Love at a Reasonable Price

[Bartleby’s Poetry Corner]

I don’t know why that happened in that way.
Too many hours ‘long too cold a wall.
My visor hinges loose so’s not to stay
without I hold it up in place, while fall
my heavy boots all heavy day upon
these worn-smooth stones where we our watch must keep.
I saw, I thought, you lean, you see; and gone
from contemplations rested, clear and deep,
I sounded the alarm, though gentle speech
was all the cry required you to reach.

Can you believe I meant to help you stand?
Yet legal dots confused my flattened mind.
Forgive me please these stupid heavy hands
that broke the thread, pale-thin but true, that binds.
In darkness stirring wide, the night is loud
with rustled branches, lonesome owl’s hoot
and finally the cock exulting proud.
Now watch human justice itself refute.
Why did this happen in this wrinkled way?
I need you and could find no way to say.

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: AM Watson

[Bartleby’s Poetry Corner]

[NYC Journal]

NYC Journal #10 — Friday 4/24/2020 — Recalled to Life

On Friday, April 24, 2020, Walter Samsa bathed and dressed, ate 50% whole wheat rye bread with organic no-stir peanut butter and grape muscat jelly imported from France, and, zipping up his puffy red vest with his black scarf tucked in but puffing out like a robin’s breast (robin black breast??), throwing his black Jansport over his shoulders, and grabbing a 6” umbrella in one hand and an old white dress shirt (with the bottom third inexpertly cut off) folded up in the other, he left his apartment.

Rainy, low-40s, gloomy, air heavy.

All throughout New York City all year round, some nontrivial portion of the sidewalks are covered by sidewalk sheds of corrugated metal sheets atop rusty I-beams supported by steel poles with flat square feet propped up on an uneven number of 12”X12” pieces of 2”-thick wood. The roofs protect pedestrians from any stray building material. They also serve as a platform for the workers to stage this or that facade work from. To keep both debris and workers from falling onto the street or sidewalk, they have tall walls (maybe 4 foot tall, on average). These “scaffolds”, as they’re sometimes named, are boxes with plywood walls standing thirty feet over the sidewalk.

Walter stopped under a green-walled construction shed.

He set his old rust-stained blue umbrella down concave-up on the sidewalk and lay the slightly-shortened, de-collared but still ringed around collar-area, old offwhite dress shirt on the inside of the umbrella. Folding its bottom up and top down, he created a 6”-tall band, which he centered around his nose/mouth/chin area, and then fastened into place by tying the shirt sleeves behind his head. During the tying process, the wind kicked his umbrella, stutter-skidding it a few feet ahead. He scooped it back up and went back to the rain, which had been patiently waiting outside the shed’s shelter. And he was off! Ready to abide by current subway-riding regulations.

He noticed that the fabric’s sheerness created a bit of problem: it got sucked up by his nostrils and covered them, interfering with their essential function. He adjusted it so it poofed out a bit more around his nose. Then it seemed to work pretty well, though he’d have to pull up or otherwise adjust the makeshift bandit-mask several times during the next twenty minutes.

Thirty or forty people standing or on benches scattered along a couple hundred feet of subway platform, waiting with him in the dank basement-world for the screeching train looming light.

Did he make a mistake? He noticed a bum sleeping in the car on his left hand side and also one sleeping in the car on his right hand side. But since there were already other people in the car on his left hand side, with still others now boarding, he thought the better option was to join the sparser car on his right hand side. Was he wrong? It’s one thing to be able to say: “things would’ve gone better if you’d chosen the car on the left hand side”; it’s another to claim: “you should’ve known to choose the car on the right hand side”.

It wasn’t that bad, but it did turn out that by choosing the car to his right, he had chosen to travel with one homeless man stretched out on a bench diagonally across from him, and another—not initially perceived—sitting upright with broad hands on thick thighs, surrounded by a loose semi-circle of strewn boxes and bags, several benches down. The car remained otherwise empty for the four stops Walter had to journey, and the seated man yelled at him the entire time, with the reposing man occasionally chiming in with a sleepy refrain of the more vulgar taunts.

But whose fault was this incident? For didn’t Walter Samsa initially swivel his back against the back wall and his feet up on this bench by the back door? And didn’t he pull out a notebook, set it on his lap, and begin to make notes while studying the sleeping man? And aren’t these actions likely the cause of the other man’s words:

“Don’t do that! I’m not high! I’m not looking at you! Somebody asks! Looking at me like I’m a piece of shit. I’m not a piece of shit!”

Here Walter bends over to be able to see the yelling man, “Are you talking to me? I can barely see you from here!”

“Don’t talk man. Like I’m a dog! I ain’t a dog! You look’in at that girl, you watch’in her—and you ain’t gett’in no pussy! No pussy! (it was here that the other opened his eyes, gave a little laugh, and then chimed in, “Ain’t gett’in no pussy!”) Ain’t nobody fuck with me, man! Ain’t nobody!”

[There was, as previously stated, no one in the car but these three men. Had they passed a female at the last station? Walter had been preoccupied with his immediate environs, and so couldn’t say.]

Walter Samsa dreams of a career in capture-journalism. He imagines himself catching precious moments as they float past, retaining them, boiling them down to their essentials, and reanimating them in prose. And so he’d thought to himself:

“Well, this is not my preferred subway car, but I may as well verbally sketch this man. Aged perhaps 40, dark-skinned with matted hair forming a bouncy many-fingered solid sometimes tamped down and sometimes rejecting oversized parka hood, reclining to his full height (5’10”?) on the light blue subway seat, his oversized, canvas square-cut navy-blue coat looking new but a little spattered with dirt. Wearing dark slacks a little wrinkled but not grimy and bright yellow socks with puffy white geometric shapes all over them. Lank build. Thin of face, with sunken cheeks and sharp features. What looks like a giant black purse or an ornate bowling-ball bag stuffed to overflowing with I don’t know what all under his seat. And right now he places a very dirty (lots of black (oil?) and brown spots all over it’s crinkled yellowed base) dish rag on top of his face.”

How did Walter Samsa think observing that homeless man and writing down his observations would help anyone? What is the use of being a writer? What is the use of Walter Samsa writing what he’s writing?

The yelling man was tall and stout. He wore a puffy coat and a knit-cap with a little built-in brim. Walter couldn’t see him very well. This man coughed quite a bit. But they were fake hollow forced-air coughs, meant to disquiet Walter. Of course both men have been riding the NYC subway without fare and without masks all during the pandemic, and so of course they’ve been exposed to the virus. But they’re not currently sick. If anything, the man coughed-out some coronavirus antibodies.

Walter wondered this: Why didn’t he smell anything? His sense of smell had long since been restored. And usually if a homeless man lays around with his shoes off in a subway car, it creates a stink. Is it the mask? Or is it owing to the relative cleanliness of this homeless man?

The yelling man also said that Walter was a spoiled baby. Is he right? How close is Walter to being homeless, to wandering the unforgiving NYC streets alone, hungry, shunned, smelly, tired, vulnerable to the elements and pandemics? Just a couple inches this way or that and any human switches places with any other human: is it like that?

Stephanie Zambrano was the only one there to witness his 9:30AM entrance. She was wearing sweatpant pedal-pushers, a thick light-green long-T-shirt, and white lowtops. The roots of her hair were coming up gray, though the mass of it—brushed up and back to fall on all sides like a harried mane—remained a very dark brown. “Waalll-ter!” she exclaimed. They chatted a minute. It was established that he’d been away almost five weeks. The receptionist came in with a blue surgical mask on. She walked into the kitchen, greeting him on the way. He followed her in and said, “about these masks”. She said, “I have to give you one.” A little while later he said, “Why is mine white and yours blue?” She replied, “Oh, this is one I grabbed from home; I have a white one too.” And then he had to ask where people got masks like that these days and she told him her father had gotten a box at the pharmacy before the whole thing really got going.

