“IF I should learn, in some quite casual way,” Plagues Journal and yearnings for laughter, goodbyes and bike rides

"NYC May Day: Day of Actions to Fight for Our Lives!

People Over Profit: Tell the government and Wall Street that their priority must be to save lives, not profits. Returning to work under this pandemic is a threat to our collective health and safety. We need systems change, not just relief and reform. The capitalist system can’t resolve this crisis.

Join workers, undocumented, imprisoned, detained, across the country, all over the world, in demanding not just safety now, but a new, just, equitable world for good."

Poetry readings are everywhere. 

 bobholman helped us find them. 

This is how we do it here. Ben runs into Greg at 7 cheering for healthcare workers, before Michelle stops on her ride to chat, before Jessica strolls by, and we chat at a social distance. Wondering how long any of this craziness will last, and the guy down the street plays his trumpet.

RIP  Georgianna Glose

In “Spellbound”,
Emily Brontë writes:

“The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.”

None of us can go  anywhere.

Shelter in place.

If you have a place to shelter in.

The homeless can’t shelter in place.

The plague keeps coming.

The losses, death, losses.

People screaming.

Quietly grieving.

Classmates,

Teachers,

Mothers,

A friend’s father, without a goodbye.

The funeral homes filled with bodies.

The morgues at capacity.

Each casket with a story.

Teaching on Tuesday, my chair called.

I knew what it was about.

Georgianna.

My colleague who’d been in ICU.

I  went back to my online class,

Telling everyone,

Students who’d taken her classes, who planned to take her  classes,

who’d been in internship with her.

Tears.

Georgianna, a colleague who you worked with for a dozen years dies, one of the good ones, one of the kind ones, one of those who looked out when things were rough, one of the ones who cares about the poor, one of those who mentored generations of students, friends, one of the good ones. RIP Georgianna Glose RIP friend.

Samuel Williams

wrote,

This is the news I been dreading & hope it didn't happen but I lost one of my heroes today. Dr. Glose passed away today due to coronavirus. Shocked & saddened with this news! Dr. Glose helped me alot over the years since I was in high school from the STEP program in Pratt Institute, my tutor for the SAT's, she allowed me to volunteer at Fort Greene SNAP & my first boss for my first paying job at SNAP few years later when I got selected to work via Summer Youth back in 2009 & 2011. Helped me alot through my young adult years and you left a great legacy! One of my heros! Prayers and condolences goes out to Dr. Glose & her family, former students & Fort Greene/Clinton Hill community. Until me meet again in heaven Dr. Georgianna Glose! RIP!

All week everyone is making it through the  darkness. 

I worked with Dr. Georgianna Glose for well over a decade, going to conferences with her, talking about organizing.  She loved higher education and advocacy.

A faculty member at New York City College of Technology, she was once the chair of the human services department, before establishing and becoming director of Ft Greene SNAP. Within that capacity she advocated for the poor providing direct services.  She also mentored a generation of social work and human services students.

When things were tough for me, she was there, offering solidarity and support.

She was a national leader in the human services field, sitting on the board of the National Organization of Human Services, receiving a lifetime achievement award from the organization.

The last time I saw her was at a union meeting.  She was asking if we could look out for someone in need.

There are not many people who took the commitment to the poor quite as seriously as she did.

And she’s gone.

The cruel and indifferent are still here.

And she is gone.

That was hard.

Looking at the carnage, we all respond.

The next day we take more food from New Alternatives to the Bronx, more sharing, and  support, more  mutual  aid, the only thing that will save us, each other. 

“I’d rather be taking food out than sitting at home,” says the teenager on our way home.

Its better than letting this consume us.

Some days we watch numb.

Or think about what might happen as the best plans are laid by the waist side.

The Spanish Flu came back two times says Caroline.

Plagues always come back, always, a little different, a lot the same.

I read the news, watch the press briefings.

And sometimes we feel it.

Monica Hunken writes

April 30 at 4:04 PM ·

Triggering content
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hearing the news about the Uhaul trucks full of rotting dead bodies in my neighborhood really got to me. The news cycle this week seemed particularly brutal; the EMT doctor committing suicide, the 30 yr old Brooklyn teacher dying after being repeatedly denied a test, canceling the NY primary, May 1st approaching and bills piling up, Navajo nations riddled with the virus, photos of women bruised and bloodied facing more violence at home trapped with abusive partners and the stupid jets flying overhead. but that story of the trucks just made me unravel. It reminded me of when I was in Greece working at refugee camps and hearing stories about people being trapped in the backs of trucks fleeing war zones and discovered later, in a mass boxtruck grave. I know it's not the same but still, it's horrific.
We live in a society that does not provide adequate care and dignity for the sick and dying. Human life is not prioritized, to say the very least. We have been feasting off war and this is an enemy that cannot be demonized and we cannot go at it the old American way with guns ablazing. It is requiring the care and justice we have always needed, the overhaul of the entire system. and now everyone knows.
Very difficult to focus today. I can't imagine I'm alone in this. Not sure what to ask for. I don't think pictures of cute animals will cut it. just wanted to express the heaviness and reach out and see how you're all doing with this. Sending love from over here in Brooklyn, breathing in and out.

