“The stranger who is really nothing but an empty cloak”: Plague Journal on the Details of Disaster and a Dream of Recapturing the Impossible #BrooklynShowsLove

"Fuck this" and other words from the street 

Strange clouds over Red Hook. 

"In Mary Oliver's words, Poe explains it all...our horror and unknown....place in a big u certainly, mysterious universe."

a closed bar offering takeaway coctails

Four Darks in Red, 1958, Rothko 

Museum Studies in Brooklyn

"RevBilly & Stop Shopping Choir

April 9 at 3:50 AM · PLANT THE RAINBOW FLAG….YOU’RE UNDER ARREST! A hospital in white tents appears in NY’s Central Park, but it is like a military encampment, a miniature American Green Zone (Note in the 3 min film below how I am tackled. Later I'm taken to the Tombs, and my N95 mask is taken from me.). The 68 beds of this private hospital is for the sufferers from the virus, but there’s a catch: These are fundamentalist right-wing Christians who pray over the victims and try to steer their souls to the "correct" God in the moments before they perish. Doctors and nurses offering their services in the hiring process are forced to sign an "I'm Not Gay" pledge. In charge here is Rev Franklin Graham, son of the legendary Reverend Billy Graham. In his internationally-broadcasted sermons, Franklin casts the LGBTQ souls into the flames of Hell along with Moslems, and Socialists, and black presidents. Each of his hate speeches sweeps across the small towns, emboldening the rage of alcoholic fathers, and encouraging suicides by the young gays. So many of us came to this city for the freedom to love in our way. I walked with my rainbow into the backyard of the Hospital of Hate thinking of that escape.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHoRTapEOTk"

Billy and I walk and walk and walk through the neighborhood.  He’s on a 14-day-quarantine after taking a bust speaking out against Samaritan’s Purse, the homophobic group that runs a field hospital in Central Park that has rejected volunteers because they refused to sign a “statement of faith.”

The police held Billy for twenty hours, taking away his bandana, after he put a rainbow flag up near the field hospital Central Park. 

14 days after from his wife and kid. 

14 days to think, to write, to talk, to walk.

14-days or two months or six, or years.

“2020 that was the first year of the quarantine,” reads a meme going around.

“What?”

Billy and I walk past a garden and talk about the transcendentalists.

“My parsley, beet, turnip, carrot, buck-thorn, chestnut, acorn, are as sure,” writes Ralph Waldo in his journal. “I believe that  justice produces justice, and injustice injustice…”

I’m not quite so confident.

Down Strong Place we stroll through Cobble Hill, up to Columbia, to Red Hood, past the blossoming trees, cyclists, a flower shop, , talking, street murals to the left, blue skies and water to the right, loading docks, kids on skateboards, past a building like a Rothko, black and red spray paint on a garage, like Four Darks and  Red, 1958.

Old piles of magazine catalogues, molded in the rain.

A copy of Wilhelm Reich orgone book, the function of the orgasm, sits among a pile of books

I’d usually pick it up and take it home.

Not today.

No need to bring in extra germs.

Billy buys me a coffee.

I put on a glove to wear it, save another for later.

But I put the other ungloved hand on the coffee cup Billy handed me.

It’s a hypochondriac’s nightmare.

A glass condo is going up.

“Look it says ‘fuck this’” on the sign in front the condo,” says Billy.

A dick pick just to the left.

“Smoke down the street,” says another sign.

“I don’t want to go there anyway.”

They want this to be the new DUMBO.”

People say hello smile more, even behind their masks.

From Whitman to Rumi, we talk, eventually turning to the point of the story with Gaia taking back her world.

"These pains you feel are messages.  Listen to them," says Rumi.

There’s something between the poems and the disaster that’s pointing us somewhere, a sonata without beginning or end, like our quarrels and conflicts, whirling, even shifting, ebbing, clashing, receding.

She gave us a long leash.

And we seem to have overdone it, poking and prodding, and drilling and extracting, polluting and heating, flying and bombing, paving and driving.

Its hard not to see plagues and storms all part of a grand recalibration.

I have a dream that the virus is smarter than us, says Billy.