Why does Walter do this job? It’s too stressful for him.
There’s too much yelling.
And sometimes you yell with ferocious certainty only to find out that so and so never answered your calls because your colleague had been dialing the wrong number, which meant that so and so hadn’t been blowing you off so much as failing to pick up a phone not his own.

What else happened during this working day?

At the nearby vegan grocer, he was greeted by a young smiling man holding out a box of plastic gloves. He put on the gloves and nodded to the man. Now they were twins! Both with masks and clear plastic gloves. It was as if everyone was the same person, a person in a sterile nosebridge-to-chin face mask and clear plastic gloves. This one much-copied person leaned over the shelves as a tallish thin lithe-limbed young woman with darky curly tumbling hair, rearranging vitamins; and leaned patiently back as a broad beefy-limbed young man with heavy hand on the top box, holding the tilted-back two-wheel hand-truck in place while a short 40ish man with a white coffee-funnel-like face mask and clear plastic gloves meandered annoying long over the sprouted-wheat breads; and—as a young woman with big eyes and nervously-bowed eyebrows—hoisted a bag of groceries over the plastic dividing line, pushing them at the 40ish man who’d just purchased the frozen sprouted-wheat bread (yup: he ended up taking back the much-contemplated fresh sprouted-wheat loaf!), a $10 jar of organic no-spread peanut butter, two $5 avocado and hummus sandwiches on sprouted-wheat bread, and a $5 organic applesauce.

Why had that short male 40ish medium-build, with receding hairline and never-quite-perfect sprouted bread, incarnation of the masked- and gloved-one thought it appropriate to go on and on about how he’d not used his debit card for so long he’d forgotten the pin! ?? Why? Should people be proud of him for having been sick for so long? And proud to have him, fresh out of some sordid squalid quarantine, choose their establishment as the first place to use his rusty old debit card??

A man with a booming jovial voice calls Walter on his office line. No, he’d not seen his email. The girl at the office had told him Walter wanted him to call him. You know what? They’ll send somebody Monday morning. Nothing easier! Regular route guy! First thing Monday. If that’ll put Walter’s mind at ease! Anything to help! Glad to help! You have yourself a great weekend! Walter hangs up the phone, feeling frail and neurotic and recognized as such. In truth, he’s getting very tired. A full day for his first day back was maybe a bit much.

Walter worked from 9:30AM to 5PM.
He wore a mask except for the five minutes it took to eat an avocado, hummus, tomato, and lettuce sandwich on sprouted-wheat bread. And for the occasional slurp of iced tea (decaf green and black). And for those few minutes he spent eating spoonfuls of peanut butter. And when he first walked in and only had the embarrassing button-up dressshirt mask, which he shoved into his bag moments after the heavy wooden office door had latched behind him. Of course, at that time, the place was almost completely empty.

The office was cold, with the wet humid 40ish cloudbank outside air somehow infiltrating. He wore a sweater and at times his scarf. In total four out of thirty people made it to the office that day. But many computer screens moved as if they were alive. They were inhabited remotely by the accounting department from their homes in Long Island, Queens, and New Jersey. The most boring ghosts conceivable, meticulously haunting spreadsheets.

Walter S. caught a train from Borough Hall around 5:15PM. There were maybe a half dozen other commuters in his train. Everyone wearing face masks—blue surgical or white dust or medical, for the most part. Everyone except for the guy who got in at Nevins street with his white corrugated face mask down and a pizza box in his hands. He plopped gratefully onto a bench and set the medium-sized pizza box on his thighs. (Everybody had at least half a bench to themselves for this ride.) A very light-skinned young black man, a little below medium height, a little muscled past medium build, with a beard sketched around the perimeter of his square-oval face, and a straight mustache likewise drawn (you know: a precisely trimmed ⅛” thick beard: just enough to have the clear outline of facial hair, but not at all poofy). He wore a light jacket open, slacks, and working boots with thick gray round-edged soles. Once situated, he opened the pizza box. Looked like BBQ chicken (chunks of white chicken with BBQ sauce slathered all over the top). He folded a slice lengthwise, bent over the open box, and shoveled a third of the piece in his mouth.

Walter was by this time beginning to realize that he had used up every bit of the “feeling great!” that he’d 10AM bragged to the receptionist. He envied the man’s energy. He wondered vaguely about the impact of subway snacking on the coronavirus spread. Could it possibly be having a statistically significant effect?

Walter Samsa went to be before 6PM.
He got up after 8AM.
His first day back had been very busy and quite tiring.
He felt like a little boy in a story book who has a busy day and then goes to bed.
Privileged little boys in story books who are allowed to rest after a hard day’s efforts.
He doesn’t like the title “privileged”. It sometimes seems to get thrown around in a mean and dismissive way. As if everything good that happened to whoever gets the label was stolen and everything bad the result of the labeled-one’s patheticness. But it is nice to be able to go home at 5PM when you’re all tuckered out and your lungs are back to feeling squishy. It’s nice to have a quiet bed to go to and not everyone does.

Why did it take him exactly five full weeks to return to the office?
He’d lie and bed and hear the Prokurist say,
“Hoffentlich ist es nichts Ernstes. Wenn ich auch andererseits sagen muß, daß wir Geschäftsleute — wie man will, leider oder glücklicherweise — ein leichtes Unwohlsein sehr oft aus geschäftlichen Rücksichten einfach überwinden müssen.”
[Hopefully it’s nothing serious. Though I must on the other hand remark that we business people — unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately — are quite often compelled, out of professional considerations, to simply overcome a little sense of unwellness].
Walter Samsa worked dutifully from home the whole time!
He would’ve probably gotten better quicker if he’d really spent all day lying on his sofa — as slanderously charged by some not-to-be-named field worker!

What about racial descriptions in New York City?
“What’s he look like? Is he black, white, Spanish, what?” says the 30 year old pale white kid with the Staten Island accent and the green-lined tattoos. He’s pacing around on his cell phone, a marked chub running through his ranginess.
“That dude hits on every woman! You know? That’s what I’ve noticed! Light-skinned girls, dark-skinned girls, white girls — he don’t discriminate!” says the 30 year old light-skinned black kid with the Bronx accent and the multi-colored tattoos. Leaning over veiny forearms on the low countertop, looking unstoppable in tight polo shirt around carefully-crafted musculature.
Walter S. circumlocutes around racial descriptions whenever possible. He counts as “white”, isn’t from New York,is too old to be 30, and is afraid of offending people.

Author: Franz Kazoo
Editors: JOS, BW, AW
Copyright: AMW

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NYC Journal #9 – First Nice Day – observed and notes jotted on Sunday 4/19/2020, although not completed/posted until Wednesday, 4/22/2020

Is the following a true-account?
There’s no need to take it as such.
But you could confidently call it a rough sketch of the general scene as wandered through by one observer who’s trying to get better at noticing and remembering but is so far not the very most reliable observer.

On Sunday, April 19, 2020, the weather in New York City was sunny and warm enough that many wore sweaters and light jackets and a few wore T-shirts and shorts.

Along Eastern Parkway by the Museum the wide white sidewalks beamed in the sunshine. A thin woman a little above average height with tumbling gray locks and a long wizened face with stark folds and somber eyes behind a strong nose walked slowly, distractedly, pulling a small yellow box (a canvas-walled cart on wheels, maybe), her long brown smooth-leather (almost plasticky) jacket open. No mask. Not everyone had on a mask. But most did. She did not.

