Homebound Routines

The winds stirred yesterday just as the rains subsided. The two dance in and out with each other, in a number that includes the sun and a newly full "pink moon."

While all these weather phenomena play across the stage, I've been comparing notes with friends about what they are doing during this shelter-in-place.

One Dad is building a treehouse for his kids in his backyard. He's got the platform built in the nook of a tree but he worries that there are no guardrails. What if one of his young kids falls out and breaks an arm. This is no time to visit a hospital.

Another is converting a chicken coop into a playhouse. A new routine is in place -- you order the lumber online, make an appointment to pick it up, and they bring it outside to you for loading in your car. You don't enter the store.

They are among the lucky ones with enough space for these kinds of building projects.

Numbers of people are sewing or knitting things for each other. Sidewalk chalk remains a major new means of communication for the homebound.

Some friends report a paranoia, as the gravity of this situation settles in on us like a Tule Fog. It's getting hard to see anything clearly,  especially for the elderly who await "non-essential" cataract surgeries. This kind of surgery is usually performed in both eyes, one at a time, usually about a week apart. But now all such medical interventions are on indefinite hold. "We'll call you," is the last message you heard before your eye surgeon closed up shop.

If you are alone or even if you are not, book clubs are a fabulous option. Anyone can organize one, and they thrive virtually -- by Zoom, or FaceTime or Skype, etc.

I've mentioned home-cooked meals before. The ingredients can be delivered to your doorstep. This can obviate the need to go out and shop for groceries. But of course for many people, in many cultures, shopping for food is one of life's sensuous pleasures.

Last I heard, in Peru, men could go out on M-W-F and women on T-Th-Sa. No one could go out on Sundays.

Back to the subject of deliveries, who wants other people to choose your fruits and vegetables for you, not to mention your cuts of meat. Diligent shoppers are giving up a lot of their freedom of choice in this crisis.

One of my journalist friends reports there is a theory California may have been hit by coronavirus last fall/winter when so many of us suddenly got sick at the same time. Did we achieve herd immunity then and is that why California seems relatively unscathed by the pandemic? Or is the early statewide lockdown courtesy of Gov. Gavin Newsom the reason?

As daily life rearranges itself within these stringent parameters, many people are discovering their innate creativity.

Of course, all I have to offer here are snippets of stories. These are just whiffs of ideas flowing past like dandelion seed puffs.

Sometimes my dreams wake me up in the dark. Last night I dreamt a romance. Two people who already have known each other for a while meet up and discover they are now attracted to each other. They are an unlikely pairing on every level, particularly mismatched by age.

So all seems impossible for them.

But they meet outside and maintain the proper social distance. They migrate to a park where they each sit on a bench near one another yet appropriately apart. One of them just can't take it anymore. "I want to violate the social distance protocol with you!"

Thus begins a beautiful but dangerous love story.

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Happy Day!

My youngest son is 24 as of today. We called him at dinner time and the six of us here sang Happy Birthday to him.

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The Light and the Night

Wild turkeys visited here early this morning. They walked boldly down the street. Of course there was no traffic.

Apparently the turkeys did not get the memo about sheltering in place. Hopefully none of the creatures we share this planet with will be harmed by this virus that I contend, we humans have caused to bloom by our own actions, much like the "red tides" that strike the Gulf of Mexico periodically.

I've walked along the Gulf's beaches during a red tide. Normally I would stay close to the water and hunt for seashells. But so many fish bones line the water's edge during a red tide, you cannot walk there unless you wear heavy boots to crush the bones as they whiten in the sun.

Who wants to wear boots at the beach? It's more fun to be barefoot.

***

One of favorite movies from long ago is "In the Heat of the Night" with Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger. It's the story of an unlikely alliance between a small-town Southern sheriff, who is white, and a big-city Northern homicide inspector, who is black.

Together they solve a murder.

The great Ray Charles sang the title song of the same name. Here are some of those lyrics:

In the heat of the night
Seems like a cold sweat
Creeping cross my brow, oh yes
In the heat of the night
I'm a-feelin' motherless somehow
Stars with evil eyes stare from the sky 
(In the heat of the night)
Ain't a woman here before
Knows how to make the morning come
So hard to control...

There is more but I encourage you to watch the movie and hear the rest of that song.

***

Many of us may be having trouble sleeping these nights. When will this Corona-V nightmare end? When can we meet again, closer than six feet again, and hug one another?

Struggling to make sense of all this, I try to tell my grandchildren stories that they might find useful. When you are alone with yourself, it is an opportunity to get to know yourself better. Many of us have mixed feelings about who we are. It is tempting to resolve some of these contradictory feeings through connecting with other people.

