It’s just so fine for the last day in October — 60-ish, a light breeze, clouds high and mostly white. Even better the streets are busy, and happy – yes, it’s nice with the streets busy today. It’s Hallowe’en and somehow everybody’s happy, relaxed. The Parade is back – yes! – beginning in less than two hours. There’s a long-missed good vibe.
People from 18 to 50 have put make-up on, even costumes. At the polling station for early voting a masked red-and-black-haired witch was assisting. Best of all, there are kids all over, masked for health or character, costumed and painted, on their own or with parents, and in multi-family groups. They run into the shops and the shop folks – from the 20-something cashiers at the local RiteAid to the 60-ish Korean owner of the prints-and-framing shop – are ready by the door, with candy for the bags and baskets of witches, dalmatians, ghouls.
We’re not out of the woods yet, but how joyous to see we are still here, under our masks, ready for happiness. What a simply glorious day.
Finally, in the sixteenth month – the first real feelings of venturing out of the cave. By and large, Covid and the CDC, not us, have been in charge, and that was almost impossible to assimilate. Now, maybe, looking at the sky, hearing the numbers, we can think of goals again without a background of fear of the air and the person next to us on the bus or in the train? I am grateful for all those who took enormous health and other risks to stand up for principles, but there are many others who didn’t have that option, whatever the cause. We just had to hang on at home. Cheering from the side lines helps, but it’s preferable to be an agent of your own beliefs.
It turned out for most of us that Hanging On to a treadmill facing a blank wall is tiring. Even with Zoom. In some cases, especially with Zoom. Though my brother-in-law grievously lost a first cousin to the virus, I am utterly mindful and grateful that no other deaths or even serious illnesses or financial hits or war zones have been personally endured by me or my friends, Yet more than a few who had doggedly faced life in the past were as slumped as I, each at different personal “inflection” points. It was so hard running out of encouragement for each other, even out of shared sarcasm.
It started to seem like the only thing I could completely control was my reading. Even more rewarding than my music. More than Netflix. Real choices. I ran to library books – no expenditure, no paper, no touching, but scads of ebooks. Mysteries. History. Fiction. Combinations.
Then surprisingly, my reading habits suddenly wanted to evolve to fit my loss of concentration. From a lifetime of a learned 100 per cent persistence per book, to reading as sheep and cows graze in a lush meadow – here a bit, there a bit. In other words, as much of a book as I felt like, as often or not as I wanted.
Guilty at first, I came round to granting myself a new freedom. It was a pleasurable, soothing activity, meant to produce satisfaction and variety in a world gone short of those experiences. A pleasurable, self-oriented activity. Why shape it like a discipline, a chore? I could go to bed with at least some sense of satisfaction.
So I checked out, and checked out again and again till each in its time was finished. My tablet shows a reading time line peppered with the same titles over and over, in between other shorter one-off completions. And it has been wonderful and will stay with me as a newly discovered way to honestly take my pleasures.
A small change, a small victory over adversities, but it delivered ease.
As for now, I will still buy the occasional paper book, but mostly – why? My shelves are groaning and dusty with NYC air deposits. So much cleaner and in many ways handier to largely store my reading in another hand-held medium, one that’s proving to be more responsive to my thoughts and questions as I read. A whole other development. I could have done without a pandemic to achieve this pleasure, but I won’t deny it.
Hopefully, I’ll be sharing some of the best-enjoyed titles in a later post.
It’s not a scrambled egg – it’s my brain. Or so I used to think. Clarity is behind a screen. Under a heel. Off the table. Corona Virus, presidential election, riven nation, relationships, tasks, time unmeasured… Not enough room in a small skull for all the suffocating turbulence. Mind like a fractured mirror – walk carefully.
But wait – grab your mask and gloves before you start out.
Time management is a fiction. Particular goals? Which? End point? Hey, remember the old adage about the light at the end of the tunnel being an oncoming train.
It would be so nice to have more than an hour or two count for real life most days. So many helpful writings – seen ’em all before, thanks. I’m just tired. Thinking is a bummer. How’s things? “Hangin’ in there, like everyone else,” sez we all.
Well, when the world drops you into a well, be prepared. So, back to basics. Old photos. New photos. Zoom ballets, Zoom museums. Zoom lectures. Books. What’s App. Photo editing. Diary. Potato chips. Kettle corn. Ice cream.
