Very Bad

30 June 2020

From the Washington Post, “Anthony S. Fauci issued a dire warning at a Senate hearing Tuesday about the rate of the coronavirus pandemic’s spread amid a spike in new cases, noting that new cases may reach 100,000 per day if the United States continues on its current trajectory.”  From CNBC, “The coronavirus is spreading too rapidly and too broadly for the U.S. to bring it under control, Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Monday.”

I have been living in isolation, virtual house arrest since mid-March.  I am antsy to be doing things.  The one thing I miss the most is sitting in an air-conditioned theater watching a two-hour drama.  But I also miss coffee shops and lunch out. But I have listened to, and will continue to listen to, the experts who have said stay home, wear a mask, social distance.  I have not listened to politicians like Rand Paul (could he be more of a flat earther?) who has opined, “We shouldn’t presume that a group of experts somehow knows what’s best for everyone.” 

We have come to the point where we must decide our own paths, I guess.  Do we follow the doctors’ advice and opinions?  Or, do we follow the opinions and feelings of people who at best are social Darwinists, but who are more likely just egotistical blow hard talking heads, who are only in this for their personal gain? I have made my choice.  I am sticking with science.  But I don’t know if I am in the majority on this or even a plurality. 

The situation is grave, and will most likely get grimmer. My prayers for you all.

28 June 2020

Be Thankful for it All

Around the 15^th of July our household will hit the point of four months isolated.  We have had a couple of socially distanced, social interactions but for the most part we are isolated totally, completely.  Depending on the moment it is either easy or very hard to be alone here in the Spaceship Todd.

We have settled into a very predictable set routine.  The centering points of our activities are the meals my wife has been preparing.  A great deal of love has been involved in the baking and grilling and planning. With nowhere to go really, smoking a chunk of meat for 8 hours is a whole lot more doable than it used to be.

Now there is time for mowing and weeding and cleaning and sorting and all the other tasks that were not appropriate when work demanded so much from us. Now there is even time to listen to new music, or at least music that is new to me.  Truly I have been down various rabbit holes of song. All those things that were just a few minutes too long to be worked into my schedule are now penciled in.

The one thing I have not been doing that at the start of the pandemic isolation I thought would become a matter of course, is reading novels.  I read a great deal.  I read newspaper articles.  I read magazine articles.  I read essays.  There was a David Foster Wallace story of a high dive experience merged with becoming an adolescent that was a great read. But novels have not been holding my attention. A friend suggested one author, an Irish writer, and I did follow up on that.  The novel was odd but well worth the read.

During my time within these four walls, I have been working very hard on keeping my level of blasphemy and profanity to a minimum when I am reading the news. During this period of isolation, it has not been an easy task. So many dunderheaded moves by so many folks that seem to be trying out for Luddite the Movement.

Oh well that is it for this Sunday.

The Ride of a Broken Heart

Red poppies and purple phlox, this weary world is awash in late spring color. Today these colors are muted. No sun this afternoon, it has hidden itself away today. Soft grey clouds provide the normally angry red orb some needed cover. Hidden or not, the old sol’s heat is clearly still reaching this world.   The temperature is quite warm for late spring. A rain threatens, but probably it will not come. Whether you call it sweat or perspiration, just a few paces outside in the warm humid air will bring moisture to your skin. Nora has always loved this weather. She was one of those who sleep nude with just a sheet over her. She comes alive with the spring. Chris on the other hand does not. He wanted a comforter over him year-round.  

Currently Chris and Nora stand on a worn sidewalk. This sidewalk is a winding snake of discolored rectangles crumbling at the corners. This particular path continues for a quarter mile until a weed choked lot swallows the route.  Behind the couple is a barn shaped house with a big bay window. A casual glance shows the premises to be quite dark inside even now in midafternoon. As the awkward couple continue to stand there her hand in his, the air conditioner kicks on.  With the place so dark and with the air conditioner cranking, the house will be as chill as one might ever need it to be.

