Finding It

April 15, 2020

Cathedral City, California

     The other day my daughter Katie said, "During this time, instead of losing it ... I think I'll find it."

     She may have meant this as a joke, or perhaps as a bit of self-reassurance.  Or maybe both.  But the statement carries with it the seeds of inspiration.  It would be pretty easy to lose it, as they say, during this period of forced self-isolation.  The initial chaos of sudden confinement settles into routine, and routines give way to monotony, and monotony begins to fray nerves and to magnify the tiny bumps of daily life, so that like the Princess and the Pea we become conscious of ordinarily imperceptible irritants.  In this regard I feel fortunate.  I've put my pickiness on hold out of necessity.  And I am particularly lucky that I get along with my wife quite well, and that she's put her pickiness on hold too.

     I am not by nature either a Princess or a Polyanna.  I think I'm what you might call very cautiously optimistic.  It seems to be the best overall approach to the world, for me at least.  For some it might not be enough positivity.  For others it might be silly, given the grim realities of life, especially now, but really, any time.  After all, life ends in death for all of us, but we spend those lives either ignoring that fact or postponing thinking about it, or making up fairy tales about an afterlife.

     With regard to the current virus crisis, I try to keep a balance between full awareness of the knowledge of the harsh likelihoods of the immediate future and the rather intriguing and encouraging pieces of information that daily make themselves known--things like medical device manufacturing, drug testing, statistical analysis of trends including the prediction of the rising and flattening of the curves of the disease.  There are also the uncountable instances of human kindness and bravery--indispensable public servants staying on the job, health care workers overextending themselves for the sake of others, grocery store employees continuing to work what in the very best of times must be pretty shitty jobs.  And then there are those who exemplify human stupidity and shortsightedness--people congregating outside shoulder to shoulder, certain types of stores staying open for no good reason, preachers holding live church services, people thinking that because they feel pretty good they should be able to act as if nothing's going on.  And that's not even counting the almost supernatural ignorance, selfishness, and mendacity of the man who is supposed to be leading the country.

     Finding it, so to speak, has become a pastime with me during my isolation.  I'd already been using the usual streaming services for movies and other television entertainment, as well as online versions of magazines and local and national newspapers.  But I've found some really interesting statistical websites for use in tracking the virus throughout the world, thanks mostly to my wife.  For some, these detailed statistics might be too much information about an unpleasant situation.  For others, who are not accustomed to using the internet for research or verification purposes, but only for exchanging vapid social pleasantries and believing everything they're told, such real statistical information might be inaccessible, given their limited outlooks and imaginations.  For me, it's a sort of tonic that, if taken in moderation, helps me to understand things as they change.  Italy's curve is beginning to flatten, slowly, for example.  They had the lowest daily death count today since a month ago.  China is doing pretty damned well, too.  The U.S. now accounts for almost 40% of all active cases of the virus worldwide.  Bulgaria, for some reason, is doing pretty well, probably because nobody gives a shit about it and they don't go there.  Closer to home, the Coachella Valley death count has been pretty stable, and pretty low, for a couple of weeks.  Maybe that will change, and maybe not.  Tune in tomorrow.  All of these things provide me with grist for the mill in my mind that tries to make rational sense of the situation without getting too optimistic or too pessimistic.

     The people for whom I condescend to feel most sorry these days are not those who get their "news" from Facebook (God help them), but those who rely on, and keep their television sets tuned to, 24-hour TV news services for their information, even the more "liberal" ones like CNN and MSNBC, because as watchers they must live with the constant "breaking news" harangues from the talking heads who really have very little to talk about on the busiest days, and must stretch it out into endless hours of palaver.  The same thing happens when you read the newspapers, with their meaningless "human interest" stories about "one town's struggle," and all that horseshit, but at least you can just turn the page of a newspaper.  But that's not the worst part:  all of these TV news services put the ugly face of the president in front of us on a daily basis, often for long stretches at a time.  Sure, it's often to criticize him afterwards, but the truth is that he gets so much free publicity from the news that after a while people get used to seeing him.  That's the worst part--getting used to seeing him.  It's like turning on the History Channel and seeing Hitler and Nazis all the time.  That simply isn't healthy for the human mind, even if the shows end with their demise and that of the Third Reich.  It regularizes evil, and dulls us to images of evil.  The same goes with pictures of Trump.  If you hate the guy, seeing him too often will make you get used to him, and you shouldn't get used to someone or something you hate--it's just not healthy, because eventually you'll lose your perspective and start relying on the regular consumption of the images of the person or thing you hate.  That's why churches don't put pictures of Satan up everywhere, for crying out loud.  It doesn't make sense.  Sure, everyone knows about Satan, but they don't have to see pictures of him all the time to understand that he's evil.  If they put images or stained glass windows of him everywhere, pretty soon people would start worshiping him, because, let's face it, he's a lot more interesting-looking than Jesus is, even in his nude homoerotic agony on the cross.  The same thing has happened in reverse to viewers of Fox News with respect to Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, the socialist congresswoman from New York City.  They hate her so much that they publish stories about her almost every day, whereas the Democrats and their followers have adopted a ho-hum attitude toward her.  Yeah, they say, let her be the voice of the left wing of the party, but after all, she's a freshman with practically no power, and not even old enough to run for president, so just let her talk.  Meanwhile, I guarantee you, if you want to know anything about AOC, as she's known, you have to go to Fox News, where they love to hate her so much that she's developed almost a cult revulsion following.  It doesn't hurt that she's easy on the eyes (just imagine if Trump were that attractive what a mess we'd be in), because one thing Fox News knows better than any other network is that cute women attract viewers, which is why the average Fox News person on air is an attractive blonde.  I will bet you dollars to donuts that the die-hard Fox News male watchers are sitting in their recliners jacking off to AOC just as much as they are to any of the rest of them.

     But aside from the news, with the help of friends I've found such things as a website containing tens of thousands of books whose copyrights are expired, just ready for easy streaming onto my laptop.  And of course if one wishes to pay money, there are endless more recent books as well.  Since I am a devotee of 19th century British and American fiction I am in hog heaven, reading Conan Doyle, Balzac, Dreiser, and others.  Once you scrunch the pages down to the width of a book page, they're pretty easy to read. 

     Another thing I've found is an increased need to communicate with my friends and an excuse to do so.  Also, I have found an interest in my extended family that is more than abstract.  For some this might have been the way of things before this crisis, but for me, as a person naturally prone to isolate, it was not.  Somehow enforced isolation brings with it more of a tendency to reach out than the regular shutting out of the world did before. 

     And to put a final point on all this, I have found small pleasures in small things, like birdsong and flowering bushes and small animals and various types of weather, that somehow never made much difference to me before.  "Glory be to God for dappled things" as Gerard Manley Hopkins said.

     All of this might emanate from a kind of semi-mad stir craziness that will fade away when the virus does.  That remains to be seen.  I hope not, because I've found some pretty good things.