- The Fact of Breath-an explorations of the mythic symbols of Covid-19. My notebook of the pandemic year
-What we are conscious of, matters.
Let’s think about archetypes of breath.
For “psyche” relates to breath and spirit.
from Greek psukhē ‘breath, life, soul’
“psyche” spirit or soul.
To me, psyche underlies identity; the deeper mission involved in personhood.
Then, pneuma.
“pneuma” Ancient Greek for breath, again, spirit.
The human psyche, not necessarily the mythic allegory, I believe is traditionally depicted as feminine, in contrast to “techne” as the masculine counterpart.
I would think that within the psychic drama of the Covid pandemic, the experience of the psyche might be that of the frontline nurse, embattled, masked, depicted as a young woman in scrubs, though today all gender identities would be included.
So “psyche” still a highly feminine symbol, involves breath spirit survival.
And pneuma underlies pneumonia, the symptoms of respiratory distress.
Pneuma is the Divine Spirit in some sense.
spirit, breath, soul, survival.
So how potent is the archetype of the frontline nurse, symbolically? At a time of respiratory (inspire, respire) distress?
And the fact of breath.
One can’t resist thinking of an old masculine world, literally out of breath.
This drama begs for psychological interpretation.
Greta Thunberg.
Of course the reigns of power are thought to be in the hands of a male who would never concede power to psyche. The president.
So a psychodrama ensues.
What we are conscious of matters.
Is there a possibility of a healing path here in these meanings?
- Mask or Crown: Symbols of Healing
Psyche pneuma mask and crown.
Potent symbols of conflict and healing.
Worth contemplating.
Symbols point to deeper truths.
The deeper truth, if any, is not subject to a stronger argument, a political calculation.
A persuasive argument is often a false cadence in the world of myth and fairy tale.
Americans who protest the lockdown of states and the wearing of masks pose arguments, undermine statistics. Rely on logic, the left brain:
“The suicide rate from the lockdown is higher than the deaths from Covid.”
“The fatality rate for Covid19 is lower than the flu.”
These engage on a level of argument. They are conceived as irrefutable.
But the world is engaged in a drama that involves our deepest instincts. The psyche will not be persuaded by counter arguments. And you don’t win an argument in mythology.
So what of masks and crowns?
The soul is communicating on a soul level now.
What truth will prevail in this psychological experience?
- Mask- and Masquerade.
“The red death had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous…
But Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his crenellated abbeys…
The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. ..all these and security were within…
It was toward the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence..”
-Masque of the Red Death
Edgar Allan Poe
The surgical mask really has one purpose only, and it’s not symbolic.
But we now have engaged the mask in a wider symbolism.
For the king in our story (president) refuses to wear one.
The Man of Bleach has refused the mask.
Here in the realm of the archetypes.
Did I say king? Yes. Sovereign?
- Is there a status here that mask-less Trump would refuse?
sovereign
supreme ruler
ruler
monarch
Crown
crowned head
head of state
potentate
suzerain
overlord
dynast
leader
king
emperor
prince
tsar
royal duke
grand duke
crown prince
mogul
baron
liege (lord)
lord
emir
sheikh
sultan
maharajah
raja
atheling, whatever that us.
pharaoh
leader of the free world
- In any case, our king of Covid refused to wear the mask.
To wear or not to wear a mask involves him deeply in the psychodrama with the nurses and first responders.
The mask of psyche. Breath. Spirit. A plain surgical mask.
There is no right answer. But there is a truth, down there in the realm of myth and fable, in the sub-basement of the crenellated castle.
The powers have shifted.
The truth is more fundamental than a fact, an angry thread.
Truth, or troll:
Protestors who refuse to wear the mask are choosing their own destiny.
Truth, or troll:
The psyche, the spirit, the energy of planetary change may well disregard the hopes of a king, a political party, the richest person or family on the planet.
Truth, or troll:
A corporation is a person.
Truth, or troll:
The earth and all living things are one thing.
We are in this together.
The Fact of Breath: Antiviral Archetypes
- Corona is a Crown
Coronavirus is not a living thing. It’s a protein they say and it looks like this, a jeweled and beveled orb with attachments.
Corona is a crown, as the sun is depicted as radiant.
The radiance of the sun relates to motifs of spiritual iconography, and these symbolic effects are transcendent of life, while partaking of its essence.