With a face totally empty of emotion Nora looks at Chris. She wonders why they are still here; she wonders why are they holding hands?  To Nora’s mind Chris needs to be gone now. Her mind is nothing short of troubled.  Two years ago, she had enough energy inside her to say might as well when she met the glib talking, big smiled Chris at Sara’s party.  But what the fuck and why not fade. Time has a way of wearing down giddy unrealistic possibilities and of highlighting the harsh compromises one has been forced to make to keep a relationship alive. Knowing someone has a problem keeping his dick in his pants accelerates the reality awareness process. Nora waits for Chris to start talking his shit.  If he speaks there will be is no novelty to what he will say. Surprisingly the trite words she is expecting to fall from his mouth do not come.

Chris shakes the hair out of his eyes and looks at Nora. Standing there on the walk outside her home he is seeing her through eyes as clear as he ever has had since he was eighteen.  By all accounts any connection between the two of them should have been completely and totally over six months ago when Nora found out about Kelli.  Chris’s first lesson learned here? Don’t give out you Gmail password to your girlfriend for any reason. Girlfriends are crafty and they will snoop through and scour your e-mail. Nora had quickly pulled away from the relationship after she figured out his betrayal. Nothing Chris did seemed to salve her hurt.  As he left Nora his parting words were, “Call me when you can.  I am so sorry.  Tell me what to do.  We can figure it out.” As the old song said, “If the phone don’t ring, it’s her.”

Was she only another woman Chris could simply abuse?  Was he ever in love with her, whatever the fuck love meant to him?  Was she just a new and novel bit of flesh for him? These and fifteen other thoughts ran through Nora’s mind as she looked at Chris.  Nora remembered Chris with drooping shoulders and hands at his side claiming he was sorry when she confronted him about the e-mails. Nora ran through it and Chris’s appeals seemed too practiced, too pat. She had to go and she did. 

Why the hell hadn’t she just batted his hand away when he offered it to her as he opened her car door? Now it was just awkward, too damned awkward.  “God I am hoping he doesn’t think this means anything,” was running repeatedly through her mind. This thought, in that quick time that exists only in your brain, was instantly becoming Nora’s mantra. But pulling away right now might trigger something worse, like tears and blubbering. The last go around had just been so totally emotionally wrenching.

Chris hadn’t dated, and more importantly, he hadn’t slept with anyone since they had parted.  Kelli was done before Nora had surveilled his e-mail. More importantly, he hadn’t had a drink in three months.  Drinking and weed made Chris stupid, real stupid, fucking Kelli stupid. Since Nora and Chris had separated, Chris had at most three beers.  And those were within a month of the breakup. Within a week of Nora’s throwing the last of Chris’s clothes out on the porch, he had set his one hitter aside.  Chris hadn’t been sober for this long in a decade. As his mind cleared from the long-term use of intoxicants, he realized that in the breakup with Nora he had lost something special, maybe real love. 

Chris tried to call Nora a couple of times in the last six months but the conversations in the few she answered died quickly. She hung up on all of them without a good-bye.  Nora never did call Chris, save the one she placed last week. Chris knew he must have hurt her really bad. Must have left her adrift in an ocean of broken dreams.

Right now, there on the sidewalk Nora wondered again why she had called Chris for a ride.  She had been spending time in Europe watching the waves in a rustic seaside village for about three weeks.  Nora had accepted an offer for free room from an old college friend who had an Air B&B right by the Atlantic. The bargain was Nora would have to buy the alcohol and one good meal a week in exchange for a space to be temporary free spirit in a foreign land. Drinking house wines and eating seafood on stone patios, Nora’s evenings would end with star gazing.  From time to time as she sat out on the sand she would think of Chris.  Fuck, she didn’t want to, she just did. 

When the holiday ended, Nora flew back alone.  Although she had tried before she left with numerous phone calls, and tried while on holiday using e-mails and texts, she could not come up with someone to drive the two hours to the airport to get her. Her housemate for a small fee was able to take her to the airport. Chris would, if she really needed it, pick her up.  She knew was a sure thing, as sure as any natural phenomena like sunrises or sunsets. Chris was Nora’s last, last, last ditch fallback. Nora knew in her heart Chris would even take time off if he was working. In the end she made her distasteful request and Chris accepted.

When Chris got Nora’s call for a ride he immediately said yes.  Chris knew that Inside over the six months since the breakup he had become a little more resigned to what they had being over. Chris thought he could handle a giving Nora a ride as a friend.

