Another week, another dream, plague journal, on Quixote, 16,000 cases and counting as the world blurs out of bounds.

Image from the Gowanus. 

A man looking out turned skeleton. 

Skin hunger. 

Peewee Nyob march 19a flashforward from the Ed Koch years

"H/t Doug McLean

“When the entire population of a superpower nation is helplessly forced to rely on a six-time bankrupt TV person..."

COVID-19 NY Working Group

@covid19ny

·

20h

NYC Dept. of Health says if haven’t taken up masturbating, you best be doing so.

Quote Tweet

Chrissy Rutherford

@chrissyford

· Mar 21

“You are your safest sex partner” — obsessed with NYC’s guide to sex during corona

Fly Orr writes:

"SHIT IS REAL!I started drawing this about a week & half ago, when the news was showing the long Costco lines to buy toilet paper (& chicken)... Everyone was buying Toilet Paper!... it was like Panic Hurricane Shopping...( I'm trying to keep a fraction of humor in the face of despair) but we really have no precedent for "Shopping for a Pandemic" Then when NYC announced that it had one case of Covid-19 the "Panic Buying" started in the City & Again, Toilet Paper was immediately sold out... then an hour later it was 95 cases...which, yeah, I understand is because they started testing & suddenly realized that This SHIT Is REAL!!... a few days ago it was 3000 plus... yesterday was over 8000 - just in NYC! - - we are now the "Epicenter of the Pandemic" with ONE THIRD of the Country's cases being in NYC... apparently... but its all about the testing... there is no way to really know since only a limited amount of people in the country are being tested... its overwhelming the healthcare system so its impossible to test Everyone... I have SO MUCH RESPECT for Anyone working to provide healthcare services on the Front Lines... & to all of my beloved PEOPs - please take care of yourselves... Much Love & Strength & Good Health... stay Safe... xxx fly oxo."

Mairi McCormick says:
"A note for neighbors before quarantining completely. Find yourself friends who create beauty, who remind you you’re loved even when you can’t hug one another, because you are. Ps. Covid-19 is symptomatic of the ecological breakdown."

social distancing bike ride. 

As I finish these edits, we are in quarantine in New York as a global pandemic changes  everything. Pollution  levels falling around the world, mother  earth seems to be taking things into her  own hands.

According to the NY Times:

“A satellite that detects emissions in the atmosphere linked to cars and trucks shows huge declines in pollution over major metropolitan areas, including Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, Chicago and Atlanta.”

Yesterday we had10,000 cases in New York, testing is spotty, the attorney general wants  to suspend civil liberties, and the President suggests the election.

Today, 

Today, 16,278 cases, 150 deaths. 

We’ve been at home in self isolation for a week.

The governor’s order for us to be shut in begins.

Everyone is going through it.

Our family, the  city, the world.

My friends  in Italy are locked inside.

A stranger  is coming  to visit.

But we can’t  see her.

"The Mask of the Red Death: A Fantasy".

But there are still cracks, openings and closings.

Mother earth needed a break and she’s taking  it.

Capitalism is turning to socialism or fascism.

But all is not right.

Each day a different set of feelings.

On Wednesday, I awoke with  a feeling of despair.

Travel and plans off.

Looks like my Cuba trip with my buddy is off.

Bad news and good.

Greg G points out, even if it gets better and we go back to normal, its going to come back.

Everyone is going through it.

My friend Matthew Sussman posted a note summing up a lot of these feelings:

“It’s bedtime and despite the help of a generous nightcap I know that while I am basically coping, staying busy and obedient, trying to be useful to my family, friends, and colleagues, (hopefully more than them too as we move through this) finding some time to actually think about life and all my good fortune and even laugh and stay informed etc. I am by turns really anxious, afraid, edgy, needy, clingy, hypochondriacal (that one just a little), conflicted about priorities as we try to keep going, reminding myself one day at a time and all of that and more, but above all I am so fucking profoundly - sad. For everyone and everything. Sending love and restful sleep wishes to everyone - same as I do for my beautiful, resilient, joyful daughter every normal night of our lives. Peace.”

But life  and work continue.

I still have classes to teach, albeit online, instead of in a circle.

I miss my students and hate getting things up for online classes.

But we have to do it.

The Wednesday night, I dream  about the usual exuberant end of the semester ritual of saying goodbye the last day of class.

The students smiling, sighing after finishing their exams.

And then I awake, realizing it wasn’t going to happen.

We were  not going to see each other  in that  same way.

There wasn’t going  to be a goodbye.

But maybe there would be.