In painting, a holy figure may be depicted surrounded by a shape of significance: a nimbus, a halo, a mandala, a corona, a crown.
Corona is a crown.
An aureole of radiance. That is golden.
Areola is anatomical, beauty, erotic, motherhood, nurturing, life- giving.
Aureole has to do with aura. Aura, pneuma, psyche: air, breath, spirit.
Aura comes from breeze meaning a light wind. Aura is air. The mineral element is gold, aurum, Au.
Aura surrounds you. Your coat of many colors.
A halo is a disc of light. Surrounds the head. A corona is a crown.
A nimbus is a luminous and voluminous cloud, encompasses the entire figure.
Mandorla is iconography, an almond-shape of holiness surrounds the holy figure.
The Virgin of Guadalupe is set in a mandorla.
A corona is a crown.
A crown simply drawn in a child’s hand has a sawtooth shape. That is the dancing sun, that light emission from what in history would be its jeweled edge.
Though your crown is often of tissue paper held together with scotch tape.
The President’s hair, blowing about. Hopefully a nimbus. We don’t think so. Meant to be gold. We don’t believe so.
What do you think of the material world?
It means everything. Alan Watts said Americans aren’t materialistic, for we hold the material world in low regard.
We often create junk, and throw it away.
We have a right to not wear a mask, to throw the mask away.
A materialist culture would value wood. Revere. Tools. Measurements. Design. Art calligraphy.
Our museums hold our treasures. Look, an almond shape of holiness surrounds this holy figure.
To hold this world in low regard, to let it go, we sing on Sunday, the day of the sun:
“As I went down in the river to pray
Studying about that good ol’ way
And who shall wear the starry crown
Good Lord, show me the way”
Coronavirus, I am taking all the meanings from you, leaving you dead fragments in air. Air is from aura is from air a gentle breeze. Arum is gold. Corona is a crown, your crown of gold.
Narcissus flowers with an outer white corolla and a central yellow corona.
Who shall wear the starry crown
Oh Lord, show me the way.
***
As I went down in the river to pray
Studying about that good ol’ way
And who shall wear the starry crown
Good Lord, show me the wayO sisters, let’s go down
Let’s go down, come on down
O sisters, let’s go down
Down in the river to pray
The Fact of Breath, Final Breath :The murder of George Floyd
I began a little exercise book called “Fact of Breath” on May 24.
It had to do with inspiration and respiration during the pandemic crisis of Covid-19.
It was a tentative way to begin a written meditation on the symbolic meanings of breath. I’m not a scholar. I don’t know where I’m going half the time.
Breath as Spirit. Psyche. Pneuma.
But then these words were heard -read -reported all across America the next day:
“I can’t breathe.”
We’re currently in a global pandemic of respiratory disease, having everything to do with breathing, and a murdered man’s last words are, I can’t breath. Can’t move. Mother.
And pandemic turned to fury and protest.
We’re trained to listen for breathing, count respirations, count minutes in a crisis. Look at the clock. Call 911. Basic Life Saving. All about breath. And pulse.
Asphyxiation is about pulse, etymologically.
But asphyxiation really is suffocation-
Asphyxiation was the official cause of death in this case.
But the cause of death was a police officer- the effect was suffocation.
In a hospice situation, one watches for the breath, the pulse, the shallow heaving of the chest. You hear the second hand ticking on an old clock run by a double A battery.
You watch breathing, as it becomes rapid and shallow, sometimes gasping, sometimes rattling. Or one notes the stillness in the room between slow respirations. There is little left to do but observe. And notice your own breath.
Usually the room is cleared of clutter and so naturally becomes a meditative space of breath.
And every time, you think, it all comes down to this, the fact of breathing.
Inhalation and exhalation.
You know that there are a finite number of breaths, that there will be a final breath. You’ll see it or hear it or note the absence of it. And then that life is considered at an end.
Then pulse, no pulse. Time of death is often a quite peaceful interval, accompanied by a sense of relief. Emotion comes later. You have a sense of dutifully carrying out some things that matter only because we’re human. But then that’s it.
And then you close the door or leave it just ajar, open the window.
The activities that seem to matter are less important for a time.
The important thing we do is to keep breathing. And observe what makes us human.
Once upon a time…
Even before that- the book of Genesis was passed down from even older days, from some old clay tablet, probably.
That old, old book. Blow the dust of the desert off of it. –
I know, you’re saying, please god no, not the Bible.