It’s like a Phillip K Dick story.

Soon, we are not going to walk on the sidewalks.

And the city is going to have pull them up, allowing the green to come back.

The Republicans hate this, he continues. Just when they were about to let government sink, the virus is bringing back the idea that government needs to help us, provide relief, jobs, healthcare.

Capitalism resolves itself in socialism?

Or fascism?

A green new deal that opens it up.

Is Gaia more intelligent than us?

Who knows

It’s not intelligent design.

It’s a living breathing earth.

The virus is killing elders, black and brown people involved with services, generational inequalities says Wendy, many with less nutrition, killing friends of friends, high school friends, a high school principle, a father, a colleague who calls from the hospital with a last gasp of breath.

Gaia is way smarter than us, she says.

Nature isn’t too worried about our lives.

It’s the stranger, the red mask of death enveloping, our cities, traveling around the planet.

“When” says Mary Oliver, reading Poe… “The stranger who is really nothing but an empty cloak enters and slays the Prince, its is Poe and its is ourselves with him, who rush forward and batter hopelessly against that incomprehensibility, with our frail fists.”

I’d been swimming upstream through her tales of her friends Walt and Ralph Waldo… before Piere inherited everything in War and Peace.

Past Sunny’s bar on 253 Conover St, where a kid is playing out front.

Stopping at Valentino Pier, looing at the water, that old ocean feeling a mystery.

Still walking through the faaabulous unknown.

The faeries love that says Billy.

Its never easy finding words for what is happening to our living planet and its unknowable consciousness, that big buddha, from which we come and return, ashes to ashes.

We’re all visitors here,

Strangers here.

“I'm unfamiliar with his heart
I am a stranger here myself” Mary sang Kurt’s old song.

We’re getting back to being neighborhood societies, says Billy.

Cities are still alive, as we are, strangers here.

My Dad found solace in Sands County Almanac and Aldo Leopold’s view,

“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”

All weekend, I read Mary Oliver and her stories about Whitman and Poe and Emerson…her walks in the woods with her friend Walt, her essays about Edgar Allen:

“In Poe’s stories and poems we hear continually about compulsion,” she writes, “terrors loosed by the powerful upon the wea (or the powerful components of the mind up on the weak components of the mind); we hear about plague and tortures, and revenge.  But none of these elements does more than forward the real subject of Poe’s work, which is the anguish of knowing nothing for sure about the construct of the universe, or about the existence of a moral order within it- anything that would clarify its seemingly imperial indifference toward individual destiny….”

Is it “Poe’s Dream of Recapturing the Impossible” or is it ours?

Its unknowable.

One day at a time I say every day, quoting Bill Wilson and 12-step platitudes, writing, drinking coffee all day, prepping for classes, teaching online, meeting friends, meeting Billy after class on Tuesday, walking through history together.

Away from the family on the waterfront, talking about floods and plagues, tall buildings and neighborhood societies.

“Pitiful empty Wall St. stands behind me,” says Billy.  “The Earth is a conscious living being and she speaks thru springtime flowers and she chases big money into the hills. Earthalujah!”

We look at the city, lady liberty in the distance, Minerva looking down at her from Greenwood Cemetary where we walked the week before, walking over the Truman’s place in the Heights.

“She’s talking to us.  We’re trying to figure out how to speak back.”

On Wednesday, Kate asked that we help out with New Alternatives food drop off, the teenager joining me as assistant... navigating food drop-off from Manhattan to the Bronx and back to Brooklyn.

Men stand on 40^th street looking for change.

Everyone in masks.

Up we drive Northwest and East back to the South Bronx, where people come out for their supplies, those who are fragile, with compromised immune systems at the highest risk, wise not to be taking the subways.

The teenager and I talk about the city and its saints and sinners, drug users and street societies, people out prowling about along Jerome Avenue.

Billy and I talk about grace.

Sarah Schulman talks about the obituaries:

“Because of the virus, the NY Times is giving obituaries to people who they traditionally ignored- people who mattered to those around them but had never gotten rewarded by the system. Maybe this crisis will last so long that people will forget who is supposed to be important, who they are excluding, what grudges they are holding, who is blacklisted, who is supposed to be over-praised and over-rewarded and who is supposed to be degraded. Wouldn't that be something- if the social hierarchies that got us here were upended?”

