COVID Journal

Sunday’s on the Phone to Monday

April 16, 2020

April 15th was Wednesday, yesterday which is customarily Tax Day. But it wasn’t, because of our Coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown, so the Feds are supposed to be sending us $ stimulus checks and the IRS says we now have an extension to send our tax return by July 15th, if, in fact, we are still alive by mid-summer and for a certain percentage of Americans, this will not be the case.

We are at home minding instructions, wearing masks made of bandanas, folded, with ponytail elastics for ear loops.  Wind blows cool and there’s more traffic wooshing by on the freeway lately. Back yard is all swaying new lemon green leaves and branches. Birds are in strong voice, sopranos chirping and shrill high notes, they are bouncing through the air from limb to limb.

May 28, 2020

COVID Here Today

I sent my daughter to Auschwitz. She went to Poland with a Jewish group when she was in high school. She wanted to go, to see for herself. My husband and I took care to prepare her for the journey to this, the largest site of the mass military extinction of Jews. She went to weekend seminars to learn the details, the statistics. She returned, carrying memories in her camera, black and white photographs she printed herself, documenting the camp, the gas chamber, the mass grave sites in the Polish forest, the detritus of human suffering.

Now she lives in Brooklyn. I am aching to have her home. 

Here today we dread talking about, even imagining what we would do if she were to get the COVID-19 virus. Or vice versa.

Our girl calls often from New York. She is with us online, on text, on Skype. Her sense of time is upside down. Sirens scream in the streets all day and night. She keeps a schedule, with online meetings and work assignments. She is safe in the apartment, where she lives with her kind, devoted girlfriend. They have plenty of masks, soap, and connections with friends holed up, streaming video, and a devious black kitty to chase around,  Outings are rare, except for food shopping. 

I check COVID-19 statistics on Twitter, watching the graph lines ricochet every week. My husband knows my anxious habits. I take my antidepressants. 

Daughter worries. Learned this from me, as I learned from my mother, who was convinced my life was doomed when I moved to San Francisco.

Office bookshelves are lined with shots of our girl. There is my husband’s portrait of her as a young lady at a landfill spot near the bay. She’s holding sunglasses in one slender hand, her pale, lovely face in profile, dark hair bristling against the breeze — behind her, a field of yellow wildflowers, and in the distance, a windsurfer sails over the grey waves.

At Passover, we joined her for a Zoom seder, boxed into our video gallery with my cousins. We recite the story of struggle from slavery to freedom, but the taste of bitter and sweet, the odors of apples, warm soup, fish, chicken and wine cannot be shared. What kind of plague keeps us trapped and temporarily isolated, unable to embrace, munching cardboard matzo? We are all waiting to be redeemed.

Each day burns and melts into the next. We wake and sleep in our comfortable nest. No symptoms yet. Occasionally, we have Six-Foot-Distance Happy-Hour in our neighbors’ driveway. No more summer block parties, with food and ice cream and dancing. On our walks, we pass others at a sterile distance, our lean faces swathed in masks; only our eyes register any feeling. Sidewalks are chalked up with white hopscotch boards and pale pink, blue and yellow happy creatures and doodles. On the soccer field nearby, dogs of all breeds and shapes race around the grass, chasing balls in the sun, crossing the long shadows of their masked owners, who stand around, chatting in small groups.

On Twitter, I watch hundreds gathering in downtown Oakland, masked marchers, carrying placards to protest the brutal police murder of a Black man in Minneapolis. I can’t join them: not this time. All I can do is listen to the helicopters circling above us and tweet in solidarity, enraged. 

I am signing online petitions for more COVID-19 tests, against police brutality. Deaths from a virus, from a violent hatred that cannot be contained. I pass my daughter’s bedroom, imagine her leaning against pillows with a laptop, her dark hair pulled up in a knot, her sweet, round face intent on the screen. She reads, she researches, she investigates the universe within her grasp.

Growing COVID-19 death rates rise at shocking rates. Mourning hit us earlier in the year; we lost my husband’s sister (ALS), and a dear friend (cancer). We were still free to gather, hold on to one another, cry together. We could share stories and photos, laugh, eat, drink together. 

To save ourselves, we are forced to accept this new mandate of stark exile. How far away we are from grieving, for the hand to reach toward sorrow. 

At least I can try to reconcile my fears with my gratitude for the incomparable spring surrounding us. Every block is bursting with an exuberance of roses, brilliant red, coral, yellow, pure ivory, and pale, sweet jasmine vines, violet iris and lavender. Birds sing, zither, chirp above us, as ever. 

Checking the COVID19 charts, the Y axis climbs higher here and in New York. I read stories of loss, tenderly written and shared. 

Not too long ago, a tweet appeared from a young woman who posted a selfie in black and white, her head covered, a ventilator strapped to her face. She was on her way to ICU. Terrified. 

I hesitated, took another look at her, then scribbled, “Hang on. Many are with you.” 

Three days later, a new dispatch — she’s back. Sends her thanks to all + photo of her grinning self, sitting up in bed. Her recovery is in full color. She has beautiful red hair, and a white cat. 

Oakland CA

After six months sheltering in place

June 29, 2020

Facts

The Known World

• Today is my birthday. I am old. More old than last year & gathering up my skirts to keep sliding through doors that have not shut.

• We are in Sebastopol (CA) in a quiet hotel/motel. It has a small pool, where I swam small laps & happy to be moving in water after four months of nothing. So meditative for me.      • Sebastopol is apple country. They are known for Gravenstein apples.

• It’s quiet here. People wear masks, mostly. There are lots of nice middle-class businesses. We ate falafel in a quiet, flowered patio — delicious.

• There is a new, temporary homeless encampment near here, in Santa Rosa.

• The ice cream store sells take-out and the young woman who takes orders has bright yellow steaked hair.

• Our hotel manager who checked us in was wearing a mask, very kind and cheerful. I asked her if she knows anyone who had the virus. She said, “Yes,” her cousin died from COVID 19, age 39. Other relatives in L A have been ill, but they seem to be recovering.

• It’s plum season in our back yard. This year, a truly bountiful crop. Big, swollen purple orbs — they remind me of Christmas tree ornaments and they are sweet . I can’t eat too many —my stomach gets weird. And we are running around gathering them up and bagging them and hauling them off to friends, and plums keeps dropping from the trees.

June 10, 2020

We wake and sleep in our comfortable nest. No symptoms yet. 

Each day burns and melts into the next. Occasionally, we have Six-Foot-Distance Happy-Hour in our neighbors’ driveway. On walks, we pass others at a sterile distance, our lean faces swathed in masks; only our eyes register any feeling. Sidewalks are chalked up with hopscotch boards and happy creatures and doodles. On the soccer field nearby, dogs of all breeds and shapes race around the grass chasing balls in the sun, crossing the long shadows of their owners, who stand around, chatting in small groups.

