The Peace of the Wild Things in Coronaville

Turns out there's a heron rookery five miles from my condo.There's something very moving about watching herons touch one another's beaks when you can't shake another human's hand.

And here's a library in a beautiful historic building. Maybe I'll go there one day.

This a is a restaurant I meant to go to. You can have a cocktail on the ferris wheel. Or you could--you know, back in the day when people did those things.

Art in Coronaville/ day # whatever

Looking through the window into my favorite coffee shop

I went out just to look in the windows at Minnesota Center for Book Arts and Loft Literary Center. The coffee shop that's part of the complex, patronized by artists and writers, was my home away from home before the virus. Washington Avenue this evening was devoid of pedestrians (unlike the park or the Stone Arch Bridge which was probably again thronged with pedestrians, joggers, runners in groups of two, three, and four--WTF Minneapolis?) 

Anyway, there's alway a window devoted to a large piece of art at MCBA. You remember art exhibits, right?

It was very satisfying to stand at the window and read the artist's statement. "Histories are written by people," she says, and "histories are not set in stone--they can always be re-written." 

We are writing and re writing the history of the coronavirus every day. It's a tragic story, and I'm feeling grumpy about it today. How are you feeling?

The window of the gift store at MCBA

Minneapolis--as beautiful as ever.

xo

Gratitude to all my yoga and T'ai chi chih teachers/Coronaville/Day 10

My yoga and t'ai chi chih studio

These two regular practices have been part of my life for some time. This routine has never been more important to me. What's getting you through?

New pandemic paranoia: Panting joggers, runners, and bicyclists who speed by me with huffing and puffing (droplets?) as they pass. Walkers seem to be much more respectful of the 6-feet rule. I wish we could all have masks. I'm working on a less-traveled route.

New favorite pandemic amusement: Kitchen island ping-pong. Unfortunately, the net and the paddles are nowhere to be found. Yesterday a friend and I tried wooden spoons as paddles, then rubber spatulas. Ultimately we settled on the metal pancake-flipping type spatulas. Without a net. The laughing was an immune booster for sure.

I counted steps on the most circuitous route possible through my condo, including bathrooms and closets. 300-- If I go around the dining room table and the kitchen island four times. How many times a day can I do that? How many steps can you walk through your space?

I am a student of the book arts, and yesterday I worked on my first small drum-leaf bound book with content. Here are the first three pages. If I never get my full-length memoir out into the world, there's this.

And I also worked on this zine about seasonal depression. It kinda translates to a pandemic lockdown, I think. It's hard to read because of the way it needs to be laid out, but you get the idea. All the marbled paper snips were marbled by me. It's pasted up the old-fashioned way rather than designed on a computer. Because paper.

Start on the bottom left, then move to the bottom right and work your way up and around.

Orange really is the most amazing color. What's your happy color?

Gratitude once again to all health care workers, and to the groceries clerks, delivery people,   

law enforcement personnel, and everyone who is working. 

xo

Leaving Coronaville/Day 7

We all live in Coronaville. 

And we can't leave. 

View from my desk.

Our governor, Tim Walz, was quoted in this morning's paper as saying that Minnesotans need to view this pandemic not as a blizzard, but as a winter. If it doesn't snow where you are, insert your own weather metaphor. Not as a wildfire, but as hell. Not as a hurricane, but as ....I dunno. A washing machine stuck in the spin cycle...for months?

I went to my paper making internship (because I work alone in a huge space) yesterday and spent seven hours dipping handmade paper into a vat of indigo. When I wasn't doing that I was spraying down handmade ochre paper for flattening. Ochre and indigo are two excellent colors to spend time with during a pandemic, I think. 

And my boss gave me an old scanner which I hope will function with my vintage macbook air. That would be swell. 

I've been calling friends. Have a date to FaceTime with more friends tonight. Gonna keep doing that.

The teaching myself to draw is crazy. After a couple of days, I realized I couldn't figure this out without help. I bought "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain." And I'm very excited. What the author has to say about drawing is stupendously good. I just thought it was innate talent--that I don't have. You just need the skill set, she says. I hope she's right and I'm wrong. It's like learning to read, she says. 

The first assignment is to make three pre-instruction drawings. OMG.

How are you? What are you doing? How do you feel? Tell me.

Leaving Coronaville/Day 3

I am most definitely not in my pajamas as I write this. I think I'm putting this selfie up to remind myself NOT to get into my pajamas. Not during the day, I mean. Back when this place was called Pillville--and even way back when it was called Divorceville/Margaritaville there was a whole lot of pajama wearing going on. I recall a particular evening when, as my mom sat at the dining room table with her martini, I bought three pairs of my favorite brand of p.j.s online. Dan had already died by then, and I thought maybe I could just pretty much live in pajamas.

So far the year 2020, my self-proclaimed great year of travel, has seen three cancelled trips. Other than that, I'm doing what I do. Writing, learning to make art (totally from the confines of home now that all my book arts classes are cancelled. )

On my to do list:

Subscribe to the two local small theatre companies that I adore.

Give to a food pantry.

Establish a routine and really let it do the good things that routines do.

Favorite thing to do during a pandemic: Shower.

Pandemic goal: Learn to draw.

first drawings

I think I'm going to use my last handmade book (Japanese stab binding) as a sketch book.

Gratitude to all governors, mayors, health care workers of all kinds, grocery clerks, first responders. 

So, how are you doing today?  I'd love to hear. 

Leaving Coronaville/Day 1

I haven't been blogging here much, choosing to write on Medium.com if I write on the internet at all. I don't know why. 

But here I am on what I consider Day One of the Flatten the Curve Lockdown. Everything I've been looking forward to has been cancelled. I'm okay with it. I think it's wise, given the level of illness elsewhere around the globe. Minneapolis is closed. My book arts classes postponed. Theatre tickets refunded. I plan to go to my paper making internship because I spend the day in a big studio alone or with the artist who runs the place (if she's not in her other studio.) Just me and paper, paper, paper. 

I've recently gotten interested in making zines and very small artist's books. I have plenty of supplies at home and a couple of days ago I discovered that I had distilled my 90,000 word memoir into ten lines that fit in a 10-page book the size of a saltine. There's a zine version too that fits on one side of a single piece of paper. I can write a fuck ton of 10-page books while I'm hanging out  here in my beautiful place.

I'm 67 years old. I'm healthy. On no medications. But January of 2019 I got community acquired pneumonia. It was a bitch. I felt like my ribs were broken for a couple of months. I don't want Covid-19, and I don't want anyone I love to get it either. 

I eat fresh food and had almost nothing in my pantry, but a couple of weeks ago, I began getting a few of cans of this and that. And I bought 6 bottles of red wine last week. Last night I moseyed over to the neighborhood Trader Joe’s for another round of casual pantry stocking. 

But. Wait. There were no canned goods. Except green jackfruit—whatever that is. No eggs, no bread. A meager supply of nuts. Even the produce bins were empty, except for sweet potatoes and a few bags of blood oranges. Shoppers shuffled through the aisles like Stepford wives, staring into the distance or into their phones, texting, Uh…Should I get some cans of green jackfruit?

So tell me, how are you?