I started connecting with people and trying to work online today. While it is nice, this is literally something I have dreaded and never experienced ver before.
I was always an outdoor/in-motion person. While I can spend hours alone in a room writing words or music, I would always go out at some point in the day. I was a landscaper at a cemetery for over 12 years. At one time, I even helped make crafts in someone's basement, but I had to drive there to get to work. I would walk to school 2 miles each way in Minneapolis. I always had a place to go or wanted to be somewhere outside of where I was living.
If the only way I can make a living is by doing stuff online, well, any port in a storm, as they say. But this is cutting against a lifetime of habit and vocation. This sort of thing does not bend easily. In the book "The Plague", people went about their business if they chose to. I am not sure if this is a shortcoming of Camus' telling or if it is simply a reality in the non-digital age. People HAD to go out to get food, so, once that was up and running, I suppose, all bets were off. That being said, there was a longing for physical connection as everyone tried to keep a distance from each other.
It seemed over the past years, with digital communication and virtuality seeming to be the drive of where we were headed, maybe all this starvation will make us realize, if even for a time, how amazing being in the flesh with other people is?
We can build all the sandcastles we can with this digital dust, but we cannot outpace history, biology, and habit. At least, I hope not...
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
Monday, March 23, 2020
On Vacation in Nowhere with Godot (03-23-2020)
I just got back from a walk to the post office with Chris. Out here, it is 40 degrees and raining and it made the short walk horrible. As I was walking there for the first time (I would always go there while the int Before Times in my car while doing things), and we were joking about how we were walking somewhere on vacation. That idea was not far from my mind as, just before we left, the Montreal hotel where we were going to stay next month called and..errrr....canceled us. So, yet another outside source is saying this thing is going to go on for over a month.
I walked to the post offie to mail a letter. Yeah, a LETTER. I have been writing all the time since high school, and I figured that just getting the hell out of here for a seven minute walk would be something good. Thankfully, Nature could care less about how comfortable we were on our walk.
What I am beginning to believe is that we are all going to have to face down our own personal lives and see what the hell it is we have been and will do with what time we have in isolation. It seems we have all been given what was always most scarce:Time. The insane kinetic life we have been living has ground to a stop and we have to deal with that. Lack of motion means stillness and within stillness comes reflection and that is why the liquor stores are still allowed to be open. That is not a slam on liquor stores or drinking, but just the fact that we all seem to put off self reflection as long as we can.
The again, maybe the Internet and Netflix and Hulu and everything else can distract us from that feared look into our own selves. In the book "The Plague", the real intensity happens to the town when the basic needs get short. May it never come to that here. But if not does, then one will really have to think about life in a different way. Hold on. Wait a second. As long as the fast food places are open and have food....there's food for cheap, right? Could THAT be the one thing watch as to how things get worse?
Samuel Beckett said in his play "Waiting for Godot" that "Habit is a great deadener." Well, let the nerve endings come alive again as all of our habits, all that which stopped us from thinking deeply, come alive again.
I walked to the post offie to mail a letter. Yeah, a LETTER. I have been writing all the time since high school, and I figured that just getting the hell out of here for a seven minute walk would be something good. Thankfully, Nature could care less about how comfortable we were on our walk.
What I am beginning to believe is that we are all going to have to face down our own personal lives and see what the hell it is we have been and will do with what time we have in isolation. It seems we have all been given what was always most scarce:Time. The insane kinetic life we have been living has ground to a stop and we have to deal with that. Lack of motion means stillness and within stillness comes reflection and that is why the liquor stores are still allowed to be open. That is not a slam on liquor stores or drinking, but just the fact that we all seem to put off self reflection as long as we can.
The again, maybe the Internet and Netflix and Hulu and everything else can distract us from that feared look into our own selves. In the book "The Plague", the real intensity happens to the town when the basic needs get short. May it never come to that here. But if not does, then one will really have to think about life in a different way. Hold on. Wait a second. As long as the fast food places are open and have food....there's food for cheap, right? Could THAT be the one thing watch as to how things get worse?
Samuel Beckett said in his play "Waiting for Godot" that "Habit is a great deadener." Well, let the nerve endings come alive again as all of our habits, all that which stopped us from thinking deeply, come alive again.
