#StayHome Looking back . . .
Selected points from my April-May journals, notes during the pandemic mixed with quotations from Gore Vidal’s Creation, the book I was re-reading during those days. Pardon the blur . . .
4/4 – Above but not immune . . .
4/7 - @ 12,000 souls lost to Covid-19 . . . owners of condos here bitching about lost income . . .
“I have made it a policy never to show distress when insulted by barbarians. Fortunately, I am spared their worse insults. These they save for one another.” (Vidal 8)
4/8 – Prepping for my one and only outing, to Publix for food and cerveza, creating scarf as face-covering . . . This is just a void of not knowing what to do . . . As if we ever really know anyway.
4/9 – Death toll rising with Covid and I fear a relaxing of vigilance; no, no to fear – a thingy-verb-state that philosophically is on my workout list of abolition. What is the opposite of fear, besides a stupid, uninformed confidence? Is it hope, stoic joy, or not giving a fuck?
“ I soon realized that the secret of power – or in this case magic – resides not in its exercise but in its aura.” (Vidal 51)
4/10 – Pine trees lovely in the viral silence/soft cloud cover/clean air/Good Friday Passover in a fluid unknowable world . . .
4/12 – Easter night . . . this time, this hour, no one’s nonsense stands between me and the music of the Gulf roaring and the wind blowing . . . no human noise . . .
4/14 – Donald declares his power is absolute and Bill O’Reilly says older victims of the coronavirus were on their last legs anyway . . . dystopia . . . when I mask, I feel disoriented . . . Figure it out . . . This is a time for invention . . .
“Wise men take whatever they can find, even in the most unlikely places.” (Vidal 71)
4/16 – Over 30,000 US dead now . . . I eat coffee ice cream and listen to The Real Housewives of NYC argue . . . empires fall . . .
“Why should kingdoms differ from human being? They are born. They grow. They die.” (Vidal 248)
4/17 – How effective is prayer . . . feeling Covid frozen when internet connection was briefly out . . . what do we do when digital lifelines blow . . . Googling sources to answer that question . . . manifesting dreamed outcomes is best accomplished by a declarative list, for example, I am Teflon . . .
4/18 - Texting with friends in NYC and Massachusetts about Florida morons . . . reasons why I don’t want to buy a house here . . . Thank god I laughed today, prompted by video of Governor DeSantis putting his facemask on wrong, just stupid . . .
“No man ever knows when he is happy; he can only know when he was happy.” (Vidal 309)
4/20 – 4:20! The day of cannabis . . . I haven’t smoked a joint since St. Pete, 2005, Mafia Joe . . . also anniversary of Boston Marathon attacks and Gulf Oil Spill, sorrow, human created . . .
“Cathay’s beautiful, seemingly empty landscape is a hazardous place for the traveler. But then, wherever one goes on this earth, all things are spoiled by men.” (Vidal 414)
4/23 - Thunderstorms like a ten-minute hurricane . . . everything is off, but animals are roaming happy and undisturbed in new places, temporarily . . . This is an era, opening and closing. I am in it. Unease is rational like storm anxiety and Vivo hiding under the bed . . . Covid deaths in the US at around 50,000 . . .
4/26 - The weirdest thing is being in a place where no one DOES anything except sit and yell . . .
4/27 – Palabras on a cool April night/the knowledge/of this truth/the incredible or unbearable lightness of being/in response, la gata rolls on her back/powerful hind paws toward the sky/Earth still turns on her axis . . .
4/29 – April closing and I found zero good houses on Zillow, something I don’t want anyway . . . contradiction – feels like friction – on a partially rainy day – Covid continues – and the relentless sun returns manana . . . I am comforted by imagining what living here would be like for someone like Woody Allen; exile comedy . . .
5/1 – May Day! May Day! The local beaches reopen . . . I cannot even go there . . . Time to prepare for vacay renter invasions . . . lacking that skill, how to deal . . . perhaps just not deal at all . . . whatever . . . a Buddhist way . . .
“When you try too hard, you become tense. When you are tense, you are not at your best . . . cease to be self-conscious in what you do. Be natural.”