“We may be alone but you’re not alone,” says Ken Schles, concurring.  “Not in what you’re feeling and experiencing, not in knowing where  we should be (and frustratingly aren’t). 

 Emily Schuch writes:

“monica, i've had hard days these past weeks so i know what that's like. in those moments i try to remind myself how many people there are who are trying to help right now. horrible things will still happen, but so many people are doing everything they can to make things better. so many people are caring rather than cruel. i also try to take breaks from news, because it can just be too much. i hope your post can also be a reminder to others to be thoughtful about what they are sharing here, because we all need each other's support right now, and some news can be triggering to others. sending you much love.”

Monica later replies:

Thanks all for reaching out. Living alone during this and then being surrounded by strangers at work, I dont have much processing time with others. It's good just to touch base. sending you love and gratitude.

In the face of the calls to reopen things, before tests, the ignorance, we  see the outcomes of the war on education. Science becomes a  stranger. But it should be a friend, a  tool, an ally, science  for the people.

Emily and I talk about the horrors and the triggers, the dead bodies and the news, the  way we  respond.

“This  is all you need to watch  tonight,” she later posts, leaving a  David Lynch cooking quinoa.

“I’ll just  keep it light with Blue Velvet,” I reply,  visiting Dennis Hopper and company, taking a trip back to 1986.

Everyone is  starving for  contact, for intimacy.

Tonel Dankenzeem outlines a few of  the  questions.

April 29 at 10:11 PM ·

*This post is for mature audiences only and discusses specific sexual practices.*

After grad school in social work, I was steeped in the interventions and language of Harm Reduction while I was Coordinator of Gay Men’s Counseling & Education in the HIV Prevention Department of GMHC in the late ‘90s. So I’ve been accustomed to helping people and myself negotiate the terrain of risk and sex for quite a while. Abstinence-based approaches are not necessarily realistic for everyone. It may be naive of me to try to open up a discussion about gay men’s sexual practices on social media in the middle of a pandemic without receiving a fierce backlash of accusations of “endorsing” hooking up/sex and irresponsibly putting others at risk. I’ve seen lots of creative options, including parties that have moved online. Most people I know seem to be with a partner or none at all. On a personal level, I haven’t had any 3D human contact of any kind in 7 weeks, and I’m not sure how long that will realistically last.

I’m hoping however, that by opening up a dialogue about the strategies men are already using to negotiate risk, people could glean new ideas about how to reduce risk, or even reevaluate one’s approach entirely.

Here are some ideas people have shared with me to implement risk reduction:

1) No kissing
2) Both persons wearing a mask
3) Opening a window, or better yet, cross-ventilation.
4) No rimming (A DOH recommendation).
5) Not using spit as lube for anything
5) Limiting your sex partners by amount, by degree of isolation/their perceived risk of exposure (clearly subjective & potentialy inaccurate), and even coronavirus history, or corona antibody status and having open discussions about these questions.

Please feel free to add your own ideas.

Maybe rimming with plastic wrap?

Eric  Sawyer, founder of ACT UP, Housing Works, and Healthgap, and I talk on  Friday,  wondering about what is coming of this.

“At first I was of two minds,” he tells me, wondering if this was going to be like the Spanish Flu of 1918, killing everyone, or it was like a nasty flu that would come and go.

The more he learned, he started worrying.

This was a serious epidemic.

“I began fearing for my safety, with HIV, I checked six or seven of the boxes of co-morbidity.”

Sawyer stayed inside his apartment in Harlem for a while, only getting out to walk his dog and avoiding contact.

And then he heard the market in Fire Island was open.

And made his way out.

“There is a lot of déjà vu between Covid and HIV,” says Sawyer, recalling the paranoia of the early HIV years, when HIV/AIDS was known as GRID, and routes of transmission were not clear. And hysteria reigned.

“Its so similar,” explains Sawyer. “The most vulnerable are the hardest hit.”

The Homeless Can’t Shelter in Place.

Housing is the simple indicator for health, says Sawyer recalling the early years of Housing Works.  

I  mention the doctor who killed herself, just  too  much of this. 

He recalls a friend, Steven Webb, who lived with a doctor who died early, taking his life when it all became too much.  

People need care and support and acknowledgement.

We need each other.

Otherwise this is too much.