Sunday, March 22, 2020
The New Silence (3-22-2020)
Last night at 10 PM, I opened the window to hear....nothing.
This is New Jersey and I am near a strip club, so, there is always some sound of traffic or (what sounds like) gunfire at night on the weekends. But not now. Last night and this morning, there is the most prescient silence. The birds singing outside the windows are, for now, louder than the traffic.
I had to go out today to get abandoned gear from a church basement. I thought the roads would be empty and I would be pulled over by police for driving. Well,......no. There were more cars on the road than I ever would have expected. Granted, it was not 3 pm on Thanksgiving Eve, but way more than I had thought would ever be there.
The drive was surreal. The billboards and signs spoke of a future that no longer exists. Ads fo tennis lessons, spa treatments, and happy hours flooded the drive with colors that seemed to shriek of dissonance with the present era. It was the same with all the terrestrial radio ads that were created and booked months in advance. I listened to them almost as if in some low budget horror movie. There were ads for stock market investment (I have firm belief that the Dow Jones will hit 15,000 before too long, half of its epic high a very short time ago), and ads about things no one even thinks about with the nightmare of being in an ICU with a respirator fighting for ones life within each paranoid breath.
Nature, in all its beauty and amoral bliss, was showing signs of the rebirth of Spring. I grew up in the last decades on the Cold War era and was tattooed with the reality that, even if all the nukes went off and we were all gone, nature would not even blink and continue. The town of Chernobyl now bears witness to tat Truth. But I will say that there was beauty out there, outside the computer monitor, beyond the walls of the house.
I just read that the governor of New York believes that this could go on for up to eight months. I cannot grasp such a thing, to be so far from the shore with the taste of my last meal still with me. My old life, one of many decades through great personal tragedy and pain, seemed to be able to be lived regardless of what was going on outside.
But this is the new world, one no one has ever seen before. So, everything is new, or should be expected to be. Even now as I type this, as the sun is setting and I cannot hear any traffic outside, just the birds. It is one thing for our daily life of activity to be redefined, but it is even stranger when silence, that which is attained when all else is absent, is shocking.
I believe everyone is going to have to be redefined within the New Silence.
This is New Jersey and I am near a strip club, so, there is always some sound of traffic or (what sounds like) gunfire at night on the weekends. But not now. Last night and this morning, there is the most prescient silence. The birds singing outside the windows are, for now, louder than the traffic.
I had to go out today to get abandoned gear from a church basement. I thought the roads would be empty and I would be pulled over by police for driving. Well,......no. There were more cars on the road than I ever would have expected. Granted, it was not 3 pm on Thanksgiving Eve, but way more than I had thought would ever be there.
The drive was surreal. The billboards and signs spoke of a future that no longer exists. Ads fo tennis lessons, spa treatments, and happy hours flooded the drive with colors that seemed to shriek of dissonance with the present era. It was the same with all the terrestrial radio ads that were created and booked months in advance. I listened to them almost as if in some low budget horror movie. There were ads for stock market investment (I have firm belief that the Dow Jones will hit 15,000 before too long, half of its epic high a very short time ago), and ads about things no one even thinks about with the nightmare of being in an ICU with a respirator fighting for ones life within each paranoid breath.
Nature, in all its beauty and amoral bliss, was showing signs of the rebirth of Spring. I grew up in the last decades on the Cold War era and was tattooed with the reality that, even if all the nukes went off and we were all gone, nature would not even blink and continue. The town of Chernobyl now bears witness to tat Truth. But I will say that there was beauty out there, outside the computer monitor, beyond the walls of the house.
I just read that the governor of New York believes that this could go on for up to eight months. I cannot grasp such a thing, to be so far from the shore with the taste of my last meal still with me. My old life, one of many decades through great personal tragedy and pain, seemed to be able to be lived regardless of what was going on outside.
But this is the new world, one no one has ever seen before. So, everything is new, or should be expected to be. Even now as I type this, as the sun is setting and I cannot hear any traffic outside, just the birds. It is one thing for our daily life of activity to be redefined, but it is even stranger when silence, that which is attained when all else is absent, is shocking.
I believe everyone is going to have to be redefined within the New Silence.
