Day 394…
These days are almost stranger than the days we experienced last year when we were still at the beginning of everything.
The strangeness is that they are starting to feel not so strange. As temperatures start to rise, more and more people are venturing outdoors. I ran into some friends downtown yesterday on the street and we hugged. There was a vaccine discussion first, of course, but once we figured out that we had all been jabbed, we just went for it. They were working on a corporate performance and waiting out on the street to go back inside the venue.
After having had our first meal inside last weekend, Michael and I have now had two more. Both of them were with vaccinated people and both were in restaurants that seemed open and well-ventilated. We are gauging whether or not a restaurant is safe purely from what it feels like. There are plenty of places that we reject because they either feel like there are too many people inside or that there is not enough space between tables.
We are trying to use common sense, and keep the science in mind, but really, we are operating on instinct.
Watching how people behave out on the street is fascinating. Some are clearly terrified, and some seem completely unconcerned. Everyone is still wearing a mask, but the level of social interaction has risen markedly. For everybody hugging a friend, there is also somebody else desperately trying to skirt around them and give them a wide berth on the sidewalk.
Theatre work is starting to happen again, albeit very slowly. Most of the available work is small in-person performances for a limited audience. I think that the friends that I ran into said that their audience was going to be 30 people. I have had more meetings and discussions about future work in recent days which I am encouraged by, but there are still so many unknowns ahead of us to be fully able to fully count on any of it yet. Most of the work that I think is most likely to happen is still going to be for things that don’t require a big in-person crowd to watch.
After a year of near total silence from our union, they finally held a Town Hall with the officers and the epidemiologist that they hired to advise us on safety protocols. A few weeks ago, a set of guidelines was published that simply didn’t make any sense at all in terms of how we could possibly do any work while incorporating them. A new set, taking vaccinations into account, was just sent out that are much more practical. These new protocols are applicable when a company - onstage and off - is fully inoculated.
The fly in the ointment is that there are going to be people who either cannot or will not get vaccinated. When that happens, these new protocols seem to go somewhat out of the window.
The discussions that are happening between my friends in the community about this issue at some point all come around to the same thing - why should we have to put ourselves in danger by having to work with somebody who refuses to get vaccinated?
If we lived in another country and didn’t enjoy the rights and freedoms that we have, this wouldn’t be a problem - get a vaccine or stay home. In this country, however, there is an immediate uproar when that is suggested. Being forced to do anything - even for the greater good - becomes an infringement upon our individual rights.
A ban on immigration to protect us from the virus only works if it is an actual ban on EVERYONE entering the country. If you start saying that say American nationals can come in, then it is no longer a ban. The same thing happens with the vaccine. If you start saying that you need to be vaccinated to work but if you choose not to be vaccinated than you can work anyway, then the whole purpose of vaccination is sidestepped.
Not everybody gets an annual flu shot. Thousands of people die every year from the flu, and we don’t particularly worry about it. COVID-19, however, is not the flu. Over the years the majority of us have built up a tolerance to many strains of the flu. Sometimes we get it and sometimes we avoid it. The difference is that none of us had a tolerance to COVID-19 until we either got it and survived or got vaccinated against it. Our bodies don’t have a history of fighting it.
I couldn’t fully make sense of what we were being told about these vaccination protocols at the Town Hall because there seem to be plenty of “what ifs” that if you try and follow them through to the end, wind you up against a wall.
What feels strange about these days is that while there seems to be the great promise of forward movement, there really isn’t any actually in evidence. I do think that we are working towards the goal of getting back and, in many cases, doing many positive things to accomplish it. Practically, though, we are still in the same state that we were in six months ago. That’s what feels strange. Nothing has changed except our outlook.
My days are pretty much locked into the same solid routine. Whether or not I am writing, my mornings are filled with work. Then we eat. Then I take a walk and then I come home and maybe work some more and then we eat again and then we watch something on television and then we go to sleep. Certainly, eating out with friends occasionally breaks the repetition somewhat but without steady income, we can’t afford to do that all the time. None of the work that I am doing at home these days is bringing in any income. It’s satisfying, certainly, but not generating anything financial. Yet.
I do think that this period in our lives is drawing to a close. It just isn’t there yet. Seeing that the end may be in sight, I am trying to finish up the projects - both the artistic ones and the ones that are pure maintenance - that need finishing. We have already done a lot. We have cleared a lot of excess stuff out of our home this past year to the point that I still occasionally open up my closet and revel at how organized and spare it looks compared to what it once did. My effectiveness in accomplishing tasks like that, though, comes in waves. I’ve have tried to ride those waves as long as possible when they come and accept the lulls when I simply can’t face doing any more.