Upon entering the Prospect Park entrance across the round-about from the Civil War Monument, visitors were greeted by a large orange-framed black roadwork sign with “Beat COVID-19: Practice Social Distancing” (or something like that) scrolling across in yellow lightbulb-pixelation. Directly in front of the giant sign, at the bottom corner of that little spigot of land that borders the roadway around the park and splits the road entering/leaving the park, was a piece of orange plastic about six feet long and a couple feet wide that read “<---- Stay this far apart —->”

The park on this day was so very full! Everyone exercising, walking, talking. Most of the locomoting people behind masks, except for the serious exercisers — maybe half of that subgroup had covered noses/mouths. At this entrance near the Civil War monument and the main Brooklyn library, park-goers walk up the road a little ways and then carefully cross the wide circumambulating bike/walk/run road (so as to avoid death by cyclists, who sometimes seem more interested in maintaining their heartrates than in the safety of all these annoying pedestrians); head down maybe ten wide stairs cut in dirt and shored up by logs, with trees and other brush on all sides, and then they see it: a great bowl of treeless green, bordered on either side by a raised path and trees.

On this fine spring day in that bowl—which is maybe 100 yards wide and 400 yards until it rolls up onto a stretch of higher, tree-ier ground—bloomed hundreds of little encampments. Small groups of people on blankets and sheets. Individual people on towels or blankets or lying on their backs, their heads propped up on backpacks or whatever else was handy. People in shorts and T-shirts doing lunge-squats or other exertions. Some with masks up, some with masks hanging about their chins. Some with their masks presumably in pockets, backpacks, purses, handbags.

A young woman in black track pants (the kind with the double white lines running down the sides) and a tight-fitting black top that left her midriff bare (pale; sturdy, but with curves and a soft stomach) fell forward onto her belly, her back bowed backwards, and was so elastic that she could somehow slide her head to one side and roll over her shoulder while her bare feet wound around and over her head, caught the ground, and pulled her contortioning body up and back around into a thoughtful sitting pose. She’d take a break for a minute or so and then fall forward again. Another young woman lay nearby, her head turned towards her friend, admiring and chatting, as the occasion permitted. Or maybe they didn’t know each other, and the one just happened to glance over and say something as this observing entity passed by. What can you recall of the perhaps-friend? A long brown braid? A long body and face? Olive skinned? Lying next to a bike? Oh, now you’re just guessing! At any rate, neither wore a mask right then and there.

Near the front center of the bowl sat two colonies about four feet apart, talking to one another across the safe-ish distance. A man [40s? Tall. A little belly settling around his square youth. Big head, big brow and fleshy forward chin. Full head of hair (light brown?) worn long and pulled back. A ruggedness and/or lumpiness nestling into his square youth. In the 1920s silent films he played a Viking in the winter and spring and a cowboy in the summer and fall, when his tan set in] and a young woman (short, slight, petite, long straight black hair, Asian). His mask, perhaps a bandana blue and white from the Wild West, was pulled down below his chin, so he could speak across the space to the three huddled on their private blanket. The woman was busy. Standing up. Folding up a towel. Her face shrouded always behind a giant multi-colored bandana hanging down to her chest. It couldn’t have been a bandana; they’re not that big; perhaps shawl? Dark running tights? A sweatshirt?

No, don’t you shouldn’t in the middle of an article switch tenses!
Oh, no, stop!
Too late:

Everyone is happy in the grass and in the sun.

A farmer and his wife walk down the steep incline on one side of the bowl. He swings a classic picnic basket woven of thin strips of light brown wood. The blue and white plaid fabric lining the basket and rounding its rim was also used to make his nose/mouth/chin mask. Her pink, with yellow and white lines (plaid, I guess) one-piece straight-cut textured-cotton farmer’s wife dress does not exactly match her face mask.

He swings the basket gayly. I wish I could remember the kind of blues he wore. Blue plaid short sleeve? Knee-length dark-denim shorts? Navy blue khaki slacks? They are both 30ish, tall, sturdy, with a little excess flesh rounding out their full shoulders and thighs. It’s like the coach said: those farmer boys from North East don’t have the prettiest muscles, but they are big useful muscles, and they make for good football players, and — at least at the upper weights — good wrestlers. Their faces were soft, large, pale from the winter, and topped with some kind of hair.

[Did a coach ever say that? Anyway, North East had kids of all shapes and sizes, like all the other little towns that we, ourselves a little town, competed against.]

Are these two happy larks really farmers? Seems really unlikely. Could be that one works in software and the other in design. Hard to say from merrily swinging picnic basket while greedily gobbling sunlight: could be anybody from any kind of business out in the Sunday sun. Were they at least raised on farms? Probably not. Most people weren’t anymore.

Outside the park, walking home, still sunny:

A tall pale Orthodox guy with a large belly in his white button-up shirt and stretching the top of his black slacks leans back a little as he walks, long arms swaying, swinging cupped hands fore and aft. He wears large thick-framed glasses and a blue surgical mask. His great gray and white beard explodes all around the mask so that it bunches and lumps up a little.It sits on the front of his face like the little floppy blue snout. A light skinned black guy with a powerful square-cut beard has a similar problem. Is it a problem? Sure: there’s more space for air to go in and out of when you wear your mask as a little lumpy dome on the front of your beard. Better than nothing, though, I guess.

[You invented the man with the square beard. Did I? Well, here’s another invention: a mask for giant beards: a flat mask; like a 4×4 cloth with strings; the standard cupping shape is counterproductive when the chin’s been replaced by a bristly platform.]

Those several kids leaning over scooter handles are skinny. Their bangs are too long and they should be wearing helmets. At least they’re wearing cloth face masks as they roll-mill around the Brooklyn Museum’s Eastern Parkway entrance. That’s more than can be said for the two shirtless skater kids (young teens; so older than the scooterers) in baggy bright-colored shorts and brown and white skins hitting and missing tricks on the wide concrete patio of the main branch of the Brooklyn Library [on the corner of Eastern Parkway and Flatbush; the patio being a short flight of steps above the sidewalk and a short flight below the spinning-door library entrance].

Why is this old woman in the long brown smooth-leather coat still near the museum / botanic garden entrances? She looks away from the observer’s gaze, pointedly pivoting her head, neck and upper torso away so as to almost face the street.

The people you saw were more likely to be white than is normal for that walk. Is that true? Nothing approximating a formal study was performed. Quite a few Orthodox families; that’s normal for that walk I guess. How old were the people in the thousand chatting encampments in the Prospect park bowl? Mostly late-20s through 40s, maybe? With some young families mixed in. That’d be my guess. I noticed many exceptions in age and/or race, but the general impression I had of the bowl was a thousand encampments of one, two, three, maybe four 30 year old white people on blankets in the sun. A pitched military camp that had forgotten their tents or were perhaps laying groggily, drunk on peace and quiet, on top of them. But now I think I should’ve looked more closely. Certainly a thousand encampments were not observed, let alone remembered. In any case, the park was different than normal: An unbroken sea of isolated outposts and a lack of sports changed the mood from an active park to a desperate field of sunworship and hellohellohelloing.

I can think of at least one example of four young people resting on backs or sides, propped up on elbows or forearms, forming a loose square, hanging out in a socially distanced society. I don’t think they had on masks. Many congregants kept their many colored mostly light cloth lowerface masks on; many didn’t. The ones that didn’t often wore the masks around their necks.

