Nostalgia for the Edge

It's become clear that this country's political leaders have essentially failed to meet the frightful challenge of COVID-19:

* Some governors want to reopen their state economies, against the recommendations of public health officials. More infections and deaths would inevitably occur.

* Months into the pandemic, there still is no coordinated national strategy for dealing with it. A severe shortage of masks and PPE plagues health care providers in some hot spots.

* Sizable portions of the public don't understand what is happening. They express their anger in protests, but they don't know who to blame.

* The President contradicts his top public health advisors, then backtracks. He is clearly confused about what to do.

* The Democrats are not helping matters by launching partisan attacks in an election year when unity of our government institutions is desperately needed.

* The science continues to roll in indicating COVID-19 has been around for longer than previously thought. It has been reported that intelligence agencies warned about the pandemic long before action was taken.

Without thinking, most Americans will cast blame for all of this according to their political orientations, which are as hardened as the arteries of an ill person. So for the rest of us, how are we to proceed with our disrupted lives in this context? We know the smartest thing is to continue sheltering-in-place, having food and supplies delivered, and maintaining social distance. These are inherently apolitical decisions.

***

I got to visit my beloved San Francisco yesterday evening for the first time in way over a month. I don't remember the last time I was there. Six or eight weeks may not sound like a lot, but under our current state of affairs, time has slowed down, sped up and virtually disappeared. It seems as if there is no time anymore.

As we neared our destination in Glen Park last night, a familiar thick wave of white fog replaced the blue sky and orange sun.

Along with the fog, a wave of nostalgia washed over me as we drove through the streets and neighborhoods I've gotten to know so well over the past 50 years. Without prompting, memories from this block or that block reasserted themselves.

San Francisco is my adopted home or maybe it adopted me. Arriving at the age of 24, I was searching for a life, just like so many others who migrated to the coast then and still do now.

It's a city where if you are lucky you may find an identity that eluded you elsewhere. Even today, with absurdly high rents and costly services, there is a certain magic in the air blowing in from the Pacific. San Francisco is an edge city, perched on a peninsula way out at the end of a continent, far from the cities in the East that dominate the foolish spectacle that passes as the state of our public affairs.

You can pick up similar traces of this magic in other edge cities -- Perth, Seattle, Key West, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Gatineau, Dublin, Brugge and Helsinki, among others.

Last night, we were in the city that adopted me to deliver food supplies to family members. I got to see my youngest grandchild for the first time in months -- she is 18 months old and surprised me by calling me the name she had somehow learned by the time she was one -- Grandpa.

I smiled at her and called her name across six feet's distance. All I could think of is I want to survive to a much older age than this one and get to know her as she grows up.

***

As I lay in bed in the darkness around 4 AM this morning, it became clear to me that I would write about wistfulness today. The origins of the word nostalgia -- Greek, Latin, German -- give it the layers of meaning that resonate when we employ it.

English is such a complex language, benefitting from so many cross-fertilizations from other languages, that with a little work we can achieve a rare precision of meaning in a world of ambiguity. Indeed some languages thrive on ambiguity, which has its own beauty, allowing for nuanced interpretations according to one's preferences and predilections.

Yet nostalgia also implies a longing for the past when now the past is basically the day before yesterday, you know, when we could hug a friend on the street, sip coffee in a cafe while reading a book, romance one another over candles and wine.

When all of a sudden that was swept away by the tsunami of COVID-19, the world of possibilities for us started to shrink.

I've read several articles about how elderly people are experiencing this epidemic lately. Perhaps it is odd that these patients often present very different symptoms from those of younger people.

Some of those symptoms reportedly include disorientation, weakness, loss of appetite, difficulty walking, and a propensity to fall and get injured.

Then again, perhaps it is not so odd. Many elderly people live in specialized care facilities where, these days they are confined to their rooms and are bereft of any physical contact.

Not too long ago I was in that situation. What I recall was a profound sense of disorientation, weakness, loss of appetite, difficulty walking, and a propensity to fall and get injured.

So which disease did I have then -- COVID-19 or the ravages of isolation?

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