(On all those things that lie outside our spheres of knowing)
I was very very emotional,” Jack said. He paused. “I’m using the word emotional to cover up the fact I was crying like a baby.” (NY Times)
…
The rhododendrons in the park today were beautiful. This is where I need to start.
“A forest of rhododendrons” — I had never heard of such a thing until this year, when I read it in a book, then simultaneously witnessed it in the park. You could see the big buds preparing themselves, and I was expecting them to burst out lilac, as the rhododendrons I knew in knew in New England used to do. But these ones were white, at least at first. I thought that was all that we were getting but after some days came the lilac ones as well, and then an occasional lighter pink, and even here and there a bright flash of fuschia. Tonight when I went out I saw one I had never seen before, lilac with a darker purple tongue, almost like a fancy tulip, except a bush of them. This is was keeps me sane in this time. Bird songs and flowers blooming, neither of which are in my control, and blessedly so.
…
Hello Sir, he says.
Oh, I am not a Sir! And anyway I am younger than you.
(Did we mention, now ‘old’ is over 51?)
But Sir is basically just a term of respect, Sir.
…
Hey Sister !
The YouTube Drag Queens take me by surprise. All of their enthusiasm, coming out of nowhere, 18 years of age. This is what happens when one grows up in the age of the internet, I think, and I’m watching them with curiosity, because being a Queen means so many things, and only occasionally, quite rarely actually, female.
I suppose I have always taken advantage of being female.
(His husky voice on the phone, calling to meet him on the canal, halfway, in the middle of the night.)
I rarely wear makeup, and when I do it is a very long shot from what these Queens put on, and not nearly as skillful. But there is something else besides the makeup, the Sisterhood. The unquestioning support, encouraging you, whomever you are, whichever gender or pronoun or ethnicity or background or profession or whatever — who YOU are, and however you best put that out there, for all the rest of us, that is what makes you a Queen.
“Put down the weight of your aloneness,” he says, “and ease into the conversation. The cooking pots have seen the good in you…the chorus crowding out your solo voice…Everything that surrounds you is talking to you…your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone.” (David Whyte)
If I am a Queen, if I am to hold my head up high, then you can also call me in the daytime, and invite me out on a date, rather than ask me to clandestinely come out in the middle of the night, always to another version of the same emergency. If I am a Queen I don’t have time for emotional emergencies. Which is not to say we are cold like the heat you cheap men don’t put on in October. Bad bitches have feelings too, even if we don’t always show them. There is just too much else to do. We are busy taking care of the whole, as well as you.
Cherish.
This is another word to be added to the Build Back Better dictionary.
Better to have the moment, she says, no regrets. But even better than that, cherish it. And also don’t regret saying No.
Back in Albany, it’s fishing season, fishing for what I am not sure. The Governor is not going this year, even though he wants to. He’s busy controlling the spread at home and fishing is something you usually do when you have a lot of time on your hands and the ability to just float.
There’s always next year.
So many prevailing and present themes, calling back to the political economies of Aristotle and Arendt. Private and public, that which we share (a virus), and that which we don’t (a home). His leadership allows for delegation, which is of course sane and responsible. We are also opening up the beaches for Memorial Day, which is basically the equivalent in emotion of the entire holiday season of the Europeans. Americans are workaholics, for sure, but this is also what causes them to enjoy their holidays with so much vigor.
Despite concerns about containing the spread, they decide to go for it, and open up the beach, in part because New Jersey and Connecticut are going to, in part as a gift to the citizens, in part because they’d have too much trouble controlling people on the beaches anyway if they didn’t. Now they legalize it, and can therefore also enact control.
“Finding an agreement that accommodates all needs.”
Here we have again one of those parochial moments of wisdom, like conviction, that many well educated and experienced people still never manage to muster. But this is what makes him the Chief Executive — of the Government, yes — the one with whom the buck stops. The one we trust.
Blame me! he says, whenever there is a problem.
What a spine that takes. What a responsibility to bear, and with a smile even.
Stone to stone across the morass, the Governor says, just as his father before him. Find firm footing, then take the next step. I find this image consoling to my soul, the promise of stability.
The facts just get more negative, he says, and all the same our spirits need to remain high. Everyone is vulnerable now. E.v.e.r.y.o.n.e.
First it was just the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions. Then it was all ages, even healthy young people. Suddenly now it included children, young people like Jack who woke up one day with fire in his veins, unable to move, his whole body inflamed.