It’s good to get outside finally and see somebodies. Tiring though. Mighty tiring. An hour and a half of fresh air and interfacing with other pedestrians (every interaction with another person, however distant, is at least a tiny little confrontation, a stressor—however minute)!

Makes a body more than ready to slide back into isolation, sink into bed, forget the world outside and how we are all here together and beholden to one another and actually all the same exact Light though wearing slightly different flesh and notions; but how we still somehow slide past each other and don’t really get each other and sometimes even get all mad at each other, or high and mighty or bitter resentful or lustfully focused or all this other stuff that isn’t quite at all the Truth and yet which we cling to and serve as if it were the Truth.

Yes, just go back to bed. You’re tired, and everyone is just a person until they die and learn the Whole Truth and sit with the Great God on a red and white checkered picnic blanket in the park one fine sunny day, eating cucumber sandwiches while jointly critiquing their (the dead-human’s) performance, considering where to improve and how. Only in heaven do picnic blankets spread out so perfectly, never and nowhere bunching up nor flutter-flapping over.

Author: Proud Mary Pledge with Johnny onde Spoett
Editor: B. Willard with A. Whistletown
Copyright: AM Watson with Andy W.

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[Editor’s Note: This essay is included in First Essays and A Readable Reader, available for sale on the Buy Our Books! tab of this blog.]

We human-things are not going to agree on everything.
We’ll argue philosophy, worldview, religion, politics, style.

But we are all still human-things and can thus all agree that to the degree a worldview fails to help an adherent develop more and more aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, respectful, kind, joyful, loving thought and action; that worldview is useless to that adherent.

Because those are the ways we must think and act in order to understand, believe-in, care-about, and participate-in our own thoughts and actions. To the degree we are not aware … loving, our thoughts and actions clang meaninglessly about: we cannot travel with our own thinking and acting, and so rather than being steered by the clear light of conscious awareness, our bodies/minds are steered by the chaos of competing animal-flinches (“give me!” “get away!” “I know!” “I don’t know!” etc). This is the way downward.

Bone-trembling example: Suppose there’s a !True Religion! Suppose further that you know and believe all its dogmas, but not with awareness … love. What do you then possess? Muddled thoughts desperately trying to interpret ideas that they do not understand — or even really believe in or care about.

Flesh-shaking other example: Suppose there is a sense in which things like “Real” and “Not Real” don’t even exist. Suppose further you believe this dogma, but not with awareness … love. What do you then possess? Muddled thoughts desperately trying to interpret ideas that they do not understand — or even really believe in or care about.
And so while we will continue to debate worldviews, we should agree to never pretend that our worldviews justify or even tolerate any departure from awareness, clarity, … loving kindness. When one does that, one betrays that aspect of anyone’s worldview that is actually meaningful and useful to anyone; and so one sacrifices everything worthy for a moment’s bloated fantasy about “us” versus “them”.

Let us therefore work diligently together to fight for more awareness, clarity, accuracy, competence, kindness, shared joy and real togetherness.

Why do we fight to establish and maintain just principles, norms, procedures, and laws within ourselves, our families, our communities, our groups secular and parochial, our governments, our friendships? Not to be “right” while others are “wrong”, but to all join together around our shared starting point — the one whose betrayal amounts to betraying all our worthiest (ie: most meaningful/useful to whole-human-beings [creatures consisting of ideas, feelings, and thatolsoullight all working together]) principles.

We don’t agree on everything, but we still have the ability and duty to work together on what we do agree on: awareness, clarity, accuracy, competence, kindness, shared joy, on how we are all in this together and beholden to one another.
Let’s permanently retire the crooked daydream that we disagree so fundamentally as to preclude any common ground, any shared identity and reality. That tired trope’s already responsible for too many fetid, diseased wounds deep-tunneling through century upon lonesome century. Let’s try more interesting, more enlightening, more productive, more beautiful angles.
Everything in its place: We don’t need to agree on worldviews to agree that none of our worldviews means anything to any of us without clarity, honesty, accuracy, competence, kindness and shared joy. And we don’t need to agree on worldviews to demand these goods of our organizations and governments.

Let’s not get side-tracked by details! Let’s keep our collective eye on the prerequisites for any meaningful worldview and any workable community, system, organization, or government!

Signed,
Pudd N. Tane,
President of the “We can do it!” Society of North America,
A chapter in good standing of the the “We can do it!” International Body of Optimistic Realists.
“We’re optimistic, because we believe humans are capable of doing good!”

[Editor’s Note: This essay is included in First Essays and A Readable Reader, available for sale on the Buy Our Books! tab of this blog.]

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NYC Journal – Saturday 4.18.2020 – Life on the Outside

Did you mislead the doctor? Oversell our improvement? You feel fine, but why this nagging chest congestion? Not unpleasant, just a gentle trickle of mucus up your throat all day.

She said that starting when your sense of smell returns, you turn away from being contagious. And it’s been way more than seven days since that happened.

Seven days without symptoms, was what she said was needed, and then she honed in on the sense of smell, saying that that at that point even if you were still sloughing off the virus for a little while, it is probably coated in the antibodies you’re creating. Then she said of course there was not enough certainty to say anything with certainty and the very best thing would be if you could get a nose swab. But you feel better and better and your friend had to wait to get the test and then two weeks to get the results, and in weeks and weeks from now, you’ll either be all better or tragically dead. (“We thought he was getting better! He was getting better! Well, it’s tricky when you’re in charge of your own diagnosis and treatment. A certain percentage will screw it up.”)

It was the agreed upon time and you felt well and so you did it. It took a month, but you gathered up your cloth shopping bag, your vest and your scarf, and walked beneath a giant dome of gray curling clouds that covered the afternoon in an eerie blue-tinged light, making the orange bricks of the schoolhouse pop dramatically out — redder, brighter, more determined.

The grocery store is close by. Everyone has a mask on, except you only have a scarf. You don’t have a mask because you’ve been inside your apartment for a month. You don’t need a mask, because you’re already cured of the concern. Or so you suppose. Some of the masks look like perhaps black cloth and nothing more, but you don’t get nosy, and perhaps these ninja cowls are something more than cloth, perhaps much more.

The barrel chested stocker in his blue thick-cotton button-up uniform shirt is there like always, except now the bottom half of his face is covered by a mask. Blue surgicalish? Now you forget. And were the plastic gloves he wore clear, blue, or black? At least he’s still shorter than you. Why is everyone so tall and thin and looming now? What has happened? Did you get smaller in your captivity?

The tall thin (not slight, but not quite rangy) pale young man, all dressed in black even to his mask, sees you standing off patiently four feet (should be six!), eying the potatoes, and so he backs away, allowing you to enter the space. This kind of turn taking, space giving and taking, aisle opening all happens automatically. Social animals, easily adapting to this new way of coordinating space with glances and by reading the momentum of bodies.

Who was that short white guy with brown receding hair slicked back but poofing a little 1950sy up? He was dressed in a very dudish, bright, blue/purple/yellow/mauve pearl snap-button westernwear plaid shirt. With a black scarf. Everyone else had a mask. Why didn’t he? Where’s he been the last month?

In the store today, he danced side to side with snappy movements like a breakdancer. To Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River”

Who was the short teakettle-shaped black lady who’s singing, through her white hospital mask, to Spandau Ballet’s “True” caused the dude to nick in recognition and agreement as he sailed past her? “This is the sound of my soul, this is the sound … ”

You can’t wear glasses with a big scarf over your nose. It fogs your glasses. You have to put them in your vest pocket and zip it up.