Saturday, March 21, 2020
When All Things Come Undone: Inking the Unfolding Unknown (3-20-2020)
As I start writing this o the East Coast, NYC in under something of a lockdown. New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut are still SORTA open for business, but the traffic on Rt 1 at midday is like a 12 inch snow fall in January....with no snow on the ground in sight or memory.
There is talk on social media of sleeping in, like every single day is now the weekend, This makes sense, as churches in the area have closed due to the fear of communal inflection. The alternate, and way more popular religion, sports, has also closed shop. I remember hearing an announcer say that Bull Riding was still going on. Okay. Fine. I once has a long chat with a bull rider waiting for a plane in Texas. Lovely young fellow. Totally respect his chosen profession. However, from my place on the east coast of America, no one, and I mean NO ONE, has ever spoken about watching bull riding here.
With God and sports both being on vacation, we have been left adrift to wonder the fate of the actual moment. Those of us who pray can still incantate hope of a better future as we have no idea what will happen next. To those who had a more immediate answer to future hopes in sports, well,.... I got nothing.
In the book "The Plague" by Albert Camus, the soccer stadiums of Oran were turned into quarantine stations. Camus had a deep love for soccer, which he played almost professionally before being taken out of the game due to his lung issues. For him to talk about a soccer stadium as a place for people in quarantine from the Black Plague would be like me taking about a music school used as a MASH Hospital. The emotions run rough and ragged for him when it comes to soccer.
In the book, Camus has a character by the name of "Fr. Paneloux" be a voice of religion in the plague ridden town. On the whole, the Jesuit priest joins the volunteers and helps with the plague, knowing full well what is at risk. In fact, he is first introduced helping out the first character in the book with the plague, M. Michel, the concierge of the building where Dr. Rieux lives. Paneloux, for the most part, thinks of the plague in theological terms of punishment by God as shown by his first sermon at a catholic Mass for men at the beginning of the outbreak. But it is watching a boy die of plague with most of main characters alongside him, that he has a change of heart and has to deal with the unexplainable suffering and death of an innocent child. After that, Paneloux, joins the volunteers to help with the plague, his conversion making him take action.
I am going to guess that I am like most people in that I have never seen what this virus does face to face. The numbers that are screamed from the news are just numbers...
...and rarely do abstract numbers cause a conversion.
There is talk on social media of sleeping in, like every single day is now the weekend, This makes sense, as churches in the area have closed due to the fear of communal inflection. The alternate, and way more popular religion, sports, has also closed shop. I remember hearing an announcer say that Bull Riding was still going on. Okay. Fine. I once has a long chat with a bull rider waiting for a plane in Texas. Lovely young fellow. Totally respect his chosen profession. However, from my place on the east coast of America, no one, and I mean NO ONE, has ever spoken about watching bull riding here.
With God and sports both being on vacation, we have been left adrift to wonder the fate of the actual moment. Those of us who pray can still incantate hope of a better future as we have no idea what will happen next. To those who had a more immediate answer to future hopes in sports, well,.... I got nothing.
In the book "The Plague" by Albert Camus, the soccer stadiums of Oran were turned into quarantine stations. Camus had a deep love for soccer, which he played almost professionally before being taken out of the game due to his lung issues. For him to talk about a soccer stadium as a place for people in quarantine from the Black Plague would be like me taking about a music school used as a MASH Hospital. The emotions run rough and ragged for him when it comes to soccer.
In the book, Camus has a character by the name of "Fr. Paneloux" be a voice of religion in the plague ridden town. On the whole, the Jesuit priest joins the volunteers and helps with the plague, knowing full well what is at risk. In fact, he is first introduced helping out the first character in the book with the plague, M. Michel, the concierge of the building where Dr. Rieux lives. Paneloux, for the most part, thinks of the plague in theological terms of punishment by God as shown by his first sermon at a catholic Mass for men at the beginning of the outbreak. But it is watching a boy die of plague with most of main characters alongside him, that he has a change of heart and has to deal with the unexplainable suffering and death of an innocent child. After that, Paneloux, joins the volunteers to help with the plague, his conversion making him take action.
I am going to guess that I am like most people in that I have never seen what this virus does face to face. The numbers that are screamed from the news are just numbers...
...and rarely do abstract numbers cause a conversion.