Having had a whole year to complete finish these projects has made me realize that completing everything is an impossibility. There are simply not enough hours in a day - even when I’m not working. Not only is it an impossibility but I realize that I shouldn’t even necessarily have had it as a goal. Life is messy. My instinct always pushes me towards trying to control and organize everything, but this year has truly shown me that, at best, that’s a fool’s errand.
The Derek Chauvin trial is consuming the airwaves. Every single time I turn on the news there it is. Invariably, there is either an image or a clip of George Floyd dying under the full weight of Chauvin’s knee. Just as there are multiple videos of that happening - each from its own point of view - the prosecution is doing every single thing that it can to present as wide a spectrum of evidence from as many different points of view as possible. It’s gruesome and heart-rending to watch - every single time.
The whole goal is to remove any sense of doubt in the jury’s mind. The defense is relying on one slightly disheveled lawyer rather than a whole team to try and make him seem like the underdog. The prosecution is flooding the courtroom with evidence - methodically and relentlessly. It is all theatre.
What do I really remember from the OJ Simpson trial? What I remember most vividly is him not being able to get the glove on and holding up his hand for all to see. It seemed obvious that he was tensing his hand in such a way as to make getting the glove on impossible, but nonetheless, that image helped sow the seed of doubt. It was a manufactured moment and one that did exactly what it was designed to do.
I am not watching much of the Chauvin trial as it unfolds. I don’t have the stomach for it. When I get home later in the afternoon, I check in to see the highlights of what has happened over the course of the day. Today, for example, the Medical Examiner testified that he would, indeed, categorize Mr. Floyd’s death as a homicide. The defense was hoping to poke some holes in that given how the death certificate had been written, but they were largely unsuccessful.
The result of this trial is going to change us. A guilty verdict will help lead us towards much needed police reform. A not guilty verdict…? I don’t even want to think about it.
We are in the part of the flight where after taking off late and then circling the airport endlessly we have finally landed but we are now sitting on the tarmac because there isn’t a gate available for us to disembark through. It’s the part of plane travel that makes me the craziest. When you can see the end of the trip, but you just can’t get there. They won’t just pull up a staircase and let you get off that way. They keep you sitting there - sometimes for hours - trapped within touching distance of the end.
We are going to forget all of this.
However long we are stuck in this last kink of the trip, it is eventually going to open up and let us all out. A gate will eventually be cleared. A ground crew will be located, and we will all get off the plane, collect our luggage, and head home. We will be annoyed by the delay until bedtime, but when we wake up the next day, aside from telling one or two people about it, we will likely never think about it again.
We are going to forget this past year because when all is said and done it was just a year out of our lives. I never understood before how the Spanish flu could have become the “Forgotten Pandemic”, but hugging my friends on the street yesterday, it became crystal clear. When we start to move on, we are going to lunge forward, and we are not going to look back.
We aren’t at the gate yet. Part of what is making this all seem endless is that we don’t know when that will happen. The not knowing makes it seem that much longer, and more fraught than it is. This past year, when I look back at it, seems to have flown by. It certainly didn’t seem that way as it was unfolding, but it does now. So much of it seems like history from another era.
I’m not the person that I was when all of this began last March. I don’t think that any of us are. There is no way for us all to collectively go through an experience like the one we have just all shared and not be altered by it. There are going to be permanent changes to some of the ways we live our lives, but we will stop noticing that they are changes and just accept them as part of our experience. Taking off our shoes at the airport after 9/11 was a new and hard to accept rule at the time. I haven’t thought about it in years. It is just an acceptable part of travel now. So, too, will be some of the new ways in which we interact with each other following COVID-19.
There were over 600 new cases of the coronavirus in New York City yesterday. Michigan is seeing the worst spike of new cases and hospitalizations that it has ever had. This isn’t done. This isn’t done, but it feels like we are close. We can all see how the end of it might be in the not so far-off future.
The people that we have become over the course of this past year are facing a future of possibility. When we are finally allowed to fully engage with those possibilities, we will leave most of this behind. For a while, after work, when we all get together for a drink, we might ask each other, “What did you do during the pandemic?” But just for a while.
Soon, we are going to have other things to talk about.
Soon.
Wonderful commentary! I am going through a powerful transformative experience being here in Limerick tending to my mother with whom I have never been close. It is an ordeal and it is grace too. Much to learn, much to give
Thank you! Annie
💞Me too...feel like I am in the twilight zone, was in the incredibly efficiently executed Javits Center ( talk about futuristic?! the Javits Center empty?!...)
received my first pfizer vaccine...extraordinary feeling, felt a part of something “bigger”... also thought what a great space the Javits Center could be for Theater
Still with a mask, socially distant and the magnolias paint the blue sky...not too much else different....except there was “traffic” in the city yesterday
I can wait 💞🙏🎈