Gregg Gonsalves posted a note:

“Masha Gessen in her obituary, appreciation of the art critic Douglas Crimp in July of last year said for Douglas, "activism was a response to mourning, but also a way to obscure grief—a way, in fact, to obscure life itself." Over the past few weeks, my instinct has been to fight, to rage, to throw myself into work around the COVID-19 epidemic. And this morning, it bubbled up. Grief. About the world that is ending, one that was never quite a world for me and my friends, because this grief is not new, it's old, ancient now. We lost so many in a time long ago that it's history to most young people. The prospect of another "wave of dying friends" and colleagues lost to another virus is almost too much to bear. For me, it's a weight behind the eyes for tears that never come. Mourning. Mourning and militancy.”

Everyone who writes about or thinks about pandemics has this feeling.

The stirrings of the past, mixed with the present, into a new trauma.

“

“1,112 and Counting” wrote Larry Kramer as the AIDS crisis began, each week new numbers.

“If we don’t act immediately, then we face our approaching doom.”

Each week brought new numbers.

My friend G’Dali was 22 at the time.  He recalls a Scene in Sheridan square almost four decades ago:

“We used to set up a folding table around the city, usually Saturdays and Sundays.  There were like six or seven of us.  The little information that was available was printed up into brochures and we'd stand at the table with all the pamphlets and a bucket asking for donations  at 77th and Columbus or down at Sheridan Square.  It was really interesting to start getting a feel for the dynamic and the response on a very interactive level of the community and of the city as a whole.  Most gay men would pass by the table or would cross the street to avoid the table, sort of the way that you avoid the perfume salesperson at Bloomingdale's at the bottom of the escalator.  So you'd find yourself just disgusted with the community.  But women with babies with strollers would stop; younger heterosexuals seemed to be interested or accessible on some level that most gay men weren't.  Literally you could spend entire Saturdays and Sundays with maybe three or four gay men ever stopping to talk or donate money. Of course, as the incidents rose, more people knew someone who knew someone who knew someone, then more people knew someone who knew someone who knew someone.  And then more people were dead. I can remember we had a placard.  It was handmade.  Everything was really very primitive.  We mounted it behind the table and on the top it said: "New York Cases" and then below it said:  "US Cases" and I can remember when there were 300 or 400.  I can remember when we hit 1,000 in New York and we switched the numbers.  It was '83....”

The slow motion car wreck taking place in the numbers  climbing  everyday.

Gradually, we came know more and more names. Friends of friends. Acquaintances.

A friend’s lover. Each week more. 

“New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Saturday morning that the number of coronavirus cases in the state has increased by more than 3,000 and now tops 10,000.”

By mid week, NYC was an epicenter.

Yet unlike  past emergencies, this time we can’t  touch each other.

We have to keep a distance.   

Emily Schuch writes:

“I realized in the past week that my emotions are a rollercoaster because I've been moving very quickly through the stages of grief. Maybe you are too. A lot of us may be at different stages and be dealing with different fallout from this. Recognize it, and keep taking care of yourself and each other. Ask others for help when you need it.”

  I can never get the stages right.”

I reply.

New things are coming out of the losses. Lots of new things...

All over Brooklyn, kids are painting. People are writing manifestos, novels, poems, planning mutual aid projects, reimagining what it could all mean.

My little one is listening to a podcast about the Diggers,  painting all day long, dreaming about going to LaGuardia, her new high school, where she received the magic acceptance this week.

Even if we are isolated, we are connected.

No man is an island wrote John Donne.

'No man is an iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee....'

We read the poem during my remote field practicum class.

We are all impacted by each other.

Learn  from your mistakes.

Be a part of history.

Write about it.

Feel it.

Let it run through you.

By Friday, it was increasingly  apparent, this was going to get a lot weirder,  a lot longer.
“We need everyone to be safe, or no one can be safe,” Cuomo said during a press conference announcing the new regulations. “This is not life as usual. Accept it, realize it, and deal with it.”

The executive order, which Cuomo calls PAUSE—which stands for “Policies Assure Uniform Safety for Everyone”—will take effect on the evening of March 22, according to the governor. It mandates that any businesses not deemed “essential” must keep 100 percent of their workforce home. Any businesses that do not comply could face fines or enforcement measures.

The order also mandates that New Yorkers to halt any gatherings “of any size, for any reason” for the foreseeable future, although it stops short of discouraging people to leave their homes entirely. Instead, it states that people should continue to practice social distancing, and limit activities to things that can be done alone or while maintaining at least six feet of distance between themselves and others. (So going for a solo run is fine; playing a game of basketball with some friends or hosting a dinner party, not so much.)

Are liquor stores included?

I wonder.

Yes.

Don’t worry.

 Jay writes:

“Everyone relax. Liquor stores are considered essential.”

I run off to do  some panic shopping.

Most of my friends working at the store are now wearing masks.

How is your writing? I ask mon amour.

Terrible.

I can’t focus on the Nazis when all this shit is going down.

God knows  we all  do.

