for as long as they can that it could not be done, then have all classes online. When the virus spreads and people get it, the people in charge an stand up and say, " LOOK! WE HAVE DONE OUR BEST! WE TRIED TO HAVE CLASSES BUT THIS VIRUS HAS MADE US IMPOTENT TO DELIVER WHAT BOTH YOU AND I DEEPLY DESIRE!"...and the classes will resume online, giving the same education as an online university at a deep fraction of the price. No one has the courage to cancel outright because the money at stake is too great. My guess is that by no later than the end of September/early October, all colleges will be online. One infection that leads to a death will cause a lawsuit so great that everyone will cower in fear. Oh, please. because of the death of someone? Oh no, nonononononono...no! Because of the cash they have to pay out and the damage to the reputation. 

A few hours ago, we just had the end of the right wing political convention for the upcoming election. The audience was not far apart and no one wore masks. That is all you need to know. THIS is how the United States is divided against the basic biology of a virus. Period.

Blaise Pascal was a French math genius and was  in love with gambling. Those two forces united and he learned how to play the odds, perhaps culminating in the now famous "Pascal's W@ager" about faith in God. Life for Pascal was, while deeply rich and intense, was one of a deep love for math and its sister Physics. You do the math and you play the odds and you gamble on the winner.

At present, we only know a fraction of what the present virus is all about. For all of our seemingly astounding ability, we are at the mercy of both common decency and within a faith upon what we perceive as best. That  being said, all those aztec tribes who had been able to do math never before comprehended and built structures we still cannot comprehend, worshiped a sun god that they believed would help them, human sacrifice and all. In the end, well, we know what happened to that society, no?

There is a group of people playing the same game right now with this virus. Unlike Pascal, they reject the math. Like the stunningly brilliant Aztecs, they are gambling on the Sun God rather than the math. 

Look, we KNOW what the deal is with a virus and people and gathering together and the spread and what it can do. We KNOW that, even if is a decent guess. But people seem to be putting faith in the sun god and not the math. And know that the US is one of the very few to be doing this and showing the epic death count to show for it. The numbers of virus patients is math. The ones who are dead is math. The predictions for the days and months ahead are math. 

But we are not numbers. We are flesh and blood with loved ones and hopes and dreams and souls and credit card debt and friends and regrets and joys. Numbers are abstractions. People are NOT, with all due apologies to Rieux from "The Plague". But humanity has become an abstraction with all this. I dare say that the number of deaths from this plague mean nothing anymore. They are numbers, the same symbols used by the Aztecs and Pascal and Touring and Hawking and you at your checking/credit card bill. Those are numbers, representations of a summation of presence, NOT the actual presence.At times like this, we should understand that we are truly no better than the past civilizations as we are literally doing no better at basic logic and compassion. 

Both the past and the future have numbers and, within history, the numbers we are presenting shall not have us be deemed enlightened in any way... Think about it.

The Humming from the Skies (There is no safe place)

 I think I need to explain the odd and unseen humming that seems to be getting louder every day.

In "The Plague", Fr. Panaleux talks about an ancient plague where a saint could see an angel above the houses being told where to strike the ones with plague. For the rest of the novel, Dr. Rieux , an atheist, keeps commenting that he feels he hears a strange buzzing coming from above. He can't place it or name it, but he believes that it is somehow connected to what Panaleux said.I do not want to talk about politics, but I have to add the following to describe what this time is like and it would be a sin of omission if I did not say something about the present time's political and cultural tone. Don't worry, it ties into the pandemic.

Here in the United States, we are hitting over 170,000 deaths from the pandemic with no real signs of stopping any time soon. That would be enough to cause a sense of panic in any other time. But now, there is another crushing fear running through the collective nervous system. So, yes, unlike the town of Oran in the novel "The Plague", we are getting pummeled while we are down.

On either side of the political spectrum, the past four years have been a blooming of the past twenty-five or so years, give or take the Civil War. Both sides are in a panic over the upcoming election and if the present president will choose to declare the results fraudulent if he looses. A minority of this country worships him, many of them literally so. The tension in the air over this is beyond palpable. All of us are having to deal with this one way or the other, whether we like it or not. 