In the beginning.
Man was an artifact, made of clay.
What happened next?
The Unnameable formed a form.
We were an object. A little statue.
Formed a man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
Breathed.
Breathed life.
Breathed life into.
Became a living being.
Those aren’t my words. To myself I say them over again. The words themselves deliver oxygen, breathe life into.
To look into the mirror of death, of a murder, and see the fact of life and breath so clearly.
-Not only the horror of murder and the destruction of life, but the fact of breath.
The fact of breath is that, breathing is really what we’re doing, while we’re doing everything else. It’s the truly important thing we do.
Inhalation and exhalation.
Breathing makes us a part of all that is.
And breath is spirit. It’s not disprovable.
So tell me we’re not crushing the spirit out of things.
Tell me this is the Beginning not the end.
Breath Life into this project, this country.
Breathe.
Life.
Into.
***
We Should Grieve
We should grieve.
But Americans, we aren’t the Lord Jesus. We’re actually the Romans. We are the dominant force. We’re the haves in the world of have nots.
Grieve- deeply- but be honest to the core. We have not forsaken violence.
Not in a million ways in our daily life.
A rattle snake is a peaceful creature and noble. It warns before it strikes, and would prefer not to be bothered.
That’s a step up from where we are today.
Carl Jung tells we cannot heal what we can’t identify; that therapists who feel morally superior to their patients are fooling themselves instead of promoting healing.
If we separate ourselves from these violent acts we have no hope of improving or healing or preventing them.
We have to be honest about our society now.
It’s what we buy, what we think, what we supply, what we demand. It’s allowing for the free expression of violence in the White House, in our policies, our “entertainment”. It’s undervaluing our citizens, and misusing and abusing our military power. It’s treating the Earth as a S-hole country, a dump for refuse. It’s allowing a fraction of people to rule the world- which in itself is a form of violent domination. Its the crushing of language and truth, our greatest resource. It’s faking our religion and pretending to be a religious sect in order to dominate those who would be free. It’s being willing to be lied to every day It’s snarky hateful comments meant to detonate in someone’s psyche. It’s hunger and dissatisfaction and dissociation and fear. It’s the implosion of masculinity and the denial of the Feminine. It’s truly the loss of individuality and a denial of the inner self. It’s the ultimate pressure of a deep push for conformity and the steamrolling of anything that stands in the way of the Empire of What Is.
It’s American road rage writ large.
It’s it’s it’s
It’s not you it’s not me it is it is it is.
08/03/2019
A Covid Walk by Night
Hospital is weirdly empty now. Just sayin’.
No visitors. Front entrance locked.
Enter through an underground check point.
ER empty. N95 masks at all times.
Usually busy med/surg floors now just echo your own footsteps. Quiet. Buttoned down. A few rooms in a row with universal precautions. Gowns, visors, masks, gloves and tables marked “Clean”.
But half the rooms are empty and clean and ready.
Calm prevails. The exact opposite of NY. For now.
The FD paramedic comes in wearing the astronaut mask with the air purifier.
Laughs and jokes with a familiar local patient. Hands him money for a meal.
Let’s keep it that way.
Stay home stay safe.
***
Yup. SF cops are everywhere on Market St. at midnight. I have my essential worker badge on.
A midnight commute by public transport east down Fulton along the Panhandle on empty buses without fare to Market St then backtrack back westward on Haight then southbound on Fillmore past Church and Market.
Haight-Ashbury is boarded up, stores behind ornate gates, the sixties iconography oddly contained and sedated. Pavements stand out, landmarks recede.
Why didn’t I walk? It’s a beautiful night.
Homeless and wanderers are few. A light rain, gentle mist. Every few minutes a police car goes by. I’m now essential worker, but it’s obvious the police are heavily monitoring the district. I actually put on my hospital badge, sensing we’re close to the time they’ll intervene with loiterers.
State of emergency, quietly expressed.
What would Herb Caen say, I wonder.
I often walked the Haight at night back in the late seventies. Ghost/ memories include the Grand Piano Cafe, Shady Grove where Merle Saunders performed often, Psalms Cafe that had hints of the early days. Steaming espresso and steamed up windows and it rained and rained sometimes in winter. I was always soaked like a rat.
Sometime in the eighties it got to be too much and I bought an umbrella.
Not a soul on the street, but somehow easy to re-inhabit memories. The present time plane is thin without the natural human nocturnal activity.