My friend wrote a poem about  this moment, tweeting:

Liz Mariani | אורית מיכאל

@LizMarianiPoet

“And now we have an opportunity to really change how it is we live love and celebrate life”

Every night, we watch a movie or two together after dinner.

Love and Death, Blade Runner, the Matrix, Chinatown, Day for Night, The End of the Tour, the bio epic about  a road trip at the end of David Foster Wallace’s book tour for Infinite Jest.

“He said in one interview that he set out with “Infinite Jest” “to do something sad,” and that novel not only paints a blackly comic portrait of an America run amok, but also features a tormented hero, who is reeling from his discovery of his father’s bloody suicide — his head found splattered inside a microwave oven.”

My friend Rob and I were going to go to Cuba.

He’d been driving up from the Florida keys with a friend,

A band on  the run, eluding the virus, from South Carolina to DC.

We’re all trying  to.

They skipped even coming to Brooklyn,  stopping in Poughkeepsie

To pick up some of Rob’s stuff.

The students sent home,

Campus shuttered.

“A ghost town before the virus, and now a moonscape of ghosts and bandits.”

Are we going to make it to Cuba for Spring break.

Probably not.

Instead we  have  Quixote.

Our book club meets online on  Saturday.

We were going to cancel our session, but Catherine wrote to everyone:

“Hi wonderful book nerds,

We were scheduled to gather today chez moi to discuss the last 40thousand pages of Don Quixote between 3-5pm

Instead, I invite you all to join for a mini ZOOM meeting.

These meeting are only 40 minutes

but it will be great to see one another and share some thoughts on DQ.

Bring a quote to share for discussion

Or theme you want to discuss

or just listen in and see your friends

A..I.R. Book Club

Today, Saturday 3-3:40PM
via Zoom Meeting.”

Before  meeting  everyone, I consult with Harold Bloom, who wonders:

“What is the true object of Don Quixote's quest?”

Reading Cervantes forces us into a dialogue with something deep inside all of us.

What are any of our quests, the windmills we’re chasing?

“I find that unanswerable,” gushes Bloom. “We are not permitted to know. Since Cervantes's magnificent knight's quest has cosmological scope and reverberation, no object seems beyond reach…Don Quixote is tragedy as well as comedy. Though it stands for ever as the birth of the novel out of the prose romance, and is still the best of all novels…We are inside the vast book, privileged to hear the superb conversations between the knight and his squire, Sancho Panza. Sometimes we are fused with Cervantes, but more often we are invisible wanderers who accompany the sublime pair in their adventures and debacles.”

I guess we’re  all inside  the book now.

Can we  make it through?

Where will this road lead us?

“Battered by realities that are even more violent than he is, Don Quixote resists yielding to the authority of church and state,” writes Bloom. “But he is neither a fool nor a madman, and his vision always is at least double: he sees what we see, yet he sees something else also, a possible glory that he desires to appropriate or at least share. Why does Cervantes subject Don Quixote to the physical abuse of part I and the psychic tortures of part II?  The physical and mental torments suffered by Don Quixote and Sancho Panza had been central to Cervantes's endless struggle to stay alive and free.

Nabakov worried about the  book’s cruelties.

“—with or without the author's intent— which riddles the whole book.”

I find myself thinking  of our webs of interconnection, between this book and all of time.  My Russian novel teacher at Vassar, who studied with Nabakov, who wrote so eloquently about Cervantes, who Herald understood to pose questions about where we stand in relationship to others or reality itself;

“I do not believe the knight can be said to tell lies, except in the Nietzschean sense of lying against time and time's grim "It was". To ask what it is that Don Quixote himself believes is to enter the visionary centre of his story.

Does the knight believe his own story? It makes little sense to answer either "yes" or "no", so the question must be wrong.”

Certainly.

No one has a monopoly on the truth or even the right questions to  ask. 

Instead we’re all invited into the conversation, taking us from Brooklyn to Kafka’s Praha, to Argentina where Borges wrote about Cervantes.

And the rest of us wondered what he learned from the master, taking us into a labyrinth, between fiction and reality.

Ilan Stavans and William P. Childers suggest:

“Modern individualism overrates originality. Inventing a writer who contributes nothing to the text except putting his own name to it, as Menard does, makes a mockery of the concept of authorship.Or better, that the center no longer holds; it has been replaced by a plethora of other decentralized centers. This is, in my view, what the ideology of Menardismo, ..is about: the displacement of Spain as the fountainhead whose water irrigated its outposts. Originality, in the New World, is based on turning European aesthetics upside down, refreshing them, making clones based on it that are more original than the original. Call it the revenge of the natives!”

The conversation turns back  to Borges, the question  of authorship and  identity.

