#just not today its my bday ill be doing nothing much and start my rewatch

[wendylewis-blog]

04.05.2020 / April ain’t foolin

Friday

I listened to Paul Westerberg this morning, shaking some yang-yangs out’mah head. Hello, grey day—I love you right now. This low cloud cover makes me feel cozy and want to write. It’s 8:03am. 

Didn’t sleep well, got up around 3am but made use of it, sorta. Steeped some tea, stared into the yard after letting the dog out with the door open, allowing the chilly morning to swirl around me in the entryway. Started to write this post. Teared up a little listening to Wally, Egon & Models in the Studio (Rachels) —affronting sentimentalism and tweaking it up, all the same. It’s here, in our faces. Splatttt! Really? Yep. 

What have we been building for the last three decades?

Pine branches sway as the sky grows lighter. I imagine they are waving to me. I wave back.

Saturday

Last night I rewatched The Matrix, took a three minute break at 10pm to sing a song with Al Church on Uncancelled Music Festival, which alarmingly wtf? has very few women slated, I’ve heard. That was not lost on Al, so he invited me and Diane Miller to join him during his set. Wish I could have heard the set (jury-rigged in via FaceTime for my song)—still, it was was nice to feel like I was performing. I covered Mr Rabbit, a folk song written in the early 1900s—every little soul must shine—like, we all matter, okay? 

Always—stories, poems and songs lighten a load, convey a message, scream out loud, or cry into the lightless maw of injustice, as it goes and goes...ugh. Keep it allll comin, artists of every kind. It’s up to us to leave stories behind for future generations and nothing would matter at all if no one was listening or watching or saying. 

I had a remarkable dream a few nights ago. Everything was warm, and felt almost combustible, just beneath the surface. I wiped my hand across a table creating a swath of fire, left footprints of fire, everything I touched lit up in a graceful trail of blue/orange flame < it looked just like that. It wasn’t hot or painful—I was never burned. It was just there, like surfaces, like me. 

Today is my mother’s bday. She flew long ago. The longer she is dead, the more I come to understand her, at least in my own way. It’s one-sided now but I get to work it out until I make my exit. 

Sunday

It’s afternoon. The sun is shining. I’ve had a fairly good week and barely listening to the news likely had much to do with that. I’ve made some good meals. The soup last night was tasty (thanks, Kitty!) and this morning, I ground up the last of my homegrown, dried and over-wintered in a Ball jar cayenne peppers and poured them into the shaker. It’s stupid how much I loved that—haha! Small triumphs?

I stumbled on a brand new podcast, Sugar Calling, in which host Cheryl Strayed has conversations with writers. In this first episode, her discussion was with one of my favorites, George Saunders. He had been her professor when she was getting her writing degree years prior. He is a gentle, kind and amusingly/cynical (hmmm... that’s the closest I can come, sorta Vonnegut?) and insanely creative, challenging writer. Highly recommended but, you have to stop to listen. Don’t be doing your dishes or cleaning out a closet. 

Speaking of writers, my friend Karissa linked me to a quote from Arundhati Roy (posted on Instagram here). I love Roy’s brain wrapped around any topic, unleashing her always razor-sharp elegance around both a concept and the written word. I tried to find where the essay came from and, I did. I’m linking you to the essay she wrote in Financial Times (pay only $1 for 4 weeks, cheap for a test drive). Anyway, I was able to grab a bit of it before they cut me off, pasted below. 

I’ll leave you here, within her sturdy, powerfully honest and vulnerable perspective. Think on it. 

Be well, take care, talk soon. Lovelove. 

Who can use the term “gone viral” now without shuddering a little? Who can look at anything any more — a door handle, a cardboard carton, a bag of vegetables — without imagining it swarming with those unseeable, undead, unliving blobs dotted with suction pads waiting to fasten themselves on to our lungs? 

Who can think of kissing a stranger, jumping on to a bus or sending their child to school without feeling real fear? Who can think of ordinary pleasure and not assess its risk? Who among us is not a quack epidemiologist, virologist, statistician and prophet? Which scientist or doctor is not secretly praying for a miracle? Which priest is not — secretly, at least — submitting to science? 

And even while the virus proliferates, who could not be thrilled by the swell of birdsong in cities, peacocks dancing at traffic crossings and the silence in the skies? 

The number of cases worldwide this week crept over a million. More than 50,000 people have died already. Projections suggest that number will swell to hundreds of thousands, perhaps more. The virus has moved freely along the pathways of trade and international capital, and the terrible illness it has brought in its wake has locked humans down in their countries, their cities and their homes. But unlike the flow of capital, this virus seeks proliferation, not profit, and has, therefore, inadvertently, to some extent, reversed the direction of the flow. 

It has mocked immigration controls, biometrics, digital surveillance and every other kind of data analytics, and struck hardest — thus far — in the richest, most powerful nations of the world, bringing the engine of capitalism to a juddering halt. Temporarily perhaps, but at least long enough for us to examine its parts, make an assessment and decide whether we want to help fix it, or look for a better engine. 

The mandarins who are managing this pandemic are fond of speaking of war. They don’t even use war as a metaphor, they use it literally. But if it really were a war, then who would be better prepared than the US? If it were not masks and gloves that its frontline soldiers needed, but guns, smart bombs, bunker busters, submarines, fighter jets and nuclear bombs, would there be a shortage? 

Arundhati Roy APRIL 3 2020