***
Notes to self.
In other developments , technology has imported the human nervous system, and at this early stage the only counterbalance is a daily walk in Nature (without automobiles) and creating art with tools or instruments.
Disembodied technology may signal that normal cognitive processes are “wrong”, to be replaced by world views designed for marketing strategies and comfort.
That’s when a walk by the ocean may be most effective, disrupting the network and allowing consciousness to breathe.
Does “someone” disagree with you?
It’s actually ok.
CoEvolution Covid
1. Anxiety!
Its like a mean little asterisk, having a little rave dance/party in my chest.
Yikes!
But we have what we need for today.
Stay in the moment.
Take a breath. Thank the mind for sharing.
Ahh. Yes. Thinking of all that I love about this world.
It’s Spring, for one. Those little chirping baby birds finally flew out of the cable box by the garage. Below, tons of bird droppings. So you see.
So the mama bird isn’t giving us the side-eye any more when we come home.
My wife will take a walk on the hill and it’s a panoramic view of the whole N hemisphere of the Bay Area. It’s a vast green place, and the ocean and sky a stunning blue.
I have the fucking best library in miles. Excuse my French.
Oh yeah: I have everything Rimbaud wrote. And everyone else. I worked in a bookstore for thirty years, so, yeah.
Today.
I’m working so I get to serve others. I have something simple I’m supposed to do, and it’s not rocket science.
My lunch is in a nifty container and includes home-made split pea soup, which improves from close to perfection each day- the flavor of the ham gives it that savor. (Ingrid!)
Yesterday checked in with family and friends, from a distance, to drop off cookies. We’re not all crazy at the same time, which is awesome.
When we got home the sun was hitting the flowers out back just right so they were – how do you say?- just doing a slow dance of unbelievable color and grace. It’s a planter bouquet of pansy and what-nots.
What is the message?
Oh yes. Breathe. And Mozart. Later. With the screen door open, finally.
2. A World of Clean Air Sounds Good-(When You Can’t Breathe).
There is a probability that we in the US will make some critical mistakes through ignorance, sociological distortions, impatience, fear.
We have clues as to what those mistakes might be, but reliable statistical data of Covid-19 has yet to be assembled and confirmed.
Our mistakes will be the decisions we make.
One decision is to reopen a “normalization” economy. People will die, but economic failure might be avoided. But people will die.
The normal economy would go forward with no repairs to its structural inadequacies, its failure-modalities.
Because those who own most of the wealth don’t want to restructure.
And people will die. Trying to scrape by.
But there will be benefits to the “financials”. The hedge fund guys are getting very impatient to get back to the game of golf, and cheap labor and imports and no health care and screw the nurses and teachers and frontline workers who were willing to make sacrifices.
It’s too early to solve this, and it can’t be done through half measures.
The wave is still out there.
Historians will look back and the word they’ll use is “ignorance”. They will consider our bad decisions tragic and avoidable and pathetic.
And they will name names.
Beginner’s mind. The unknown. A respect for the resources we do have and a humility and good faith and courage to make the whole world better. Not by saving the world, but by making some good decisions now.
The world doesn’t want us to save it: we aren’t the heroes in the global pandemic and climate change. We’re the problem. Look in the mirror.
The idea that we could save the world in itself is so pathetic. Now nature has given us a pathway out.
Nature has given us a pathway out of our disaster. We need to follow it.
Don’t “re-open” anything now. We’ll know when it’s time. And a new global agreement will be in place, and economic supports. And austerities we haven’t considered. Yes, the top one percent has to decide whether life itself is worth the candle. It’s one big empty luxury hotel now, the good life.
But a world of clean air. That gets your attention. When you can’t breathe.
3. The First Five Minutes
Scenario:
It’s the first week of Covid-19.
You just get to work and it’s a low census and calm so you think this is cool and then a bed alarm sounds.