Spence gets word from work:

“Today from our CEO: "With a heavy heart, I report that 53 clients have passed away and that in our staff, one subcontractor and two home health aides have passed away due to the Coronavirus."”

LA and I talk about mutual aid.

L.A. Kauffman

April 18 at 8:38 AM · writes:

“The last time I saw writer, firebrand, and friend Benjamin Heim Shepard in the real world, he had just gotten out of D.C. jail yet again, after another direct action, this time one calling for 45's removal from office. We caught up by phone last week for this episode of Books to the Barricades, where he interviewed me about my two books on protest history and the challenges of collective action in the age of social distancing.”

The conversation is about mutual aid, the ways we help each other in such moments,

the ways we look out for everyone.

I can’t believe my government is not helping everyone out, says one of my students, in a zoom class.

Yet, mutual aid is everywhere.

People offering recipes and food recommendations,

Movie picks and empathy,

Solidarity and food,

Mutual interests and care.

Lots of it.

Equalityforflatbush.org has kicked off its brooklyn-shows-love-mutual-aid-project/:

“Since March 25th, we have delivered over 191 community kits of non-perishable food items and household supplies to community members living in the neighborhoods of Bed-Stuy, Brownsville, Bushwick, Canarsie, Coney Island, Crown Heights, East Flatbush, East New York, Flatbush, Fort Greene, Kensington, Marine Park, and Mill Basin.

Any and all Brooklynites who need grocery/supply deliveries, medication pick-up/drop-offs, tenant/rent-strike organizing support, and other forms of material aid, can please feel free to contact us.

With revolutionary love and solidarity,
Equality for Flatbush and The Brooklyn Anti-gentrification Network”

One of my students posts a comment from Master and Margarita in a reaction log about the pandemic.

“Yes, man is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble. The worst of it is that he's sometimes unexpectedly mortal—there's the trick!”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

We are wonderfully horribly made, fragile and resilient, and “unexpectedly mortal.”

This is ugly and beautiful at the same time.

Students talk about patience and silver linings, the Yin and Yang of things, and how we support each other and those in need?

At home the kids are making art and studying,

Museum projects, prepping for college, whatever that might look like.

We're having fun with the insanity of it.

But the losses are piling up.

Not trump, not those I detest,

the ones  adore are sick.

A drag performer from Caroline's high school

died on the couch, his boyfriend was on the way home.

We drink on the roof every night.

Looking at the city, counting our blessings.

  

Each day, I walk or bike through the city, glad to be in the metropolis instead of the country, where many have retreated, glad to be in town during the crisis.

Here, Glynnis MacNicol writes:

“It is, of course, not a holiday, nor is the city nearing the end of a long night. The witchy New York hour between yesterday and today is now the New York of all day, every day. A nightmarish bizarro world set to the soundtrack of sirens. Everything is still here, but off. Even as I thrilled to the empty streets — rounding Columbus Circle in an uninterrupted sweep that made me think of the red-tailed hawks I now enviously watch gracefully circling the skies over my neighborhood — I couldn’t escape the ominous sense that the city had slipped its axis. It was the wrong time of year for this empty, the wrong time of day. The sun itself felt in the wrong place, and the light hit at odd angles. The beat of the city was now the beat of an unhealthy heart, lurching unevenly from one pulse to the next. Music evokes memories, and the refrain of the city’s stillness reminded me of past moments when I’ve had its streets to myself. Sailing down a now-vacant Fifth Avenue, I recalled biking the same stretch during the 2004 GOP convention when Bloomberg had shut it down to cars. I vividly remember reaching 34th Street, and seeing a young man on a delivery bike thrown to the ground by NYPD officers because he had stopped a few inches past some security cones that had been set up. Now food delivery people are on the front lines, risking their health to keep us fed, and the restaurant sector that has long been the lifeblood of New York alive.”

Every day more notices of people getting sick.