On Twitter, I watch hundreds gathering in downtown Oakland, masked marchers, carrying placards to protest the brutal police murder of a Black man in Minneapolis. I can’t join them: not this time. All I can do is listen to the helicopters circling above us and tweet in solidarity, enraged. 

I am signing online petitions in support of more COVID-19 tests, against police brutality. Deaths from a virus, from a violent hatred that cannot be contained. I pass my daughter’s bedroom, imagine her leaning against pillows with a laptop, her dark hair pulled up in a knot, her sweet, round face intent on the screen. She reads, she researches, she investigates the universe within her grasp.

Growing COVID-19 death rates rise at shocking rates. Mourning hit us earlier in the year; we lost my husband’s sister (ALS), and a dear friend (cancer). We were still free to gather, hold on to one another, cry together. We could share stories and photos, laugh, eat, drink together. 

To save ourselves, we are forced to accept this new mandate of stark exile. How far away we are from grieving, for the hand to reach toward sorrow. 

June 10, 2020

At least I can try to reconcile my fears with my gratitude for the incomparable spring surrounding us. Every block is bursting with an exuberance of roses, brilliant red, coral, yellow, pure ivory, and pale, sweet jasmine vines, violet iris and lavender. Birds sing, zither, chirp above us, as ever. 

July 25, 2020

HND – House Next Door

My test is negative, as of mid-July. Ditto the antibody test.

House Next Door (HND) has been bought by ambitious renovators. 

All around our neighborhood, which has finally achieved its “Up &

Coming” status after 30 years, investors are buying up houses and tearing them

apart. They keep the footprint to please the City Planning office, but destroy the old surfaces, lovely wood paneling circa 1910, replacing everything with new, cheaper and shinier walls and painting everything exterior black. They sell the homes for high, high prices, which buyers are willing to pay. 

Today we can hear construction workers (less than 5 feet away) shattering, clattering, splintering, pounding, scraping, ripping off the asbestos siding, having agreed to cover our side of the house with plastic sheeting and a bright blue tarp. They will raise the house and put in a new foundation. They will be here all summer and late into the fall. 

August 12, 2020

Construction noise is brutal. Pneumatic drills breaking up the concrete driveway and foundation…the racket shoots straight up my spine. I sequestered downstairs, wearing earphones, trying to write, covering the windows with old sheets. Doesn’t help much.

Going out to take a walk does, but if there is work left undone?

The Hispanic crew is friendly and they work hard. I hope they are being paid well. I will not have a quiet space to observe the High Holidays. Have to find another place for Zoom services from the synagogue. What a pain.

September 11, 2020

Wildfires

Post Office (PO) closes at 5 pm (1:30 pm on Saturdays). That’s the only fixed deadline we have, since the sunrise and sunset, moon rise (gibbous or no) cannot be seen or tracked in real time,

Because the wildfires blazing all around us have obliterated the sky, the stars and the planets and the Bay Area is rated purple, for Disaster level.  Breathing the air is so hazardous, we are told to stay indoors or go to a respite shelter set up by City of Oakland.  Breathless, indeed. 

Governor declares Disaster - wildfires still burning in seven counties in our region.

We have “Spare the Air” days. Windows closed, fans in rooms. Restrictions are for your own good. 

Nobody on the street. HND crew are wearing masks, mainly working indoors. The air is dangerous, a faded orange haze. Where is the sun?

September 20, 2020

Rosh Hashanah

The New Year service is taking place online. Some real time prayers by the Rabbi and a few

pre-recorded sessions. 

My older sister likes to send cards for every holiday and birthday. My younger sister called me last night to wish me Happy New Year – Good Yom Tov. Interesting, because my younger brother called a few days ago, and I am usually the one to initiate contact, but this year is just too upside down for me and for everyone, mostly because I have to find ways to insulate myself from the HND construction. Endless racket, punctured by accordion music and Mexican pop songs from the radio, which I don’t mind at all. I only ask that they lower the volume: “Baja les dos.”

I have to drive to my stepson and daughter-in-law’s house and bring my prayerbook and computer for Zoom services. I decided to dress up and wear makeup because it is for me a special day, a holy day, the beginning of the Jewish calendar year, a lunar calendar. I have a desk in the downstairs unit, and there is a handsome black grand piano in the corner. Sometimes I take a break and finger the keys, plunking out old chords and scales I used to play as a child. 

I can log in to the service, wearing ear buds, and sing the melodies to myself. Can’t see the Torah online or hear the bells on the silver crowns tinkling as it is carried around the sanctuary, undressed and rolled out and the story of Abraham and Isaac is read. Only a few faces are visible — the rabbi, the Torah readers — but the spirit of this day seems sanitized, contained.

The “tech gabbai (leader)” places us into different chat rooms. I end up with people I mostly don’t know and one I do (but I have never been warm to her). Maybe because she reminds me of my older sister, whose insecurities fill up the space between us.

On top of all these truncated rituals comes the crushing death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg. Pancreatic cancer. All over the news, tributes, praise for her extraordinary courage, a Jewish woman, “a woman of valor,” who held up the Court & the rest of us, on her tiny shoulders.

I remember, and now I regret expecting so much of my mother, who was truly mystified by what I was doing with my life — to be a writer, a feminist, traveling, moving across the country and back, not to be married, living with lovers. By the time I married and had my daughter, she was gone. Mother could not read a map; she was afraid of getting lost. It was hard to be supportive; she only worried that I would have a life of struggle. And I did.

What would my situation have been like if she had been glad for me, made me feel that she was proud of what I managed to do, so determined to hold on to my values? She was only afraid and left me twirling around with insecure, embarrassed apologetic defenses, eternal self-criticism, depression — all those shadows, colliding with my enthusiasm, astonishment, endless questions. I kept trying to reconcile my fears with the urge to chase after stories I wanted to tell and retell, to keep journals crammed full of notes and ideas, drawings, sketches of people on the street, at work, in transit, sitting still; to collect an image, to catch snippets of dialogue, lines of poetry, songs, prayers, dreams, fantasies, comedy, farce, satire, irony, tragedy, to compress time into frames, words, phrases, sentences — my hands, my long fingers, typing chords on the keyboard.

October 2, 2020

The Sound of my Heart

My heart sounds like a techno-beat, swushing, 

  Wa

  Swush

  Wa wa sh

  Swush-a-swush-a

 Wah-Wah

Zig-zag jagged lines in day-glo acid flouresecent green

on the sonogram screen

and I notice a black void with my heart valve a

  velvet, yawning O shape

  like a vagina , and it’s fuzzy greyish imagery, but definitely

black holes expanding and contracting in heavy rhythmic tones on

a keyboard from somewhere deep under my chest.

Breast bared (the left one), and I’m lying there twisted on my side

while the probe with smooth jelly moves around the muscle -

  it’s modulating, pulsating

and then the technician, who controls all the buttons

  presses another function.

