Some think we are already on the other side of the mountain. That we have reached the peak, flattened the curve, descended along the ridge and endured the plateau. But what if we are really just running from a volcano that is getting ready to blow?
Today my building shook for no reason. My neighbor says it couldn’t have been a tectonic fault. Berlin is built on sand. But that Genie in the bottle, who knows when someone will rub her the right way and make her chance come true? Who knows the true size of this iceberg?
The changing numbers present a beautifully geographic picture, a mountain we would want to climb, a ridge we would want to enjoy, a descent worthy of a good pint at the end, if it weren’t actually the number of people who have died. But this is not a mountain isn’t capable of giving us blisters, rather PTSD, or PCSD. Post Corona Stress Disorder.
Meanwhile, who the hell actually knows what’s going on in Hong Kong? Thousands of protesters and riot police officers swarmed some of Hong Kong’s busiest neighborhoods on Sunday, cutting off traffic and freezing most retail activity. China’s aspirations for power and control are not even minimally veiled.
When did it happen that every educated adult in the civilized world was supposed to know what was going on everywhere else in the world at all times? And of course, all we all know, is what is going on in The New York Times. God bless you all. We trust you with our understanding of the world.
It is Sunday and I decide to listen to Jazz while making biscuits like that math teacher with a side gig delivering craft beer in Harlem. People in Florida are becoming concerned about the next hurricane, and how the words evacuation and “socially distanced” can be used in the same sentence. This is not what I thought the apocalypse was going to look like, she says, showing a picture of herself in her pajamas.
There had to be one national definition of what is safe. (Doesn’t there?)
You know, safe can be defined. There are numbers.
Right, says the Governor. Like I said, I’m not in the business of guessing.
Here we are meanwhile, looking to identify and claim purpose. That’s the fuel. This is our marketable asset — purpose. Confidence, professionalism, and credibility.
We listen to Uptown funk and the French horn playing in the morning rain. That race is over, for now. Families have been given time, a daily life that feels something like history, an old sitcom. Less nonstop, more Brady Bunch. Life as celebration, rather than production, a bright side in a dark chapter that we will all miss from this race as we rush all the same to the finish.
The rats are going to war against each other. Let us not become them.
In the park we now have irises, indigo, and yellow ones. They give me pleasure. They give me something that feels like joy, along with the little birds that fly past me, the small brown ones with their blue heads and multi-colored wings, and the large blue Garza, asserting presence, taking over things. This is my walk, slow and ever present, with irises looking on.
Health, Happiness, Love, Purpose.
These are the requirements, our aspirations. If I want to live my best life, this is the checklist. Moment to moment to moment. Because of course these are not permanent states of being.
We have our health, we have each other, we have our purpose. (Michelle Obama)
She helps me add a few feminine requirements to Governor Cuomo’s New York Checklist, which has recently been expanded to refer to all of America. Yes, America is —
Tough
Smart
Disciplined
Unified
Loving
And also, how about:
Honest
Empathetic
Compassionate
Kind
Grateful
I hope my super power is seeing people, she says. Making people feel truly Seen. Like this we learn to understand our walk, ourselves, learn what health and happiness means for me. Even if it is just flowers and birds and the percussive sound of those leaves in that one tree, perhaps that is just me. And here we are, in quarantine with ourselves and ours, hours upon hours with ours. You and yours. Me and mine. Keep the rhythm, keep it real, keep the energy flowing.
It makes me happy to know I am not the only one dancing in my living room.
It is Memorial Day, and the Governor’s daughter comes along to throw a wreath into the water, so as to remember those that have fallen. She is dressed in white, the color of memory. Let us die in black, let us remember in white. Like this we are reborn. It is windy, and the briefing is short. Everyone wants to know when New York City is going to open, including me, because that means the story of quarantine is over, at least for the moment.
We all listen to that single trumpet play his anthem, and share a moment of silence.
But we must dedicate ourselves to this unfinished work. This is not Pick-Your-Numbers, the Governor says. We will open when the numbers line up. I’m out of the guessing business.
Someone suggests that Staten Island wants to break off from the other boroughs and open on its own, but the Governor says it doesn’t work like that.
Hey, he says, I get it. Sometimes I want the State of New York to secede from the Union and forget about all this federal shenanigans. But it doesn’t work like that.
Although, he says, five minutes later, Coming back to that question of seceding…
We all smile, because we are Native Born blunt, even if we weren’t born in New York. I mean, hey, I was born in West Virginia with all those other Mountain Mamas, and I know what you mean. Sometimes all those other people out there just have no clue of reality.
“I will talk about masks until I’m blue in the face,” he says, right after the news prints a story about the President of the United States being too embarrassed to wear a mask in the car plant because masks are apparently not manly enough for our courageous and dignified federal leader. Maybe the masks mess with his tan lines? Anyway.
Get a designer mask, suggests the Governor. The opposition is so nonsensical and trivial in relation to the risk. Nonsensical and trivial. Like history.
I know history isn’t cool anymore, says the Governor (throwing a side glance over at his daughter), but sometimes there is relevance.
Right now it is time to own our stories. For my part, I like my story. Born in a pickup truck, raised in suburbia, then exported to Europe. Digressions to Mexico. Etc tattooed behind my left ear.
The Republican brand seems depressed across the board. Every man for himself is going out of style it seems. We’re experiencing a mass trauma across the United States, if not the world. This is what the doctors say.
“Our illusion that we’re safe has been shattered. It’s like a psychological earthquake.”
Earlier this weekend the President, excuse me, the Governor, made his briefing in the Governor’s mansion. Spoke to us all about his forefathers, FDR and Teddy and Mario. Seems sometimes we are given our calling, rather than left to aspire for it. If nothing else we are all well aware that he is in training. The de facto leader, whether voted in or not. It seems appropriate, for someone as fond of facts, as he is.
The next day he went to the seaside, build a castle in the sand of Jones Beach, a castle of its own right, it seems, 7 miles of human achievement and dedication and dredging, so to speak.
What does a Governor do on Memorial Day?
He goes to the beach, and he brings his friends!
(They did not say, but we assume, this also includes hotdogs and potato salad and beer. I just recently explained to a European how to make real potato salad, which is actually quite similar to egg salad, as well as tuna salad. All descendants from the Hellmann’s mayonnaise era, it seems, and a Prussian transplant, no less.)
Still let me reemphasize, it is about the numbers, not emotions. (Or potato salad.) Science, not politics. (Hotdogs neither.) We want people to understand what is going on. (Watermelon!) Here we are still learning lessons from 1918. Look at THOSE mountains. It was not a single mountain, there was more than one, and the second was often much higher than the first!
This is a point where we get very basic. Do you have shelter? Do you have food? (No, but we have beer.)
When the first superstorm happened, they said it was a once in 500 years type of thing. Now they happen 3 times a year. Does anyone REALLY believe that there won’t be another public health emergency?
Build Back Better really means nothing other than creating the Next Economy, the one that is not formulated around systemic risks, and instead learns to work around them. In this new economy we put in sustainable infrastructure for transportation, education, and healthcare. In this new economy we address issues like inequality and pollution. In this new economy we learn to walk our walk as humans, as Americans, as members of a global community.
Chapter 1 is about how we stabilized the health crisis.
Chapter 2 is about how we reopened smartly.
Chapter 3 is how we rebuild and recreate our economy.
We are writing history here.