There is also an economic crushing going on. The present political storm is causing it to go almost unnoticed. The GDP was down for the last quarter over 34%. If this continues for the next few quarters, it is going to show we have a new economic depression on our hands. The unemployment rate is out of control. It is not pleasant out there for many of us.

On a personal level, Musicians and all creative people in the analogue arts have been bashed in the kneecaps and are floundering to get back to their vocation. It was not easy before this, but not it is a famine for us.

There does seem to be this horrible unseen humming going on. No one is really at peace. I shall suppose that some people are doing well, most likely the very wealthy who, like in Camus' book, always seem to be buffeted from the pain of such things. But the majority are swimming each day within an emotional and spiritual mud that we have no choice but to struggle through. It is no surprise that the rate of suicide is up at this time. All of us in this country are having to deal with a crisis both of health and our very government. 

In Camus' book, there are festivities at the end of the plague, the moment when the past seems to be deleted from the soul and the future that holds the most sacred of hope is all that matters. I cannot believe that there will be such a day with us at the end. It will be a slow recovery and we will still be suffering the damage of the political issues long after the pandemic passes. Yes, there will be moments where we all embrace the future, but I do not believe it will be a singular day with a singular event. We will get out of this at some point, but we will be entering a house that was on fire and we will have to rebuild just to get some rest. We are not soldiers who, at war's end, have the gift of returning to a place where the past horrors did not exist. This is a guerrilla war and there is no safe place to come home to. To those who have been blessed to have survived this ordeal, we will not feel safe as long as we have memories.

In the end, we may all have to burn our hopes and memories with the belief that, like pinecones, the fire will release the seed to have something new begin to grow.

Late Nights With a Redundant Dawn

 I am about to go to sleep but it seems that I will awake into where I did the last time.

We are approaching 170,000 DEATHS to the virus and the Music from the outside is dissonance. I went to to see a student perform outside at a pizza place a few days ago wearing a mask. To be more precise, I went to the show and, in accordance with the working Musician Creed, supported the establishment by buying product that funds the operation. When I went inside the pizzeria, very few people were wearing masks while I wore a high level mask. I refused to take it off to fit in, all those decades of being the outcast coming in handy. For the record, no one was a jerk, but there was this sense that the virus was over with and it all all a lie by this point. The people outside were not spaced far apart and no one wore a mask. I kept my distance and did my best to support the immense talent of the young student. While I do not wish to cast emotion and narrative on those unspoken, I would like to say that I was looked at like a fly in the soup. 

Allow me to say the following: I have and shall continue to bend my life into a tesseract to support my students. If this had been within normal times, I would have been there early, helped set up, and helped the student in every way with the gig. My track record of thirty years supports this. The fact that I had to be at a literal distance when this young student was performing was crushing, but I did it...wait for it... BECAUSE IT WAS FOR THE COMMON GOOD!  It SUCKED! I wanted to jam with the kid and help lift him up and show his excellence. But I did not because of the virus. And it hurt like absolute hell.

What this made me realize was that, here in this part of New Jersey, people just do not give a f*ck. It doesn't matter anymore. No one has died and the corpses are not lining the streets so SCREW IT! WE WANT TO BE TOTALLY FREE LIKE BEFORE!!!! Yeah, that is what we are around here and if you cut again the grain you are a leftist moron.

Oh, yes, the virus had, via the present attitude, polarized the concept of wearing a mask. I know I mentioned this before but I was allowed to be thrown into the pit of others who think my attitude is insane.  For the record, I sincerely hope that nobody gets the virus. Period. That being said, Camus said in "The Plague" that Fortune is not something that should be tempted. In the novel, he states that the very weary volunteers of the front line would not take all the precautions they KNEW they should. It is a subtext that maybe Jean Tarrou, the beloved friend of the narrator, skipped these precautions and wound up dying of plague. Even the most remedial boxer knows that you never EVER let your guard down when you see your opponent weaken.