The entire nursing staff is in shift report, the hallway is practically empty;
a patient has dementia and possibly Covid-19 and/or “rule/out” Covid, droplet precautions in order, big infection control table at the doorway to patient room, and large stop signs and warnings, so you cannot assist without PPE on;
that patient struggles out of bed and the bed alarm goes wailing;
you just arrived on the unit a minute ago-first week of Covid-19;
and another aide runs up too, thank god, gown mask goggle gloves, alarm’s going off, you both run in- hurry! Hurry up slowly, deliberately, but fast!- fall prevention-
…infection control: gown mask visor gloves! we can’t put them on fast enough! It’s the new Covid protocol;
So the patient can’t walk, can’t talk, but climbing out of bed, impulsive, loud bed alarm squawking-
two person assist and that’s an order-
we don’t know the patient, or each other- patient has dementia, is confused, impulsive;
and it’s shift change, before report- and all of the protocols for Covid-19 are new and rigorous, the first week of lockdown;
all nurses are away in shift change huddle, and the other aide has to go home, shift change,
so now this minute you’re alone,
gown mask visor gloves- glasses steamed up-
then the patient codes.
Stares up at the ceiling from a bedside commode.
Holy shit! A two-hundred pound patient, staring upward, not moving.
“RRT! Rapid response team!”
Fortunately the transport nurse is walking by. So now she dons gown mask goggles gloves shouting “RRT!”
Immediately a team of ten: interns, white coats, nurse-supervisor, infection control officer, all pour out of the elevator, infection officer calling out directions like a general, all jam into the doorway, and oh crap! all ten people have to don gown goggles mask gloves as fast they can, “are there more goggles? – oh my god it takes a minute!
while two of us (safely) move the unconscious patient-gait belt pivot hoist- “1,2,3!” onto the bed then you clear out of the way and the team piles in.
It all happens in like four minutes.
You find something useful to do- elsewhere (stay the F out the way) and see the response team leave that room conferring, relaxed now.
That patient was DNR -do not resuscitate- and the transport nurse walking by just pats your shoulder and looks intently into your eyes to see how you’re doing.
Deceased.
And thats the first five minutes of your shift.
That’s the first week of Covid-19.
So yes, I’m a little jumpy. A bit emotional. That was almost a month ago. My very first Covid- related patient.
So if people are pretending this is over- this ain’t over.
So stay home- stay safe.
4. CoEvolution Covid
- crisis (n.)
early 15c., crise, crisis, “decisive point in the progress of a disease,” also “vitally important or decisive state of things, point at which change must come, for better or worse,”
from Latinized form of Greek krisis “turning point in a disease, that change which indicates recovery or death” (used as such by Hippocrates and Galen),
literally “judgment, result of a trial, selection,” from krinein “to separate, decide, judge,” from PIE root *krei-“to sieve,” thus “discriminate, distinguish.”
A Door of Perception:
The first thing that happens is one slows down, becomes curious and alert.
One notices the quality of light. The energy of objects, the color, form, weightlessness of things.
The vibration of things. The deep hum of things.
There will be no traffic, construction at a halt. Things at a standstill.
We’re home.
This isn’t a new world- it’s earth, our home address. That’s what your guide would tell you.
Form interacts with form, shadows open into deep space. Lamplight is luminous, but shafts of darkness interact, allowing for depth perception and a change of consciousness.
How large the moment is.
Change of consciousness? Dude. Some people long for it, work for it and yes, took drugs to seek it out. Religions, too, were founded upon it.
And now due to Covid-19 we have a global change occurring.
My old hippie friend back in the ‘70s used to say, about LSD, once you take the journey, in theory you don’t have to take it again.
You can draw upon your multidimensional hallucinatory vision/ journey ever after- when the universe was right outside your window, and then, no window.
True enough.
Of course Lloyd at the SF Art Institute back in the seventies took LSD daily, but never mind. The guidance was correct.
Of course we fucked things up, the kids of the sixties and seventies. What else did you expect? We sold out immediately.
But some things we improved. Look at the space we’ve preserved. Look at how we love fresh homegrown vegetables. And recycling.
There’s a banana bread/ earth mother/ old hippie in a lot of us, passed down through the weird American culture. As well as a revolutionary fervor and a push for reform.
So Covid-19 has caused yet another global change of consciousness.
We miss the old life, we say, when it vanishes into a new one.
Did Americans of all ages miss this moment, fail to engage?
We can honestly say, no; people have sheltered in place, endeavored to innovate, create, ensure survival of others.
When perception comes, or insight, or ecstasy, what do the artists do? What does the essential work of art tell us?
Is there a turning point, an insight, a seeming accident that changes everything?
We need to know what they know, the artists, about creativity and process. And how to completely embrace the Unknown …which is impossible. But.
With the courage of cosmologists, they express where we are.