Before the Sun Goes Down on What We Knew (3-21-2020)
As far as I can tell, that car ride I just took to the storage unit will be the last one for a while, and it might be some time.
It is 2:01 PM and about half an hour ago, the governor of New Jersey just told everyone that things have shut down and we will be told when it is over. This does not surprise me. As I live in New Jersey, I knew full well that when they would put New York City under "Stay In Place", they would have to do it for New Jersey and most likely Connecticut.
It is the waiting for the news that will change our lives that is crushing. This isn't a book or a movie. There are no jump cuts, nor the ability to read the ending pages of the book to see how it turns out our to have time moved quicker. This seems to be the beginning of Deep Real Time. No one has ever been through such a thing on this scale and everyone is making it up as they go along.
Another strange thing is that there is this constant state of humming fear and panic all over. I went out before and went to a convince store to buy milk. All the while I was in there, my mind was racing: DID I GET THE VIRUS FROM THE REFRIGERATOR DOOR WHEN I GOT THE MILK? I JUST GOT A CUP OF COFFE! WHAT ABOUT THE COFFEE DISPENSER HANDLE!? THE MILK HANDLE! DEAR LORD! WHY DID I PAY IN CASH??? IT COULD BE ON THE BILLS!!" I went to my car and sanitized my hands and went about my so-called day, but the brain is on high alert at all times.
I am old enough to have lived through the AIDS crisis in the 1980's and 1990's. I was young enough to know what was going on and remember that the illness had a distinct shadow of it being for those who, according to society's decision, for the most part, somehow deserved it. No, I am not talking about the people who got it from blood transfusions. I am talking about the drug users and homosexuals who were struck down by that plague. It pretty much seemed to boil down to this: If you got AIDS by something you did, you asked for it. I will say no more about it here except for the following memory: when my friend Seda and I went to see the AIDS Quilt at the Rutgers Athletic Center, the local diocese had a sign with a drawing of Jesus on it as He embraced what looked like a leper. It said, "Those who believe AIDS is a plague from God have not met our God." A clearer message that was not adopted by the masses (or even many people who believe in Christ) I have yet to see.
This virus is almost god-like, ghost-like to be more precise. I could be everywhere. You could have it and not know it and pass it on to some other person and have it kill them or their elderly relatives or friends or immune-compromised people of any age. There is no real morality attached to this pandemic, with the exception of the Florida Spring Break people who are, as of now, too young to get it, but able to spread it. This inversion of the Darwinian equation sets my head spinning.
All that being said, none of this has really kicked in yet. How could it? The afternoon sun is glowing in the window to my left. All of this is still theory until 9 PM tonight when it goes into effect. Even then, it will not be Marshal Law. There is just this sense of waiting in Deep Real Time to have this whole thing unfold where it will.
It is, to be sure, a nightfall to remember.
It is 2:01 PM and about half an hour ago, the governor of New Jersey just told everyone that things have shut down and we will be told when it is over. This does not surprise me. As I live in New Jersey, I knew full well that when they would put New York City under "Stay In Place", they would have to do it for New Jersey and most likely Connecticut.
It is the waiting for the news that will change our lives that is crushing. This isn't a book or a movie. There are no jump cuts, nor the ability to read the ending pages of the book to see how it turns out our to have time moved quicker. This seems to be the beginning of Deep Real Time. No one has ever been through such a thing on this scale and everyone is making it up as they go along.
Another strange thing is that there is this constant state of humming fear and panic all over. I went out before and went to a convince store to buy milk. All the while I was in there, my mind was racing: DID I GET THE VIRUS FROM THE REFRIGERATOR DOOR WHEN I GOT THE MILK? I JUST GOT A CUP OF COFFE! WHAT ABOUT THE COFFEE DISPENSER HANDLE!? THE MILK HANDLE! DEAR LORD! WHY DID I PAY IN CASH??? IT COULD BE ON THE BILLS!!" I went to my car and sanitized my hands and went about my so-called day, but the brain is on high alert at all times.
