A New Age With New Routines

Up by six, my first cup of coffee. Not yet a thought, however, about what to say today.

More coffee, as the light outside starts arriving.

Maybe this health crisis will unleash a new age of fantasy. We are forced by the circumstance of Corona-V to suspend our normal interactions with one another. Friends, family may be close by, geographically, but they might as well be on the other side of the world. Video games are thriving -- an ultimate expression of fantasy and quest.

Over the past week I've found myself borrowing my grandchildren's art supplies to make birthday cards. The results are childish and primitive, circa age seven, I'd say. But they transport me back to my childhood in Michigan. We didn't buy Hallmark cards; we made them.

My mother sewed and knitted. I am wrapped this moment in a shawl she knitted for me decades ago. It shields me from the cold and damp of an early Bay Area morning. Parents do things like that -- make or give protective shields for us as we venture out in the world.

Until I did that -- venture out -- I really had no idea who I was. Then, in college at the University of Michigan in the 1960s, new movements were erupting all around. The peace/anti-war movement; the civil rights/black power movement; the environmental movement; women's liberation; gay/queer liberation; the farmworkers' boycotts; the student movements against any sort of administrative control, which Mario Savio and the Freedom of Speech Movement epitomized.

What I could not have anticipated was that I was drawn to all these movements. The people leading them felt like my brothers and sisters. We all felt like outsiders for one reason or another. Then again, exactly what was *I* outside of? Here I was, white, square, male at an elite university with peers who would go on to be prominent leaders in government, industry and the non-profit world.

For reasons that remain vague and cloudy to this day, I never felt like an insider at all.

As it turned out, millions of others felt exactly the same way. Once I realized that, I found my voice -- not as an activist, that was not for me, but as a story-teller, chronicling what was happening around me. Gradually, my confidence grew that I could trust what I observed, that the reality I perceived bore at least a reasonable resemblance to something more concrete than the ramblings of a village idiot, which is what I considered myself to be.

The fact, should we agree to face it, is we all have a lot to say. Most people just don't say it, not publicly at least. And yet what is known as the public square or the pubic commons is where the grassroots conversations that mold the future occur. Some of this can be irritating -- speakers on boxes with bullhorns; others passing out leaflets.

I'm not sure why, but those I find especially obnoxious are religious proselytizers. This touches a raw vein for me. Don't get me wrong -- if you sincerely are an adherent of any religion, I feel pleased for you. But my request is that you keep it entirely to yourself.

Of course, nowadays we cannot even go to the public square, so there are no rushing crowds, bullhorns or proselytizers. In fact, no one is about. The commons are empty, droplets of virus hanging in the air with one to land on.

We've ceded the commons to COVAD-19.

***

Besides making art, and exploring virtual communications channels, we can cook. Last night I cooked one of our favorites for my family -- a tomato meat sauce over pasta, often called spaghetti. This time I had a pound of veal, another of beef, tomato paste, fresh cut tomato slices, onion flakes, fresh sticky garlic cloves, herbs of many varieties and a touch of hot sauce.

I like it all to simmer for up to two hours as I mix the ingredients until they get to know one another intimately. They fall in love and have their way with each other. As they are joined. the sensuous pleasure this brings me is almost too much, and I have to sneak a taste now and then -- the smallest of sins of every cook.

As the pasta heats, I add olive oil and stir it all with the spatulas and spoons still coated with the red sauce. This cleans the utensils and turns the boiling water to a delicate shade of orange -- just like the western sky outside as the sun fades below the horizon.

The sky is orange, my pasta is orangish, and alas I am growing very hungry.

Hungry for food, yes, but hungry for much more than that. I am hungry for the things this awful virus has stolen from all of us -- the people I cannot share a coffee with, the wandering past busy shops, the encounters that lead to smiles and laughter.

And yet, as long as we remain open to them, art, cooking and new friends await us. These short essays are one way for me to participate in the society that is emerging post-pandemic. It was never my intention nor even a thought that thousands of people would show up daily to read these words. I'm not standing on a box and I don't own a megaphone.

But I am wrapped in my mother's shawl 18 long years after she passed, protected against the elements that would weaken me and let that poor virus in. In the words of the old gospel, I've seen the light, and I can testify that it is orangish.

-30-