Gridlines appear to measure the shape of what’s

  pumping, those valves throbbing, that blood goes to my

 brain and to my eyes, watching myself pumping blood and oxygen

 giving life to myself, keeping the system alive and awake -

“What’s that?” I ask and she seems annoyed, plus

the sound is quirky so I laugh but she’s just getting her

work done and I am just interfering, quizzical old broad.

Onscreen, heart valves emit blue and red tinged with yellow like a cartoon

blam-O-flash from a super creature or something heroic, but it’s just

the nature of the flow that gets colored so it can be seen and measured,

 what’s going on, a machine is calibrated to measure me, how my

heart is beating and where is this murmur, detected last summer.

Wow 

When no one ever heard it before,told me about my murmuring heart. 

I do have nightmares and

scream “Help me!” and my husband has to shake me awake. 

I never would have known about this without the exam 

at the private medical clinic down the street where I had my first COVID test because my own mega-monopolus health provider was too big to pivot into test mode and would never 

take the time to measure my blood pressure and check my heart before 

the test swab went up my nose.

But this nurse found it. She listened and told me she heard a murmur.

 “Are you sure? I’ve never had one”. She listened again and said

“Yes, I hear a murmur, a slight murmur.”

I should have asked, “what is my heart saying?”

but I was too flustered.

Now my sonogram results go to my main MD.

She read the report, and sent me an email

about my murmurs. Nothing to be concerned about… not …now…yet.

I am nervous and worried I will catch this infernal

virus and perhaps spread it to the ones I know and love

and never get a chance to finish my work, my work of the heart,

words I want and need to pull together so that it is my own

testament to what I know and feel and want to say before it’s too

late to send a message to

Listen, for our sake, listen to your heart.

Don’t worry, just let us know, now, what you

are hearing and what we need to know right now,

before it vanishes…

Wa

  Swush

  Wa wash

  Swush-a-swush-a

 Wa Wa…..

November 30, 2020

An Invasion

Ants are invading our house, trying to escape the cold.

We keep putting out little white traps and spreading baking soda on their trails.

Determined, they switch tactics and try another part of the house. They are swarming 

about below our floorboards, above our heads, desperate to find a winter home.

Swim

I now have a way to get back to swimming. All the pools around in Oakland & Berkeley are 

either closed or booked up online. I miss moving through the water. Such a luxury calms me down. I drop some of the bitchy, bitter dialogues between myself and the universe. Energy lifts, back and shoulders loosen up.

The City of Alameda has two outdoor pools, one at each high school. I figured out how to 

register for a time slot: sit by my computer at 2:45 pm on Saturday afternoon and log in to 

my account with Alameda Aquatics, wait for the sign-up system to go live at 3 p.m. and grab a time slot for one of 6 lanes, 50-minute swim. No dressing room. Takes 20 minutes to get there from my house. Sign in wearing mask, temp check. I put my bag down in front of my lane marked off with colored masking tape, strip off my outer layer, jacket, sweater, pants, socks, to my suit, cap, goggles and a swim shirt. It’s chilly but sunny, a beautiful spring-ish day, and pool is heated. I swim laps but I could not tell you how many; definitely avoid competing with myself. I take this time to think through what lies ahead and behind me, other than moving closer to decline, decay, return to the elements. 

One of my stepsons is locked into a mental health unit at Santa Rita jail. His session with a judge is being postponed for over a year because of the plague. They’re giving him supplies – masks, sanitizer, even a tablet and a phone card to keep in touch – and he will be tested and vaccinated when that’s available. My husband tries not to sink into a dark corner. He used to go to NAMI group meetings. Not now. What can you do? Write letters. Get through a day without guilt. Watch comedies, lots of them.

All the swimmers are in good humor when we climb out, dripping, and towel off. I have to pull on my dry clothes over my damp suit; a little funky, but ok. The woman in the next lane is cursed with sciatica from a botched hip repair operation. She has a cheery attitude, but I can sense her sorrow, living in constant pain. I know others who retreat to the water for relief.

Chanukah begins Thursday night.  My pal F sent me a link to a chorus singing Tom Lehrer’s “Chanukah in Santa Monica.”

Boxing Day, Oakland CA

December 26, 2020

We have been sheltering in place since March 2020. 

Everyone on our block tries to look out for one another. We wave from our cars or our driveways, “Everybody OK? ” and we nod or give a thumbs-up.

I’ve been to a Zoom wedding and a funeral. Now it’s the “Holiday Season,” sort of. Not so many light strings or giant blow-up Santas on porches – no parties. My husband and I celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas a few miles away with our “pod.” two granddaughters and their parents.

This afternoon we heard B, our neighbor across the street, has gone missing since Xmas eve. He is usually surrounded by a friend or two,  or a few relatives from his big, extended family; they drive up and park, leaning out of the car window to shoot the sh-t with him daily and late into the night.  B is either high, drunk or both – it’s been like that with him for the decades we have lived here. Before pot was legal in California, he smuggled it, doing business after dark. Sometimes when he was in jail, it was quiet on the street. He had odd jobs, up and down the street. 

In the past 4-5 years, he has been through three cardiac arrests but he won’t quit drugs or booze and still smokes, sitting in the front yard in a plastic lawn chair, a tall, rail-thin Black man in jeans and sweatshirt, chatting up whoever walks or drives by. 

We wave at each other, “Happy Holidays, Neighbor.” 

He can be friendly, charming. Old high school buddies show up, nieces, nephews. “All right now, take care.  Love you.”

It’s up and down with him, high on something, fighting with his girlfriend, one of his brothers or a cousin, in the front yard. We hear them yelling bitter F-curses at each other, as if 

needing a stage to release their rage. Upstairs, his father lies in pain. Caregivers show up, meals delivered.

A fire truck, then police show up in the early darkness. B’s girlfriend starts shrieking. I spot a guy standing on the front sidewalk.

“What’s going on?”

They found B in the back yard. 

“I don’t know why I didn’t go look back there,” the man says. “I touched him —rigor mortis. Been dead for two days.”

“It's so difficult to be a human being.,” said the writer Barry Lopez, who also died recently. “There are so many reasons to give up… retreat into cynicism or despair. I hate to see that … I want to do something that makes people feel safe and loved and capable.” 

###

January 9, 2021

(3 days after Jan 6th – DC riot, insurrection)

Inventory

A few flowers in our house

Some fun

    Much sadness and fear as government begins a shaky

    year. 

   Fascism is blooming in our country.

More construction noise in the HND (House next door),

and we have New neighbors on the other side of our house.

They brought their strawberry fluff cat, “Whiskey”.

Every week it rains.

Calls from our daughter, who is alone with her cat and frightened

by the coup attempt.

“You are learning how bad things can get,” I tell her.

She knows more than most of her friends about the 60’s, Vietnam 

war protests, and resistance fighters during WWII.