As I have promised, I will not get into broad politics within this blog as Camus did not do so in his book. Camus was concerned with what the common people did. So, allow this entry to be, at best, something Dr. Rieux would have written down via being among the people. The narrative descriptions of the novel made me want to become one. That being said, I do not feel the need to go into deep details here about my visit to the pizza eating contrarians of biology and the better good. There will be countless articles describing the landscape of this era. Trust me on that. The internet shall give COUNTLESS descriptions of this time.

For the first time since this plague has entered the collective narrative, there was a sermon in church at Sunday Mass that touched on the damn thing. While watching it online, I screamed in my seat. FINALLY! Finally, the clergy has chosen to address the issue is a VERY VERY light way. For the love of God! Even in Camus' "The Plague" they had a Catholic Mass dedicated to the plague early on! Yeah yeah yeah, I know. Religion has been discounted and diluted over the decades since that book was written and the importance of the institution has been depleted for many reasons. Yeah, I get it and do not condemn it.

But that is the point, isn't it? We, as a society, have no center. None. No leader has the balls to make the call to do what is needed. No religious leader. No political leader. Few parental and group leaders. We are left with desire for autonomy and "freedom" to dictate the direction of death via amoral biology. Molotov cocktails have a more complicated set of directions. 

After I type the last sentence of this entry, I will be off to bed. But I am having a difficult time figuring out what is needed upon awakening each day. My life, like so many others, has been eviscerated from what was once the routine we placed our reality upon every day, no matter how variable. As a Musician, this life was never ever ever ever EVER a solid place to stand. But we all chose that via the hope that we would survive because what we did was beyond the realm of the stock broker, the billionaire bond trader, those who chose the typical path. We were spiritual preachers unto who God would forever shine upon as we deliver something no other could translate. Well, all of us are having deep meditations with the Old Testament people named Job and Noah as to how we are to survive this literal flood and draught.

Tomorrow will be another day, and I am so very grateful for that. Another day means another day of hope and creative possibility. Alas, that does not mean income. To those of you who have secure day jobs at this time, I would ask that you place yourselves within that deep fear you have about losing your job via the caprice of those above you, and you ALWAYS have someone above you. That low grade hum of dark fear that you have way deep down about all your security vanishing within an instant, well, those of us who live a creative life have that as our constant bass line. Every moment of every day. How will I pay the Visa bill? How will I pay the water bill? How will I pay the health insurance? That is the 60 cycles per second hum we have at every moment of every day. Google that sound and see how wonderful it is. We are now all in the same boat, even of you don't want to admit it via your ear buds on full volume with your favorite podcast and playlist. 

That 60 cycle hum is waiting for all of us when we awake, whether we like it or not.

Going Below the Waterline of Sanity

 Sorry for the delay, but a few horseman of the apocalypse decided to make a food run along the East coast.

I haven't posted in bit because we had a tropical storm run up the coast and it did disproportionate damage. I remember the epic Hurricane Sandy and that trashed the state and we lost power for what seemed like an eternity. This storm was not all that bad, but apparently the winds came in and just tore up the place and caused the horribly neglected power grid to take a severe fall. The outage here was because of an overgrown brand flapping in the wind and whacking two power lines together. This sort of thing is not uncommon here, as squirrels tend to make tragic mistakes and cause a transformer to blow. But that fix is no more than an hour or two and all is right with world. No food is lost, no work missed. Basically the same thing happened this time,....but the state was flooding with problems and it took over two days to get power back and another day to get internet. 

That meant I had two days of no real virus news. It would have been much better if I had power and could work, but you find the good in the miserable. As it stands, things have kept rising and there seems to be no end in sight. My home team of New Jersey is doing its best to throw itself under the bus via the feelings of  frustration of confinement that has fed into an illusion that we are all fine. You have no doubt seen the news reports of the SECOND massive, multi-hundred house party thrown here. We are all starving to get out of this. All of us. But that is the same reason you do not allow a starving man into a fully stocked kitchen. This goes very bad really fast and this state, amongst many others, is showing that. We all want out old way of life but do not have courage to embrace that harsh reality.

