Or is this what being home is like: home as a place from which the entire world is suddenly possible?
— Hisham Matar, The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between
Image: Let’s Eat Cake
Tag: quarantine
Evolution
Cover of The New Yorker Sept 21, 2020 issue by Artist Chris Ware: “I live in the quiet, relatively diverse, and leafy “village” of Oak Park, literally across the street from Chicago, and all summer long I’ve seen neighborhood almost-but-not-quite get-togethers, not unlike what I drew here…I think vastly more people still try to get along in America than not. Our cities aren’t exclusively anarchic blast zones, and the suburbs aren’t all xenophobic cloisters. Yet, now, the weather is cooling, and we’re all heading back inside to await the results of what will surely be the most contested election of our lifetimes. The real fear is what may result: not a democracy or a republic but something that somehow stifles both.”
Oh, I need it! Oh, I need your help!
Lightly Child, Lightly
We are looking for new spaces, but what we are really looking for is retreat, clarity, to escape our internal chaos.
For the days not to feel glued together.
— Kate Zambreno, Drifts: A Novel (Penguin, May 19, 2020)
Notes:
- Photo: Image source here. (via Mennyfox55)
- Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
The Good News.
There’s no morning drive to Work. No 40 minute commute home in traffic.
There’s no one hour Metro North ride into the city for Manhattan meetings. No one hour return trip on packed commuter trains jostling for an open seat. There’s no walk to/from the commuter trains in suffocating humidity. As Jeffrey Eugenides puts it: “It was one of those humid days…you could feel it: the air wishing it was water.”
Today, the commute from Bed to Breakfast to Office is less than one minute. Air conditioning cools, a steady 71° degrees.
The Less Good News.
Work Hours: Up ~20% per day. Calls, emails, Zooms, conference calls. Add the pandemic anxiety to the tonic, and you have a giant Boa asphyxiating its prey, as I sit, sit, sit, and sit some more — from daybreak to late dinner, and again the next day, and the next and the next. And the body, and the mind Scream: You’re sliding Pal, things gotta change. These Home Office walls are closing in.