“It was happening to junkies and queer and whores, so no one cared until ‘innocent’ babies started getting sick,” recalls Sawyer.

“This is impacting everyone”

There’s still a lot of activism to do, he concludes.

This is impacting everyone but in different ways, countless ways, as we cycle through emotions.

As Kate, of the New Alternates points out.

“This is a declaration of war on homeless New Yorkers. Until the city and the state provide Actual safe housing with appropriate services, chasing homeless New Yorkers out of the subway will just result in them being on the city streets. I have worked with homeless clients for decades and people are not on the subway because they want to be. They are there because it feels like the safest choice. Instead of blaming the most vulnerable among us, We need to treat them as human beings deserving of services and respect. We need to address the factors in our society that create and allow this level of poverty.”

Joseph Sonnabend

April 30 at 8:18 AM

Many of us who participated in the early response to HIV/AIDS have been asked if any useful lessons were learned that might help us in dealing with Covid 19. Implicit in the way that question was sometimes asked was the assumption that the medical response to AIDS was exemplary, a contention I most certainly do not agree with. Instead and more to the point, the question might have been: Can we avoid repeating the mistakes made in the medical response to HIV/AIDS?
The mistakes that were then made, both with respect to steps that were taken and those that were not taken were numerous and easily documented. ….

Whatever goes into the establishment of a medical leadership in times of crisis, in the case of HIV/AIDS, it failed miserably. Can we trust that it will not fail us today?

Unlike the mediocre medical response to HIV/AIDS, the scientific response was spectacularly successful, resulting in major advances in virology and molecular cell biology with implications well beyond HIV/AIDS. The same appears to be true of the scientific response to Covid 19. Maybe virologists, immunologists and molecular cell biologists have performed so much better than the doctors partly because they are to a greater extent, shielded from political influence.

There has been much recent publicity reassuring us that we are in good hands with Dr Fauci leading the medical response. Maybe this is indeed a good thing, but in extoling his virtues, one can’t help but note that the less than lustrous performance of the medical response to HIV/AIDS under his leadership has somehow been transformed into a triumph. We should not be taken in by this attempt to obscure a less than exemplary past.
We have to admit to what went wrong as a first step to getting it right.”

We’re all looking for solutions.

Thursday, we took the antibody test, on the recommendation of my doctor.

I'm very glad to have been able to. We need data and tests, questions and answers beyond hunches. My sense is that the positive tests do not guarantee immunity. What do others think? Is there a consensus?

My feed swells with answers.

Some immunity, no immunity, lots more information to think about.

Nothing certain.

Uncertainty is hard to live with but it beats lying to ourselves, says Seth.

Still we have to live and make sure other indicators are ok,

Cholesterol down, healthy food, exercise up.

Mental health ok.

Friday is Mayday.

Babs and I join Make the Road by Walking, calling the governor to cancel rent.

I’m not working, I can’t pay rent says one man, outside the governor’s office.

Cars zoom by with signs.

Free them call.

Cancel rent.

May Day, International Workers Day!

Essential workers need essential protections declares Barbara’s sign.

Riding in the rain feels about right.

As the day continues, the sun starts to shine.

Back in Brooklyn, the teenager and I ride to Greenpoint,   

Eleven miles from the Gowanus

Through Ft Greene,

To Bed Stuy,

Through Williamsburg

Up to Greenpoint,

Where she skates, joining others renegade skate boarders, out keeping their distance.

If you have a bike and an imagination you can be free, even when all you see is the darkness,

And the Blue Velvet.

All weekend, my friends and I ride through sunlight,

Hiking across bridges,

Down the railroad tracks wondering about what’s lost and how we are going to find out way back.

Secret places are still to be found,

Even amidst the broken glass.

Bike repairs help.

So do books and movies and poems.

The little one and I dig further into
Part two of War and Peace, reading #TolstoyTogether.

“Yes, you’re afraid,” said the first speaker.

“You’re afraid of the unknown, that’s what it is.  Whatever it is Whatever we may way about the soul going to the sky… we know there is no sky but only an atmosphere.”

I guess we’re all afraid of that unknown.

Can we find another way to see it?

That’s not easy.

Certainly, Tolstoy didn’t think so, imagining the front:

“One step beyond that boundary line which resembles the line dividing

the living from the dead lies uncertainty, suffering, and death. And

what is there? Who is there?—there beyond that field, that tree, that

roof lit up by the sun? No one knows, but one wants to know. You fear

and yet long to cross that line, and know that sooner or later it must

be crossed and you will have to find out what is there, just as you will

inevitably have to learn what lies the other side of death. But you are

strong, healthy, cheerful, and excited, and are surrounded by other such

excitedly animated and healthy men.” So thinks, or at any rate

feels, anyone who comes in sight of the enemy… everything that

takes place at such moments.”