Let me be clear about this. In Camus' "The Plague", the authorities placed the entire town in lock-down and everyone was in the same condition. The leaders dealt with it as best they could, M. Othon is the only steady character of the government is an example of this. He states that the rules are good and must be applied to all. This statement comes down falling at its molecular center via the falling ill and horrible death of his son from the plague in front of most of the main characters. This is a point in the novel where Camus does a major tone shift for the novel. 

In this world and in real time, the people do not have a central leader who is making an example of what should be done for the good of the country. Let this post show that we are literally a country without a central leader in the fight against this. I am saying this as a statement regardless of what side you are on politically. There literally has been no ABSOLUTE statement as to how to treat this plague from the central leader, nor from the part that he states he represents. Check the news. Check the facts. All of us are literally upon the desires of our own selves and what the governors of our individual states are telling us. That, and the allowance of our own desires to be either taken into account or ignored by the police. That is the way it is and may no one ever be allowed to say otherwise.

The country is literally adrift and its survival is now being placed upon its own collective conscience. It is not all bad, as there are many who are good and kind people who care and are choosing to do the right thing in the face of deep suffering to themselves. let us not at any point in time ever EVER deny the presence of those good people. The Titanic may have sunk, but there were good people who helped those into the life boats. Tragedy does not negate the ones that did good but merely spills ink across their numbers in the column of those who did the right thing within the overwhelming presence of those who chose to not act upon their better angels.

After having literally starved from lack of electricity, communication, and work for several days, I believe I have gone below the waterline and arisen into a place of gratitude. My life as a Musician and teacher has been ruined via all previous metrics and history. Gone. No students. No gigs. No in-person recording. Gone. While I see others doing such things now, I have chosen to not place myself within those realms for the betterment of others. The suicidal creative person looses its slimmest narrative validity when others can go down with you. The entire purpose of being a creative person is to speak the Truth and make this world a better place by it. Period. Some jackass wanting applause or self-fulfillment by putting others in danger negates and and all romantic notions of the creative act. This new place of existence within plague is a fire that burns away the truly selfless creators who are in touch with their deepest and best selves and those whose have sold out and have blackened their souls, even without knowing or best intentions, to serve themselves, not the Truth of what they were given.

In the past few days, I went below the waterline and had my mouth filled with the brine of everything past out of reach...and I never was to forget the taste of it.

How Sand Looks Very Close Up

For the first time in my entire life, I had no idea what day it was yesterday. Today is only slightly better.

We are in the never ending loop of undefined days. Well, that's not totally true. We have the case counts and death toll rising to give us some sort of benchmark for a passage of time. What is the number for the USA now? Just shy of 153,000? And there is no great rebellion, no massive rise in marches against this state of waves of illness and death. Any rebellion is, at best, localized. The political news has been astoundingly effective at deflecting the conversation away from the plague. One could stand in awe at it if the entire building were not on fire around them.

It is now the last day in July of this year and it just feels like some daze...if one chooses to not go out. Here in New Jersey, the governor has stated that he is going to put in place the previous lockdown measures if people do not stop gathering at 700 people parties, bars and restaurants down at the Jersey show, or just going to the store WITHOUT A DAMN MASK! I have lived in New Jersey for the majority of my life, and I can tell you one thing: no one cares and this weekend will be full of parties and hook-ups and drinking and gatherings everywhere is the blessed Summer sun...and we will be back on severe lockdown again very very very soon. The rise in cases seems to have bothered no one, the release from the imprisonment has made everyone forget about any crime they could commit and the repercussions of them.

We are all in denial one way or the other. I blame this on the lack of national solidarity on to do what is needed for the common good. Organized religion has lost a great deal of ground in the past decades, so sports and the government have had to pick up the needed slack. The concept of community has also broken down. If you don't believe me about things breaking down in the individual cohesiveness of morality, just ask any lawyer the kind of cases they are getting, the type of legal cases that are before a judge. And, while you are at it, ask any public school teacher what the students and parents are like. We are fractured and amusing ourselves to death. 

