Who's Zoomin' Who?

Visiting Dan in 2014

I feel stunned most of the time. Loved ones on the front lines. Me here, sometimes feeling I'm barely earning my right to breathe our virus tinged air.

I am, without a doubt, an introvert. I was never so exhausted as when I was teaching English. I was in my 30s then, and the constant talking, explaining, teaching destroyed every ounce of energy every single day. This is my way of saying that, in some ways, my life is unchanged, that I'm fine with lock-down. I could tell you too, that my life has been turned upside down. Both are true.

I have made a schedule for my self, a routine, a checklist. It's a lifeboat. An anchor.

Here's a photo of my old neighborhood in California with a cloud shaped like an exclamation point

I read the news, do a t'ai chi chih practice, yoga (unless it's a day off to rest my wrists.) I write, read, practice drawing with the lessons in "Drawing on the Right Side of Your Brain." There are bookbinding projects. I do Duolingo French lessons. Yesterday I found the juggling balls and added juggling. I could juggle well enough in the summer of 1975 that I did it day after day in a commedia dell'arte. 

I sit in my big chair by the window in my bedroom and let memories roll by like clouds.
Memories of hospital rooms, being masked and gowned, visiting Dan whose white count and platelet numbers were all wrong time after time in the months before he died.
Visiting my mother from the hallway when I was 18, and she was in the hospital recovering/not recovering from surgery with pneumonia and a staph infection.
I remember my own bleary hospital time, her at my bedside every day during a long Minnesota January. I remember the sirens the day the poet John Berryman jumped off the Washington Avenue Bridge. Something's going on out there she said, standing by the window in her high heels, me flat on my back. lashed to the bed, in traction.
The thing is, everything is worse than all that now.

But my god, there are ridiculously funny things on the internet. I was laughing almost unable to stop at midnight last night. There's amazing writing and art. I'm talking to friends almost every day. Zooming them. Remember that Aretha Franklin song from the 80's? Who's Zoomin' Who? I just might zoom everyone I know.

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

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?