"In times of trial, on top of the history must you stay."
The news has really been getting to me. The scenes of disease and death. Shortages of vital medical equipment. The absolute ineptitude and stupidity and arrogant contemptuousness of the Trump administration. The horrific predictions of just how bad the Covid-19 Pandemic could become.
I don't really worry about myself and my kids at this point. We're isolating ourselves, and my kids are young enough and healthy enough that the chances are that even if they contracted the virus, they would come through it okay. Me not so much. I'm in four high risk categories: age, heart disease, former smoker, and male. But I'm very careful, doing all that I can do. No, my worry is for the world. For people who have lost their jobs. What the fuck is a $1,000 check going to do for them? And the idea that some people are literally being left to die because there isn't enough room for them to be hospitalized...or that there isn't adequate medical equipment to treat them...that they are literally drowning in their own fluids with no one to help them. We've all got to die, but it is obscene to die that way in the richest country of the world in the 21st century.
And of course now we're finding out...no surprise...that there were plenty of warnings early on, that the worst of this could probably have been avoided if Trump's head hadn't been so far up his ass that he could talk to his own uvula.
And yesterday I happened upon (certainly wasn't looking for it) a Paulina Porizkova post in which she was posing topless (with an arm across her chest) in a pool, and my first thought was, "For fuck's sake, you're rich as Midas and your social isolation includes an Olympic sized heated swimming pool and a house big enough to get lost in without a map...and while people are gasping for breath and dying in hospital corridors, you're doing THIS?" And I read a few of the comments, and there were several other people who felt the same way that I did.
And when I went to bed last night, I was just feeling nothing but despair.
I had a dream in which I was lost in New York City and was desperately trying to find my way back to my car, and I was looking for a place where I could buy a smart phone so that I could have access to Google Maps. I woke up without having found my way.
And I couldn't eat breakfast, but I got my kids fed and cheerily asked them how they'd slept, allathat, and then I sat down on the sofa with a cup of coffee and turned on the news...and it was despair and death and fear. And I looked over at my cat, Jet, and she was sitting on top of my copy of Fernand Braudel's The Mediterranean: And the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (Volume I), and it made me happy for a few seconds. First, because she has this weird propensity for lying on top of the books that I read, but only on the ones that I read every day. And not just because they're lying about...I have lots of books lying about. I think it's because I touch them every day and they have my smell on them. But whatever.
But also because that cat's life has not changed one iota since The Lockdown began. And you know what? She's pretty fucking happy. She looks forward to her meals. She supervises while I scoop her shit out of the litter box. She comes to me when she wants to be petted or to play. And if I lay down to read, she sits on my chest and goes to sleep.
It's a good life.
So I thought I'd Tweet a picture of her...with a li'l caption doing a play on her name: giving her the last name "i." Which made me think of Yoda, so I did a little caption utilizing Yoda-style diction. And sent it out, meaning to share the little happy I had felt.
And then I thought, "Maybe that's what Paulina was aiming for." I don't know, maybe that's giving her too much credit...and I still feel a little pissed, because I really would like to be in a heated Olympic sized swimming pool right now...but hey, what the fuck.
The news has really been getting to me. The scenes of disease and death. Shortages of vital medical equipment. The absolute ineptitude and stupidity and arrogant contemptuousness of the Trump administration. The horrific predictions of just how bad the Covid-19 Pandemic could become.
I don't really worry about myself and my kids at this point. We're isolating ourselves, and my kids are young enough and healthy enough that the chances are that even if they contracted the virus, they would come through it okay. Me not so much. I'm in four high risk categories: age, heart disease, former smoker, and male. But I'm very careful, doing all that I can do. No, my worry is for the world. For people who have lost their jobs. What the fuck is a $1,000 check going to do for them? And the idea that some people are literally being left to die because there isn't enough room for them to be hospitalized...or that there isn't adequate medical equipment to treat them...that they are literally drowning in their own fluids with no one to help them. We've all got to die, but it is obscene to die that way in the richest country of the world in the 21st century.
And of course now we're finding out...no surprise...that there were plenty of warnings early on, that the worst of this could probably have been avoided if Trump's head hadn't been so far up his ass that he could talk to his own uvula.
And yesterday I happened upon (certainly wasn't looking for it) a Paulina Porizkova post in which she was posing topless (with an arm across her chest) in a pool, and my first thought was, "For fuck's sake, you're rich as Midas and your social isolation includes an Olympic sized heated swimming pool and a house big enough to get lost in without a map...and while people are gasping for breath and dying in hospital corridors, you're doing THIS?" And I read a few of the comments, and there were several other people who felt the same way that I did.
And when I went to bed last night, I was just feeling nothing but despair.
I had a dream in which I was lost in New York City and was desperately trying to find my way back to my car, and I was looking for a place where I could buy a smart phone so that I could have access to Google Maps. I woke up without having found my way.
And I couldn't eat breakfast, but I got my kids fed and cheerily asked them how they'd slept, allathat, and then I sat down on the sofa with a cup of coffee and turned on the news...and it was despair and death and fear. And I looked over at my cat, Jet, and she was sitting on top of my copy of Fernand Braudel's The Mediterranean: And the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (Volume I), and it made me happy for a few seconds. First, because she has this weird propensity for lying on top of the books that I read, but only on the ones that I read every day. And not just because they're lying about...I have lots of books lying about. I think it's because I touch them every day and they have my smell on them. But whatever.
But also because that cat's life has not changed one iota since The Lockdown began. And you know what? She's pretty fucking happy. She looks forward to her meals. She supervises while I scoop her shit out of the litter box. She comes to me when she wants to be petted or to play. And if I lay down to read, she sits on my chest and goes to sleep.
It's a good life.
So I thought I'd Tweet a picture of her...with a li'l caption doing a play on her name: giving her the last name "i." Which made me think of Yoda, so I did a little caption utilizing Yoda-style diction. And sent it out, meaning to share the little happy I had felt.
And then I thought, "Maybe that's what Paulina was aiming for." I don't know, maybe that's giving her too much credit...and I still feel a little pissed, because I really would like to be in a heated Olympic sized swimming pool right now...but hey, what the fuck.
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