“I’ll tell you why you can’t be right,” he said. I’ll tell you why you aren’t alone.
There are two things in life that will never leave you. The eye of God and the love of a mother.
(Get into the office by 6am, gather yourself, she said, and spend the rest of the day on the unknown. It is incredible what the combination of adrenaline and caffeine can do to push you through anything.)
I thank you for your fortitude, Melissa. Competence is captivating, and we are all watching and grateful.
The Pressroom it has become the stage for New York’s Next Top Journalist and one woman starts all her questions with, “Do you regret…,” which gives me reason to think this woman regrets a lot in her life, frequently. You have to go there to know there, honey. And yes, sometimes you do regret, even if you don’t admit it, but you can also decide to live your life in such a way that the question never arises, because you act with clarity and conviction, and a determination to make the best of the hand you were dealt, no matter what happens in the meantime, what mistakes you make or things you learn. That is the whole point — do it better next time. This is how we metabolize trauma, remaining at ease and engaged, a form of peaceful surrender and scaleable transformation. We never solve a problem we do not admit.
In the meantime, even if we don’t have sports games to go to, we can witness other forms of ‘fanless’ activities. Like watch the Buffalo Bills. We are opening up the possibility, and in fact actually encouraging and supporting, the resumption of all fanless sports, the Governor says. As a coincidence of personal agenda, I want to watch the Bills. Watch the Bills and read the Good Book, catch up on the former politicians of the Good Book. Turns out Lincoln quoted Mark, back in a time when Jesus wasn’t partisan.
Just squeezing some joy out of my day. Don’t ever regret squeezing that joy out. You are allowed to, and in fact encouraged to do so — boosts your immune system, your physical and mental health.
On what basis do you think?
What is the stuff squeezing out of your cells?
People working together to achieve a greater goal; Teamsters, lying on the carpet after work with their son watching MASH reruns. When he grows up and has kids of his own, this is what he remembers.
How are you, really?
I cry coronatears for nearly 12 hours in a row, stop to sleep, and wake to tears again.
Is it just me, or did you get a sunburn, Governor? A nice afternoon in the sun by the lake perhaps?
I know it’s the weekend, the Governor says, because I don’t wear a tie on Saturdays.
We are living here in the sci-fi movie reality where 40% of the people between the ages of 18-44 in America are experiencing high levels of emotional and mental distress. That number declines the older you get, and is only 9% amongst those over 60, who are ironically the most proportionately vulnerable. Age breeds wisdom, acceptance of life’s precarity, simple experience with loss and making do, apparently. Like this we are returned, to Nana’s Chicken Soup.
Yes, maybe it was stone to stone before; now it is hurdle to hurdle. Good thing I did hurdles in high school, always found that minuscule pause when one was in mid-air as a kind of break from the running and jumping and landing. Just a moment in mid-air, free floating.
Here in the midst of this inexplicable madness, just a moment, free floating.
Movement directed by clarity. Allow your heart to speak. Allow it to spread open. Allow your heart to pump a lot of blood. Can you feel it? Can you feel the blood in your heart, beating?
Life is not about going backwards. Life is not about regret, Bernadette.
Welcome to Life. Things happen outside of your control. Are you strong enough to get back up when you get knocked down, and smart enough to learn from what happened? That is the important question.
The Governor makes another nod to Buffalo Bill, who, for anyone unfamiliar with the history, happened to have killed 4,228 buffalo out in the Wild West in between the years of 1867-68. Apparently he had a special technique, ride out front and target the leaders first, then cause the followers to run in a circle and create an easy target. He is also known for having performed very bravely in the Indian Wars.
Go Bill.
Here we are, unpacking not just our personal history, but our social one, too. The last time I was in South Dakota I saw just a handful of buffalo along the side of the road. Over a hundred and fifty years after these wise old herds were consistently massacred along with their people, and still they are the emblems of our sports teams, the source of many a modern creation myth.
May we see their false truth now.
In other news, a 108 year old woman recovers from the coronavirus in New Jersey. “I survived everything because I was determined to survive,” she says, pointing out the self-explanatory. Seems spunk correlates to immune function, as does the survivor’s mentality. Already made it through the Spanish Flu and two separate World Wars;
A friend I haven’t seen in months wishes me a Happy New Year in May;
A man on a deserted subway car asking for money, wearing a mask, hearing the sound of change falling into a paper cup;
Baseless Shiva logic;
Rent-a-Rabbi;
Free-floating.