When cosmology remaps our place in space and time and marks a new era in human history we mark it well.
We have a new transformative myth. Now activated, as all myths, it involves survival and heroism, and a preservation of inner truths, countering a world of cynicism.
The way might be home-made. Garden grown. Local. Communal. Global. It’s what we decide it can be.
I notice that, among the first reactions to a shortage of surgical masks were cloth masks that were homemade, some quite colorful. And then word got out about DIY masks, using a kerchief and rubber bands.
Back in the hippie days, Coevolution Quarterly and Foxfire were guidebooks to home made hacks and how to make a yurt, a shirt, how to plant a raised bed. How to stir fry vegetables. What fresh coffee is.
How do we do Covid?
And here we are again at the beginning of a movement, at the beginning, at a door of perception:
…The first thing, one slows down, becomes curious and alert… to how large the moment is.
5. Covid Wave Symphony
Is it a change of consciousness yet?
As we flatten the curve we would do well to add dimension to our graphic representation: it is a wave that is affecting society. It is a wave.
The metaphor of a wave applies to sine waves, shock waves, the waves produced by grinding tectonic plates, and to the statistical models of fatalities from Covid-19.
The wave symbol is our only tool to plot the course of Covid.
We engage this symbol thoughtfully.
- First thing: the wave is bigger than you are.
- You can ride a wave, or be subsumed by one.
- Don’t turn your back on the ocean.
In this wave of Covid-19, we consider amplitude, and dread an amplification, as we plot statistics in an early phase.
Musicians and sound technicians perhaps have an insight into the wave.
The visual representation of Covid data, extending into two dimensions, to ascertain present conditions, involves basic themes- signature melodies so we know we are still in the same symphony.
“Flatten the curve” is technical and disproportionate: influencing wave action is what we’re engaged in, now.
We may have to improvise.
There is a possibility we could be overwhelmed. Respect the wave, the surf. A riptide will exhaust a swimmer.
How like a great earthquake, is this Covid wave.
The question that engages us today is one of magnitude.
***
News From My Corner
It’s seven am and here is latest news from my corner:
Due to circumstances beyond our control it is a gorgeous foggy morning, luminous with mists, and here, just a squirrel on a fence and myself.
It’s rare to see a squirrel in this green neighborhood, so something has changed in the balance of nature here. Some creature has been displaced. I’ll have to ask hawk or perhaps coyote. Owl would know.
I’m listening to the morning birds.
And the fog collects into heavy drops and drums on the parked cars in a satisfyingly random way.
I compare the crow unfavorably with the robin, the trees listen to my categorical denials, dripping big drops of condensation on my hat brim. What do you think?
The fog reminds me of the diffused light of a pure snowy morning, or the surf breaking in drifts too dazzling to look at directly in a walk by the wild ocean.
Don’t you agree, squirrel?
He’s gone.
Oh here’s my bus, good, just as I predicted!
Dear Corona,
I have to think.
Took a walk on the grassy hill and the grass was knee-deep and fragrant and wet with intermittent rain. I could see all the way to the ocean and bridge from the great hill.
Great blue heron periscopes its long neck gradually arising up to the crest of my hill. Took off, black wing tips flapping over the gulf of the valley to Lake Merced. Flap flap flap flap into low distance just out of sight.
Then pouring rain. The kind with the discreet dancing raindrops, silver, percolating down the black asphalt pavement. Ok, trite, but little ballerinas on the street glancing light. Degas.
Pausing in the downpour to watch an orange California poppy in mid/unfurl.
These are your gifts Corona, you wild anxious microscopic being with no identity. Thanks for that.
The rain cleared by evening. Sat on a rock at the top of the canyon. The sunset over the distant Farallons. The firmament, the many-paned Mondrian mansion with windows ablaze, pouring light across the surface of the ocean, smudged out into charcoal clouds and shoveled back ablaze again. A man and his obedient border collie stood staring a social distance away saying “Fuck that’s so fucking beautiful! Stay. No we’re not going down there, good boy.” Ocean waves rolling in, far out, slow, purling foam at the edges. Seabirds’ silhouettes here and there. Hawk’s raspy hunting cry.
In Paris and in Atlanta and Italy apartment windows open and everyone applauding shouting the goodness possibilities of humanity.
Novena Novela Corona. I’m walking home. We make the most of our walks now. ”Good boy! That’s so fucking beautiful!”
*
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