Quarantined: Folley and Flow

March 22, 2020.

Hello and welcome to Day #i-have-no-idea-anymore of this coronavirus pandemic that has swept across the globe like an absolute lightning bolt in the middle of a lightning storm on my personal climb up Mount Everest. It all seemed to happen so fast that sometimes when I close my eyes, it’s still two months ago, when things were “normal.”

That calm before the storm is always so sweet.

Since then, everything has changed. Or nearly everything. What is the same? The same is … work. Work is about the same, for me. Maybe a little different, because there is this Other Thing, this Being, that Beckons on me and that’s different. Before, it was just my dog, and it was more me than my dog, me demanding his attention and letting him know I loved him even though I spent most of his time boring him to death. What is the same? Music is the same, maybe. Except it’s more, maybe. During the last few weeks, It’s been the thing that has grounded me, even though I’ve never been good at it, never actually depended on it before, not like I do now. Whether it’s playing my tongue drum or singing a song that I love or that I don’t know or beating my chest like a drum, music has become the fastest way to center myself in this crisis.

Other things take too long, require too much focus, take too much set-up …

What is the same? I used to have time. I used to be able to focus too much. I loved to dream of new projects, especially projects I had no idea how to do. Which is maybe why I thought that I could do this. Why I had that kind of ego that told me, sure, you can handle it, no big deal — all while having a mental breakdown while you watch, in the background coming at you like a spec of dust turning into a speeding bullet, or an astroid, or any other Hollywood doomsday scenario.

Television is the same, maybe. Except for the news. Now the news is all coronavirus, all the time. I know it’s only been a few days, but … for me, at least, it’s been a 1,087-hour day. A once-in-a-lifetime marathon, a climb up Mount Everest. Normally with a 24-hour news cycle, the news moves on to something else, eventually. But not this. Not this, because this actually affects almost every single one of us. It has been a Global Catastrophe — one truly felt around the world. It has been a Global Catastrophe in both the Sharing Age and the Misinformation Age. It has been a Global Catastrophe, not just a hurricane in Haiti and a fire in Australia and a flood in New York and plastic in our seabirds and the dying corals and one thing after another thing after another thing. This has been an Everything. Everything is different. Schools are different. Love is different. Home is different. Relationships are different. Travel is different. Convenience is different. Worry is different. Sadness is different. Nothing is the same.

For some of us haunted by past trauma or videos from the future, the news seems so worrisome hope is hard to come by. For others life is passing almost normally, although restrictingly in a dystopian world where nothing seems quite real because, come on, this can’t be real, can it? Schools are closed. Bars are closed. We can’t dine together. We can’t congregate, we can’t rally, we can’t party, we can’t drink and be merry. We are supposed to eat alone. We are supposed to sleep alone. We are supposed to stand alone. We are supposed to go out, alone. We are supposed to be, alone.

And yet, we feed each other. We help each other. We watch out for each other. We take care of each other.

This is still just the beginning. Everything before was all prequel and preamble and pre-this and pre-that. It was the lead up to the main show, and right now the whole world is on its tip toes to see if we can make it a no-show. It doesn’t have to wipe us out. It doesn’t have to be the End. This might not be the Rapture. But it sure does feel something like it. It feels Earth-shaking. It feels traumatizing. It feels weird. It feels dystopian. Nightmarish. Confusing. Yet another change in the timeline. But I used to watch some spirit science, I used to believe I was an avatar for my soul, whole-heartedly, I used to think God was an absolute necessity to the answer of What was Before the Big Bang. So is this it? Is this the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning? Is this a horror story, or a hero story? We still don’t know. Perhaps the future is written in stone, but none of us has read it. I predict a lot of bad things, but I didn’t predict this. Though some people did. It was predictable. The future is written in stone, see?

The truth is, I’m only writing this because I have to stop oversharing on Facebook. I mean, I just have to. Nobody wants to read this stuff in real time. You want to look back on it, later, when everything’s over and things are okay again, when something feels “back to normal” somehow, though normal hadn’t been normal in a little bit of time. The world had been crumbling, and then it crumbled. And then it was the past-tense. That’s when you want to read this. When you’re look back.

Perhaps. Or maybe you’re going to need it when those crumbled pieces have turned to ashes, and you need to remember who you were and the things you’ve been through. Maybe you’re going to need it in those moments when you’re crumbling, to remind yourself that, no, you have hope within you. You have strength within you. You have something to say to yourself that is going to get you through your day, and tomorrow. And the day after. And you can’t say no matter what happens, because there is always something that could happen. Life has proven that much, to you. I respect What Could Happen. Maybe you need it to remind yourself that couldn’t have foreseen what actually did happen — or to remind yourself that you had no real choice, in any of it. Choice is an illusion. We are part of Flow. Choice is an illusion. We are part of Flow. Choice is an illusion. We are part of Flow. Choice is an illusion. We are part of Flow.

