Not Impressed and Turned

A good bike ride today.  It was muddy and hard going.  Took some work to get traction but it was good to be able to ride along again.  Coming up on the apple orchard I saw a great pair of wings alight and settle in a tree about twenty feet up ahead of me.  Unlike ravens or even hawks there is something oddly human about the great round head of an owl.  He stood there for a moment and looked down at me.  I stared back and involuntarily made a ‘whooo” sound in his general direction.  He was not impressed and turned to fly away, as if he’d heard it all before.

I must be sinking three or more hours of my day, this week, updating on the latest news for the Corona-virus.  The New York Times had an enervating article documenting global Sinophobia.  “No Chinese Welcome” signs in Vietnam, in Japan, in Thailand and South Korea. DNA-level human behavior, certainly.  People are scared of the unknown.  I am scared of the unknown.  People in Hubei outside of Wuhan don’t want to talk to anyone from Wuhan.  Chinese from anywhere but Wuhan don’t want to talk to anyone from Hubei.  People from the rest of Asia don’t want to engage with anyone Chinese.  And the rest of the world doesn’t want to sit next to anyone who looks “Asian.”  Hopefully some time and distance will cultivate a bit of empathy. 

First one conversation and then another during which I refer to the "Seventh Seal."  My wife doesn’t get the reference.  Neither does my business acquaintance.  I remind them that something like one third of the population of Europe perished during the Black Death.  Ponder for a moment just what that might have been like.  It too spawned from East Asia, but by the time it got to Western Europe, who cared.  It was simply death, metastasized uncontrollably from each person to each person.  And the scene I have in my mind is not the chilling face-off with death over the chess board, but rather the scene in the woods when the infected man runs up upon their party, asking for help, asking for sympathy and he is told to stay away, and die somewhere else.  This must be etched in at the DNA level the same way we leap from a snake or feel terror when we hear the call of wolf. 

My stepson, down in Brooklyn.  I’d given him a vinyl copy of the Rutles Album which he kindly took a look at but didn’t quite know what to do with.  Well I heard today that he was playing along with “Please, Please Hold My Hand,” and other classics.  Does he know that it is a play on “Please, Please Me,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “She Loves You” ?  Does he know any of those songs?  Does it matter?  What matter it if one comes to Rutles through the Beatles or the Beatles through the Rutles?  Unlike fear of being hunted or infected, Beatle appreciation isn’t coded into our DNA, but it settles into the circulatory system with remarkable consistency. 

Wednesday 01/29/20