Tag Archives: pandemic

Wherein I Find a Metaphor on My Walk and Have to Go Lie Down

So, after a few decades as an English teacher, and a few more as a serious reader, I am pretty blind. My glasses, which started out as readers, and then added distance, are now trifocals, with the middle range for the computer. And normally that’s just fine, although whenever I get a slightly stronger prescription, I have to be really careful (or just take them off) while going down stairs for a few weeks–because that can get wonky.

But yesterday, on my second day of exercisanity walking while wearing a bandana, I found myself 1) fogging my glasses and 2) having my glasses rise over the bandana, putting the mid/low bit of the lenses in front of me as I tried to walk on uneven Boston sidewalks. At first the problem was simply tripping slightly. But then I started to get eyestrain. Then nauseated. Then– Yeah, I cut my walk short so I wouldn’t throw up on the side of the street. Yes, Covid-19 is a respiratory disease, but vomit on a sidewalk in your neighborhood is just never a good look.

But the metaphor holds. My attempts at personal safety and at protecting others made it kinda hard to see clearly. It made me self-isolate even though I really felt the need for exercise.

I’m not sure what else I can get from that, but it seemed worth thinking through.

Keep Calm, Stay Well, Keep Writing.

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Love in the Time of Plague

I got an email from Kickstarter a few days ago that spoke to the current moment:

“In times of crisis, some might feel selfish pursuing creative work. It might be hard to imagine why your art matters in the midst of a pandemic. But think of the book that shaped your childhood; the movie you watch whenever you feel sad. Creative work transports us. It recharges and renews us. And in order to experience it, someone needs to make it—to get that strange, unprecedented idea out into the world.” (No author cited)

But a few hours earlier, for the first time in a long damn time I started writing a poem, which I will find tomorrow and finish and post here. But in the meantime I wrote this for a prompt on one of my Facebook groups. It is dedicated to Musashi, who is now the Teaching Assistant for my now-online classes.

 

Love in the time of plague is this black cat

walking over my keyboard because he knows

attention is love, attention to what your loved one

attends to is love, and also when she doesn’t yell at you

for making all the M’s run across the screen

that reticence, the soft voice calling you

a goober, that most of all is also love.

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And yes. That is my rollbook he’s sitting on.