Day 178…
Ordinarily, the drive up to Cape Cod on the Friday of Labor Day weekend would have been horrific. During this weekend, the traffic would normally be awful just about everywhere as people flee to the beach or the mountains for a last summer hurrah. Just getting out of New York City alone would have taken well over an hour.
While traffic was definitely the thickest it’s been that we’ve experienced since the pandemic began, the only place where we actually came to a standstill was just before the Bourne Bridge onto the Cape where three lanes go down to two. The rest of the time we moved. There was no delay at all leaving the city.
Michael and I have started talking about trying to visit my family. Unfortunately, they live in some of our country’s hardest-hit places. When I took my road trip to North Dakota and back, I avoided having to quarantine by keeping moving. I stayed socially distant from everyone. If anything, I had less contact with strangers out on the road than I usually do at home in New York. For much of the trip, I remained isolated in my own bubble in my car.
Visiting Michael’s family has been less of an issue for us as we all live within the same state. We still social distance the couple of times we have gotten together, but the risk is something that we feel is manageable. Coming up here to Cape Cod is also not such an issue because Massachusetts and New York have comparable low rates of infection. Neither state requires visitors from the other to quarantine.
Visiting my family, however, will be an issue. That will require a solid two weeks of strict quarantine upon our return. It means staying at home and getting food ordered in. Two weeks is not forever. It’s all fine until one of us gets called for a job. Then we’ve got a problem. It’s unlikely to be me who is called, but with film and TV production starting up again, it very likely that Michael could get a call. And we need his health insurance weeks!
Throughout this strange period of time, we have all been called upon to make these kinds of choices. It has fallen to each of us to weigh the relative risks for ourselves.
Michael and I have a small group of three or four people that we occasionally get together with in the park. We set up our beach chairs in a large, loose circle and we all bring our own food. Those visits have kept us all from completely losing our minds.
No matter what any talking head says, it is that need for actual human interaction that is going to keep us from becoming a completely virtual society.
My mother and I can keep up with each other via emails and the occasional phone call. Same with my sister and her family. My niece and nephew are both on Instagram, so I can actually see what they are doing. There is a circle of people that Michael and I zoom with some regularity. Through that platform, we interact with these different couples and groups of friends and colleagues and, on some level, we keep up with them.
None of it, however, is real.
We are, none of us, presenting our true selves virtually. We have set up corners of our living spaces that we have decided provides the background that we want to show ourselves in. We all make ourselves look together - at least from the waist up.
What nobody can see is that we are in our underwear from the waist down, or have on a raggedy pair of shorts, or maybe nothing at all. The corner of the room we are showing each other looks great, but the rest of the space, maybe not so much. Like many of our friends, we have a ring light that has some very flattering settings.
What we choose to share on Facebook, Instagram or on any other social media platform is carefully edited and curated by us to present to the world pretty much exactly what we want to present. We can cut out all of the embarrassing or the unflattering parts of our lives. Face to face, most of that instantly falls away. We can’t hide our true selves in person as effectively as we can behind a camera.
As living creatures, our bodies require food, oxygen and water to survive. Beyond nourishment, we also require true social interaction for our mental well-being. Virtual interaction is like spiritual junk food. Yes, it can keep you going but ultimately, we can’t live on it alone. We need the real thing to keep us healthy.
We are all getting sucked into the news on a much deeper level these days because it is being presented to us in the same way that our personal relationships are. It’s all on the same screen. The newscaster and our Aunt are on the exact same screen and are the exact same size.
Before the pandemic, we could put the news into a more manageable compartment in our lives. It was less important than our in-person interactions with friends and family and co-workers. Those meetings were happening in person and therefore had far more energy and power behind them than any news broadcast.
These days, though, the news can seem equal or even greater than the events in our personal lives. Anderson Cooper and Rachel Maddow come into our living room in precisely the same way that our friends and family do. While we see our loved ones only every so often, Anderson and Rachel and their ilk are there with us every single day. Of course we are all anxious and going crazy with fear, how could we not be? We are out of balance.
The TV is on in the room and I am listening to everyone talk about the President’s disparaging comments about all of the people who have served and, in some cases, given their lives fighting for our country. Reported by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic, the President’s total disdain for those who have fallen should be shocking.
None of these comments, however horrific, are a surprise. He already said much the same thing about the late Senator John McCain. The fact that Senator McCain was captured during the war made him ‘less than’ in the President’s eyes.
He has described soldiers who have lost their lives in service to their country as “Losers” and “Suckers”. It is clear that he has no conception, whatsoever, about the idea fighting for something greater than yourself. He cannot understand why somebody would choose to serve for the low salary that comes with enlisting rather than pursuing a more lucrative line of work elsewhere. It is truly all about the buck for him. We knew that before, but thanks to these latest comments, now we KNOW this.
Yesterday, the Pentagon announced, seemingly out of nowhere, that they were going to halt the publication of Stars and Stripes, the military paper that has served our armed forces since 1861. The President quickly spoke up and said, “Not on my watch”. He has condemned the move.
This seems to me to be a complete Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy political move.
The syndrome is an attention getting device. Caretakers create a medical condition in someone, either by secretly poisoning them or perhaps starving them so that they can then take care of that person and maybe cure them. They become the hero.
Stars and Stripes is an infinitesimally small part of the Pentagon’s overall budget. For many service personnel, it is the only news and contact with the outside world they get. Putting an end to it, seems like a pointless move unless it was directed to do so, so that the President could swoop in and save it. It gives him something to balance out his painful and disgusting remarks. It will be interesting to see what the reasoning behind the decision really was. I’ll wait.
I will figure out a way to visit my mother and my sister. If I have to go into strict quarantine, then, I guess, so be it. I’m not ready to risk getting on a plane yet, but clearly, I’m good with a long car ride. I think my nephew might now be as tall as I am. I’d like to see for myself.
The TV is on across the room, but out of the window, to my right, is Cape Cod bay. The sky is blue. It is a perfect 72 degrees (22C).
I don’t know that we should shun the news completely - we owe it to ourselves to stay informed, but it doesn’t have to rule our lives. There's a beautiful day out there and for Michael and I, at least for the next few days, a beach.
The TV is now off for the rest of the day.
a beach
💕