That can feel like love, and maybe it is, but I'm not one to pretend to be an expert about that subject.

About the nature of night I may know more. If you are awake and alone it may feel like it will never end, but in truth it always does. If you can train your brain to do so, dream about the day. Dream about the light, the warmth of the sun, the softness of falling rain and the bright petals of flowers blossoming all around you.

This is a beautiful planet. Having traveled virtually all over it -- except Africa  :(  -- I can attest to its beauty.

***

Since I have been posting these Corona-V musings, my Facebook feed has exploded. I cannot keep up with the new friend requests. I do not wish to "chat" with anyone. I deeply appreciate that the writing resonates with certain people and I will continue doing it as I am able. Rather than asking me to chat please add your comments to the bottom of the posts.

Thank you!

The Corona-V Blues

Here we all are again, together. Or more precisely, here we all are again, alone.

These are extremely weird times. Dr. Fauci apparently has said that even after the virus lockdown is eased, a return to normal life will not be possible.

I'm wondering what we will have to give up. Shaking hands? Easy. Elbow bumps work.

Parties? Sports contests? Flying? Professional gatherings?

Where does the list start and where does it end?

***

For random reasons, I've been wondering about love in the age of this virus. People seeking to meet new prospective partners must be feeling disoriented and discouraged, as if one of life's supreme purposes is being stolen from them.

How can you date someone if you have to stay six feet away? 

I'm tempted to revisit Love in the Time of Cholera, the classic by Gabriel García Márquez. In literature, everything has been anticipated.

It must seem odd to some that I am preoccupied by love at a time when people are dying all around us. But it feels natural to me. Life must go on. 

There are so many kinds of love. Some of them result in children, who will grow up and old and carry on our traditions,  be the guardians of our legacies, and create the societies of the future.

Part of their effort will be based on assimilating this disruption in the natural order of things. They will be taking this into account their entire lives. Should, as I fervently hope, this is a once-in-a-lifetime event, they will memorialize it for their children and grandchildren.

My presumption, though I've seen no data, is this pandemic is related to climate change. We know scientifically that a global change of a few degrees in temperature unleashes potentially massive disruptions to our ecosystems, as they struggle to adapt.

This is an election year, less we forget, in the U.S. Control of the White House and Congress is at stake. If I could ask each American voter to consider only one issue, it would be global climate change.

If someone in a position of power denies the grim reality, the scientific certainly of the transition that is destroying our coral reefs, our rainforests, and the rendering of vast areas of the planet ultimately uninhabitable, let's replace that person with somebody who cares about the future our children and grandchildren will inherit.

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As the Pen Goes...

My granddaughter Sophia (9) was doing an art project with me, as was her sister, Daisy (6). We were making birthday cards for their Uncle Dylan, my youngest son.

As I questioned Sophia about her approach to art, she explained, "I just let the pen go where it wants to go."

"That's funny," I answered. "When I write a story I just let the story go where it wants to go."

***

It's been raining for days now. This is spring break for the children, so they have no school work. Card games, board games, art projects, movies are all on the docket.

Everything around us is green now. Or pink (native roses), yellow, purple and orange (the wildflowers). As the rain once again approaches, the beautiful California poppy closes up. The birds seek cover. The dog-walkers break out their umbrellas.

I begin to write, inevitably. I love the rain.

***

Writing my memoir is a daunting task, because I mainly have to work from my memory. Luckily, I also have 50 years of written journals, some letters, and 14 years of blog posts to check my memory against.

I have also reached out to a few friends to compare memories of certain events.

But reconstructing events from long ago is indeed an exercise fraught with peril. I used to use a teaching exercise to make a related point. I would stage an event, such as having someone suddenly burst into the classroom, seize something (say an eraser) and then just as suddenly depart the premises.

Then I would ask each student to write down what they think they just saw. The responses varied tremendously.

Every defense lawyer and prosecutor understands this phenomenon. It is why "eyewitness" testimony can be so unreliable. We all tend to see the events we witness in a self-referential way, in a pre-existing context we bring to the situation.

In his brilliant book, Ways of Seeing, John Berger argues that we perceive the world visually, and only later construct the language that explains what we think we saw. That this is shaded with our biases, ideological beliefs and previous visions is implicit in his argument.

***

Sophia, Daisy and I finished our cards once our pens and pencils had had their way. So too has this story found its way to a conclusion.

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Dress Rehearsal

Ever cognizant of that line from Les Mis about words better left unspoken, discretion nevertheless becomes a challenge at moments like this.

A young woman stopped by yesterday to measure the open space in my daughter's yard. Her idea is to grow vegetables on people's private property, then distribute community food boxes throughout this area. The property owners would be compensated by keeping a percentage of each crop.

I've always loved entrepreneurs.

