The New Abnormal
4/3/2020 — Carlisle, Massachusetts
4/3/2020 — Carlisle, Massachusetts
Welcome to the new abnormal, for me at least. And for friends who fled our quadrilateral lifestyle boxes in New York to be closer to nature and farther from humans. And for Red Americans now sloppily running after Blue Americans to the land of shut-it-all-the-hell-down. And for everyone, everywhere.
This is your new life.
Rise. Coffee. Email. Zoom. Walk? Wine! Tigers. Sleep. Repeat.
I’m doing better this week. It’s nearly 4pm on a Friday afternoon. I haven’t been outside yet because of the cold constant rain. The temperature ventures north to 45 degrees, loses its nerve and then slouches back to 40. Another day with human voices only heard on a laptop or phone. (I’ve stopped using my TV because I’ve never been able to endure the broadcast carnival with its pharma ads and well coiffed celebrities issuing banalities and besides, there’s no cable.) If it seems dreary and isolate, that’s about right, but it’s also warm and dry. I’m living in a small apartment, maybe 500 square feet, carved out of an 1879 barn. There’s food in the fridge. I’m healthy. My family is healthy. My friends are healthy. My bank website shows numbers that had set off alarm bells but now reassure, because they exist.
You know I love youth culture anthropology from the late 20th century. It seems appropriate on this miserable but reflective day to culturally appropriate Ice Cube:
Today I didn’t even have to use my A.K. I got to say it was a good day...
Last week there were no clever references to hip hop and white privilege. It was my first week in the address-less barn down the road from the store, by the brambles, just behind a broken Challenger muscle car as old as I am.
I woke in a new for me bed that’s cradled countless bodies over the years. There is no even smooth firm-yet-soft flatness here. What’s here is a queen-sized dominion of foam and springs and cloth that dip and sag and swell against each other like tectonic plates unhappy with their arrangements.
During the night I kept waking to turn over to stop the pain. Then I had a nightmare where my mother’s lungs were so full of fluid she could barely speak. The sound of her garbled voice, a voice I’ve heard ever since the memory of my existence, was so terrifying I forced myself awake. I lay in my seismic bed in the darkness, trying not to imagine, stretching then curling my legs to find a position that didn’t hurt.
I woke with my back in torment and a heart full of mourning.
Rise. Coffee. News. News. News. News. News.
Stop. Right now, stop. Do something else. What? Anything. Go. Walk.
Carlisle is such a small a town that it provokes ontological musings: What is “town?” A solitary store? A post office next to… shrubs? I headed down a road busy with pickup trucks, Subarus and crossovers. (Why so busy? Where are these people going? Massachusetts should be shut-the-hell-down like Blue No Matter Who America, but with a Republican governor languishing in Cuomo’s rearview, and where more Democrats voted for Biden than Warren in the March 3rd primary, I’d say it’s a little pinkish over here. Not in the good way.)
South of the main road I hit a muddy trailhead that leads to the woods. Forest bathing usually makes my soul sparkly clean. That day, a grey sky leaked light through the skeletal canopy of winter branches. Woodpeckers vented Rage Against The Trees. Clouds smothered the sun. I stepped in a mud puddle that soaked my socks with cold dirty water. You get the idea.
I returned to my den. Took Advil that my mother would later spend ten minutes on a Zoom call saying would kill me, and resumed prior activities.
News. News. News. News. News.
Hours later Farmer Andrew coaxed me out of my hobbit hole to meet at a park to exercise with him and his two teenagers, whom I’ve known since their mother was pregnant with them. The park is still open because what is “town?”
We ran around a quarter mile track a few times, did push ups in the grass, chatted about COVID and nothing. His son rode an electric skateboard and somehow did upside down pull ups on a set of rings. His daughter stepped into handstands that ended in a bridge and then somehow stood up again.
An hour later I returned to my studio to reheat a prepared meal from the Bedford Whole Foods. Netflix showed me Icelandic people investigate a serial killer—who seemed relatively unambitious. My thoughts turned to a beer in the fridge.
Car headlights lit up the apartment. Andrew’s Subaru idled out front. His 14-year-old daughter jumped out, handed me a wax paper bag, took a peek inside my den, flashed a smile and retreated into the car.
It took maybe half a minute and the visitors in the night had disappeared. I turned back to the Icelanders on Netflix and opened the wax bag. She had baked chocolate chip cookies with wide flakes of salt on top. I had one, then two. It was like eating heaven and the Atlantic, with a current of hot cocoa.
I used to watch a TV show a friend of mine wrote for called Heroes. The first season tagline was “a cheerleader saves the world.”
Yes, exactly.
Usually you look after a child and don’t anticipate or even want reciprocity, but when they surprise you by doing something tender and kind, you remember why you’re alive.
The next day. Bed wasn’t as Saint Andreas if you slept close to the left edge. Wakefulness at night but fewer nightmares. I had coffee and remembered that Ice Cube earned his real money making family comedies. But not before he said this:
Just waking up in the morning gotta thank God.