I am old enough to have lived through the AIDS crisis in the 1980's and 1990's. I was young enough to know what was going on and remember that the illness had a distinct shadow of it being for those who, according to society's decision, for the most part, somehow deserved it. No, I am not talking about the people who got it from blood transfusions. I am talking about the drug users and homosexuals who were struck down by that plague. It pretty much seemed to boil down to this: If you got AIDS by something you did, you asked for it. I will say no more about it here except for the following memory: when my friend Seda and I went to see the AIDS Quilt at the Rutgers Athletic Center, the local diocese had a sign with a drawing of Jesus on it as He embraced what looked like a leper. It said, "Those who believe AIDS is a plague from God have not met our God." A clearer message that was not adopted by the masses (or even many people who believe in Christ) I have yet to see.
This virus is almost god-like, ghost-like to be more precise. I could be everywhere. You could have it and not know it and pass it on to some other person and have it kill them or their elderly relatives or friends or immune-compromised people of any age. There is no real morality attached to this pandemic, with the exception of the Florida Spring Break people who are, as of now, too young to get it, but able to spread it. This inversion of the Darwinian equation sets my head spinning.
All that being said, none of this has really kicked in yet. How could it? The afternoon sun is glowing in the window to my left. All of this is still theory until 9 PM tonight when it goes into effect. Even then, it will not be Marshal Law. There is just this sense of waiting in Deep Real Time to have this whole thing unfold where it will.
It is, to be sure, a nightfall to remember.
Friday, March 20, 2020
Gravity, Expectation, and Physics: An Ode to the Unknown Beginning
It would be foolish to say that no one saw this coming. Some people did, but we simply didn't listen to them. But that is the way it always is in these sort of circumstances: we were too busy, or too scared or too proud, to listen.
Even a cursory glance over history shows that this is nothing new, not by a long shot. What makes this different is that we are now global and, with that blessing, comes the other side of the sword. We are, in our own very real way, a Global Town, just like the port of Oran in Camus' novel.
It has come like a tsunami, with only the very few who, like certain animals, knew what was coming and somehow fled, somehow knowing to leave before it all came crashing down. That being said, I do not know of anyone who had the foresight of even the birds in all this. It seems, to myself at least, that no one did or was able to flee the oncoming wave.
Let it be said that the days before were like any other and that the concerns of almost everyone were simply on what lay before them in the immediate future. Unlike the last stock market crash, where everyone seemed to talk in loud whispers about selling their houses for an insane profit and unqualified college students were offering half a million dollar loans with absolute ease (trust me, I was offered them), not to mention the earlier tech bubble that gave myself and seemingly everyone I knew sone gift from the market, this one has come at a time where the general attitude was, "Well, we are getting by." Climbing up the ladder of wealth was never a spoken or believed option.
In the end, it begins and ends with gravity, expectation, and physics.
We lived our lives with our heads placed the way we always did: looking at our feet and at times gazing up tp make sure we did not collide with anyone. None of us desired that collision of two bodies, unknown to each other, colliding into one another, gravity being the immoral imperative that it always has been.
We always expected things to go on and, at the very very least, not get worse. Most of us were not thriving, but feeling well enough to not worry as we tried to go to sleep. Others, such as real estate agents, were thriving and making great wealth, with no one remembering of what happened not so long ago when the last real estate boom happened. And there were the people in retirement who saw their portfolios of safety swell beyond expectation via realms they never bothered to measure or truly investigate, now see their literal future crash before them. All of us who could breath with relative ease just a few weeks before are now gasping for air.
And, finally, physics. This literal wave is crashing upon us and none of us can control physics. The virus continues to multiply and mutate due to molecules and all the laws that we perceive to govern it. The water falls around us and we curse the same sky that gave us sunshine during out blessed Summer memories and the quiet rainy days where we either stayed in bed (alone or with someone) and listened to a smooth jazz album or walked alone with the music of Eric Satie in our souls along half filled streets visiting record stores, cafes, and antique shops. We never challenged or cursed the amoral skies before, but now it is all we do.
Let it be said that a few were reaping rich rewards while most were having their daily bread. We were able to have our earthly desires fulfilled for a moment with a quick swipe on our cell phones, And, most importantly, we amused ourselves to death without speaking to one another vie the technology we helped bloom into life.
But now flesh being near flesh can kill the ill and elderly. A simple gathering at a bar has been forbidden. We are pressing hard upon the digital flesh and communion we created. (Personally, I have three movies ready to be watched on my computer. ) But it seems we are all being impaled upon a unique isolation, one that is both of the flesh and the spiritual unknown. It seems we forever hinged our digital isolation on the doorway of escape into the flesh and blood. And now, that escape is been deeply narrowed.