Do not take my comments as an absolute. There are, and always will be, wonderful and caring people. However, in the distant past of six months ago, the actions of those who were selfish and cared for their own personal interests were not directly felt on a day to day basis by the general populous. But that has changed and the fact that there is over 4.5 million cases of the virus in the US, with no sign of stopping,  speaks for itself.

This nation is fracturing on many levels and a crash of the stock market would just have it fall into an abyss. This is because there would be no way of hiding behind the illusion of a healthy economy. I say "illusion" because stocks have had their fourth straight months of gains while the GDP has fallen over 32% in the last quarter, a number that has surpassed the Great Depression of the 1930's. When the next quarter result comes in and that number is tragic again, I would not be surprised of the great reckoning arriving. 

There are many who have entered this plague with their heads already in the sand as to the world around them. There are others who plunged into the sand when they could not take it anymore. But there are some of us who are just so damn weary of the same day repeating over and over again, like the character Raymond Rambert playing his one album over and over again every day, whose backs are growing sore and keeping our heads from just collapsing and diving head first into the sand just so we can stop the pain and maybe get a good night's sleep. 

By the way, it is Summer out there. If you do touch your face to the sand right now, you will get burned. Trust me, you will be burned

Running Out of Ink: The Photocopying of Time

We are in a photocopy loop of repeating days, and we are running out of Ink.

To those who may remember those days, there was a time when bands used to put up ads for their shows via wheat pasting black and white copies of their flyers all over the place. You could tell what generation the image was by how blurry and faded it was. Well, this is exactly what it felt like to be within this pandemic, this horrible copy of the previous day where reality and sanity are fading. 

Okay, it is not horrible via the definitions of the past. It is not a dark post-nuclear war landscape outside. Neither is it a massive military presence due to a government coup. On the surface, all things seem like a Sunday in Spring: less traffic, some stores closed, and people walking outside during the day. But I believe that is the largest part of the problem. Things seem normal on the surface, but they are not.

Speaking personally, it is taxing. I was speaking with a close friend last night who is a fellow Musician. This whole pandemic has destroyed the paradigm of how we define ourselves. We have had our very life changed in every way. We have no places to play, no place to even meet up and discuss our lives and concerns. And please don't think of this as silly. The Cedar Tavern is famous for having many many many famous artists gather inside on a regular basis. While creative people are loners by nature to get their work done, we also crave to not be alone and mingle with friends. In brief, we are human beings.

The news is showing we are just shy of 147,000 deaths from the virus. This staggering number, which is simply going to rise, seems to be ignored by everyone. There is no panic here in New Jersey because, well, it is believed we have been though the fire and cannot be touched. People are tempting fate and that is not a good  thing.

This eternally repeating day is why I have been so bad at keeping this journal going. In the beginning, this was all new and one would wake in the morning confronting this new reality. But things have just kept repeating and there is a numbness that has has come over everything. You can always put off something till tomorrow because there will always be free time tomorrow.  And that does not seem the changing  any time soon. The news is blurring together and leaves one anxiety stricken on all fronts, until one just shuts down and do something to kill time until sleep.

We are in the digital age and one can make an infinite number of copies without any degrading of the image. And that would be horrible if it were to be mimicked by life. Those blurry band flyers showed that the image had a lifespan, a history. These days are more like that. A new day arrives and the previous day is repeated, but the ocean of time continues to carry us forward even if will never be able to touch the horizon. 

Camus talks about this feeling of being caught in a haze of repeating days. I THOUGHT I knew what that was before this, but now I believe I totally comprehend. 

So, I will do my best to write in this blog tomorrow...hopefully one that happens sooner rather than later.

