…[I]t is Like a Play with No Good Ending

3 April 2020

A ghost looks back at me from the triple paned bay window as I type this.  His forehead is high and his skin pale.  Those eyes are set back deep and hollow. While I can see his moustache, I cannot see his mouth.  The specter floats out among the brown but greening trees of this twilight. The image reminds me of a soft song from a female singer with a high range singing in front of a drum and a guitar, they are both there, but just barely.  The brushes keep the time and the guitar floats soft and ethereal. 

Today was a day where things seemed kind of, sort of, normal. On a day like this you want to do the things you want to do. Midday there was a trip to the grocery store.  But the trip was not normal.  All the groceries had been ordered online about a week ago, not normal.  Someone brought the groceries to the car, not normal.  We opened and closed the trunk from inside the vehicle. Outside of yelling “Thank you”, we had no contact with the person who brought the groceries to our car. 

The sun was out and the air was warm and it felt good.  We opened up the sunroof just to feel that warmth on our skin.  Social isolation and well, Michigan, have almost turned us into mole people.  It felt good to see the familiar houses passing by on the road to and from the store.  I, of course, looked like a 19^th century train robber with a bandana tripled layered across my nose and mouth.  (Yes, the government has changed the rules-masks are urged for everyone with potential contact with others).

To feel like “I” had accomplished something, I dragged the various parts of the hammock out of the shed and into the back yard.  I assembled it and lay down and made a very silly video.  Why?  Well, because I can.  I have the time and I have no obligations to work from 8 to 5 any more.  When I told my wife this, I added this is not the retirement I had contemplated.  She looked at me sharply and said very gently, “This isn’t the anything that anyone was expecting.” Truth, harsh truth.

Sprawled out in the hammock, after the assembly was done, I could feel the warmth drawing me into sleep. Given it was midday, and given I did not want to get a sunburn, and then have to find the aloe…etc., I got up and went inside and put away the groceries.  From veggies to cake mixes all had been decontaminated as best my wife could do it, based on a lengthy post from a physician in Grand Rapids.

Usually, on the first Friday of all but the summer months, we get together in a bar downtown with our creative friends.  Screen-printers, printers, paper salesman, etc., we gather and quaff a few.  Not so in the plague year.  Today we Zoomed in and talked from our basement bunkers. It was fun, but was it what we wanted, no.  But we are too old for taking our chances in such a public venue. Too many hands abound, too many coughs and too many silent carriers. 

The sky has gone dark.  As I look out the bay window, I see that the specter is me.  Still, I hold to the stance that I am haunted.  In this plague year we are all haunted.