All that being said, no one worth their salt can say that physics is perfectly defined or without mystery. We must all now walk, not fearfully run, into that unknown where, thankfully, there are no answers. We are all making this up as we go along, doing the best we can.
When this chapter in history is written, those that come after it will know the ending. We, however, do not, and we must fight with all we have with love, kindness, and compassion to be fully alive these days. As I write this, I am sure that things will only get stranger as pieces are filled into the narrative puzzle.
We never asked for this, but we got it regardless. Now, we must make the best of it by caring for each other in ways we have hopefully not forgotten.
Even a cursory glance over history shows that this is nothing new, not by a long shot. What makes this different is that we are now global and, with that blessing, comes the other side of the sword. We are, in our own very real way, a Global Town, just like the port of Oran in Camus' novel.
It has come like a tsunami, with only the very few who, like certain animals, knew what was coming and somehow fled, somehow knowing to leave before it all came crashing down. That being said, I do not know of anyone who had the foresight of even the birds in all this. It seems, to myself at least, that no one did or was able to flee the oncoming wave.
Let it be said that the days before were like any other and that the concerns of almost everyone were simply on what lay before them in the immediate future. Unlike the last stock market crash, where everyone seemed to talk in loud whispers about selling their houses for an insane profit and unqualified college students were offering half a million dollar loans with absolute ease (trust me, I was offered them), not to mention the earlier tech bubble that gave myself and seemingly everyone I knew sone gift from the market, this one has come at a time where the general attitude was, "Well, we are getting by." Climbing up the ladder of wealth was never a spoken or believed option.
In the end, it begins and ends with gravity, expectation, and physics.
We lived our lives with our heads placed the way we always did: looking at our feet and at times gazing up tp make sure we did not collide with anyone. None of us desired that collision of two bodies, unknown to each other, colliding into one another, gravity being the immoral imperative that it always has been.
We always expected things to go on and, at the very very least, not get worse. Most of us were not thriving, but feeling well enough to not worry as we tried to go to sleep. Others, such as real estate agents, were thriving and making great wealth, with no one remembering of what happened not so long ago when the last real estate boom happened. And there were the people in retirement who saw their portfolios of safety swell beyond expectation via realms they never bothered to measure or truly investigate, now see their literal future crash before them. All of us who could breath with relative ease just a few weeks before are now gasping for air.
And, finally, physics. This literal wave is crashing upon us and none of us can control physics. The virus continues to multiply and mutate due to molecules and all the laws that we perceive to govern it. The water falls around us and we curse the same sky that gave us sunshine during out blessed Summer memories and the quiet rainy days where we either stayed in bed (alone or with someone) and listened to a smooth jazz album or walked alone with the music of Eric Satie in our souls along half filled streets visiting record stores, cafes, and antique shops. We never challenged or cursed the amoral skies before, but now it is all we do.
Let it be said that a few were reaping rich rewards while most were having their daily bread. We were able to have our earthly desires fulfilled for a moment with a quick swipe on our cell phones, And, most importantly, we amused ourselves to death without speaking to one another vie the technology we helped bloom into life.
But now flesh being near flesh can kill the ill and elderly. A simple gathering at a bar has been forbidden. We are pressing hard upon the digital flesh and communion we created. (Personally, I have three movies ready to be watched on my computer. ) But it seems we are all being impaled upon a unique isolation, one that is both of the flesh and the spiritual unknown. It seems we forever hinged our digital isolation on the doorway of escape into the flesh and blood. And now, that escape is been deeply narrowed.
All that being said, no one worth their salt can say that physics is perfectly defined or without mystery. We must all now walk, not fearfully run, into that unknown where, thankfully, there are no answers. We are all making this up as we go along, doing the best we can.
When this chapter in history is written, those that come after it will know the ending. We, however, do not, and we must fight with all we have with love, kindness, and compassion to be fully alive these days. As I write this, I am sure that things will only get stranger as pieces are filled into the narrative puzzle.
We never asked for this, but we got it regardless. Now, we must make the best of it by caring for each other in ways we have hopefully not forgotten.
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