Covid-19’s Silver Lining

(and my epitaph)

Please read to the end.

 

On last night’s local news I heard a local city councilman, a self-described Millennial, called upon his fellow Millennials — in fact, all of his fellow humans, to do whatever we can to halt the spread of Covid-19, stressing the seriousness of this crisis and the need for immediate and effective action.  His remarks stimulated the idea in my head that the world is, at this moment, facing a future that is unique and destined to transform our lives forever.  Just take a look at how our lives are different from at any other time in history:  we are, by free-will or coercion, sheltering in our homes and committed to doing so for an uncertain amount of time; we have, in many cases, panicked and overstocked our pantries and storage spaces; cancelled all public concerts and shows or gatherings of more than 5 or 10 people; we have cancelled the NBA, XFL, NCAA, MLB seasons, in a world where sports are considered essential to life itself; a Chinese billionaire has pledged to send to the U.S. a million surgical masks and half a million Covid-19 test kits; the U.S. government is planning to send $1000 or more to each citizen as compensation for our voluntary quarantining.  Not your world as usual, is it?  And where will it go from here?

 

Interestingly enough, in China and northern Italy, air pollution has been reduced to the point where thousands of lives have already been saved that would have been lost to respiratory diseases (in response to the danger of the respiratory disease we are currently battling whole-heartedly).  Also interestingly, the world would never have submitted to the harsh measures we have undertaken to fight Covid-19 just to fight air pollution and climate change. (Who knew it would be so easy?)

 

What a strange new world we have found ourselves in.  We are doing things for each others’ wellbeing that we would not previously have contemplated doing.  We as a species seem to be undergoing a transformation.  Each and every one of us will undoubtedly be touched by the death or serious illness of a family member or friend.  What if we seized this time in our evolution to commit ourselves to continue to press forward in this movement toward a more caring, loving, supportive world?  We have come so far in only a few weeks!  How close might be the tipping point that would alter everything?  Are you up for the final push?

 

I remember, in the 1980s and 1990s, my volunteer days with a global organization committed to ending hunger in the world.  The Hunger Project’s source document compassionately spoke of the deaths of millions of people annually as a result of hunger.  Its proposed solution to ending hunger is creating the context in which that can occur.  In other words, the creation of The End of Hunger as an Idea Whose Time Has Come.  (As Victor Hugo said,”Nothing is so powerful as an idea whose time has come”.)

 

Humanity is, for the most part, currently acting as one during this crisis.  The opportunity has been created for us to transform our relationship not only to each other but also our relationship with the entire planet — to care for and nurture the world as a whole, each one doing whatever is in their power to do in order to bring that vision into reality, to create an idea whose time has come.  To quote The Hunger Project, “A person can die as evidence of the persistence of hunger and starvation, in which case that person’s life and death have been reduced to meaninglessness.  A person can die in the context of the end of hunger and starvation, and the context affords meaning — almost purpose — to that life and death.”

 

There is a sizeable chance that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people in the U.S. will be infected.  I am in one of the age groups that is most at risk during this crisis, so I could easily be in the 2%-plus who don’t survive. Should that become a reality I offer my proposed epitaph:  “If my life has not made a difference in the world, please, God, may my death do so.”

 

Thank you for reading this far.  Now, please, don’t let this opportunity turn all the world’s deaths from this virus be meaningless.  Don’t let this opportunity to transform the world become wasted.  We’re so close!

 

 

 

Sterile Processing Technician (Trainee)

70 Years old, by far the oldest person sitting in a room of 27, waiting for a chance to apply for a job sterilizing medical/surgical equipment (entry level) at a currently unknown salary, working who knows how many hours a week, at a yet-to-be-determined location.

There are another 12-15 souls in the foyer who are also waiting ahead of me for an interview.  In the past 5 minutes only two names have been called for whatever is the next step in the process, and 6 more applicants have arrived, so it looks like it could be a bit of a wait at this point (unless a miracle happens, which, of course, I am always open to.)

As tempus fugits  (what’s the Latin word for “crawls at a snail’s pace”) I have ample time to consider the finer points of my job search here today, to whit:  Do I really want to invest this much time seeking a job I heard of for the first time just a week ago and about which I know precious little?  Knowing what I do know about this job, do I really want to risk getting cut, pricked, or otherwise exposed to some, possibly, deadly disease that someone else clearly sought treatment to rid him/herself of?  How do I convince my interviewer that, of the 50 or so (so far) other eager applicants, I am the one — I, the guy with the gray goatee (albeit the most handsome guy in the room) am the one he/she should risk his/her career to hire?  What if this job is really shitty?  Given all the above, how much time am I willing to spend waiting here before I blow this joint and get on with my day?  (On a related note, do I have anything better/more important to do if I do leave?)

(Another 15 minutes of my life have passed/expired since the last name was called.  Getting on with my day is looking more and more like an attractive option.)

More questions arise as I continue my vigil:  What are the odds that I can beat out the (now) 60 other candidates for this position?  Even though this process is a font of valuable insights, do I yet have sufficient material for a decent blog (this being the end of my second page of handwritten blather)?