This whole debacle reminds me of Chile and Argentina, military coups and repression

 in the 1970s – 80s, co-sponsored by U.S.

I know antisemitism, racism grows quite well in Fascist climates

I fought, protesting regimes, along with my S F Amnesty International 

   group, organized by writer Kay Boyle.

Wrote in my journal when I lived at Kay’s house in San Francisco.

January 25, 2021

Field notes

I just sent query to Lithub magazine re “Marching with Kay Boyle” from my 1973 journal article.  Editor wants to publish it. I want to update the piece, describe downtown San Francisco today. 

Return to Union Square under COVID19 shadow

John and I drove to SF today. First time we have been there in a year. We got

there in mid-afternoon – cold, windy, sunny streets – not much traffic.  We parked in Fifth Street garage near SF Chronicle building. I wanted to walk on some of the downtown streets I describe in the 1973 memoir, which is about a protest against coup in Chile, march that ends in Union Square.

We noticed entire buildings vacant, FOR LEASE signs in the windows. We passed an alley at Jessie Street and Mission where folding tables were set up. Several volunteers stood in front of the tables, wearing jeans and PPE, light blue surgical gowns over their jackets, carrying clipboards. They told us they were offering free COVID-19 testing for anyone, service provided by SF City and County.

We passed so many storefronts boarded up with plywood - coffee shops, restaurants that used to service tourists and downtown workers.  The Cable Car turnaround at Market St. was vacant. Tracks silent, with a sign to inform tourists the Cable Cars were not running because of COVID19 safety measures. You can’t ride them, but there was a schedule of times when a car would be parked at the site, and you could stand next to a car and take a tourist photo and there would be someone to ring the bell for you. 

Walking up deserted Powell Street on the way to Union Square, it’s shocking how silent it was – normally a hub for large groups of tourists, and the sound of the cable cars is pretty loud and clanky and it’s packed with shoppers. Usually, homeless people are wandering around, some asking for money or sometimes selling copies of Street Sheet newsletter written by homeless poets and reporters. Now so quiet, very few people on the sidewalk, and most stores boarded up.  If they are open, there are very few customers, mandatory signage on the door with mask requirements, and of course, there are hand sanitizer stands. Some storefronts have been decorated with murals in bright colors and messages thanking the essential workers, city agencies and nonprofit orgs for their help during this season of isolation.

We only found one souvenir shop open, and we were the only customers. The owner had time to talk with us; told us it has been a hard year. He had two kinds of souvenir face masks for sale, one with a photo of the golden Gate Bridge and “San Francisco” logo and one from Alcatraz

There was a big wall full of tchotchkes, - tee shirts, license plates, little trinkets, etc.

He also sold bright blue luggage.

The closer we got to Union Square, the bleaker the storefronts, boarded up with plywood.

We passed the Union Square Hotel – six stories – with a guard sitting at a card table.

He told us this place is being used by the city as temporary shelter-in-place quarters for the homeless.  He said it’s pretty tough – no one can survive here – he estimates about 30 percent of people staying here will eventually find any kind of permanent housing in the area.

We went to Union Square, looking for rhododendron plants, because my old story from the 1970’s described them in flower. The towering, fine palm trees are still there. 

It’s now a flattened space, with lots of granite, history of the site etched in one retaining wall.  The upper tier has been redesigned, and it’s a very large, mostly unobstructed plaza, with seating along the perimeter. 

Landscaping is a mix of succulent varieties and more conventional drought-resistant plants that are popular these days and overgrown shrubs. Plantings are scattershot - one raised bed is full of scarlet cyclamen. There are planter boxes filled with smaller, more delicate azaleas, flowering in vivid jeweled tones of fuchsia and magenta and dark green jasmine vines, now dormant. In other sections of the plaza, I found brugmansia, tall plants with light green, floppy leaves and hanging large, bright yellow trumpet-shaped blooms as large as my hand, but not to touch — the petals are highly toxic. Finally found ‘rhodies’ - a few of them, on the northeast side of the square – and too early to bloom. I texted a few photos to our daughter in Brooklyn where it’s truly barren, frigid. 

More pigeons here than humans. There were a few people sitting in the sun – a homeless woman with lots of bags around her. We watched woman feeding the grey and white birds with crumbs from her paper bag – a huge crowd of fans.

Otherwise, the open space has become territory of skate boarders, guys zooming around, free to glide, jump, trip, spin.

Some of the luxury stores had security guards at the entrance, and hand-sanitizing stations:

Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Tory Burch. We only saw one police car parked outside the old

St. Francis hotel (now owned by a chain), and there were no crossing guards, cops who used to be at the corners to direct dense traffic, the whole scene used to be so noisy and hectic. 

The Geary bus still runs. Bus nearly ran over a pedestrian who was jaywalking in puffer coat and high-heeled boots, holding on to her take-out container.

Depleted, that’s my current state. My pink pussy hat from the 2017 Women’s March still hangs on our coat rack. In my photo stream, I still have my shot of the American Indian women I met in the downtown Oakland BART station. They carried a sign inscribed with a proverb from the Cheyenne:

A nation is not defeated until the hearts of its women 

are on the ground. Then it is finished. No matter how brave its warriors

or how strong their weapons. 

[Rosebud Sioux Tribe, Rosebud South Dakota] 

Now, cloistering my socially-distanced self in Zoom meetings does not cut it. I am stuck at my desk like so many. I have to wear noise-canceling headphones to drown out eight months of construction noise next door. 

I am in charge of Twitter for a local activist alliance; I get out the word to Get Out the Vote. Bravo, we finally elected a new President for our fractured country. I am not up for a chorus of ‘Happy Days are here again,’ not yet, with the second Impeachment circus gearing up as the old leadership’s elephant leaves so much garbage in his wake for the rest of us to clean up. Not with so many COVID19 obituaries to scroll through and our government operating in fail-safe mode today.

In Chile, the people are still duking it out over the legacy of dictator Pinochet, the coup that put him in power, and his harsh, murderous regime. They are trying to change their constitution.

My biggest fear: that this entire debacle will vanish, swallowed up in data stratosphere, only to be retrieved as a dystopian setting for a film or streaming series. That we will live in 1984 limbo and lose our separation of powers, politically and intrinsically and emotionally. 

Given her own trajectory pre- & post- WWII, Kay Boyle would hardly be surprised. She was woke way before the term was conceived. I can hear her whispering, “Come on, spit it out. Tell them not to fall asleep — speak out,” like the title of her essay collection: “Words that Must Somehow be Said.” 

We have the potential to uplift and transform our fledgling experiment in leapfrogging over monarchies and conquerors. Takes so much time, study, argument to take on the unnerving, exhausting tug-of-war between the individual and the collective. Fear of destruction, hunger for renewal, longing for escape. My heart has not yet reached the ground.

Feb 12, 2021

Vaccine & Impeachment Trial

COVID19 Vaccine is now out.

