Don’t shake out your dirty laundry, the television says. You might release a viral cloud.
There’s the guy I’ve always wondered about, the one across the street who leaves big chunks of bread on the fire escape for the pigeons.
Meanwhile, I’m reverting to the diet of a five-year-old. All I want to eat are peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Each headline is more disorienting than the last, and these pandemic days are breeding baroque conspiracies.
Every night the Electrifying Mojo would sign off with the same message, and I want us to hear it in our heads tonight.
The optics feel wrong, more like a simulation than reality; it’s eerie to see New Yorkers so evenly spaced apart.
I hear the undoing of a lock and her voice calling behind me. “Thank you, darling. Pray for me.”
A deeper hush fills the city, a sense of bracing for an unseen blow. We know things will get worse.
This is dedicated to the nighthawks and graveyard shifters, you beautiful enemies of sleep.
I spent the morning scrolling through images of empty highways and blank parking lots that look like a new form of land art or maybe a message to the gods.
Once this is over and we’re allowed to gather outside again, I hope we take to the streets for all kinds of reasons.
There’s a blush of dopamine, an uncoiling of the nerves: the smudged memory of doing arts and crafts in a classroom while a storm beats against the windows.
Tonight I sympathize with Will Durant’s wistful sketch of Rousseau: “He escaped from the stings of reality into a hothouse world of dreams.”
There was a time when I would count how many words I said each day. At night I logged the number into a notebook. Sixteen. Twenty-three.
These are long days of suspension. For a moment I convince myself that everything is just fine. That I must have imagined the whole thing.
Riffling through an old box of keepsakes, I came across a note that I wrote to her five years ago.
I run through Central Park, passing joggers with balaclavas and kerchiefs wrapped around their faces like they’ve been throwing Molotov cocktails.
I needed to work with my hands today. To be reminded that I can make something that takes up space and serves a need.
I’m beginning to understand the street preachers and late night radio voices who root through arcane numerology and biblical verses that implicate Wall Street, Hollywood, and the United Nations.
The streets hum with a hunter-gather energy that brings to mind the days before a hurricane. Except there is no storm, only the prospect of staying indoors.