My work colleague Victor Ayala writes:

“Those who know me understand my silence and distance... today I want to share a very emotional and touching moment. My friend and colleague of 30 plus years called me from her ICU bed to say goodbye .
In between breaths we expressed our love for one another and encouraged Hope and Prayers. She reminded me to hold on to our memories and love we shared while traveling to conferences and the many lunches and profound discussions about religion and higher education..
Call ended with I love you...
I will continue to hope and pray for her and yes hold onto to our memories, love and respect for one another.....”

We had plans to ride to the beach  but it snows on the way.

Someone sends Caroline a note from the Waste Land.

And it goes in my blog.

Comments and comments.

“Seems like Eliot is becoming the poet laureate of the lockdown,” writes Brennan.

“His the Hollowmen also prophetic.  And of course lovely.”

“We are the hollow men”
he begins:

“Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
 In death's dream kingdom
 These do not appear:
 There, the eyes are
  Sunlight on a broken column
  There, is a tree swinging
 And voices are
 In the wind's singing
 More distant and more solemn
 Than a fading star.

Emily G posts Ash Wednesday.

“Because I know that time is always time.

 And place is always and only place”

And Nancy chimes in that she can still recite the last lines of the last story in the Dubliners.

“Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westwards, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

It snows on Saturday.

The little one and I read War and Peace.

Piere inherits a fortune.

And jealously grows.

A force larger than anyone is coming.

War is looming

A stranger is coming.

No one knows what to do.

So I drive into Sunday.

Hiking with a friend.

Thinking about Mary Oliver and Billy and Rob and everyone, Tolstoy and the road, trips to Prague and Hong Kong, places I’ve been, that I’m not going now, living with the uncertainty, the crackdowns, the adventures that might not happen this summer, the plans that are off, books put on hold, the vivid dreams, wondering what happens when we meet that stranger.

“The road to death is a long march beset with all evils, and the heart fails little by little at each new terror, the bones rebel at each step, the mind sets up its own bitter resistance and to what end? The barriers sink one by one, and no covering of the eyes shuts out the landscape of disaster, nor the sight of crimes committed there.”
― Katherine Anne Porter, Pale Horse, Pale Rider

I left a sit-in of a fracked gas gas pipeline in Williamsburg to join this photo shoot with the nytimes on Feb 28. Seems like a lifetime ago. So strange to watch the ways history repeat, the first time tragedy, the second farce... https://www.nytimes.com/…/04/13/t-magazine/act-up-aids.html…

Hanging out with a friend.

Cleve Jones

April 12 at 7:18 PM

Report from Guerneville.

Every morning my garden is filled with busy quail and doves calling coo-oo, coo-oo. This morning the sky was filled with geese heading north in giant V formation, hundreds of them. The noise was as striking as the visual. There have been numerous sightings of a large mountain lion just a few hundred yards from my garden. While walking a neighbor's 6-acre plot two days ago we saw the remains of a deer killed by the cougar.

In the yard the early blooms of hyacinth and tulips are now giving way to irises and roses. There are still a few blossoms on the apple, pear and plum trees and the weeping cherry scatters drifts of pink across the lawn. The artichokes are almost ready to harvest and I've planted beans, tomatoes, potatoes, squash, quinoa, brussel sprouts, chard, kale, pumpkin and melons and layered them with rich dark compost from the back yard.

The neighbors and I meet briefly most days out on our street while checking our mailboxes, wary to keep far more than the six-foot recommended distance. We compare notes on our gardens and the few food delivery services available in this area. We're all leery of going to Safeway, the only grocery store in town, especially on weekends when the place feels way too full of visitors from out of town. There have been a few cases of the virus reported in town and almost everyone has a story of lost income, sick relatives and the emotional toll of isolation.

i struggle to imagine what it will be like to return to "normal" or if that is even possible. Every plan I'd made for the future has been set aside. There are moments when I am overwhelmed by grief, loneliness and fear as well as memories of another plague in another time. I was young then and full of purpose, now I am old and uncertain. Some nights I can't sleep; some mornings I struggle to get out of bed. I haven't touched another human being in 33 days.