Meditation 32

--This was to be a series of meditations that included more abstraction than I am wont to use these days. I wanted to think about the world I attend to, its walkers and philosophers. But the pandemic has shut abstraction down. Meaning's stuck in quarantine, as are we. My ambition for these entries dissolves, as ambition must. I want simply to chronicle the day to day under the threat of COVID-19. I will retain the label "ordinary life" for some of these entries, even if there's nothing ordinary any more. The new is not normal.

3 April 2020

Dear Patriotic American: do not ask what you can do for your country, ask what your country fails to do for you. “We’re all at the helm now,” a fellow walker says over his left shoulder as our dogs sniff at each other. Donne had his flea, and we our virus. The world paradoxical: we are closer for being apart. The bank has blue tape to put our feet behind. I step aside to let two joggers by. This is not writer’s block, because I can write just fine. An older woman pushes her walker around the block; she walks more quickly than we do, wheels clattering up hill. A self-stroller, she pushes the handlebar against loss of balance. Gravity is still in order, and the weather still fickle. Out back, a maintenance guy is mowing. Must be an essential service. “It’s ok,” Bryant says, “he’s getting a paycheck.” I remark to a tree trimmer that he’s still working. His face lights up. Thank God. No longer looking for the quick connections, the inadvertent puns, the fertile typos. The mountains, Dogen writes, are walking, and we are walking in them. We cannot see them walking because live inside of them. The zoom conference gave us permission to speak our minds through tiles of tiny heads. Play twister with the squares on this screen. The neighbor with two Rottweilers and a black Dachsund has a chain link fence beside her concrete lanai. Between concrete and fence I spy dog toys. The spiky balls resemble COVID-19. Co- meaning with. Vid records image. Corona is the sun, the virus its stunted rays. The dog lost the sun and virus; to him they are invisible. But we see them with eyes of accident. Eyes that we’re now advised to cover, along with our mouths and noses. Our ears are hooks, our noses off-set shelves. The brain is a carrier. The aircraft carrier’s captain was fired for saying his soldiers didn’t deserve to die of the virus. He did not go down with the ship; he walked down the gangway to a waiting car, then turned to wave to his men and women. His emails were unsecured. He called his sailors “assets.” The asses have gotten too big to cover, though the president fully intends to keep golfing. We’ve rented the golf carts to let him play, and play.