Hi, This week I went to the Bronx Zoo website to connect with anything but the world I’m in. Remind me never to do that again. I realized I live in a cage, too.
1. Bronx Zoo has live webcams starting at 10 AM each day. I watched lemurs, or should I say I waited for the lemurs. They stayed inside their house and while I thought I saw some type of motion near the entryway, it seemed like a really long time before I actually saw a lemur. I watched a sea lion (which I initially thought was a rock) lay about for so long without a whisker moving that I thought, “Jesus, I think he’s dead. They have a camera on a dead sea lion. Kids are watching this. For God’s sake!” He wasn’t dead as he subsequently “roared” like a sea lion and I spilled my coffee at the sudden sound as it came from the center of the earth.
2. I can relate. My roar is not as robust but resignation has set in and if there is a slower human being getting from den to kitchen, I’d like to have a webcam on them. Does YouTube have a film about sleepwalkers?
3. But, the instagram account for Bronx Zoo is better because their cameras must be motion activated. The facial expressions of a gibbon inspired me to get more creative in my cage this week and to put on some make-up.
4. I feel like Christopher Columbus on Mondays when I go for the weekly shopping trip. He was in search of spices when he discovered America and I wonder if he had to sanitize his haul of allspice, vanilla, and red peppers when he got back home? Plus, I’m going into the vanilla business because for a small bottle I could buy a small boat and set sail for the Spice Islands, too. All the cheaper ones were gone as well as flour because apparently quarantined folks have discovered bread.
5. Sharon Olds, the poet, (“I love to be a little disgusting.” ) was interviewed in 2016 by Eleanor Wachtel on Writers and Company. This interview was replayed this past Sunday on the podcast . Thank you Gods of All Things for Sharon Olds. She had just published a book called, ‘ODES”. and here a few of her titles: Ode to Tampon, Ode to Condoms, Ode to Hip Replacement, Ode to Wattles, and Ode to Donner Party Moms. This woman’s titles alone make me laugh out loud. But, the honesty of them kicks you in the shins at the same time and so you hop painfully around the room as you laugh.
6. To parents out there still able to read after becoming teachers to their children, there is this one brilliant cri de coeur sentence from a Mom in New Jersey: “I don’t even feel like I’m parenting at the moment. We’re all just alive and in the same room.” Elizabeth Kelley, Columbus, Ohio.
7. If you only read one article this week, let it be the one by Atul Guande in The New Yorker . He is a surgeon in Boston and he describes the “re-entry” process he and all his colleagues have to go through each day when they go to work. If the numbers of the US dead from COVID19, 90,694, is too difficult to grasp, read the article in the NYTimes Sunday magazine about one funeral director in New York.
8. I have resumed my daily meditation practice. Now, instead of anger management, I simply need reality management techniques. And, one tried and the true way I have always done that is reading more. If I am forced to answer the question, “What do you miss most during quarantine?” I’d have to say, “The Library”. Yes, it may compete with not seeing family and friends and taking the train into Boston. And, of course, Amazon two day shipping on books is in the competition for most missed. I ordered two books this past week which will take over a week to arrive. I said to myself, “All you have is time, fool, and no library, press “buy”. W.S. Sebald and Pablo Neruda arriving soon. None of the reopening strategies are inviting the elderly to stop by for their gala reopening. Even if the phases work flawlessly with no one step forward, one step backward, phase 4 in Mass is called the “new” normal. Estimated at least a year away. I don’t think folks who are able to participate and encouraged to enter phase 1, 2, and 3 quite grasp this horizon and what it means for us.
9. Oh, and don’t forget. Hydroxychloroquine. “What do you have to lose?” Where is Elizabeth Barrett Browning when we need her to outline “How do I Lose Thee? Let me Count the Ways. 1)Maybe hydroxychloroquine. My verse would be borrowed by Shakespeare, “Hoist with his own Petard”. Literal meaning, a bomb maker is “hoisted” by his own explosive device. I don’t believe any of his base or lieutenants are going to take him out so waiting for a palace revolt is pointless, but poetic justice would be that his demise is left to his own hands. Would I prefer an election to a pharmaceutical petard? Yes, I would. But, if he does it to himself? So. Be. It. 10. I wrote a text to a teenage grand niece about how a future awaits her after this COVID19. I realized after I sent it that at my age and given that we are not in Phase 1-3, I have to create my future during COVID19 because it is my future. Gulp. Looking at it directly is like looking at the sun.
11. But, Wendy MacNaughton’s poster she created right after the 2016 election is helping. I am planting it as a guidepost for LIVE future creation in my house. After seeing this poster, I picked up my damn chin, put my calloused hands around a pair of scissors and cut the last of my dying tulips, and got me some light from scanning the exhausted petals into my photo computer software. It’s not as funny or sad as Sharon Olds, “Ode to Wattles” but it’s the best I could do.
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” Carl Jung Dammit. You can read all the new blog posts here https://www.patcoakley.com and can share this link with anyone you think might need some survival suggestions.
If you are not subscribed but would like to be, click here