You can go online and fill out all kinds of forms to get a shot.  Plus, if you are “Essential” as a worker you are 1st in line, which could imply the rest of us are non-essential beings, if you string the logic out to the end. Whatever.

Also, if you are old like we are, over 65, you can get in line after the Essentials.  But the online forms are confusing and there are a gazillion sites to register for Alameda County and everything about the appointment process and the venues – parking lots and coliseums is so compartmentalized for efficiency.

 I just watched a documentary video for tourists, describing an athletic stadium in Chile that has been renovated. The narrator talks about one section that was not changed.  The old bleachers are preserved as a reminder of the political prisoners who were taken there in the 1970’s during the Pinochet regime. They were penned up in the stadium and some were interrogated and tortured. 

We are having daily broadcasts of the 2nd impeachment of Herr Tru-pf. Layers of proof building up expose our pathetic Fearless Leader (now ex Pres) to be inarguably guilty of inciting a violent and deadly attack on the Capitol on Jan 6th.

Oy veys mir, the GOP & their lunatic fringe now having crossed over to River Styx will probably not convict T-mp out of fear for their own political destinies …careers…having forfeited any vestige of moral responsibility as they keep their eyes firmly closed, mouths and ears plugged while the proto-fascist lunatic unleashes a tantrum over his loss of power.

For this trial, extensive videotape from security cameras inside the Capitol bldg. has been combined with handheld footage – intruders were busy recording what they were up to, I wonder if that was really the point, the text messages and photos/video “selfies” –

“Heroic” Patriots storming the Capitol breaking into the building and screaming their lungs out because they feel so bloody righteous about a juvenile prank. “Oh, look Ma, I beat up the guards, police and got into the bldg. Am I cool or what?”

Social media enables this to the max. Living one’s life in real time on camera is gratifying, to be filming yourself acting the part of “Rioter” for a video audience — a performance — when it comes down to the absolute value of this vandalism, smearing feces on the walls and tracking shit prints and dripping piss on the marble floors, tearing up signs and emptying file cabinets, spewing paper all over the nice, clean royal blue carpet, basically nullifying any symbol of respect or decorum, it seems the “resistors” want this arrogant memory to fade, just wait for the next news cycle and the bad dream of treason drama will be forgotten and disappear. “Too bad, so sad,” we just have to smile and wait until the sun comes up tomorrow, “bet your bottom dollar…”

Clean up the floors, say a few prayers for the dead, the injured and preserve the photos in a file.

“Tsk tsk  ..tut tut” “That was a sad day” …our “Patriots” just got out of hand

because T convinced them the Nov. election was rigged and somebody had to say something.

If I hear “to be clear” one more time, I’ll tear my hair out

Feb 15, 2021

Amnesia

Linear time, lunar time. Solar clocks, shadow clocks. 

Navigation

From the position of the sun and the moon and in the night sky, stars are invisible within city limits. But for our need for landing strips and night vision, we would not know where we are and still look up to gauge location and velocity with a compass or speedometer.

Moving around on foot more often, I find it is easier to have a sense of when to expect to reach the mailbox or the corner store without my phone.

So much I’m hearing, reading on paper or online about our current state of Plague and Political extremism feels like a pinch at the heart.

It’s either that or a bromide to stimulate amnesia.

or a cheerleading session/ pep talk to keep paddling, treading until the harsh, desperate threat ends and the boredom (or exhaustion, depending on your role) lifts and the battle hymns and victory parades begin and memorials end. Maybe we should drag Admiral Dewey’s monument down in SF Union Square and replace it with a hologram for the lives swallowed up by this black hole, for the climate of unrestrained suspicion, violence, fear and endless lies. 

Start at 0 and go beyond the x and y axis measuring the future of this pandemic and the end of this tyrannical era.

Qualitatively we know we are at the mercy of battles we can neither see nor hear nor touch yet we know in the air dangerous particles, infection and the end are out there, so metaphors fly around like magic spells:

The Big Bad Wolf

ultimate jigsaw puzzle

curse of the unsolved crime/murder or

Grim Reaper.

Angel of Death approach-eth.

or

the haunted house

eggplant that ate Chicago,

“Pete and Repeat” sitting on a fence

Scan the epidemiological maps before COVID19, after a spike and on the periphery of change.

My job is to do nothing, lay back and stay out of the picture, so the essentials are taking care and they can do their jobs. Stay out of your own way, don’t interrupt. Be silent, quiet and patient and get down on your knees and be at your essence not liable for making this worse than it is.  Hold off, postpone guiltless, joyride fantasies that cloud and blind, deaf dumb numb you to mortals who lie on beds, in chambers, chained to ventilator masks. Tubing forces oxygen into tissue-thin layers of lung for life, life in a universe of one, inhaling darkness and light shadow, bright at this replicating pace, breathe: inhale - exhale - 

in – ex, in – ex,

a patterned infinity, unless or until the Moirai cut the thread. 

Feb 17, 2021

Preserve a memory

protect

calculate our losses

assess the damage

honor the dead.

Time Capsule: encode the scars as if they were growth rings of a tree, to record and remember.

How to mark the deaths, off and online:

hate crimes in the streets, in churches, mosques, synagogues

in our halls of government and affairs of state.

Our losses a hologram

damage to our environment and our systems of care and justice.

May 3, 2021

Editors keep telling me they don’t have a place for pieces I sent them.

It reminds me of so many competitive situations I have encountered. 

I am always getting dinged because I don’t provide the exact point of view that fits in with the image of a ___ (fill in the blanks). Judging from other pieces that are recognized, I am not prosaic enough.

Living Online

I went to my college reunion this weekend. via Zoom, one of those mass reunions for decades ending in 00 or 01. I was one out of about 6 women who showed up from Class of 1970. I did not know any of them. We each had a different view of who we were and what we were part of at that time: protests against Vietnam War, dating, studying social science, humanities, traveling. Most of us are now retired (not I). We were shepherded by the moderator, who was really quite proper and wanted us to have an “Open forum”. That’s what she claimed, but I was skeptical. Wasn’t she wishing us to play “Oldsters,” sweet and nostalgic and unaware, chewing over happy memories of our blissful college days. Once we brought up sexual harassment by our professors — rampant — she did not want to listen. Tried inserting some kind of prompt along the lines of “Let’s talk about the good old days.”

I did not report my continued political activism or my writing. I could not quite deliver sentimental, warm fuzzy feelings. I don’t write that way either. Not too good at avoiding the flip side of fairy tales. 

Our moderator proudly informed us the school is now offering a “green” MBA. What - Business School? This is a liberal arts, social science and humanities school, not a B school. Spare me. 

I also pointed out the growing antisemitism on campus, and our dear Moderator rushed to defend the school, as the President is trying to manage and see what can be done. Fine, well & good.

Just don’t feed me a bunch of platitudes that have been ground up in a blender for easy digestion.

