Entertain Such a Sacrifice

Sun is gone but there’s a fine glow coming up from behind the Gunks.  I took an art class with my sister one summer and we learned the technique “French Wash” which reminds me of what I am looking at.  “This is Happiness”  by Niall Williams is denuding I slow down.  I think I’ve been reading fiction, written by people who are moving story lines more than chiseling marble.  Mr. Williams is concerned with every sentience.  One needs to slow down and chew on each of the sentences.

I’m back in New York, under a self-imposed quarantine.  I just flew to LA and back in about 48 hours.  Reporting live, it doesn’t seem as though America is taking this Covid19 alert seriously.  Not a single person on either flight nor anywhere in the airports has masks on.  None of the TSA staff, none of the staff on the airlines, none of the folks tasked with coming on the planes later to clean them up.  No one seemed particularly well protected.  It isn’t going to be pretty if interstate travel becomes curtailed.  Can America even entertain such a sacrifice?

I washed my hands diligently during my trip.  Fretted more than I otherwise ever would have pushing the doors at Port Authority, gripping the rail down to the A Train or later at the Path Train.  Hoboken was oblivious.  Newark was oblivious.  Anaheim as oblivious, Pasadena and Studio City and LAX and Newark Liberty Airport, and Port Authority once again and the Trailways Bus Company and the New Paltz stretch of the Walkill Rail Trail just now.  Everyone is still assuming  this is happening somewhere else. 

Driving up from Port Authority on the first bus out this morning we had a young woman as our driver.  About fifteen minutes into the spaghetti bowl of arterial possibilities, we had a flat tire.  The driver, our helmslady, was great.  She tried to calm everybody down, acknowledging that the sound of the tire popping was intimidating.  And that this would introduce delay.  But we shouldn’t be the least bit frightened.  She needed to go out of the bus.  We should stay inside.  It will be OK.  Everything went exactly as she said it would.  Later, after we’d switched busses and taken seats in our new bus and driven all the way up the New York State Throughway to my home stop, I made a point of telling her that she did great, in managing our flat tire matter.  She was unresponsive.  But I hope it gave her a shine.  She deserved it. 

Saturday, 03/07/20