The girfriend with straight lines pulled down her mask to say something at her curvier girlfriend, who walked a pace ahead as they neared the aisle, and who lifted and bent her head to hear what the other forward-spoke. Is that allowed?

The young boy with his cherub cheeks fading (6 years old? 7? 8?) let his blue surgical mask hang down around his chin while he looked up at his fit-40s mother-type. Is that allowed?? They were off to one side, along an otherwise unoccupied wall far from the shopping and the motion. But still: is that allowed??

[Editor’s Note: Originally, these individuals were sketched a little more precisely. We removed even that touch of precision for the sake of anonymity. The author thinks he’s being funny in this “Is that allowed??” segment, and that a little slippage from mask-protocol is to be expected and, at least in minor cases like these, overlooked. But maybe people would be embarrassed to see themselves immortalized with their mask down in this setting. And we don’t want to give any impression of a state-run paper, where even the gossip column is really there for the sake of outing, disgracing and ultimately destroying all dissent.]

Not everyone was tall and thin and swaying in the breeze high above you, but many were. Not everyone was dressed all in black, but so many were!

This cashier is a sturdy young woman with several lines of tight braids running down her head. She’s protected by a plastic shield in front of the conveyor belt, and by a white clinic mask and black plastic gloves.

She says, “I’ll bag it for you!” The dude is not used to this kind of treatment, and starts bagging the smaller bag himself. On the way home perhaps it will dawn on him that she probably wanted him to not reach into her space to grab the tumbling produce.

At some point early in their relationship, he says to her, “I guess I’ll just have to buy a bag!” She says to him, “We’ll figure it out!” And, a little while later, after one of the most masterfully efficient packing jobs he’s like to ever witness, she presents him with a very heavy very solid canvas bag, and exclaims (smiling, no doubt, behind that mask) “See! No need for a bag!”

Did you get everything you wanted?
Forgot the salt. Five years on one salt container and it picks the pandemic to peter out! And then you forget to buy it at the grocery store! You’re not going back there tomorrow. Not for salt. Add salty condiments to whatever you need salt on.

No toilet paper still. No plasticware either. Or dishwashing soap. Low on cleaning supplies in general.

They had broccoli, but it looked a little dry and pale; you bought it anyway, since you were craving broccoli; it was pretty tasteless, but better than absolutely no broccoli. You got a definite sense of broccoli.

Only one natural peanut butter; and only a few jars of that! Take it! Take it! And settle for this strange muscat grape jelly. Could be good! Good to try new things. You’re one of many who now sit at home, replaying their day, regretting not taking the shelf up on the fig jams. No one ever thinks to buy fig jam, not even in a pandemic and it’s one of the few options available. But fig jam is a neat idea. Next time.

Fancy bread available still, though not the exact fancy bread you’d hoped for.

Menu: Steak marinated in Bragg(™) amino acid (tastes like soy sauce; you’d forgotten you had it, but the fridge is now showing its once hidden back-area) and fried in organic expeller-pressed canola oil; cooked carrots, potatoes, beets, and broccoli; and a small side salad.

A big steak.
You thought you might just eat half.
You ate every bit, including all lumps of gristle.
If you’d had the teeth for it, you would’ve probably crunched the bone.

But what have you learned from all this?

Author: Distant Dan
Editor: Jonathon Vonder Spoett
Producers: B. Willard / A. Whistletown
Copyright: AM Watson

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NYC Journal #7 – Thursday 4/16/2020 – A larger day alone

Using up food in the pantry and fridge is satisfying.

Why did I have five partially-consumed nut butter jars? Three peanut butters and two almond butters? I don’t know why. But as of this morning I have none.

Why did I leave two pieces of organic spelt sourdough bread to ossify in my fridge for several months? I don’t know why. But this morning I enjoyed peanut butter and in some spots almond butter and grape jelly on two very thick very hard organic spelt sourdough bread crackers. (Yes! You guessed it! I went through both the fancy jellies and all the Finn crisps!)

Seamless texted me questions about my satisfaction. The final was one about did the delivery person respect my wishes for a contact-free delivery. I said “Yes” because there was no option for “And how! He’d thumped down several flights of steps by the time I turned the latch, stretched up my shoulders a moment to let the Light in at the blades a bit, and pushed open my door.”

The previous two days I’d lunched on whole wheat noodles, frozen peas boiled with a bit of salt, and olive oil. Oh, and yesterday I added some canned salmon with mayo and mustard. Today I bought enough Mexican food (whole wheat steak burrito, large guacamole with chips, large chop salad) for two days. It’ll definitely last two days because I made my own side: refried beans with whole wheat noodles. They’re not just whole wheat. They are an ancient and abiding grain, which has proven its synergy with the human form. (I don’t eat dinner, especially not while under house arrest.)

I was so hungry when I finally got to ordering lunch around 2:00pm! And then they have to prepare it and bring it, texting fiendishly all the way. And then when I was trying to eat lunch, somebody had a clogged tub, and strange goings-on were in motion due to another person’s worried radiator, and something else that seemed noteworthy at the time and which I’ve now forgotten also got going. So I was really really hungry when I finally ate around 3:30pm. As a result, I scarfed my food. I did not adequately commune with one of the best meals of my life — a fresh hearty feast that leapt up to meet the demands of my returning appetite. This I regret.

Hunger enhances a meal, up to a point. Of course, I who’ve lived so mollycoddled for so many years cannot speak of real hunger. I should’ve just sat down, taken a deep breath, gave a little prayer of great thanks, considered the moment, savored the occasion, and ate slowly. Oh well. I can savor the tastes in retrospect. And there was some real-time savoring.

I can’t say enough about today’s teledoctor. It was like she cared! It was the best. I told her how I’d been taking the isolation order really seriously and have only been outside twice in four weeks. She said you must be going crazy. I said YES!, I AM!

We had a lot of other nice exchanges. And she said that while we lack adequate scientific evidence to be too certain — since, after all, two months were wasted after the initial warning (who said that? Was it me or her? Or do I just add it now? You’ll never know! Dr/Patient confidentiality! ) — , it seems like, seeing as my sense of smell’s been returned to me for a while and I in general seem to be reinvigorating, that I should be OK for work next week.

Do you know about the tests? I do. She told me. The one they swab your nose’s interior and tell you that you do or don’t currently have the latest model of coronavirus. This test has a 25% false negative, but it’s better than nothing, and it would be great if I could get one before work begins again — just to be really sure, and in this way extend to my colleagues the consideration that I would like from them, were our roles reversed. And in like manner did she weave many a profound spiritual teaching into her medical learnings. The other test tells me if I have the antibodies: here’s a great idea: call this local hospital that’s looking for people to donate blood with the covid-19 antibodies, and offer up some plasma: you get a test, people less lucky than you get the help they need, everything goes better for everybody.

But first things first: I need to find someone qualified to swirl a cue tip around the inside edge of one of my nostrils. Luckily a nearby walk-in clinic had texted me about the tests earlier this week. I clicked on the link. However, it seemed that since I’d already been to that clinic, I needed to sign in to the website with an already existing account, and if — as in my case — one doesn’t have a login and password, one must call the clinic to get it. And then when I called the clinic, I was on hold for twenty minutes and then transferred to an answering machine without realizing it and then heard, “you’ve exceeded the maximum time. Your message will be deleted.” On the one hand, I’d left no message, so it doesn’t seem to matter that it was deleted; on the other hand, it is always painful to be deleted, erased, forgotten, zeroed away as if you’d never been the legion that you had, in certain moments of fluid competency engaging and utilizing you’re whole moment, known yourself to be.