I talked about poetry, how I loved hearing poets on campus, how important my adviser, poet Bert Meyers, was to me, also his family.  We continued our friendship, and I arranged for him to give a poetry reading when I was in graduate school at SF State. He acknowledged my views but still could not understand why I wanted to be a writer. He also assumed that I came from a wealthy family because so many other girls did. I was on a huge scholarship and when he learned that he was surprised.

Then there was the retired teacher at the reunion who had positive memories and was cheerful. She had her yearbook and eagerly held it up before the camera, turning the pages to show the other women she knew the photos of their former selves.

Another who spoke was a lucid and eloquent woman who told stories about she managed at school, being one of the few Black scholarship students there. I appreciated her comments. Other women were old friends, with shared memories outside of my world at the time. 

.

I was on scholarship too, an outlier — conflicted, curious, …. where some might expect an arc in my story, as in “Oh I found a way to overcome and triumph,” I don’t have one to offer. I wandered and read and investigated…all tributaries. I sometimes send in news of published pieces, but the alumni office repeatedly ignores me, I suppose for my lack of official Wikipedia entry with “Major Donor” status. 

Spring 2021

Birdsong, Roses, cupcakes 

So much to lament, and too many losses still. And yet

we are vaccinated here. Ditto, everyone we know. So we (my husband and I) cling to our gratitude for each drop in daily anxiety. Feeling a bit more hopeful, and

oh, the May roses are in full bloom in every shade on every street, some more fragrant than others. I have been so relieved to take more walks and hear more birds singing to each other from trees in our back yard, telephone wires in the front. I thought this music might be due to the slowdown in traffic. But it’s spring, and the city is repairing streets and sidewalks, so we have daily thunder of jackhammers, heavy machinery. 

And yet

birds are singing in such a range, and more loudly. I found a scientific publication online confirming that certain sparrows in the Bay Area have changed their tunes, so to speak, with a drop in the noise level.

I have rediscovered tapes of poets reading their work. The Poetry Center at San Francisco State has an online archive that dates back to the 1950’s. I’m sure they used the old reel-to-reel audio tape in those days, but now, the readings are digitized and instantly available. I sat at my desk and heard the voice of the magnificent Muriel Rukeyser reading, as if she were in my room:

“A voice riding on the morning of air
Sang to me from the cloud of the world:
Are you born? Are you born?”

Prizes

We won a dozen fresh cupcakes in an online raffle, part of our neighborhood chat group. Made by a woman who is working from home and bakes for a hobby. Three different varieties:

Rich buttermilk coconut cupcake, vanilla lime cream cheese frosting,

kiwi berry, kumquat wedges, toasted coconut flake. 

“You put the Lime in the Coconut” Cupcakes. 

Persian Love cupcakes. Toasted pistachio cake, 

strawberry rose American buttercream. fresh strawberries.

edible rose petals. 

Chocolate stout cupcakes. Milk chocolate buttercream. 

Valrhona white chocolate crisp pearls. Toasted corn nut toffee.

Each cake was artfully wrapped, nestled in its own space in a large baker’s box. I picked them up but could not hug my generous donor. She refuses to accept any payment for her gifts. Behind her mask, I could sense her joy. 

We have had nightly rituals, sampling each flavor, licking our fingers. I fell for “Persian Love.”

6/22/2021

My friend’s sister died recently. I’m giving her the pseudonym “O.G.”

She lived on the East Coast, practicing divorce law. She came to visit in summer, 

checking in with family and a circle of friends from childhood.

We are not sure if her life was shortened because of COVID-19; she got sick after 

a trip to Asia in fall 2019, before there were any tests. Later, she felt worse, 

becoming paranoid, wary of the vaccine. She never regained her health and withdrew into a negative state, drinking hard liquor, yet still lively enough for a seasonal Zoom chat. 

I knew her for many years. We were kind to each other.

A WORD (or 2) ABOUT O.G.

Our irascible O.G.,

charging through briar patches,

rattling her saber.

Stopping for a snack and a chat.

Cackling over a joke, 

but a good joke, mind you.

Joyful O, exploring and savoring 

whatever in the world was excellent, 

finely wrought, 

well spoken, 

or truly phenomenal.

I remember her delight in watching birds 

nesting on the shore of the Chester River 

from the screened-in porch of her summer place.

She liked to go out on the water, quietly paddling around in a canoe, 

            water dripping from her raised oar.

I remember the intense authority of her smart and curious self,

her passionate love for her children and their children,

her sisters, cousins;

Her nature to stand watch – 

protective, fearful, watchful.

In later years, she seemed to vacillate in and out of fog, 

a rueful shudder - 

Darkness within 

            drove a distance between us. 

I am working my way through my own thorny universe

releasing, forgiving

letting her slide away, gently

from the shore where

 birds fold into their feathers to rest. 

August 9, 2021

Rosh Chodesh Group

Our synagogue has a monthly group, a women’s group, to honor the new moon of the new month in the lunar calendar.  This one is led by a friend, a poet. We are reading poems (via Zoom) and then taking a few minutes for free writing.

We read “The Joins” by the late Chana Bloch.

The Joins 
        Kintsugi is the Japanese art of mending 
        precious pottery with gold. 

What's between us
seems flexible as the webbing
between forefinger and thumb.

Seems flexible but isn't;
what's between us
is made of clay

like any cup on the shelf.
It shatters easily. Repair
becomes the task.

We glue the wounded edges
with tentative fingers.
Scar tissue is visible history

and the cup is precious to us
because
we saved it.

In the art of kintsugi
a potter repairing a broken cup
would sprinkle the resin

with powdered gold.
Sometimes the joins
are so exquisite

they say the potter
may have broken the cup
just so he could mend it.

Copyright © 2015 Chana Bloch All rights reserved
from Swimming in the Rain 
Autumn House Press 
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission

My take on the poem:

On Broken-ness and Repair

So much has split, dried, fallen into fragments of a former self. Resurfacing, reordering these pieces — weaving, mending, forming metaphors and narratives to mold a new container that carries a voice; I am mulling over boxes and cartons, pages and tiny notes written on the edges of memory; probably a task much like making a quilt, but a noisy, messier process.

I don’t have much time to ride this wave; the energy, courage to speak up retreats, retracts into dark, critical self-denial and must be healed and first aid delivered. A pattern, lifting up of the fullness of life, and, as in the myth of Demeter and Persephone, a voyage through hell to retrieve and revive that vivid, passionate embrace of the beginning, the astonishment, the urgency of the “Never Mind”:

“You must finish what you start before time vanishes and dissolves. You promised. Tell what is true of loss, how the shard broke of

June 12 & August 27, 2021

In the Sierra

We reached the Sierra before they started to burn. Two trips, the first in June, to Olympic Village near Lake Tahoe. In August, Yosemite.