The soil here is not conducive to gardens. It is hard clay. To make it productive, you would need to break it up and add manure, for starters. Most city dwellers do not like the smell of manure. Of course there always is the "potting soil" option.

But the urge to grow your own food now is intense. We live in the most industrialized agriculture system ever developed, where less than one percent grow the food for the other 99 percent.

As the isolation grows, we are all looking for ways to connect with each other. I cannot grow food for you but I can write stories for you. These are not chapters from my memoir but daily essays meant to accompany our mutual journey through the days and nights of our dress rehearsal.

My mind wanders to engage those among my friends and family who have recently passed away, not from coronavirus ostensibly, but from other diseases. They died just before the pandemic hit, so they missed this experience, for better or worse.

***

Children, with their natural curiosity and resilience, can lead us through this journey. Whether you have children with you now or not, you can listen to their stories, Last night, my grandson wanted to play poker. When his Dad and I sat down at the table with a deck of cards, he arrived with a bandana tied over the lower half of his face.

He explained that he doesn't think he has a very good "poker face," and he didn't want to give away how he felt about the cards he was holding.

He's 11. He won the evening.

One of my granddaughters picks up on conversations by suddenly breaking into song. She can dramatize an item as prosaic as a butter knife.

***

Millions of us have been caught by the pandemic away from home. In my case, I'm not sure that I have a home. We've finished clearing out my San Francisco flat; I no longer have the key or pay the rent there.

My apartment in the assisted living facility is absent one item -- me. My journals, files, memories fill the place, but I have not been there in weeks.

Here, as a guest in my daughter's home, I am welcome, but I am taking up one of my grandchildren's beds.

This family knows how to make the most of a challenging time. We've had lunch at the fireplace, cooking hot dogs, sausages and marshmallows (for s'mores). I cooked a meal -- spaghetti and meat sauce -- for the first time in many months, five I think.

The kids gathered tiny fish from a nearby pond and they are now swimming in an acquarium in the living room.

We eat our meals together. The family chatters in French and English. Often a lively exchange is bubbling along when one of the kids blurts out, "But wait, Grandpa can't understand."

"No," I always say. "I understand."

Choosing our words carefully is a privilege of age. Back to where I started, it is probably best that some things remain unspoken.

Other things -- how much we care for one another, how much we've enjoyed each other's company, how love has caused us much pleasure and ineffable pain, how the accomplishment of a common purpose obviates the difficulty accomplishing it, how knowing we are not actually alone even when we feel alone leads to the urge to make a phone call, take a walk, send a text, post to Facebook, exchange memories -- these are the stuff of our dress rehearsal for that time when we will actually be going away.

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Rediscovering Friendship

These are times to let go of old disputes and resentments. As we shelter in place, cut off from our daily routines and interactions, we have an opportunity to repair our relationships.

It may be an unfortunate analogy, but much like automobiles, relationships need maintenance. Now is the time for a major checkup.

Just posting here on FB, I have been able to reconnect with dozens of friends. According to the latest research, only about 5 percent of my connections on Facebook will see any particular post courtesy of the site's algorithm. That's maybe 70 people.

So I can't expect Facebook to do more than a fraction of the work I need to rediscover old friendships.

My chosen option is to do what I am experienced in doing -- telling stories. This is a natural extension of what I am doing at this point in my life, which is writing a memoir of my 54-year career in journalism.

It's contagious work -- memories stir up other memories. I have always loved those moments when I sense we are onto something big. On the eve of publishing our Patty Hearst/SLA stories in Rolling Stone in 1975, Howard Kohn and I knew we were onto a monster of a story. So did our editor, Jann Wenner.

Jann could be a difficult character, with an explosive temper perhaps fueled by his heavy cocaine habit. But he also knew a story when he saw one, and he saw what we had.

Until that point in my career, I had been a struggling freelancer, with little to show for my efforts other than rejection letters.

But this time would be different. Jann hired a security service, I believe it was Pinkertons, to guard the issue through the printing process. He sent the staff away to a retreat at Ventana, a hot tub resort near Big Sur.

The three of us remained at the office; Howard and I fending off threats from left-wing attorneys who had gotten wind of our impending story, and vowed to prevent the publication of an expose of the true nature of the Symbionese Liberation Army. It wasn't the vanguard of a revolution as they pretended; it was a dangerously misguided gang of thugs.

Meanwhile, Jann was arranging national publicity for our scoop, which would succeed beyond his wildest imaginings.

Life would never be the same after we published that story. Suddenly an entire world of new relationships would be opening up for us. But that's a tale for another day. Today I am just savoring the memory of that pre-publication moment, a moment of excitement, fear and naive expectations.

A moment of hope.

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