On Rebellion Within Plague

"At this point Father Paneloux evoked the august figure of Bishop Belzunce during the Marseille plague. He reminded his hearers how, toward the close of the epidemic, the Bishop, having done all that it behooved him, shut himself up in his palace, behind high walls, after laying in a stock of food and drink. With a sudden revulsion of feeling, such as often comes in times of extreme tribulation, the inhabitants of Marseille, who had idolized him hitherto, now turned against him, piled up corpses round his house in order to infect it, and even flung bodies over the walls to make sure of his death. Thus in a moment of weakness the Bishop had proposed to isolate himself from the outside world, and, lo and behold, corpses rained down on his head! This had a lesson for us all; we must convince ourselves that there is no island of escape in time of plague. No, there was no middle course. We must accept the dilemma and choose either to hate God or to love God. And who would dare to choose to hate Him?"

(To begin, for reasons I am not sure, it seems Camus got this historically wrong according to what I could find. Still, it is a relevant story, even if it is false.)

It seems that things are not holding together very well out there, and I did not expect any different.

As I type this, the television is announcing that the number of virus deaths in the USA is: 140,563. That is an insane number and it is only going to rise. Florida has an 18% positivity rate. To make it simple to imagine, if you have five friends in a room, one has the virus. Make that picture be in every square mile of Florida. Yeah, that's huge. But the people of the nation seem to not care.

The story Father Paneloux tells shows that biology and humanity will get their way if you ignore them. In most of the country, the virus is spreading and it does not seem to be slowing. Here in New Jersey, we are going down or are steady. From what a friend told me on the phone yesterday, you would have idea that there was a pandemic going on in the shore town of Asbury Park. Other than the restaurants being outside, it was the same. No masks, people close together. Okay, well, let's hope the heat and being outside helps keep the transmission low.

It seems that people are not taking this seriously in most of the country and that wearing a mask has become a political thing. Again, I won't go into that, simply because it is just something I have a hard time believing, that science is now a political Make Your Own Story. Well, we are paying for this and paying for it hard. The virus is just doing what it does and spreading like crazy, with the added bonus that wealthy and powerful people can get a test at any time and have results come back very quickly. Meanwhile, the working class have to wait in their cars for hours and have to wait over a week for the results. 

People can tolerate a great deal of inequity for a certain amount of time if the suffering is kept to a minimum and when the poor cannot really taste the difference between the divide. But a test for a virus is a test that works for all people. The poor now realize how screwed they are when they cannot get tested and the upper part of the economic spectrum can get a test a day without any problem. 

This country has seen a wave of protests that have once again shown the racial issues that we have forever seemed to deal with since, well, forever. One would have to be foolish to think that this virus did not act as the gasoline that was lit with the match of the violent acts which happened in Minneapolis. The people in my beloved city rebelled and took to the streets. This led to places all over the world having mass gatherings to protest inequality, showing a global rebellion. 

In the book "The Plague", there is only light reference to actual riots in the streets. But, it must be noted that the main character Tarrou was a political revolutionary, a former rebel who has seen the fault in his way of life and is now simply trying to be, as is stated a saint who does not believe in God. But it is he who starts the volunteer squads who help with the plague when the local authorities are helpless due to the machinery of bureaucracy. His rebellion now takes form of fighting against the plague and even gets Rambert, the trapped journalist who is trying to escape, to join the fight. 

If we are to believe, as Camus states, that this world is absurd and the only thing we can do to find meaning is to rebel against it to become happy, then we are now at a point where everyone can rebel and the fruits be shown. If we were to all fight against this pandemic, all of us do our part, the unification of the people would lead to a sense of hope. Think London during the Blitz of WW2. We would see the similarity within humanity before any difference. Well, ideally anyway.

But now, with the wealthy and famous behind their walls and the common people who feel powerless;ess choosing to show their power by not wearing masks, there is no unity. This has, I believe shown the level of selfishness within the country and the lack of unity that was always under the surface, with the virus and the protests causing the truth to be exposed. I can only imagine that the tide will turn when those who have been able to be far away from the majority of the country, as well as those in the larger community who choose to rebel by not wearing a mask or take precautions, will have themselves or others close to them die. from the virus.

Why does this remind me of the the gospel passages that speak of "weeping and gnashing of teeth"? It is mentioned when Jesus talks about the of the unrighteous ones upon the time of judgement. I can envision, rather easily, the look on a doubter''s face  when they or someone they love gets the virus and is in the ICU. There is no religious talk here, just the moment when someone realizes they could have stopped a tragedy and did not. People chose their path and the results just happen.

