Quick intermission on this warm and sunny Sunday before I go back to painting. I Had a great riverside run this morning. (Observing the required social distance of course as did most of the others) It was interesting to see so many people taking to walking (with or without their dogs – even a guy with a bird on his shoulder who technically was not walking but "scootering") If this continues, we may well be on the way to retrieving some semblance of health and wellbeing. Goodbye couch; goodbye obesity; Hello walking and running. Also, people greeting each other, smiling … And all from a distance. It seems some good is coming out of all of this. Maybe just maybe this pandemic will in the end force people to take a very deep look into themselves. I have found that a lot of people are trying to help out as much as they possibly can. We all must understand that it is not the same to be isolated in a house with a garden versus an overpopulated apartment building with nowhere to catch the sun without risk nor is it the same to be in the high-risk areas versus sparser populated ones. It is not fair. And now, it seems even less fair than before. Sharing and caring, that's the current motto. Of course, there will always be the a-Loles... but their reckoning will be at their doorstep one day. One can only hope.
Until tomorrow, peoples of the page.
Be kind. Be safe. Namaste. And don’t forget to like/follow us. We thank you for your kind patronage.
ISOLATION JOURNAL | A Southern Strategy |Day 6
The Prom Has Been Canceled-------------------------------------
I had a mask around my neck outside while doing more yard work today, for pollen, since I am sensitive during the week it covers Carolinians and their homes like lethal lace.
Not thinking everything through, I left it strapped beneath my chin on a quick errand down to the Dollar Store to see if I could find my allotment of paper towels and bleach; the store had been bare for four long days of almost everything I had needed. (This was one of two conservative excursions I would allow myself today. )
I had barely gotten halfway down the aisle in futile search of bleach when I noticed several pairs of eyes staring at me with the look of alarm reserved for serial killers and aliens. I felt like I was Tessie, the ill-fated housewife in Shirley Jackson's THE LOTTERY who had drawn the death-by stoning ticket in the annual sacrifice deemed 'traditional' in her small, cowed village ("Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon!").
I wondered to myself what these folk will do if more sh*t comes down, shelter-in-place is mandated, a national lockdown is implemented, and the only images they see from behind their screen doors are strangers in hazmat suits? None of us wants to "go there," --I certainly don't-but face it, some facts we have, and some facts we don't. The whole fabric of reality woven by current science, media, and gutter politics has become what Human Resources officials like to call a whistleblower to slander and disable him or her: a loose-cannon. 'Shock'n'Awe' stratagems which arose from 9-11 may never fade to seem mild to historians, but they now pale against some of the fears engendered by the threat of Whatever-This-Is.
I whipped off the mask from around my neck and put it my blazer pocket, then claimed my allotment of paper towels. When I got in my car, I wiped down the steering wheel, then my hands, drove across the street to get some gas at Woody's, then repeated the same ritual in my car after gassing up. Then I returned home to do more cleaning chores before I embarked across town to accept a friend's offer to help change my car lights so I could pass inspection. Of course, we played everything at "safe distance" with sanitizer and such and had some quality time to chat about the great "it" amongst us, and our mutual concern that a lot of locals were being far too unconcerned but, oddly, not unconcerned enough to stop hoarding as if it was some unconscious appeasement to their Armageddon ideology.
In the middle of prepping dinner, it occurred to me that I had found a new rhythm on my sixth day of 'isolation.'
Instead of entertaining anxiety about Night as I had all winter long, wondering how I would fill the hours without tilting into alcoholism or idle ruminations unworthy of mention, I had become calmer. I'd been cash-strapped for almost a decade, unable to do much of anything with my evenings but stay close to home and hope the muse would strike me with some new melody to refine and, perhaps, commit to a recording.
As my friend Carole had pointed out so succinctly in her own Facebook post, the whole world is in the same slammer all-of-a-sudden. No one else is going out for drinks and sushi, concerts, or anything. As long as one has a roof over his or her head, food to eat, and decent health, well, who is Special?
It's as if the Senior Prom has been canceled, and 'Carrie' White can stay home, think things over, process her strange gifts to make things move, deal with her zealot mother, avoid calamity and her awful destiny, and... well, everyone lives.
How one sees humor when he lives across from a cemetery.
© Silvanus Slaughter 2020
#IsolationJournal #Covid19 #CdC #WHO #Lockdown #hope
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