Beyond the above I don’t know what to say. I think the breath exercises where you take in a small sip of air and hold your breath while expanding your abdomen from your gut up — I think doing that for like an hour stretched out over many hours last night and then again as much as work permitted this morning was very salutary. I think it helped reduce the congestion and papery / fragile lungs. Eating so much so quickly was unsalutary: it seems to have brought back a trace of the paper lung feel.

Today’s Spotify lists were Classical Jazz and Jazz Classic. I don’t know why. I wanted something with bounce, but also with some depth, even if I have a very weak understanding of music and cannot plumb its depths, but can only vaguely sense that some interesting ideas and beautiful sentiments are going on way down there, albeit far deeper and wider than my perception reaches.

Wait! Hold on! Today I was also reminded that the people still working out in the world during this shutdown are not being adequately compensated for the risks they’re running. The least we can do is cover our faces, give them wide berth, look out for them when we can, and also, in a weak but hopefully not completely negligible attempt to push against the injustices within the economy, tip generously. So there’s that. Also we could maybe give some thought on how to look out for everyone. I’m so wrapped up in myself, I can only half fathom wise counsel; but I pass it on, hoping more spiritually mature souls will understand and advance it.

Author: Mr. Toad
Oversight: JOS, BW, AW
Copyright: AMW

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NYC Journal #6 – Papery Lungs – Tuesday 4/14/2020

I remember the good old days, when I would walk in the four seasons down a long street and up another until I reached my office at a bit before or after 9AM, depending. I’d walk along and talk aloud to myself about how I really needed to reverse time and reinhabit the 20 year old me as he landed in the Madrid airport:

“I really need to go back to Heidelberg. I can start from Madrid. With a couple slight improvements. I need to go back to be 20 and 21, when my health was unassailable and my time flowed like wine. I’ll still sit around in bars and cafes, smoking and zoning out on the people moving around me, sharing my visual space and also the music that nods my own head, that catches my own soft underbelly, sharing it with other creatures similar enough to me that they must’ve been similarly caught.

“I’ll still do all that, zone out with cigarettes and a tea in the cafe and a drink in the bar. But less. I’ll do a lot more reading, writing, studying, practicing my German. I won’t say nearly as many stupid things. I’ll make wiser decisions about women and have more success.

“I really need to get back there. These last two decades need to be redone. But first that year in Heidelberg I must loop over and over again until I’ve had enough of zoning out with cigarettes in cafes and bars, surrounded by the hubbub, living forever in a harmless dissipation. You, see, when you’re 20, you can get away with it. You can smoke a half a pack of — in this time and place reasonably priced — cigarettes and drink a couple beers — so inexpensive! — without ill effect. Now even if I drink a few too many a little too late, the next day is shot. Now I cannot both dissipate and succeed at anything. Yes, I need to go back there/then and to have a few cigarettes most days, and ten once in a while. Is that what I did that year? Not ten, not that year. Well maybe once or twice.

I don’t remember ever waking up with papery lungs that year. That came in subsequent years. And not that often. It took a lot of cigarettes in a very smoky bar for that to happen. But even when it did happen, the papery feeling was over by the time I sat down to breakfast.

Now I’ve had papery lungs for over three weeks. And this without a cigarette in years. And without any kind of regular habit in forever.

I used to kind of like the feeling of waking up with papery lungs. It was not good. I felt that it was something of an error. But it was also kind of peaceful, and perhaps it reminded me of waking up foggy lunged during that gradeschool year when I had bronchitis over and over again. Perhaps waking up with papery lungs carries me back down the steps on that Christmas when I was too sick to comprehend my gifts, but was still surrounded by a pleasant homey comradery around our magical shared ritual. The tree. The presents. The anticipation of some several children, happy in their new pajamas, received the night before, as part of the rite, as part of the safe path leading to eternal safety and fun. And that year it was like falling asleep into that happy dream, which lent it an eternal sense.

Would I have shaken this off a week ago if there’d been no smoking? If I’d had no stretching youthful mornings with papery lungs to all appearances quickly healed, forgiving and forgetting their owner’s irresponsible caprices?

The nicest part of this forced isolation has been the lack of alcohol. The second nicest part has been the lack of dairy products. And also in there somewhere is the salutary effect of possessing almost no white flour. Oh, and a less varied diet. I was carried away with vegetables; as my brother said, “more influenced by ideas about health than about how you feel”. Too much variety and roughage confuses the gut. Also nice is never going anywhere, especially these last couple nights, when I’ve felt pretty good and so can enjoy full evenings. There’s nothing so nice as having a clear head and using it on meaningful tasks.

At this age, I feel pretty good if I behave myself, but I can’t get away with anything. Just thinking about cigarettes makes me feel nauseous, and a panic sets in. And now, after three weeks apart from alcohol, I begin to feel a similar reaction to that old favorite. It’s not that a glass of wine with dinner is folly; it’s that if I stray into three or four or more drinks at one sitting even once a week, that week is not the week it should’ve been. And that happened too often. I wasn’t getting enough done. I wasn’t using my body/mind effectively enough. How can I continue to give alcohol a rest while I try to find my feet?

But paper lungs. Paper lungs. I wish they’d stop being like this. It makes me uneasy. And am I even allowed to stay home another week? Don’t I have to be all better for sure and real by next Monday? I feel much better. I guess I’ll be all better. But why are my lungs still brittle like I’m breathing dangerously cold air?

Mucus slips up. Just a bit. All day. You swallow it. It’s kind of fun. It’s a little comforting, a little snuggly. Why? Are you back on the sofa with chicken noodle soup, Get Smart, and mom’s concern?

Being sick is only bad when you’re not going to presently get all better, or when you’re not allowed to be sick. I’ve been getting better and I’ve been allowed to work from home. I’ve had it easy.

Author: Kannich Michnicht Daranrineren
Oversight: JOS, AW, BW
Copyright: AMW

There was never 20 cigarettes at once!
Maybe ten once in a great while. Right?
Usually no more than four or five in a day. Right?
Oh, who remembers?

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NYC Journal Monday 4/13/2020 – Lemonade when possible

Did you ever read about Dr Buteyko? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buteyko_method
About the only good thing Wikipedia could think to say about his method is, “A 2014 British clinical guideline said that for adults the Buteyko method could improve some asthma symptoms and quality of life, but that it had little impact on lung function” OK, well, that’s pretty good. Maybe it also can help with sleep apnea? Didn’t find anything definitive about that, but I didn’t look very hard. It’s hard to study methods based on forcing yourself to feel like you’re drowning. Where’s the cohort who follow the regime? When I was particularly interested in this topic, it seemed to me that, though I searched the wide web over, I’d really only found one truly worthy pupil of Buteyko: this Scottish Buddhist, who’s testimony can be read here: monk:http://www.buteykomeditation.com/a-buddhist-monks-experience-with-buteyko/

The method mostly consists of practicing taking in less oxygen. Like you can alternate holding one nostril closed for five minutes and then the other. Or like you hold your nostrils closed and nod up and down. The sense of it I have is that unlike normal deep breathing, you don’t ever take a big breath, but are always trying to hold your gut in and not let too much air in. No: I don’t think you’re supposed to breathe from your chest. I think it’s more like you let the air fall all the way down to your gut and you push chest and gut out to receive the air, but minimally, as if your gut could only move a miniscule amount beyond “sucked in”. Or is it OK to do my variation, where you push the gut and chest out far while holding your breath, having brought no extra air in?

