Day 328…
Tom Stoppard, the playwright, gave a lecture that I went to at the American Museum of Natural History back in the dim and dusty stacks of time. It must have been when I was working there in the gift shop in the very early 1980’s.
At the end of it, somebody asked him if he minded when a production of one of his plays veered from what he originally imagined and was presented differently from the original one.
He responded by saying that, in some ways, he felt that his job was more like that of an architect than anything else. Like somebody who designs a house that may get replicated many times in a development, he felt his task was to create a sound structure that could stand on its own. After that, how it got decorated was somebody else’s job. As long as its bones were sturdy it didn’t matter what color its walls were painted. Part of the joy of the experience for him was seeing what furniture people choose to move into the house and what art they hung on the walls. Sometimes they put up additional partitions inside that made two rooms where one had been intended. Sometimes they added in a picture window.
As in a development, there could be a whole line of the same basic house, but none of them would look precisely like another. The families within each of them would put their own stamp on the basic design. Despite those changes, the underlying structure of each house was always the same.
Hamlet, he said, has been done a million different ways over the last centuries. Despite being set in outer space or in a brothel, the play has endured unscathed.
That discussion came into my mind as I was trudging through the snow out on my walk yesterday.
For the first time in my memory, we have all, the world over, been handed exactly the same obstacle to deal with - in this case a new virus that spreads fairly easily through the population - but we have all reacted differently to it and had to figure out our own way to live with what it’s wrought.
All of our individual experiences since last March have been radically different. Even Michael and I, who have been living together in the same apartment this whole time are forging our own paths through it. We’ve been given the same play to put on, but our individual productions of it are not the same.
Different theatres have different sized stages and different access to materials and funding. It’s the same with all of us.
Some theatres have competent people at the helm and some not so much. One theatre may have a particularly talented prop master while another may have a good core group of actors. Some of our productions are being done inside a grand opera house and some are being done on a rough platform out in a field, scrapped together with found objects.
In theatre money rarely affects the result. The play out in the field may very well turn out to be the best one of all of them. The best theatrical experiences are about the story, not the trappings surrounding it. After all, the most expensive and lavish production in Broadway history was also its biggest flop.
Yesterday’s snow was a pretty stark reminder of how separate all of us really are these days. The drifts kept most people indoors. Friends outside of the city were completely snowed in in some places and couldn’t leave even if they wanted to.
After lunch, I had a phone conversation with a friend of mine who has been remarkably busy through all of this - completely online. There has been plenty to do. Together with other friends on Zoom, she wrote a play. She has created a popular YouTube channel. My friend has had what looks like a very successful year without her ever having left her apartment.
You can occupy yourself for an entire day, and we all are doing that, but at the end of that day we are all doing it away from everyone else, in our separate pods. It can be, quite simply, as my friend said, lonely.
We are designed to be social creatures. The insidiousness of this virus is that it is that very need that we all have to physically connect with each other that allows it to spread. The AIDS virus stopped us from having sex for a while until we figured out how to protect ourselves, but this one is stopping us from even shaking hands with each other. The act of breathing near each other is potentially dangerous.
I’ve started watching a TV series called Snowpiercer. It is an end of the world story where a failed climate change experiment has in essence, frozen the world. All life has ended except for about 3000 people who are surviving on a super high-tech train that endlessly circles the globe.
The train is a thousand and one cars long and life aboard it has devolved into a rigid class system - the wealthy in the front living in luxury all the way down to a mass of stowaways in the back who are living in squalor. They are all on the same train, they are all trapped in their cars, but their experiences, even under those circumstances, couldn’t be more different from each other. I’m sure that the number of cars is a reference to the Arabian tales. A different story every night or, in this case, a different story for every car.
Whether or not you are getting through this by yourself in a studio apartment in the middle of the city or with your family in a house in the country, we are all still being kept from actually being with each other. We’ve created little pods of people that we might get together with every so often, but it’s not the same thing. We aren’t going to parties and meeting new people. We aren’t all in a room working together and fighting about what we should do. We aren’t standing in a crowd with a whole bunch of strangers waiting to get on a train or into a movie or even into a club.