Decision made for me: I was supposed to fill out an on-line application before coming for an interview — I can’t be interviewed without it.  (Who knew?)

It was probably  a shitty job anyway.

 

How Did You Sleep, Dear

My wife, Mo, will not ask this question again.

 

I don’t know why her simple, ordinary question struck me the way it did that particular morning.  It was asked in the way that we usually greet each other upon our awakening — before we shake out the cobwebs that snare and entrap more intelligent conversation, preventing it from greetin the new day.  Maybe I’d had a dream, another of those that disappear without a trace upon awakening; maybe I’d had a wonderful, restful sleep and, miraculously felt alive and adventurous at the moment.  Whatever the reason, I proceeded to fully, to the best of my ability, answer her question, given my age, physical condition and temperament.

 

“Well,” I began, “as usual before we fall asleep, I turned to you (on my right side, as you occupy the left side of the bed), and we spooned awhile”.  (We both fell asleep ,you before me).  “Before long, I awakened to a right arm that had fallen asleep and was causing the usual  pain, so I rotated counterclockwise onto my back, which is, as you know, my go-to sleep position.  There I slept soundly for however long only you can tell me, because, in this position I usually begin my snoring, which  awakens you, and which, you say, can sometimes literally rattle the windows.”  (She will not take the trouble to record this alleged racket for me to hear, so I cannot, and will not, confirm this to be true.)

Returning to her early-morning question I continue,”Being awakened by snoring, mine or yours I do not know, I continued my counter-clockwise rotation onto my left side.”  Now, due to my deviated septum, before long I have difficulty breathing.  As, I am sure you know, the body has developed an astounding ability to keep itself from suffocating: when lying on one’s left side the right, uppermost, nostril opens; when lying on the right side, the left, uppermost, nostril opens up.   (I have read that periodically, even when standing erect and proceeding with our day-to-day activities, our nostrils open and close, one then the other, continually.  If both nostrils were to be open simultaneously, my reading continued, we would die.  I have been aware of such nostril oscillations  since reading that and have scrupulously made every effort to prevent both my nostrils from being open at once, even if it meant putting a ball of toilet paper up one side.)  In any event, I have, over the years, developed a method to open up my right nostril, the one which should be open, when lying on my left side:  I place my right thumb on the right side of my nose and apply a slight downward pressure, my fingers comfortably splayed over my forehead.  My right nostril immediately opens and remains open until I remove my thumb pressure, which usually happens after I fall asleep, typically within an hour or two.

“Then,” I told my darling wife, “I returned to my original position on my right side, once again spooning with you.”  (I had, at that time rotated a full 180 degrees, instead of my previous 90 degrees counter-clockwise, bypassing the lying on my stomach, which would be the next logical progression of the rotational cycle.  I generally reserve the face-down position for those times when I am having difficulty falling asleep — it is truly amazing how effective this position is.  Unfortunately, after about 45 minutes, my arms, which are, by necessity, folded under me, fall asleep and awaken me.  This is, fortuitously, an great advantage when I want to take a 45 minute nap.

“After a number of these cycles I awoke, however coherently, to your query.”

“And, how did you sleep, Darling?”

 

 

 

 

A Quiet Kind of Guy

His Life, Which is Based on a True Story

He was a nice enough guy.  He never had a whole lot to say, though.  Cliff was a quiet kind of guy.  He usually seemed distracted, like he had a lot on his mind, although, if he did, he never said anything about it.  Mostly he would say something funny — he could be a very funny guy; he had an extremely sharp mind and a strangely humorous way of looking at things, even a bit bizarre at times.  He would often tell jokes about something that had just been said; he knew a million jokes and could go on non-stop once a topic had been raised (I hear that Rodney Dangerfield was like that).  I think that telling jokes was Cliff’s way of avoiding sharing himself with his friends —  a way of contributing to the conversation without really sharing Cliff.  Everyone would laugh (his jokes were usually top of the line), and then we would go on with our conversation without him until the next joke topic showed up.

Maybe he was liked just for comic relief.

He really didn’t have a lot of friends — he had many acquaintances, but, unless he needed something from someone or someone need something from him, he never called anyone and no one ever called him, like, just to chat and catch up on what’s been going on in their worlds.  Even when you bumped into him somewhere, just the two of you, the conversations seemed awkward and you both wanted to just get on with whatever you were doing.

Cliff always seemed upbeat, though.  His life seemed like it was going just the way he wanted it.  He always seemed to have anything and everything he needed.  Of course, not actually being able to be close to him, one never knew if what he had was what he really wanted.

Cliff had led a long, very interesting life, with many wonderful adventures, which he would only bring up if it fit in with the conversation at the time or he could gain some bragging rights or some similar advantage.  Over the course of the years he shared about his childhood as a Navy brat, moving with his family every three years: Memphis, Pensacola, Whidbey Island, Hawaii, San Diego and, least interesting of all, a small town in Southeast Texas, where his mom was born and reared.  His personal adventures while in the Navy and afterward were some of the most interesting: Visiting Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines; living in San Francisco in the Hippie Heyday; hitchhiking around the Western states; sex, drugs and rock and roll; two marriages, one child; living three years in Hawaii.