Tahoe - We stayed in a hotel originally built for the 1960 Winter Olympics. Ski slopes carved out of the mountains are still operating, green and smooth, cutting into the pine forest at the crest, wind breathing through branches, forest exhaling in loud waves, in synch with rushing creek waters. 

Relieved to be in a place that existed before two-legged creatures arrived and will remain for some notion of eternity. At the end of the valley, rock face looms in striated rust formations and scales of armored granite. Trees and brush cling to edges and shelves of this massive wall, crowned on one rough ledge with a ski lift, now inactive.  Granite plates overlap, straight up, 90 degrees, miles high, jagged turrets at the top, thin silhouettes of small pines, stained surfaces scarred by melting crystalized ice and snow now barren in the sun, washed pale, almost glazed., sanded, planed. Snow still clings to the higher, more distant range.

            This backdrop from our balcony is fronted by smaller, shimmering birch trees, leaves rustling, shuddering in the wind in a liquid sound stream. Sitting still, quieting the mind, the spirit, so vital and remote. I like sitting with the massive granite above and the delicate trees below, absorbing stillness, hollowing out a space to allow the summer to evolve.  Shoulders drop, hands at rest.  I have to transition to simplified mode, ignore my neurotic, ‘what-if’ voice chattering away. 

I don’t really know how others feel outside my circle of friends. Aren’t they weary of drop-everything moments? Everyone we know wears a mask, observing no-touch protocol, measuring distances between ourselves and strangers. We have been tested, vaccinated. We are neither suspicious nor superstitious. So deal with it - angry crowds waving American flags, screaming “No No No Vaccine for me, I’m no sheeple!” 

I met an anti-vaxxer on the August trip, this time driving to Yosemite. I will call her Debra. I actually don’t know her name; we never introduced ourselves.

We met her after checking into a ‘bargain’ motel outside the park. The place was clean, a bit shabby. with tall sugar pines hovering over a long turquoise pool and a pale hazy sky from fires burning farther north near Tahoe. 

We had a hot, stuffy room on the second floor, with a weak window fan. Debra was climbing the wooden stairs to the outside corridor when I opened the door to get more air, and I asked her if she had the same problem. She offered us her extra fan, quickly retrieving it, her young grandson at her side.

I thanked her, and we chatted about taking a break to enjoy the mountains. Grandson, whom I took for a fourth grader, bobbed restlessly behind her, grinning, a cheery, sunburned round face and blond buzz cut. He disappeared once we drifted into serious matters.

Debra told me she was a psych nurse, just retired after thirty years. 

“Sounds like a good time to retire. It’s such a crazy time,” I said.

            She agreed, “It’s crazy inside and outside. I just want to know the truth,” she told me in her calm, low voice. 

.

Later, my husband confessed he felt uneasy the minute I apologized for not wearing my mask and mentioned I was vaccinated. 

D said, “Masks aren’t going to do any good,” she said. “They make your system more acidic — weakens the immune system,” she explained. She was concerned and sincere. “We need to stop yelling and screaming at each other. That’s not what our country is about. We need to listen to each other — Freedom of Speech.”

            She was making room for me and I decided to do the same. 

            I tried to sound friendly and neutral, as if I were on camera. 

D stood there with her arms crossed standing in the door frame of our room. Behind her, the sky was pale apricot, a smoky sunset. She kept her broad, tan face slightly averted. No trace of makeup; puffy half circles beneath her eyes, she shifted her gaze from the floor to me. Her long, greying brown hair was gathered in a loose ponytail.

Me: “What’s your take on the CDC, how they’re managing COVID19?”

D: “They’re lying to us.”

Me: “About the virus? The vaccine?” 

D: “Don’t call it a vaccine, it’s an experimental shot. Big Pharma’s making billions 

off us.”

I nodded. “They are definitely making a big profit.”

D soberly informwd me the virus is a “bio-weapon.” COVID19 shot is causing mass deaths. She said reporters are sent to jail if they reveal this secret.

Me: (Interrupting) “I have to disagree with you,” (taking a breath) “I have friends who do that work. The only journalists getting arrested are the ones in other countries. They’re being censored by dictators.” 

D: “Well, they’re all in on it — media, the government, Big Pharma, corporations, hospitals…”

My husband cleared his throat. He was unpacking groceries on the table near the bed. I took very small steps backward. 

Me: “This pandemic is such a large-scale problem; countries are having a hard time figuring out what to do.”

She agreed.

Me: “COVID19 is so much more widespread - we’re not used to that. It’s so much bigger than AIDS in the 90’s.”

D: “I was around for that.”

I braced myself for more conspiracy.

D: “I want to know the truth,” she said, with a look of despair. “I want to know, before more of us die.”

My husband and I had a cold swim and ate a cold dinner.

Debra’s truth is all over the conspiracy sites online, folks who trust God over pharmaceuticals, and believe this hoax is a global plan to suppress democracy. 

I could have asked her about the creation of the world and what schools should be teaching her grandson, who bobbed in and out of the doorway, grinning, restless. That the Sierra were created by volcanic shifts in the earth. 

Before bed, I went back outside to catch the night sky. Nearly impossible to see any stars at home 

Hiking in Yosemite, winding our way through outcroppings of massive boulders, and trees so tall their branches seem to grow out of the sky, I end up wanting more, another spectacular view, to be engulfed by monumental sheer granite walls glinting in the sun, terraces of trees shrouded in shadow among piles of ancient, glacial sculpture. I’m tired of my frustration with Debra’s of the world, their ancestors and the next generation.  I climb higher, a deep, long stretch for my legs, walking switchbacks up a steep trail, past lichen coated boulders.  Maybe it’s the high altitude that drains the bile out of me; I don’t care. 

I should have asked D why she needed to embrace an entire conspiracy theory to make sense of this nightmare we are dealing with. 

I should have insisted that I struggle, too. I’m just as afraid as she is.

October 20, 2021

Muir Beach CA

I am cat sitting at Muir Beach for two weeks. I really need this time alone. I am next door to my 

old friend M. The apartment has huge windows facing the ocean, a field of waves, rippling in currents toward the sand and boulders without interruption.

Some days I drive over the hill to Mill Valley to get groceries, a few lunch dates with

old friends, a film with M. We share dinners and talk about aches and pains, film, our siblings, mutual friends, the insane political situation. We trade stories and I show her my drawings of the Sierra. 

Family visits on weekends.

Daily walk after

first rain of the season – a furious storm.

After heavy mist, fog and light rain, the sea takes on the grey-green filter from dark cloud cover and faint light leaking over white foaming waves breaking, spitting and spreading out in overlapping, circular shapes. Clouds hang low on the horizon. A briny odor covers the open field of sand, scattered trails of animal paw prints and human foot/shoe tracks in the grainy porous field. Farther down the shore, small gathering of birds, ravens vs hawks strutting, tentatively avoiding each other, pecking at the debris washed ashore, perhaps discovering some edible item among the entrails of kelp jumbled in piles, a mass of garbage in distinct stages of decay clumped along the sand, and forever the loud, beating heart, unending chorus of waves crowding out all shrieks and calls/cries of birds, in harmony with fog horns and the inhale/exhale of the coast waters at the edge of the continent.