Chris had suspected the ride from the airport would be awkward.  His intuition was right.  Nora was jet lagged, a regular transcontinental burnt-out rolling stone. The grind of seventeen hours either in the air, or waiting bored as hell in two different airports, had sapped her humanity. To ensure the ride didn’t back to Nora’s place get too weird Chris did not turn on any of “their” playlists. He tried to ask about the trip but Nora was really too tired.  He got three-word answers wrapped in sentences that then faded to silence. Chris knew from experience when she was tired, Nora would get short and cross. He quit talking. She nodded off once the car’s cabin was silent. For most of the ride she slept head against the passenger window softly snoring.

Nora awoke with a start as Chris leaned in her door offering his hand to help her exit the vehicle.  She could see he had popped the hatch and had taken her carry on and under seat bags up to the house. Nora was still out of it when she took Chris’s hand to exit the vehicle. His hand did help her get out, but then he kept holding her hand as they stood beside the car on the sidewalk. Seconds passed by and she had already stuttered out her thank you and still he was holding her hand. 

Cheating on Nora had been the biggest mistake of Chris’s life.  In other relationships Chris just sucked it up when he was caught straying and moved on.  Each relationship had its different levels of comfort, and the emotional costs of going varied. But even when Chris was the person dumped, on those rare occasions when he had done nothing wrong, he had never doubted another relationship was waiting not too far down the line. He sucked it up and moved on.  But this was different. 

Kelli was a dead end and a mistake.  Chris didn’t know why his relationship with Nora really mattered to him, but it did.  His feelings for Nora were visceral. As he held Nora’s hand as she exited the vehicle, he tried to convey his most sincere apology and his most wounded and injured self ever without words.  His pain was in his eyes. His loss was visible in how he held his body. He stilled his tongue showing total contrition.  Chris was as broken and begging of forgiveness in his looks as a medieval priest whipped and lying before a cross in an old mountain monastery.

Nora sensed these things.  She also sensed when Chris’s hand seemed to lose its tension.  With his grasp weakening Nora pulled her hand away and she thanked him again. She would not give him a good bye kiss.  She would not promise a call in the future.  She put the key in her door and waved him a short waist kind of flapping hand thank you and go away gesture. Nora looked at Chris just a second too long as she entered her house and they both felt it.  Nora clearly saw the pain and she felt the broken pride-less spirit in Chris’s demeanor.  But would it last?  But did his now open, wounded and raw heart balance the scales between what he had done to her and what it seemed to be costing him?  Nora pushed her luggage to the side and sat on the couch.  Quickly, very quickly in that cool, cool living room she fell into a deep, deep sleep. 

Prayer or Meditation

Sometimes I wish I had an ancient stone chapel somewhere near my house. This small prayer chapel would have a well-worn threshold made of granite with grooves worn in it from passionate penitent pilgrims’ knees. The ceiling would be dark with the soot of a thousand years of candles and oil lamps.  The air inside with be cool and protected from the heat of day by the stone edifice surrounding it.  The acoustics would be crisp and ringing so that a Gregorian chant would fill the hall with a rich full sound of Latin words sung acapella. 

This is just a dream for you don’t need a place like this to be close to the divine.  You simply have to have a silent moment when you heart can be heard.  You need a silent moment when you can hear the small still voice of the holy, when you can experience the precious flash of song or light, or where a calming moment of inspiration can fill your empty mind. Still, sometimes a holy space like an ancient chapel will provide you an opening in the veil that you would not find otherwise.

In many senses the hour of golden light combined with the music of Stile Antico’s Music for Compline is my stone chapel.  On an evening of a once humid day now filled will cooling air, the sound of these voices as I sit on an old dining room chair at an old dining room table now cast out upon the back porch, the holy is within my grasp. I guess in the end, there is my prayer chapel.

I offer the translation of the piece offered below:

If I give slumber to my eyes


and to my eyelids drowsiness,

I shall sleep and rest.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son,
 and to the Holy Spirit.

There is a very esoteric and mystical reading on this text that can be found here. https://saintpaulsanglicancatholic.net/the-psalms

Before Time Controlled Me *

Before Time Controlled Me *

At evening

In the passing of a clear day

With sunlight, now sunset, now twilight fading

The birds provide one last chorus to their long song

A song hardwired over millennia and more

Twee, twee, twee.