If all it takes to rebel within this pandemic, if nothing else but to be a rebel against a foe that has killed over 140,000 people, please...just wear a mask and be that rebel.

The Ballad of Cottard: A Barefoot Waltz on Death Row

The USA is just shy of 137,000 deaths from the virus in under four months and there is no end in site.

If this were said via a panicked voice on a blackened movie screen in a theater, your heart would start racing. You could see the premise of panic as clear as day. But why have we become so numb to a reality that would have freaked us out as fiction? Well, isn't that the place where our brains fear to go?

We are heading into an abyss when it comes to the infection and death rate outside of the Eastern most places in the USA. New Your and New Jersey are not going down anymore, but are stable. That's nice to know, but there is still a risk and that, let's be honest, is scary. Within this moment the situation is as follows: You can go out without a mask and roll one dice to see if your number comes up. If you go out with a mask, it is two, maybe three dice. 

And, I have to make this sidebar comment. People who have bravado (i.e. delusion) say, "Hey! I could get hit by a car every single time I go out! You always take a chance! Screw it!" Okay, well, that's true, the pick-up truck that plows into you without your seatbelt on will physically effect the parties involved in the accident. You took the chance, you pay the cost to the dealer when you get the wrong hand. But, what if that car had the chance to plow into your home as well? Or your mom's house or someone else's house you saw that afternoon? Our idea of individual freedom and taking personal responsibility for it within a nation that has not gone to an official war with a draft of its best and brightest is far from reality.

Arizona, Texas, and Florida are lighting up like a bingo board on fire when it comes to cases. With mask wearing having become a political issue, we have come as close as we could to any Old Testament Bible story crushing a nation as anyone in history. Religion on its own does not supply all the answers. Science alone does not supply all the answers. I love both very deeply and have faith in them. At the core of both is a very hard end point: there are no absolute or easy answers. Ever.

To follow blindly is a right we have within this country. However, there is always an effect after the cause. If you want to protest that the Northern White Rhinoceros was the last point of the Divine in the world, you are allowed to protest, write letters to the editor, get a press agent, have a Facebook, twitter, and Reddit page to state your beliefs. But the cause and effect of these beliefs and protests, outside of illegal activities of violence, will not effect others. Not wearing a mask and allowing close gatherings in a time of pandemic will effect others. All one has to do is look at the stats of deaths today and the proof will be there.

I honestly cannot find a link to the book "The Plague" within all this.....well, maybe there is one.

The character of Cottard is the only one happy when plague breaks out. This is because, as someone who was on the run from the law for an undisclosed serious crime, he feels free when the town turns into a prison. In the novel, Cottard tries to commit suicide and fails. The main character, Dr. Rieux, is called to him by M. Grand, something of a beautiful and absurd character who is Cottard's neighbor. When Rieux treats the man for his injury, he states that he (Rieux) must tell the police of this because, if he does commit suicide in the future, there would be deep legal problems for Rieux. 

Normally, according to the book, this is literally nothing of any importance for the police. Official paperwork to avoid a lawsuit later. But for Cottard, it is the worst news. As he is on the run and hiding in Oran, to have the police even know his name is akin to being thrown in prison. Still, Rieux and Grand win out, and the police are called. Afterwards, nothing happens to him, except the plague comes to town.

But Cottard overplays his hand. Instead of laying low or even escaping to somewhere else via illegal means, he stays in town and makes a a great deal of money in the smuggling business as Oran is hurting for just about everything and those that are still alive will pay anything for what they want. In the end, the authorities figure him out via his noticed position in the illegal affairs, and he is arrested at the end of the book. 

His character is really talked about in analysis of the book and that is a shame. Granted, he is not a huge character in the book, his presence has a great deal of importance. He was forever living under a death sentence, never knowing how or when he would be found. Within a city that was a lottery based death chamber, he felt at home and at peace because everyone was in his shoes for the first time. 

Let's all go barefoot and never be happy in this present place, shall we?