5/4 – Here? Ghastly out of staters (some, not all) and unmasked teenagers claiming freedom . . . near 70,000 US Covid deaths . . . so much for a time for elegance and grace . . . I need to get the hell out of Florida . . .
“Sometimes it is wise to confront rather than evade what you fear”. (Vidal 448)
5/7 – Today around 2,000 more deaths from Covid-19; total nearing 76,000 . . . a local asshole set the forest on fire . . . DOJ drops case against Michael Flynn . . . townies and tourists cannot wait to go back to eat at Stinky’s. OMG. Stinky’s . . . bees happy in the holly tree . . . mockingbirds diving . . .
5/10 – I will stay healthy . . . I will outlast them . . . and I will see Trump ousted in November 2020 . . . #esperanza . . .
5/11 – Covid deaths at 80,000 and the West Witch next door is projecting movies on the side of her house . . . Pitbull follows me on Twitter . . . finding a quiet yet alive place . . . devoid of Covid carriers and assholes in pickup trucks . . .
5/13 – Blue sanity and red rage . . . the Trumpers are coming after Dr. Fauci, his truth/facts/science . .
“I think it is better to study real things in a real world”. (Vidal 466)
5/14 – Sigh, inhale, exhale and weight the risks of getting a hair cut . . . bought a tie-dyed pink mask at a boutique on 30A . . . enroll in Medicare, on my list tomorrow . . . oh hell no, Medicare . . .
5/15 – Trump takes news time to spin a tale of “warp speed to vaccine” . . . babbling . . . near 90,000 Covid US deaths, and oh, he wants to lock up Obama . . . . got a novel from the coastal library via curbside pickup, a book wrapped in safe, brown paper . . . strange days . . .
5/17 – My feet look young and strong . . .
5/18 – Renewing my car registration at the DMV, now open, officer put some kind of gun-thing on my forehead for temperature test . . . apparently I am fine . . . Covid-19 USA deaths up to 91,172 . . Walton County releases bizarre cleaning guidelines for rentals that will not be enforced . . . Zeus, Artemis, Hermes, Apollo et al., help us . . .
“If one is going to eliminate the creator of all things, then it is a good idea to replace the creator with a very clear idea of what constitutes goodness in human scale.” (Vidal 483)
5/19 – Speaker Pelosi calls Trump “morbidly obese” 😊
5/20 – Ease/elegance/grace/Covid-19 US deaths at 93,000/three qualities enumerated/this time/it takes a warrior/to be those three . . .
5/21 – Condo pool around 5 PM featured four screaming teenage girls taking selfies and doing what appeared to be cheerleader moves, no irony intended on their parts . . . Googled “quiet lake town” . . . found zip . . . Brazil is in trouble and Trump flags here fly high . . .
5/22 – I reject despair and that is why I reject living in Niceville, FL . . .
5/25 – Memorial Day . . . cloud cover and night rain . . . POTUS golfs . . . deaths near 100,000 . . .I want life in 4D, 3D is missing something . . .
5/27 – For the first time in many, many months, I walked in the surf here on the tiny, sad, Seagrove Beach . . . jammed with locals and visitors . . . Gulf, however, massive and gorgeous . . . we must live bigger . . . George Floyd was murdered in Minnesota by a cop . . . #persist/resist/above this bullshit . . .
5/29 – A shattered wine glass on the tile floor = the real world beyond the condo/Seagrove Beach . . . protests in cities re: Floyd murder and more . . . crisis national . . . pushing Covid off the news . . . hating people now . . . vacationers/fat/clueless/Ozark Lakes party video/what the fuck . . .
5/30 – Hot . . . Covid US deaths at 100,200 . . . Chicago, Nike store looted . . . why not . . . the staged simulacra of something called an economy . . . perhaps it is time for thing (things) to all go down . . . except my bank . . . life is happening . . .
5/31 – Protests continue . . . Donald is in his bunker . . . and all is “right” with the world . . . absurd . . . empires fall . . . anxieties rise . . . I shall remain solid, even if jangly . . . June comes as it always does . . .
“I like to think that in heaven men get credit for how they live and what they’ve aspired to be. If this is true, I am content.” (Vidal 500)
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