The Perfect Vision Plague Diaries #9

Notes on the general state of the neighborhood, the family, and the masses in the time of the virus.

Yesterday’s numbers:

• 1,359 confirmed positive cases (up 82 from yesterday)
• 100 confirmed deaths (up 6 from yesterday)

An even 100. Let’s keep it under 200 for the duration, eh? They’re back to confirmed numbers, too. I guess their Windows XP system finally got those updates installed. And there’s this “new” campaign now called “Stand Together, Stay Apart.” They’re finding new ways to say the same thing. Fine with me. Constant escalation of restrictions is the fast lane to defensiveness and panic. Whether they mean to or not, the government here is sending the message that we’re already doing enough, as long as we just friggin’ do it. It keeps the sense of threatening heavy-handedness from creeping in (says the guy living on a peninsula whose government just cut off access to the mainland with 4 hours notice).

This is the first time since the beginning of things that I didn’t start writing today’s post yesterday. Maybe that means we’re normalizing. Our quarantine is no longer a surprise or an adjustment – at least not much of one. The changes are small and connected enough to the last change that it doesn’t seem like a big deal. Doesn’t seem like things are getting worse. That’s a feat that our public health people can be a little proud of. They’ve managed to manipulate a ridiculously fickle public into being reasonable about this. Oh, there’s griping and complaining and theorizing and second-guessing, but we were doing that before all of this – in the midst of incredibly prosperous and liberty-filled times.

Around here, “please stay home if you can,” became “schools are closed,” “don’t go to work,” and “practice social distancing;” then a small shift to the outdoors with “don’t crowd the parks and beaches,” which became “the parking lots are closed at the parks and beaches.” And now, for all the zigging-and-zagging of the past two weeks we’re really still just at “please stay home if you can.”  It’s interesting to note that the second thing – schools are closed – was the last thing we did that was motivated by the coronavirus. Everything else was necessary because of us, in our tendency to combine denial with resistance, and then rather pridefully confuse that mixture with wisdom.

Which makes me think of elections, for some reason (haha). What if we’re still being socially distant on election day? Do you think anyone’s planning for that right now? I would be, if I were somehow connected to that process. In Washington we vote by mail, so no worries. The ballot handlers would have to be careful, but there’s no shared equipment, no lines, no screens to touch, pens or pencils or however the rubes in other states do it. Are there still chads anywhere?

Throughout it all, it’s worth mentioning, the government (bless their souls) is still encouraging us all to go outside and get some exercise. I agree wholeheartedly and appreciate their faithful adherence to that basic tenet of human health. It’s important to move, and to breathe fresh air. And now that the parking lots at the parks are closed, and the weather’s a bit worse, it won’t be socially irresponsible to go there. The crowds’ll be diminished, perhaps back to something close to “locals on a weekday” levels. I hope so. Mind you, the best I’ve done along the lines of exercise is some minor landscaping – taking a curved path of large stepping stones and turning it into a straight path of large stepping stones. My wife did a great deal of the work herself, having begun it the day after I wrenched my back moving the birdbath. We’re doing it via a system of shortcuts and disregard for the correct way to lay stones, but that’s ok because it’s a lot harder this way, and is taking longer.

Otherwise I’ve been idle, probably because I feel genuinely ashamed somewhere in my subconscious for being part of the crowding problem at Alki beach. I mean, there’s no getting around it – I was one of the bad guys in all of that. There’s an impulse when one is guilty of something to cast aspersions on the crime, but that’s childish. I find it healthier, more gratifying, and more honest to simply put my hand in the air and say “that was me.” Makes it easier to move on. Try it sometime. Ah, who am I kidding, you already do.

I’m busy though, too. We’re taking my son’s schooling perfectly seriously, so he and I are pretty thoroughly occupied from 9-3 every day. Third grade is fascinating – basic math, bad handwriting, cursive practice. But that’s all expected. What warms me is the art history – looking at Durer and Velasquez, at modern marble quarrying and Michelangelo. Chiaroscuro, foreshortening. I didn’t hear those words until high school. And also the literature – they write their own stories, proofread, edit, and revise. He’s reading Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh right now. I’m going to read it along with him for the flashbacks and nostalgia, and also to make it something he and I can talk about.

And his sister in 6th grade – she just finished reading Steinbeck’s The Pearl, with an accompanying series of interpretation assignments that were impressively layered. In the mail yesterday she received her next reading assignment: Animal Farm. I don’t think I had it that good in 6th grade. There’s an odd serendipity or synchronicity to the universe that I like to note in times like these: I used a quote from Animal Farm in the 2nd episode of these Plague Diaries, having no idea her school would be sending the book to her.

Anyway, the sun’s up, and I have to go see what I’m going to write about tomorrow.

………

 

Your “Homeless in Coronafornia” update for today:

Um still pretty quiet but it seems more people are starting to come out and do things

Not very exciting, that one. He’d know more about people getting out than I would. He is out all the time, having no “in” to enjoy with any regularity. And that’s probably the way things are going to go. We’ll all just start acting more normal without the government telling us to (we’re no slaves, amirite). We’ll creep back into the public places, nobody will tell us not to anymore, and the “all clear” will come when we’re already back to meeting the mailman at the door.

 

—Admit your mistakes, Comrade Citizen!—