October 22, 2021

Muir Beach CA

No rain today.  Just wind and high, ferocious grey surf breaking, loud crashing like cymbals; my voice would be lost beneath this roaring heavy wind, forcing the waves to spin and churn faster, with no limit – how high can the surf rise and ricochet across the boulders, and open beach. Few visitors, bundled up against the wind, a chill but not at freezing temps. 

I’m sitting on a worn log, looking farther down toward the entry gate. Coming down the pathway

from the hillside trail are new guests, 3 horses and their owners.  Two horses are bare backed. one a caramel hue, white mane and tail, the other brown with black forelegs, mane and tail, young and strong both horses are following the rope leads of their owners. I watch the animals stride over the beach, their gait, a lurching, steady bob, long neck, stopping, snorting, to paw the sand with one hoof, neck lowered. Near the waves, they speed up, splashing in the foam and shallow puddles.

Third horse is stocky, a thick black coat, long bushy tail, saddled. His mistress rides him easily, comfortably.  I have seen her before, literally crossing paths with her, quite friendly. I am guessing she is about ten years younger than I am.

All three horses and their owners move across the beach, the waves rising, curling in white ribbons and flattening out across the damp field of sand. Horses shake their manes across their strong necks, the weight of their thick tails swaying behind them as if to propel a loping, four-legged stride, haunches shifting the weight and each hoof step carries the syncopated stride, the head raised high, snout leading, each angle of the neck twisted to take in a slightly different focus, the eyes on the side of the head forces angular turns to gauge the way forward …I am only imagining how sensitive that peripheral scope might be, while the snout is central, snorting, the ears sensing the wind, voices sounds, it’s a venture isn’t it, if I could ask, to be held back by the rope attached to the bridle, the rider now on the ground, walking ahead pulling the rope, granting permission to move in any one direction or pace. I watch the horses standing, heads lowered to the sand, then stretching up, necks curving and then stepping forward, hooves sinking, making deep holes in the damp sand among small paw prints of dogs crisscrossed by children’s small toe marks or their parents’ heavy boot marks.

At the end of this short break, the riders saddle up their horses to mount and ride them back down the pathway, skirting the dry hills beyond.

December 23, 20

Today, two lovely young women were standing behind me at the Goodwill store in downtown Berkeley.  I was looking for gifts, an interesting Men's tee shirt, while listening as one friend was talking to the other about whether or not she wanted to go to graduate school. Should she get an MFA in poetry? She did not want to waste time on a degree if was for something that did not interest her. Perhaps an MFA in Creative Writing, but then all you could do was teach. Or maybe publish a novel.

Having located a tee shirt with an interesting graphic that was unforgivably somber black yet still interesting, or rather, not totally tacky --- I just could not help myself. I turned around and faced the two of them. “Excuse me, I heard you talking about graduate school.” They stared at me. I said I got my MA in Creative Writing in the 1970’s, when there were only a few programs around. “I can tell you – don’t bother.” I explained that these days, there are CW programs all over the country and they’re all the same. It’s like a mill; everyone writes the same CW story.

Then I said: “Go to Journalism school. It will help you get the specificity of language —this is

what you need for good creative nonfiction.” I should have shut up then, but I just had this feeling to speak: “You know, we just lost the mother of that form, Joan Didion.”  I asked if they had read her work and the answer was “No,” but her name was familiar. I frowned and

lectured, which I try to avoid, but somehow: “You need to read Slouching towards Bethlehem.” Good Lord, how could they not? 

That was a defining book for me — so meticulous, straight-shooting. I remember Didion’s piece about the Santa Ana winds. Now I can easily find it online, her essay, “Los Angeles Notebook:”

There is something uneasy in the Los Angeles air this afternoon, some unnatural
stillness, some tension. What it means is that tonight a Santa Ana will begin to
blow, a hot wind from the northeast whining down through the Cajon and San
Gorgonio Passes, blowing up sand storms out along Route 66, drying the hills and
the nerves to flash point. For a few days now we will see smoke back in the
canyons, and hear sirens in the night. I have neither heard nor read that a Santa Ana
is due, but I know it, and almost everyone I have seen today knows it too. We
know it because we feel it. … To live with the Santa Ana is to accept, consciously or
unconsciously, a deeply mechanistic view of human behavior.

I remember it because when I read it, I had just moved to Claremont, outside the Los Angeles area, to go to college. I was building up my own sensory vocabulary, trying to absorb the place. I experienced that Santa Ana season and thought it was eerie and confusing, like so much of Los Angeles — the people, the geography, the smog, the orange groves.

I also mentioned I had one of the cheapest M.A. degrees you could get then; San Francisco State charged about $300 a semester. They laughed.

Back stories

It’s Omicron Christmas, dial everything back to Season of Contagion. We had to buy about $80 bucks worth of tests at the drug store before we could even think about going to my stepson’s house for dinner with their extended family. 

They do secular Christmas only, no church. 

I am back to Zoom services at our synagogue with my prayerbook and headphones & computer.

Everyday more antisemitism reports. Some teenagers in Sacramento posted a photo of themselves online with “SS” & swastikas drawn on their bellies. In October, a right-wing group dropped a “Vax the Jews” banner on the freeway overpass, and some other miscreant set the entrance to a synagogue on fire – my cousins are members. 

I keep up with ADL reports. I am always reporting imagery I find on the Twitternet full of ghastly caricatures and neo-Nazi stereotypes. Trying to finish memoirs about antisemitism I witnessed growing up in Waco, Texas. When I was Bat Mitzvah age, my mother and I used to watch TV news after supper (if it wasn’t my turn to do the dishes). After international conflicts were reported, my mother would frown, folding her arms. “Just wait,” she would say. “They’re gonna’ blame this on the Jews.”

Mother was born in Waco, speaking Yiddish before she learned English. 

We wanted to learn Yiddish, but she wouldn’t teach us much. Such a funny way of talking and so many curious words and sounds & the jokes were terrific. We were always asking about the jokes she laughed at when we went to other relatives’ houses to visit in Houston, Dallas and Austin. She would say the jokes were too dirty; we didn’t need to know. Her Yiddish was never vulgar, I figured that out later – and her English was proper –she was horrified if I dropped my guard and said “Shit!” 

Last night I had another nightmare, the kind I often have, noisy, cursing: “Get the f-k out of here!”  My husband said he woke me up and told me I was having a nightmare. He said I agreed, but then I went back to sleep, and the dream and the swearing started up again. What’s with these recursive dreams? Why does it seem that we are living in circles within circles?            

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