You’d think that with all that travel and adventure his address book would be bulging.  Not the case.  It’s doubtful that more than a dozen people would even be at his funeral.  Maybe more if anyone knew how to contact the people in his past.  He’s one of those fine, honest, loving people who pass amongst us, lifting us up a bit over time, and then fading away forever (dead or alive), except in the memories of a precious few: family and those to whom he owed money or amends.

Maybe his deep feeling of impermanence was the motivation for his taking up the art of writing in his later years.  Maybe it was his deep seated feelings of failure to make an impression worthy of his desires.  Maybe writing was just the only outlet left to him to have his thoughts heard.  One can only hope that it succeeds for him.  Maybe he just wanted to be special.  Or, maybe, just left alone.

Life is What You Make of It

Where, when and how did my life take such a drastic turn? I remember that at an early age all I ever wanted was to be liked, so I was an exceptionally well-behaved child. Later I discovered that if I made people laugh they’d like me even more. The die was cast. My career as a ersatz entertainer was launched. I had them eating out of the palm of my hand and began to believe all the nice things people said about me, and all the cute comments the cute girls wrote in my high school yearbook (“Stay as sweet as you are”, “To the funniest guy I know”, “Don’t ever change”).
Things began to change. I grew up in a small, quiet town in southeast Texas in the late 50’s, early 60’s. It was the end of the school year, the last days, when, typically no book learning ever took place. But something big took place: my civics teacher, Mr. Rector brought in an l.p. he was very excited about and wanted to share it with us, so we listened to music. He played Bob Dylan (“Freewheelin'” if I remember correctly). I was hooked. I was amazed. I was slammed to the ground and stomped on by this man, by his strange music, and by his unholy lyrics. Imagine! The man who had been charged with teaching us how our government works is punctuating his lessons by planting the seeds of protest in us! In all honesty, it took me decades to see the irony here, but the seeds had been planted; the damage done. Thank you, Mr. Rector, wherever you are.
After graduating high school, followed by a semester at the local Institute of Technology (a B.A. major — accounting was my goal), I, instead joined the Navy, intending to make that my career, as my father had done. So, off to San Diego for boot camp and “A” School, where I learned my specialty: Interior Communications Electrician (running wire for telephones, bells and whistles and such). Then, the North Bay Area, Vallejo, CA for nuclear power school, where I met my first wife, who began The Awakening: this was, after all, the San Francisco Bay Area in the middle 60’s. It was a far cry from the sleepy town of “Boremont”, TX. Six months in the high deserts of Idaho followed. That’s where the Navy’s reactor training facility was located — in the desert, where there’d be few civilian casualties in case one of us fucked up. Then I was sent to serve on the greatest warship mankind had ever known, the ship I had read about in Popular Science as a kid, the ship I was about to step foot on after a short chopper ride from the ship that ferried me there in the South China Sea — the USS Enterprise CVAN(65). My job now was to operate the nuclear reactors that powered this mighty ship on its mission to launch heavily armed jet fighters/bombers, whose sole function was to bomb the shit out of the Viet Cong (and any non-combatants who might happen to be nearby — collateral damage, they were called).
My life veered giddily to the left. The Big E (as she was called) returned to her home port in Alameda, CA, across the Bay from San Francisco, when our tour to Vietnam ended. It was the Summer of Love. LSD, pot, more Bob Dylan. The seeds planted in Mr. Rector’s civics class were sprouting like crazy. I protested the war even while in uniform. I protested being in the Navy, where I was prevented from letting my hair grow to my shoulders. So I got a smart lawyer and an un-hip psychiatrist and was honorably discharged a year and a half before the end of our contract. Now I could really let go. Sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll as far as the eye could see. There were no limits.
I learned to read Tarot cards; became a member of an “interdimentional studies” group; became a father; got a divorce; lived in a three-storey wood and glass pyramid overlooking the Pacific about 75 miles north of San Francisco (just north of Jenner by the Sea). I meditated; learned Polarity treatment; got my BA in Business Admin (which I only ever used to do my own taxes, which got pretty complicated in my later years, so I guess the degree was worth the effort); and, of course, more sex, drugs and r ‘n r. Much later I did the est Training, but that wasn’t until I left Nor Cal for my hometown again (to care for my aging, sainted mother, austensibly; but really it was to be with an old flame I’d left there long ago) I always thought it funny that I never did the est Training while living in the est heartland — it’s kind of like the native New Yorkers who never made it to the Statue of Liberty. The truth is that, having moved from the land of enlightenment back to the land of endarkenment, I desperately needed the life preserver that was est.
Fast forward forty years. That’s actually how it seems (fast forwarded), for I struggle to remember a great many of the details of those forty years. They say that when faced with death, your life flashes before your eyes. As I have slowly approached death, at the speed of life, however, my life seems to be slowly erasing itself before my eyes. Days bleed into more days. Events pile up in a forgotten savings account. My second wife is still with me (God knows why) and still encourages me in whatever idiocy I undertake. It took every mistake I ever made, every wrong turn, every stumble, every sane and insane thought I ever had to get me to this point.
They say that life is what you make of it. This is what I’ve made of mine. My life is blessed.