Who’d have thought involuntary isolation would create so much togetherness? Never have I felt so connected to so many others as at this onset of my sixth month of social distancing. The bulk of us half-trapped at home, whether for caution, fear, necessity, quarantining, or lack of funds to do any of the few things left to do outside of home.
Who’d have thought even professional writers – let alone the rest of us – would be running dry on ways to describe or elaborate on our New Universal Now.
Six months in hyper-managed NY, NY and a personal sea change. From terror and confusion, wiping down or spraying everything in sight – in a March panic dumping into a huge trash bag the winter coat I had absently rubbed against some door and elevator wall and still haven’t laundered – to now grumbling about having to mask-up, glove-up, shoe-up just to leave the apartment for the small common laundry/trash room, while holding a Clorox wipe.
It has lead to fewer laundries and learning to cook while producing garbage of the kind that can stay in the kitchen trash overnight – skip the seafood – so we only need venture out every other night.
Adaptation.
Who hasn’t developed new habits in isolation? It now seems that phone calls must have always been via What’sApp, personal and cultural visits always via Zoom and Skype.
Running into long-time neighbors while on quick, tee-shirted, forays into our West Village neighborhood becomes a mutual party – we’re all so delighted we end up thoughtlessly , endlessly, blocking crosswalks. Covid-19 and lock-downs have turned us into the tourists we used to curse.
And everyone bring this up: The stationary bike. The weights. The walks around the apartment. The streamers. The books. Enough. They’re body-flopped, bored, mindless, witless and out of creative solutions. Uninspired. Longing for stimulation.
But they can’t concentrate on vids or reading anymore.
Well, reading. A gift greater even than Netflix. These last months I’ve learned – no Great Books, no Life Explained tomes, ancient or modern. Mysteries, thrillers, fun novels, memoirs. Not dumb, but still light. Things that don’t dig below level two of depicting how we deal with our mortal coils. It’s mind-twisting enough actually living the how we live now.
So on Monday, yet another Zoom – a virtual Movement studio. Wednesday, a Cousins Zoom. The next week, a monthly virtual Mystery Readers group.
Not perfect or comfortable, or curative. But more unwinding and connective than riding the stationary bike or walking the apartment. And followed by a light dinner and a good detective novel, something of a fair start to Month Six.
Sort of staying in the human loop. Sort of on our own. And hoping.
♦LOOKING BACKon a bunch of time that made keeping this going close to impossible. It seems like replying to articles in other media keeps a WP account alive! It never leaves the mind though, which, encouragingly, suggests the impulse for the blog is real.
Definitely have been reading mysteries, mostly of the B++ variety. It’s something most people with lives long-term “taken over” by unplanned events probably understand – stimulation is the last thing needed, calm and entertainment was the ticket.
Some of that reading was nevertheless mention-worthy, and I hope to get into it all during the coming weeks, a bit at a time.
Interestingly, non-fiction “dipping-in” reading has come to appeal; some interesting landscapes opened up that way which would never have entered my experience before.
Just for the record these are some of the reads I really want to mention immediately:
The Division Bell, Ellen Wilkinson – A mystery by one of the British Parliament’s earliest women members that takes us deeply inside the institution and building and customs, and isn’t a bad crime story either.
London Rain, Nicola Upson – An A-category mystery set in the BBC in the Thirties, with fascinating insights into the institutional culture, and driving an involving story.
Girl Waits With Gun, Amy Stewart – A lightly fictionalized and fascinating tale of Florence Kopp, one of the first female sheriffs in the US. Living with her two sisters in early 20th Century rural New Jersey community after leaving NYC, they run afoul of a town boss and industrialists, endure intimidation and attacks, and with local law eventually find themselves to be a major news story (you can look it up). This book won a lot of awards.
The Last Days of Night, Graham Moore – Truth is stranger than fiction as Edison, Westinghouse and Tesla conflict in making the world light 24 hours a day. Beautifully written to read like fiction. A vivid depiction of the mad genius Tesla. By the same author as The Imitation Game film starring Benedict Cumberbatch, I believe this is the basis for Cumberbatch’s upcoming film on the subject. The book stands alone. Highly Recommended.
Be wise, taste wines and adjusts your boundless hope to the cup of life, which is small. Even as we speak cruel time flees jealous. Harvest the present day, the morrow is uncertain. Seize the day. Carpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero. (Quintus Horatius Flaccus 65–8 b.C.)
MIND FRAGMENTS 