“Borges read Cervantes all his life, and his reflections cut across genres: essays, lectures, fiction, poetry, interviews, memoir… He was the first to take a serious interest in the metafictional aspect of the narrative.  Fiction and reality are interchangeable; neither can be shown to be more than a representation.”

Catherine opens the zoom  lens for all of us.

There is Emily looking out.

Joan E has been taking virtual tours of the trees.

And Rob has been thinking about he order of things:

Foucault wondered about Quixote in The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Books, 1970) 46-48:

“His who journey is a quest for similitudes: the slightest analogies are pressed into service as dormant signs that must be reawakened and made to speak once more. Flocks, serving girls, and inns become once more the language of books to the imperceptible degree to which they resemble castles, ladies, and armies--a perpetually untenable resemblance which transforms the sought-for proof into derision and leaves the words of the books forever hollow. . .

Don Quixote is a negative of the Renaissance world; writing has ceased to be the prose of the world; Resemblance and signs have dissolved their former alliance; similitudes have become deceptive and verge upon the visionary or madness; things still remain stubbornly within their ironic identity: they are no longer anything but that they are; words wander off on their own, without content, without resemblance to fill their emptiness; they are no longer the marks of things; they lie sleeping between the pages of books and covered in dust. . . The erudition that once read nature and books alike as parts of a single text has been relegated to the same category as its own chimeras: lodged in the yellowed pages of books, the signs of language no longer have any value apart form the slender fiction which they represent. The written word and things no longer resemble one another. And between them, Don Quixote wanders off on his own.

Yet language has not become entirely impotent. It now possesses new powers, and powers peculiar to it alone. In the second part of the novel, Don Quixote meets characters who have read the first part of his story and recognize him, the real man, as the hero of the book. Cervante's text turns back upon itself, thrusts itself back into its own density, and becomes the object of its own narrative. The first part of the hero's adventures play in the second part the role originally assumed by the chivalric romances. Don Quixote must remain faithful to the book that he has now become in reality; he must protect it from errors, from counterfeits, from apocryphal sequels; he must fill in the details that have been left out; he must preserve its truth. But Don Quixote himself has not read this book, and does not have to read it, since he is the book in flesh and blood. Having first read to many books that he became a sign, a sign wandering through a world that did not recognize him, he has now, despite himself and without his knowledge, become a book that contains his truth, that records exactly all that he has done and said and seen and thought, and that at last makes him recognizable, so closely does he resemble all those things whose ineffaceable imprint he has left behind him. Between the first and the second parts of the novel, in the narrow gap between those two volumes, and by their power alone, Don Quixote's truth is not in the relation of the words to the world but in that slender and constant relation women between themselves as verbal signs. The follow fiction of epic exploits has become the representative power of language. Words have swallowed up their own nature as signs.”

None of us have  read the book as we navigate this  pandemic.

Something is being  written.

History is  unfolding  in front of all of us.

“Six feet apart,” the police scream as we ride our bikes past the police parked along Union, outside the 76^th precinct, as we finish our social  distancing cycling ride from Prospect Park to Red Hook and back.

We all have to keep our heads.

“I hope you write about the looming fascism coming our way, with curfews, police and lockdowns.”

What wave is coming our way, I ask as we stand outside Valentino Pier, looking at the mural of Hokusai’s the Wave. There were jobs and containers and then deindustrialization, then drugs,

Then gentrification, globalization, Sandy, and now who  know what wave is coming our way?

Its  a good time to keep our heads.

Can you keep a distance, says a woman ahead  of me in  line at the grocery store.

It could be weeks and weeks of this.

Can we starve the virus or flatten the curve?

Be patient, I say to myself.

One day at a time. 
Breathe.

Enjoy the vacation.

Mother earth is in change now.

“Come visit next week,” says Mom on the phone.

“The governor wants us to stay home,” I tell her. 

“Well, he can’t ticket you for visiting your mom.”

“I feel like crying,” writes a friend in Hawaii, worried about our Cuba trip.

“Where do you go?   Africa, maybe?  But then it's Ebola!  What is Rob doing??  I'm seriously freaking out.  And can't stop crying.   I'm having major full-time anxiety attack.   And I feel safe; it's just mostly grief for everybody else.  I just went to the store and everyone is wearing masks and it's like Dead Zone out there.   And we only have like 50 cases, but nobody trusts the numbers, b/c we are so tourist-dependent, we don't trust anyone to tell us the truth.  And everyone losing their jobs, it's so sad.  We are so lucky, govt. employees, but what about everyone else??    Seriously I can't stop crying.  And watching lots of Freddie videos.  He faced AIDS bravely, and that was 100 per cent death rate at that point.  I'm trying to be inspired.... “

“Keep a panic journal,” I reply.

Its my answer for everyone.

“Hold your head.

Its gonna get weird. 10,000 cases in NYC.

Next week, 100,000

The following…?