That line between is a space that is exposed in such moments.

We ride through the park, back to Greenpoint, for more skating.

Broken glass everywhere.

A flat.

All afternoon in the park, waiting for an essential worker to fix my bike.

Loafing under the trees in the park.

At book club, Joan E is reading Leaves of Grass.

“Loaf with me in the grass,” the bard invites us,

 a transparent nourishing turn on me swiftly arose my feet, all the argument of the earth, all men ever born are my brothers, all women, my sisters.

What is in me is in you.
lets dance and sing !!!!

We’re all made of water.

My atoms are your atoms.

Sea and tears and seamen…

We’re all of the same elements.

Whitman is so hot.

The metaphysical poetry of Brooklyn ever expanding.

Joan E writes an eulogy to Gustavo.

I talk about bobholman who wrote a life poem,

helping us find each other,

one poem at a time. 

A Visitation By John Belushi on the Isle of Capri

“Constant eating  Constant motion..
 In laughing, however; indeed, it was John’s laugh itself
That transmitted to me, immediately and wholly, his entire
Comic Cosmic Theory, as if, looking directly down and through
The clear Caprian Mediterranean blue one were suddenly
Face-to-face with the face behind the mask of Comedy.
His laugh functioned like a strange chemical, causing all substance
To diffuse at once into its parts, while simultaneously taking on
A physical appearance of nothing less than a sheet of gold,
Which again, as it slowly lifted, revealed, as if directly implanted,
The True and Complete Nature of Humor According to Belushi.
At this precise moment of revelling revelation, I was able to gasp
Just enough air between laughter-rapture convulsions to blurt out
“All comedy is a yearning!” a statement which stopped time dead.
It happened like this: a quick hitch in John’s eyebrows,
As if Confucius’s pivot were on the wobble, and then an odd wind
Rustled a few hairs on my arm: the congruent pause
Stretched Infinity. Whew. Like a balloon,
John ultimately burst into gales of hilarity, veils of relief,
….Our laughs in, listening at the door as best we could
To the deep breaths of my loved ones as they assumed
The absolute rhythms of sleep, a song which in turn
Signalled sighs and exhalations between the two of us.”

Our laughter really is a yearning.

Every day a yearning.

We are all.

Vicki reads a story about listening to opera on the live stream, joining singers from Vienna, New York, and Rome.

A little glimpse into each other,

Our apartments,

Our hopes,

Our books,

Our rearrangements.

I move them and rearrange them.

Breaking through a level of intimacy,

Notes Gladys recalling the philharmonic performing Bolero with musicians around the world, zooming into the room.

She reads the ingredients from chocolate therapy, from the ice cream stand, following by Mary Oliver:

“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left.”

Maybe we’ve broken through, she wonders.

Catherine tells us about a book reading she went to with a photographer and a poet.

She came out adoring the poet, Ishion Hutchinson, who read:

moved by the beauty of trees:

The beauty of the trees stills her;
she is stillness staring at the leaves,

still and green and keeping up the sky;
their beauty stills her and she is quiet

in her stare, her eyes’ long lashes curve
and keep, her little mouth opens

and keeps still with its quiet for the beauty
of the trees, their leaves, the sky

and its blue quiet, very still and quiet;
her looking eyes wide, deep, silent

hard on the trees and the beauty
of the sky, the green of the leaves

Everyone has read a poem but Julie, who confessed, she preferred to read about the lives of poets.

Yet, there was one poem she was ready to read by Edna St. Vincent Millay:

IF I should learn, in some quite casual way,

That you were gone, not to return again—

Read from the back-page of a paper, say,

Held by a neighbor in a subway train,

How at the corner of this avenue

And such a street (so are the papers filled)

A hurrying man—who happened to be you—

At noon to-day had happened to be killed,

I should not cry aloud—I could not cry

Aloud, or wring my hands in such a place—

I should but watch the station lights rush by

With a more careful interest on my face,

Or raise my eyes and read with greater care

Where to store furs and how to treat the hair.

Listening I think of walking by Millay’s home in the West Village years ago, during one of our poetry readings.

“I learn about someone who died every day at work,” says Vicki.

“Every day I hear about someone who has died, from the ACT team, giving injections, on the mental health team, those from communities of color coping with more and more losses.

Disproportionate losses.

Georgianna RIP.

Thinking of the many.

Those behind bars.

Those unable to pay rent.

Those without work.

“If you would be  poet, create works capable of answering the challenge of apocalyptic times, even if this means sounding apocalyptic,” says Lawrence Ferlinghetti, with a nod to Edna and Walt and the many others of the colossus, reimagining what our world could be, can be, will be, between here and there in early May.

“burst into gales of hilarity…”

Yearning for laughter.