sovay: (Default)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2020-04-14 05:00 pm

And I'll breathe the dust of cosmos and wild rosebud

Today is my father's birthday. There have been years when I did not celebrate it with him, but I was in grad school at the time, or in different countries. I've called him and sent e-mail. I should have put a card in the mail last week, but I had not yet adjusted to the new timing.

I would hate to be confined to my apartment and immediate environs for eighteen months. I would hate to be without museums and rehearsals and trips to D.C. to see my godchild. I would hate to be in these levels of pain. I have lost so many years out of my life already, I feel most of the time as though the majority of my life has been a waste of waking up; it would hurt very much to add to that. I would rather lose as much time as it takes to make sure of a vaccine and treatments that are not wishful thinking or snake oil than pretend it's safe when it's not. I appreciate my governor being one of the people who don't want to jump the gun. I still wish I'd been able to replace him with an ethical artichoke in 2018, but he might be working his way up to, as [personal profile] phi aptly identified, a turnip with common sense.

Today's installment of the New Decameron is Lila Garrott's "The Prudent Traveller's Guide to Venice (Excerpted), 1872," which I adore. It's so beautifully worked out and so matter-of-fact about how it reveals it.
pameladean: (Default)

[personal profile] pameladean 2020-04-14 11:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Happy birthday to your father! I feel for people whose birthdays occur during this mess. Mine was just before, and I don't know what things will be like next year for the next one.

I've been having similar thoughts to yours, although I think my space is less constrained and I have only intermittent chronic pain of a minor variety. But the depth of time in which so many necessary, desperately needed or desperately wanted things cannot happen, is daunting. I hope they will find a good anti-viral. I would feel so much better if we had a real federal government and not a sabotaging arbitrary mass of nonsense.

It's cheering that governors on both coasts are banding together to do sensible things. It's just all so slow.

P.