When a few days ago I had asthmatic symptoms with this suspected COVID-19 case, I played around with the following riff on the Buteyko method: I wouldn’t draw air in, but I would plug my nose and then open up my thorax as wide as possible, like I was bringing lots of air in and needed more space for it, but without bringing the extra air in. And then holding my breath and that constantly-expanding pose a bit past comfortable. I worked on this off and on for a couple hours.. The asthma stopped. Why?

The next day I was very congested and did the same, except I also mixed in taking long slow big breaths and holding them for a little past comfortable. And then, as in the night before, I’d push the air out by pulling my gut in in in, trying to get as close to 2-D as possible, and holding that a moment before letting gut up a little, and breathing more normally. Also seemed to help.

While opening your chest and gut and shoulders and everything as wide as possible; you can also practice letting the Light in.

Today my lungs still feel a little papery. And this morning and the last couple yesterdays I was coughing more than I had. I guess I’ll experiment with breath control and thorax/carapace expansion for a while and see if I can push back on the crumbly lungs. I haven’t been coughing for several hours.

Why would one be mostly getting better but yet cough more than ever before? Is it like a symptom-halfpipe? One must go through the milder symptoms (this cough, though active, has seemed relatively dry and nonviolent) as one rises out of the disease? I am rising out of the disease, right?

I’m going on my fourth week home with suspected symptoms. If I didn’t have to stress out in my living room / office all M-F 9AM-5PM, I think I would already be all better. But who knows? And there’s something very unstressing about being gainfully employed.

If your work asks for a doctor’s letter, what would you like the doctor to write?

What about something like the following?

BEGIN SUGGESTED LETTER:

This man lives not in this world; he works in and from and through and for the Best of All Possible Worlds.

Granted: by working so hard for you from his isolation, he’s set back his recovery by a week or two. However: do you want the whole enterprise collapsing, as surely it must if this Titan of Productivity were to take his full rest? And: If you simply give him time, if you back off, give him his space, and let him work through this difficult situation as he sees fit, he will not only effect a full recovery, he’ll do so with the best possible balance between physical and economic health, between private and public needs, between Yes & No.

Please indulge a few personal remarks:

Both as a physician and a human being, I mourn the scarcity of citizens of his caliber. It’s not simply that with more such cautiously courageous souls we would shorten both this pandemic and its economic slump. That, of course, is self-evidently true. But the tragedy is deeper and wider than this moment. The tragedy is that human beings fail to govern themselves well because individuals and systems do not adequately fight against the corruptions inherent in all earthly organisms/organizations, and that the few who do do what’s right are all too often swallowed up and crushed by this general, all-pervading, all-shaming spiritual/emotional/intellectual indifference.

What thanks has this selfless jedermann received for his steadfast commitment to the one true prize; to a life centered around a whole-being active unfolding of a simple question: “how can I think/feel/act in a way that is best for everyone??” ??

I’ll tell you that thanks he’s received:

It is to be treated like a common thief: stripped down, paraded naked and shivering up to an overlooming concave shining-steel podium, while down from on high shouts/spits a leering judge in a garish outfit of mink overcoat (heads & feets intact); frilly peacock, ostrich, and rattlesnake shirt; and a brass helmet decorated in rhino horns, dolphin eyes, and pangolin spleens:

“Where’s the proof? Where’s the proof that you didn’t steal the cabbage leaf? It’s true that we find no cabbage leaf on your person and we’ve found no traces of cabbage leaf in your digestive system — which perhaps we’ll return to you after this inquest, we’ll see how it goes —; but that’s hardly proof! Where’s the proof!? Speak! And don’t you lie to me, boy!”

Sincerely,

Dr. Delilah Samson Xerxes, MD (or: Medical Doctor) (among other accomplishments; for example I am a critically acclaimed classical and big band trombonist, a black belt in Judo, Jujitsu, and Six Sigma; and an avid cyclist, cook, and blogger — see From-Bartleby.com for a full resume and writing samples)

END SUGGESTED LETTER

Today I had a conversation with someone whose friend’s husband had just died of the disease.
Her friend had for weeks been asking for prayers on Facebook. He’d been on a respirator during that time.
He was in his late forties. He leaves behind a wife and young children.

Author: Various
Editorial Oversight: JOS, AW, BW
Copyright: AMW

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NYC Journal #4 – Speculations – Tuesday 4/7/2020

I’m feeling pretty good.
I’m feeling well enough to speculate.

First: Why is it so easy to have food delivered and so hard to have groceries delivered?

I know it is easy to have food delivered because I put in an order for a Mexican feast at Noon and a short young man in a purple and green windbreaker, a white bicycle helmet, and a light-colored sheer scarf wrapped several times around his face rang my doorbell before 12:30. He came up the steps and when I half-opened the door and yelled, “just set it on the ground — I won’t breathe on ya”, he put the paper bag, tall and stapled into a barnhouse, on a step about five down from the landing, gave a little nick, and disappeared.

NYC Journal #2 explains why I know ordering groceries is difficult / imossible.

It’s no surprise! New Yorkers have been eating way too much take out for years and years, so the economy is already geared up for that. And they also used to eat out way too much, but now they can’t do that at all, so the entire restaurant business has to put all its hope and dreams and the staff it can yet support into preparing and delivering take outs; oh, and there’s some pick-ups I guess. Grocery deliveries, in contrast, though by no means negligible, were comparatively rare. And now suddenly everyone wants more groceries delivered than they used to go get themselves.

If we were to continue living alone in our apartments without ever going out and mixing it up with our fellow citizens — which actually is kind of peaceful and relaxing and has much to recommend it (kidding! Well, nothing’s all bad; see Speculation #4) — the economy would evolve pretty quickly to meet the needs of that new and pathetic society.

Second: How many people who are sure they’ve had it are wrong?

Hmmm. That’s tricky. I personally know that I have it, and presumably, if all goes well and I’m back in the world next week after three weeks enjoying my quarantine away from the loud and clanking in-your-face world, I will know that I have had it.

But now comes the question: Within a couple months, they’ll be how many people likewise certain? How many never-tested New Yorkers are dutifully staying home with the symptoms, convalescing, preparing for a future in which they are 100% sure they’ve had the novel coronavirus that everyone’s talking about? Some percentage of them must be wrong. Some of these individuals will be wrong. I know I am not one of the mistaken; but of course it follows axiomatically that I, who am certain I have the coronavirus, would believe it impossible for me to be mistaken about having the coronavirus. Some of us who are certain we are right will be wrong. Gives me vertigo.

But I guess there’s going to be a test to tell each of us whether or not we have the antibodies. So that’ll let me know that I’m right. Unless somehow I’m wrong, which of course is impossible, and yet we know that it is in the general case possible and indeed inevitable, and that there’s no real reason to exempt me from the large folds of the general case, from it follows that it is in fact possible that I don’t have the coronavirus, but only a sort of madness that gives one the appearance of having the coronavirus.

Third: How could anyone ever vote for a Republican again?

I’m talking about the Wisconsin Republican legislature refusing to postpone today’s election, and then the five conservative members of the Supreme Court refusing to extend absentee voting in Wisconsin.
What is that but blatant cynical evil?

Particularly the Wisconsin legislature. It’s been clear a long time that more voting equals less Republican victories. And Republicans unsurprisingly are often behind legislation that makes it harder to vote. That’s pretty crappy; but to force an election to go forward in a pandemic when the wise thing to do is not going into a place full of other people — this takes the anti-Democratic impulse to a new level. Literally: “Let us win, or maybe die” (since the places with polls that are likely to be less impacted are outside of large urban areas and thus less Republican).