There are a lot of people I miss, in small ways and in big ways. Right now, it’s this guy, Jason, who once shared his daily mantras with me when he saw I was going through a rough time. I think I wrote some mantras for myself, but I never recited them, not really. I meant to. Just. The moments go more than they come, and I don’t know what’s up with that, exactly. There must be a physics behind it. There must be a science behind it, like there is to This.

This Global Catastrophe is an invisible natural enemy that has brought the whole world to its knees in just four months. Our world has finally turned against us with a weapon we haven’t been able to beat. The virus has mutated and spread…

Do I allow myself to escape into a fiction so dark that it’s darker than This? What are the new-age manifestive ethics of that here in this world in which we all need to escape but in which none of us can.

The virus hasn’t mutated, not yet. There isn’t any such thing as zombies, yet. Nobody’s come back from their graves — though the last silently troubled gasps of the dying do whisper like ghosts that haunt dreams — or so you imagine on those nights when you can’t sleep from the worry of it. Is she still breathing? Does she need me? Is she okay? What does she want? Why is this happening to her? What did she do?

Is this the future? Happening NOW? Why does it have to happen at a time like This? Why does anything have to happen at a time like This? Why does This have to happen?

Because This was inevitable. Sooner or later, one day, for sure, and sometime again, and it’s happened before, and in a trillion other universes, this is the story of Life. David and Goliath. Consciousness versus randomness. Imagination versus evolution. Man versus nature. Sooner or later, something sparks a revolution. Sooner or later, things change. Nothing stays the same. We are part of Flow. Nothing stays the same. We are part of Flow. Nothing stays the Same. We are part of Flow. This is Flow. This is Flow. This is Flow. And this is

A disaster. A terrifying coming-of-age-in-a-world-gone-mad-Disaster. Not just a climb up Mount Everest, but a climb up Mount Everest in a snow storm. A virtual snow storm that kills real people before they even see it coming. The weather forecast is grim, my friends.

Except for tomorrow. Tomorrow is supposed to be a nice day. We will see what happens.

——

March 23, 2020

I don’t know if the lump in my throat is this virus that’s spreading across the globe like a Taylor Swift rumor or if it’s the manifestation of fear itself. It feels exactly like what a ball of fear and anxiety would feel like, invisible but also ever-so-present. I know there’s not actually anything in my throat, but it feels like my throat is caving in from like the outside? Like the gates are closing, and I never knew I had actual gates right there. I don’t know, it’s just the sensation of a nightmare choking you from behind.

It’s been just 10 days since I decided to hole myself up in this house with my mom and not let anyone in or out except for previously-deemed-necessary-in-another-lifetime medical appointments for the cancer that was supposed to kill her. Now I’m afraid it’s not going to be the cancer that gets her. It’s going to be this other Thing, and that Thing, I am sure, will somehow be my fault. Not that I, like, invented it or discovered it or even transmitted it — I did my absolute best not to catch it, followed all of the news out of China and Italy as soon as it started surfacing — but just that I willed it into existence. This is a manifestation of every dark thought I’ve ever had.

What if none of this is real?

I don’t think I’m actually crazy yet, but the days are getting harder. Scarier. I am doing my best to keep up some level of normalcy, working all day and trying to empty out some boxes and set up the house but my mom just fell off her couch and it took me 20 minutes to get her back on to it and I feel like I’m choking from my own anxieties, literally. I never imagined the possibility that caring for my mom before she died could actually kill me, but here I am. I might actually die doing this, and since all my dark, ugly thoughts tend to come to fruition … I’m probably already dead.

I just don’t know it yet.

I want to make art, need to make art, need some other focus for this stress besides the news and the lack of news. How many people actually have this thing? How many people are in the hospital with it right now? It could be dozens, I guess. That’s what the government wants you to believe. That there are just 17 people who have tested positive for this virus. That they are “resting at home,” by which they mean fearing for their lives alone. They don’t want to tell you how many people have been refused tests, they don’t want to tell you how many of the doctors and nurses have gotten sick, they don’t want to tell you that if you’re a caregiver, there’s a possibility that you might die from this, just like your patient.

But that’s a small possibility. As long as you keep breathing, you’re fine. That boa constrictor around your neck is nothing more than your over-active imagination trying to make a monster out of a molehill. I wonder if my mom feels this lump in her throat too, or if she really just believes this is all from the cancer. It’s almost funny because she’s spent the last two years telling me cancer isn’t contagious, and I know this (I think maybe my mom’s generation thought it was at one point?), and yet: cancer is contagious, on the grander scale. It can be brought on by genetics, by environmental factors. ‘

And she could definitely be contagious now. We all could be.

We don’t know why this thing kills some people and not others. We don’t know anything about it really. I don’t have diabetes, asthma, cancer, or any other underlying condition that I know of, but I’ve read enough stories to know that this hits a lot of people who consider themselves healthy hard. Why? The government wants to blame vaping and obesity but all these healthy marathon runners getting sick aren’t big vapors, I don’t think, and enough of my friends vape that I don’t want to even think about it. It could be anything.

