In the Space of Days
Everything means something new in between now and for me three weeks ago when I arrived home to see a message from the school where I teach demanding that I create online protocols for all my classes for the rest of the semester.
Depends on your Perspective
“The journey changes you; it should change you.” A. Bourdain
Then I went to the gym two more times and they were shut down. My last workout in a group was with friends in a parking lot. Then I drove to the supermarket to buy an orange and a head of broccoli and was greeted (at 7am Sunday morning) with a line of people that stretched around the block. Inside there were rows and rows of shelves stripped of merchandise and the bulk aisle was shut down entirely because some people were sticking their hands into the containers. The woman in front on me had a cart overfilled with frozen desserts and 8 bottles of liquid soap...I don't know diabetic coma, but her hands will be clean? A guy two spaces ahead of me was pretending that he didn't understand that he couldn't buy 7 cases of bottled water. We were not space six feet apart, but we were careful not to touch on another and I remember the last time I shook someone's hand as if it were an historic last moment.
I'm not disconnected from my friends or my students but virtual relationships are a pallid replacement for real contact. Zoom is my friend because particularly now I find emails and posting are not enough. I need to see your face and hear your voice. I see my neighbors more now than every before becuase we are all out of work and in Las Vegas it is pre-summer so we spend as much time outdoors as we can now. But it feels lonely.
And lastly the madness from those in authority who seem to have no grasp on the facts or on the important tasks we must address. This isn't new. I don't read the news if I can help it. Yes, yes be informed but don't let them take up space if it's just stupid stuff. Now I skip through the headlines in case I need to know.
I'm busy as ever, busier still because I'm still getting the handle on working online all the time. And I work surrounded by all the photographs of my life hanging on the walls and I have to say they all mean something new to me now. I notice them now. I sit and remember when and why they were taken. This is just change but it feels like a small death. I am having weird ass dreams. And, I am scared but excited. Change does that to me. What's next said happily and as I crouch in my closet with my flashlight and a month's supply of D batteries.
Talk to me. What small things are you doing differently now?
Hey!!! this works!!