Whatever our individual circumstances, we are all united in what we aren’t actually able to do. We are trapped in our bubbles in the same way that those people on the train are trapped within theirs.
From inside, you can look out at somebody who appears to have it all and compare it to what you have and despair at the difference. They are probably, however, looking out from where they are and doing the same. The people who have been with their families in the same space since March are likely just as desperate to reconnect with other people as those who have been on their own are.
Michael and I certainly spend time together, but we are also alone for an overwhelming majority of our days. If we lived in a studio, I am sure that we would gravitate away from each other as much as we could to the opposite sides of the room. People aren’t built to be with each other 24/7 any more than we’re built to be apart all the time.
Michael and I have now been together more than we ever have over the entire decade and a half that we’ve been a couple. We eat almost all of our meals together. We watch TV together and we sleep together. The rest of the day, we are by ourselves. Even if I can hear him in the other room, we have figured out how to have our own spaces.
I was with my ex for nearly twenty years and now I’ve been with Michael for over fifteen years. Clearly, if I really wanted to live completely by myself, I would not choose to be in these relationships. My job took me away from home for sometimes months at a time. In all that time Michael and I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the days that we didn’t talk or text or facetime with each other at least once.
I like being alone. I’m usually happy with my own company. Up to a point.
Most of my time away from home these days has been spent walking around the city. I really enjoy being part of a crowd without being part of the crowd - not an actual crowd, mind you, I have very little patience for that, but the normal crowds that you come into contact with, in daily life. I like the energy of people around me who are living their lives.
Even though there are people out and about in the city these days, that kind of purpose is absent now. The people I pass are, like me, looking for that same energy, not generating it themselves.
One of my favorite things to do is to go on a long car trip with Michael. I always drive and he works on his computer in the passenger seat or sleeps. At home, I rarely see him sleep - he almost always comes to bed after I do and he’s often up and about before I wake up. The rhythm of the car changes his rhythms. I love watching that happen.
I have other friends that I like to travel with too, as well as my family who are all excellent travelers.
Traveling, however, is more than just going to another place. It’s experiencing that place once you are there. There's a joy in sharing that time with friends as well as a joy in having it to yourself. During this very strange period in our lives, the going part of traveling around the city is still possible, but that experiencing of it has been much curtailed.
I did take a long walk yesterday. Central Park in the snow is truly lovely. There were a lot of families out with their kids sledding down the small hills that weren’t flattened out by the people who first built the city.
It’s still snowing outside this morning, but it’s only flurries. By the end of the day, yesterday, it got a bit warmer so some of the snow started to melt. This morning, though, the temperature is below freezing again. It is meant to go above that point later on in the day. All of that means that everything outside is going to be as slick and slippery as a skating rink.
Punxsutawney Phil, the Pennsylvania groundhog, saw his shadow this morning, so we are getting another six weeks of winter. He was awoken at 7:25am and made his prediction in front of a small group of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club at Gobbler's Knob.
I look around at how everyone else is getting through this time and sometimes I am somewhat envious and sometimes, not at all. None of our lives are all that similar even though we have all been subject to the same overall restrictions. I’m happy, though, with the straw I’ve pulled. I’m grateful for it.
New York City, even with its issues, has proven to be the best place for me to watch the events of this past year unfold. It probably wouldn’t be for everyone. What’s missing here, isn’t happening in many other places these days, either - certainly not in this country.
The cat woke Michael up early this morning to be fed despite the fact that there was plenty of food still in his bowl. Michael had to get up and rearrange the food to the cat’s liking. After that, he couldn’t get back to sleep.
He’s somewhat annoyed. He’s in the kitchen, now, making breakfast and he and the cat are exchanging words.
In its own way, it’s everything, And, in spite of it all, I’m, indeed, utterly grateful.
Grateful for him, grateful for the cat, even grateful for this time.
❤️me too, great full a
state of love
❄️❄️❄️❄️❤️💕
That was beautiful!