But I am well-suited to this. I have been through disasters before. I know that this is in my head. I know that my airways will open. All I have to do is take it easy. Don’t be a show-off right now. There’s a global pandemic and I can only do what I can do. If I peace out here, maybe it’s the Rapture and God is taking me home before all Hell breaks lose. Maybe the dead should be greatful because what’s coming next really doesn’t sound all that promising, to be honest. With the government the way it was, and with the system so impossible to break, after four months of deaths and dying, with no jobs to go back to, houses going into forfeiture, the climate crises still ongoing… death by asphixiation might not be so bad.

But I do want to live. I want to say that, succintly, clearly. I want to live. I want to live another 50 years and I want to see what happens and I want to try to make this a better place, somehow. I don’t know how to do that, what my role would be, but I think I want the opportunity. No. I shouldn’t say ‘I think.’ That’s where the manifestations come from: I think therefore I am. But if I think not, am I not? It’s the age-old question, and one worth considering during this particular apocalypse of misinformation, fear, stupidity, authoritarianism, greed and natural warfare. I don’t blame the Earth for fighting back.

Yesterday I felt hopeful. I had the day off. I was able to get some things done. This lump wasn’t all situated in my throat like this.

—

March 26, 2020

Things are happening so fast it’s impossible to document it all. Officially, 68,000 people in the U.S. have tested positive for Coronavirus, but that’s only because tests are still so hard to get. An entire nursing home in New Jersey with 96 residents fell ill; how? What kinds of precautions were they taking? Were they letting in visitors? Were staff members all told to go on lockdown outside of work? It must’ve been a caregiver or health aide that brought it in accidentally. New York City, Detroit, New Orleans are all falling. Doctors are talking about mandating universal do not resuscitate orders because it puts healthcare workers in jeapardy; all of a sudden, what we don’t realize is that soon, we may all be health care workers. Globally, India and Mexico are the latest doomsday scenarios, with India woefully unprepared and impoverished and the Mexican government telling its citizens to go ahead and hug one another.

Hugs have become poison.

My mom doesn’t understand this. she doesn’t underestand why we shouldn’t be in the same room with other people, why we can’t go eat at a restaurant or meet my friends like we had planned. This isn’t a nightmare. This isn’t a movie, or a book, though it will be made into many movies and many books. This is reality. The reality is that there is a deadly disease circulating and I am taking care of someone entirely dependent on me and my well-being at a time when professional caregivers are being swamped in death. And yet, many people are doing their best just to live normal lives, to pretend nothing is happening. They are together, hugging each other, laughing together, facing the world together.

But I don’t want to think of those people today. I want to think about other things today. My mom is officially dying; she wants hospice care and I have to figure out how to overcome all my anxieties about getting sick and gettin her sick and balance those with how hard it is to care for a dying person, and how hard it is to die. Because this virus can hit anyone. Because this virus appears to be perfectly engineered to kill and to spread. Because nobody knows anything about this virus — why it kills who its kills when it kills. I can’t think of my mom dying because dying is dying and a lot of people are dying now.

I played poker with friends today, almost like a normal Wednesday: we all sat at our computers at home and video chatted during an online game and it was, in some ways, amazing. It was great to see their faces, and great to connect and laugh and be together for that little while, and especially great to see John walking around with his shirt off. If that’s not the silver lining of those whole thing, I don’t know what is. I really really really hope he comes out of this okay. There are so many people I worry about, think about, want to send good vibes to — it’s hard not knowing what people are doing with their time, not knowing how seriously people are taking this. People are still going to work and then coming home and then going next door and going for walks around their neighborhood and all the while this thing just waits and in the end we all will have next to no choice about who gets this and who doesn’t and I feel guilty because I am not out there braving all this with them. Instead, I’m in here, terrified for the collapse of the health care system, doing my absolute best to scare other people into submission. Suffice it to say, people aren’t going out of their way to talk to me right now.

I am one of the lucky ones, I know it. I already worked from home, I still have my job, I am with my mom, I have purpose, I have someone else I’m trying to protect, I have a financial safety net for now. As much as everything in my life has changed, things seem like they might work out in my favor — just in the most difficult way possible. And it’s risky. But I guess we are all having to take big risks now. Growing up people used to say you could die crossing the street, you could die going to the grocery store. And now, it’s true. You won’t die crossing the street but you could die 17 days later because you chose to cross the street after someone coughed or sneezed. Nail biting is now more deadly than heroin and cigarette smoking.

I said I was going to think of other things but let’s be honest: It’s impossible. This is it, for now. Trying to make my mom’s final months on Earth not totally miserable, trying not to make myself totally miserable, trying to stay healthy, trying to stay connected, trying to let everyone around me know I care and know I want them safe and sound and hoping and praying that we are all in this together. Because there are two ways this whole thing could go here and the odds seem to be leaning in a bad direction but change isn’t impossible.

There are two ways this could go: It could get worse, or it could get better.

I told my mom she’s one of the lucky ones because she doesn’t have to watch the world go to shit. It made her laugh.