Not gonna lie. I hurt right now. It's not the aches and pains of a Covid attack, but that of our inept federal government letting Americans die. I remember when Republicans made up stories of Obama's "death panels" to scare America away from his health plan. Now it's happening for real and Republicans are encouraging it. And lying. Just so much lying. Lying is one thing--it happens in politics. It happens everywhere. But this is insidious. A silent fart of misinformation that trickles out to cloud the truth about very weak men. Weaklings. I'm so tired of weaklings wrapped in the thin film of toxic masculinity. And, I know, that's an annoying phrase, so let's just call it what it is: sad little dudes being assholes.
Our president is gushing all over himself during his daily coronavirus update while doctors, nurses and others on the frontline of this insane battle against a germ are getting sick and dying. He's blaming others, he's making up stories and now--holy shit this is unbelievable--now he's trying to horde the federal stock of emergency medical supplies. His son in law was paraded out to take is place at the lectern. Some faux wood slapped together to hold up a microphone and hide some notes, and this one upright coffin has become death central for an administration that has no idea what it's doing. I mean it knows it's trying to pass the buck. It's doing its damndest to make it look like they've done no wrong. So far as to edit the strategic storages's website after Jared Kushner said the federal stockpile wasn't for the states but for...who? I don't know. I mean this is the united states of america, no? People from the states fight and die in wars for the country, right?
It's too dark to be true. It's too outlandish to be dreamed up by even the darkest minds. A coven of incompetence run amuck trying to save their own asses at the expense of countless lives.
Also…
It's weird being home. You don't know what day it is. Your clothes don't matter. Not that I ever fretted over them, but I just took out a pair of pants like I was cleaning out the home of a dead relative. These once familiar khakis were distant and alien. They seemed to fit someone else. A smaller person.
We are doing what we can to be active. Online martial arts. Trips to the park. Walking the dog. People get too close. Don't get too close. I'm trying to help here. It doesn't help that there was this nationwide drumbeat to ignore the problem. We're going to start wearing masks. Mom, Dad it's 2020 and your grandkids' school is cancelled until fall--and maybe longer--and they're wearing face protection to have ice cream handed to us through a door at Dairy Queen.
the laptop teaches ballet
There is beauty in this. We've been spiraled inward to one location. No longer kids and parents flung to every corner for tutoring and flag football. The web has been cut away from the frame and we're all balled up on the floor. This has meant close inspection of who we are. Of us. the kids are good. We're fine. We have our jobs. There is the fear of illness and of some kind of loss. Like the 9/11 loss. That sliding dread that pulls you down in mental quicksand wherever you go. Everything is tainted. Rusted. Temporary. The swing sets have police tape around them. I'm reminded of the darkness of the first Terminator. I felt that at age 10. The fear of nuclear war and here was this popular movie reinforcing the story of our demise. Maybe it won't be so exciting with robots and mushroom clouds. Rather just a gradual wheezing until nothing and nature takes over again. Our desperate final attempts stopped and rusted in place. A deer trots by an overgrown Starbucks.
But in that. THAT dark place where ferns grow and parking lots crack wide open is us together in our house and seeing so many beautiful things. Brothers at each others throats but in identical sweatshirts and a shared longing to be…good? To be good at something, even if failure means taking the other down with them. Out of 100 words 1 is to lift the other up, and that's something we hadn't been around enough to hear. The other 99 are painful. Downright deflating. But to hear Quin tell Otto is good at his video game and Otto say Quin is good at his anesthetizes us for a bit. So simple and dumb but goddamn it's a freakin blossom out of our own once dead-faced pavement of eternal traffic jam. The cars are parked and we’re left with a conversation.
a virus may off me but at least I lived to see this
The other day we all played soccer. The backyard has never had this kind of activity. Grass will be a miracle. This particular game it was Otto and me versus Sarah and Quin. Eliot was the coach. She had a whiteboard and a green dry erase marker. She had us all huddle to talk about our plans. She called the huddle “the ball.” We all get into a ball, or whatever that's called she said. And I hoped she could excuse herself and let that kind of common sense creativity flourish. Why would anyone be huddled in a combative sport anyway? It's all about balls anyway.
So she starts drawing a soccer play and begins by making little green marker strokes to represent the grass on the field. We’re all enamored with her tiny strokes of art and commentary. “And there’s grass, green grass.” But then with her left hand she wipes the lawn away. Talking mostly to herself she says “"Eliot it's a play not a picture." And Sarah and I gasped at some kind of indescribable scene. It’s a play not a picture. She admonished herself lightly while landscaping her canvas. Sarah looked at me and clutched her heart. "I'm so happy we got to be here for this.” Her face pulled to the kind of agony one feels when the moment turns into a mountain of incomprehension. I'm not even sure what I saw. I felt it. There may have been some loss of innocence. I wanted to stop play so she could indeed draw the scene.
The comaradarie is good. Natural. I have weird aspirations. Making videos. Capturing the moment in every celebrated way possible. The family gets it. They protest being in my creations but eventually end up in them. Sarah and my parody of the popular reality show Naked and Afraid has been, well, popular. I should probably just write, but there are too many ideas. too many opportunities to share. It's too easy to shoot a video and publish a blog. Too easy to get distracted from whichever medium I'm supposed to focus.
we may be on the hook for more