The old table made of oak with varnish fading

Set out upon a dispirited porch 

Offers up a fine place to watch the gold and the reds

Of day’s end sky

A leather jacket feels comforting

A coffee is soothing.

A scent of a fire lingers on eastbound air

Someone is sitting on this nearly still night

Perhaps circled with those well-loved, loved well

Around flames and warmth

Facing west with collars upturned

They release the day to the care of others westward.

Inhaling the faint fragrance of smoke

I rock back in my chair

My mind is blank

As the scented air flows in through my nose

And out over my lips

I am free in this moment from all cares.

Music of the Spheres

23 April 2020

Living in isolation is tough.  Today I decided all this repetition needed a soundtrack.  Truth be told I started my “Deep Within the Bunker” playlist yesterday.  Apple Music has helped with to create a 35+ song playlist.  In the application’s four suggested playlists (generated anew each week) from New Music to the Get Up I have found some great songs.  

The music I’ve picked is a weird blend.  A number of recently released songs are heavily loaded on the first half of the playlist.  Most of these artists I had never heard of before I put the Apple playlist created on. The last bit is a collection of acoustic renderings performed mostly by the artists who had hits with the songs, think Jane Says by Jane’s Addiction and The Freshmen by the Verve Pipe. Tis’ a funny thing for most of the music on the front end can be traced to the stylings of the artists at the tail end.

Music makes me feel good.  Feeling good is extremely important in getting through this period of nationwide house arrest. Music, reading, binge watching TV and walking, these are my personal coping tools.  My wife has turned to cooking. We had excellent homemade shish kofta, tabouli and pita bread last night.  Today we had very tasty and delectable pizza. My youngest has been playing online games and doing his study by computer college courses.  My oldest son is working.  The recently refurbished basement is his.

Something lightens up inside me when I hear instruments like six string Martin and Gibson guitars matched with mandolins and joined with strong voices.  My musical tastes are not everybody else’s.  Bliss can come from various directions.  I know some people that will find happiness working their way through a catalogue of death metal. The times are such that we are isolated and facing great challenges mental, physical and financial. Whatever lifts us up, we need to embrace it now.

I know there will be huge changes in this world by the time the pandemic passes. Life will no longer be as we knew it in the years before March 2020. With changes that have come and those that will come, we will need things to lighten life up life for us.  I offer music as one excellent tool for this.  Peace out my friends

  

At Evening

21 April 2020

Damn it is cold for this point in April.  Weather forecasts are saying we may get a dusting of snow this night.  Damn.  Wind has been coming up in strong bursts from the west all day.  When it catches you, the chill penetrates into your bones.  No howling sounds or shaking lawn furniture right this moment, all that happened this afternoon. 

Just got back from a walk in the golden light of this early evening. As I walked, I listened to a playlist of songs I had heard recently.  An eclectic mix.  Was listening to a song I don’t hear often by the 400 Unit and I have to say I really do like Jason Isbell’s lyrics. Watching the day fade and the evening come on, I was just blissed out by the clarity of the blue skies and the warmth of the sun on a big tree by the park.

64 years may have flown by since I was born, but I still find joy in the little things of everyday existence.  There was an old country song with some words about finding gold in the sunlight and silver in the surface of a big still lake.  Yeah, I am kind of like that.  When I walk the trees and the flowers, the sunlight and the clouds, they make me feel so very good. In those moments I am out and about I am loosed from the concerns of this world.

Retiring from day to day struggles at my workplace has been a real blessing.  Oddly I am only noticing this now, but the pandemic and social distancing kind of demanded my mind’s focus for a bit.  Still, once I figured out how we would make all our payments and got into a daily routine I feel so much lighter, yeah lighter.  Tricky trying to describe this feeling of weightless existence.  

[Interruption here, cat has demanded to have her ears scratched and her belly rubbed].

Well I will leave you with a photo of me against the blue sky, a photo of a tree in its golden glory and a song that you probably have never heard.  May you sleep in peace tonight.  As I try and do every time I create a post I will leave you with a song you probably don't know.  But I promise you it will be pretty.