As to the SC, well, they have their arguments, they give their reasons; but in the end, presidents know what they are buying anymore. So if you vote for Republicans, you get legislatures more interested in winning elections than protecting the lives of their constituents, and you get Supreme Court justices whose minds usually find a route to give Republican politicians what they want, which is things like voter suppression and endangering lives for political gain (note what the SC would have to themselves note: if people were allowed to mail in their votes for another few weeks, most would stay home now, which would be the safe thing for them to do).

At some point, enough is just enough.
Stop voting for Republicans until they get the message that you don’t want assholes representing you, which will force different sorts of Republicans to run and get elected and make decisions for the collective.
Stop voting for Republicans until they start pursuing policies and making decisions that work for all US citizens, thereby earning the votes of all US Americans.
Because, just come on! This goes too far.

Fourth: Why is it kind of pleasant to spend three weeks inside your apartment? I have now left this apartment three times in three weeks: twice to take out garbage and get the mail; once to grab a food delivery from a step a few stairs down from my landing. And I’ve worked 9AM-5PM every day. And, though these last few days especially I am feeling better and better, I’ve felt poorly the whole time. So why do I feel like I’ve had a nice break?

In the world that you walk in, everywhere there’s effort. Moving is effort. Physically interacting with others, even if it is no more than adjusting your walk to circumvent then, requires effort, a little stress, a tiny bit of putting yourself out there. To speak nothing of eye contact here and there or short office conversations, which are often enjoyable, but also always a tiny bit denuding, exposing, emotionally risky. All these microaggressions that the even the most peace-loving surroundings exact on one’s mind/body add up, especially in New York, where he have to stand so close to one another in the subway, the elevator, the food co-op. And New York also is designed to explode men’s minds with too many beautiful women all around all the time, part of you, no matter how much evidence you’ve gathered to the contrary, always kinds of thinks something is maybe kind of afoot with this girl or that one, but of course, you’re just passing one another, perhaps stuck momentarily near one another on a platform or in a train car, but that glance she throws — even if you aren’t fully inventing it as you must be doing most of the time — can’t go anywhere, and it knows full well it can’t, it relaxes in that security and comfort just as your glances do. All this largely-imagined, back-of-the-mind courting is also stressful. A fine dust of loneliness and frustration builds up on your heart- and loin-strings.

Here I’m all alone. I talk to people on the phone and through email and text. I get excited and annoyed at people I’m interacting with at work. I get the little tickle and thrill of comradery with people I’m interacting with at work. But all these inputs are “lite”, and at the end of the day, I never had to leave my apartment, I never had to get out the door by 8:15AM so I could be at the office by 9AM. I didn’t notice my boss staying past 5PM as I considered whether or not I should. And even on those days when I worked for any amount of time after the quitting bell, at the end I did not have to go down into the grimy subway corridors to wait for a grimy train, surrounded by people for whom I felt tiny little tugs of hope and fear. None of that! On the days when I was feeling weak and 9-5 was about my limit, I went and rested. On the other days, more of them as time goes on, I sat down to write, still safe in my cocoon.

It’s nice to have some time alone.

It’s also been wonderful to have no alcohol around. And no white bread. And no dairy. I’ve felt worse because of the coronavirus, but better because of the lack of these drags on my mind/body. Especially no alcohol.

Fifth: What about people who aren’t getting better?
There’s a great exaltation in the final stages of convalescence. You’ve made it! You’re out! You’re stronger and wiser for the struggle! You’re proud to have been there! You’re excited to start fresh! You’re ready!
But some people are dying of this.
Many of them are quite old; but they might’ve had another decade or two enjoying their grandchildren, garden, reflections, journaling, volunteering, singing in the church choir.
And many of them are not that old. Whether because of individual genetic weaknesses and/or extreme exposure (high viral load), some people who a few months ago had every reason to suppose themselves fit and robust and ready for another 40+ years of living, loving, growing, sharing — some of these people find themselves terribly sick and not getting better, or a little better, but then relapsing after that false hope. Suddenly the whole trajectory’s altered.
We’re all in this together and cannot escape one another in this life or the next.
We pray that we grow together in wisdom, so we can better enjoy and benefit from our irrevocable eternal interconnection.

Author: Johnny Onnda Spott
Editorial Team: A. Whistletown / B. Willard
Copyright: AM Watson

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Tuesday 4/7/2020 – Lana / Rear Window

A breeze-blown world in the springtime sunshine. Wish the bottom of my window wasn’t tainted with last season’s dried muddy splatter. Wish there weren’t all these child-safe window bars obscuring my view. Wish the best to the cars and bikes sailing down the street. Particularly want to appreciate the thin-boned rangy young woman with medium-brown skin and a wide-flowing mane of kinky black hair, relaxed in blue jeans, windbreaker open at the top to reveal red sweatshirt or heavy duty-T, able to sit up tall because of wide backwards-hooking chrome handlebars with thick plastic handles.

Lana del Rey and some kind of a weakness swaying in the background. We’ve got your melancholic nostalgic vaguely-infinite longing in a bottle, baby. This bottle-feeding has something to do with the info age; something to do with the contactless development of souls lost on datastreams. (No, I think it goes deeper than that.)

The outfit is a flapping white lab coat, a blue paper medical-quality showercap, and oversized white medical mask. The wind whips her open coat around. Is that coat made out of plastic? It looks vanishingly thin. Her light blue scrubs also flatter against her heavy round thighs, stomach, chest.

The outfit is a light gray pedal pushers, open tan jacket, thin light pink sweater layered over withe T-shirt, long black wavy hair, a big white face mask, all but the mask whisked and ruffled against her thin form by the wind.

Lana del Rey says she’ll love me until the end of time, and that I should promise to remember that I’m hers. She doesn’t mean me in particular. We don’t really fit, except as gently enfolding essentially aimless unanswerable longings: she surrounds me with the stuff and I cuddle appreciatively into it. It’s a relationship that works within its boundaries but not beyond. Perhaps, however, I could meet some fellow fan, and we could form our whole everlasting love affair upon this shared weakness for overripe moods. Or would that be as silly as it sounds? But, life being so short and unpredictable, is it perhaps time to reassess silliness? Maybe not really a threat to truly living, after all?

The Bus is a long white box that must go slow between the car and the double-parked white ambulance van. The joggers in black sweatshirts and (him) yellow knee-length shorts and (her) gray sweats don’t need masks. They aren’t going to get close to anyone, and economic depressions make for great air quality. The pigeons are a two and they go everywhere together, the uniformly dark gray and the light gray with the shimmering green head and the dark tail feathers. They go everywhere together, and now they strut shake and bob side by side, getting every little grain of (uncooked? is this dangerous?) rice off the cracked and uneven extra-wide sidewalk. That little tiny brown hop-hop bird is not part of their crew, but they don’t mind if he hop-hops around and gets what few grains his tininess can handle. The nice thing about these two pigeons (Israeli Rock Doves) is that forever — ever since they together tossed themselves off of the white Israel sandstone cliffs, caught the first seaglory gust and tumbled off to their life of wondrous adventure and unquestioned support — they stay together and do everything together and are the very best of friends and tell each other all their secrets, which are minimal, since they stay present and open-hearted all the time anyway and they’re just themselves anyway 100% keeping it real. Their situation is not at all like three weeks of quarantine with a still slightly wheezy chest.

The man in the yellow windbreaker bikes with a huge orange box upon his back. It’s a 2020 Pilgrim’s Progress! That vinyl-over-plastic bright orange box is his burden! Or just his job.

Author: Johnny Onnda Spott
Editorial Team: A. Whistletown / B. Willard
Copyright: AM Watson

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