Moving off into the distance to get closer again
Today so far has been characterized by an unpleasant headache, but also an unexpectedly nice conversation, so it is what it is. At the moment I am happier about the latter than I am inconvenienced by the former. Have a meme and some links.
1. I had no idea that spiders performed courtship dances. The music is extra-diegetic, but the dance of the Maratus speciosus is just spectacular. The brilliant colors of its mask, too.
2. I got sick of not knowing the musical source of the jingle I learned from my grandfather decades ago ("My ma gave me a penny to go see Benny / I didn't go see Benny, I bought some chewing gum . . . My ma gave me a nickel to buy a pickle / I didn't buy a pickle, I bought some chewing gum") and futzed around on the internet until I discovered it was something called "La Sorella" by either Louis Gallini or Charles Borel-Clerc. It shows up brassily in An American in Paris (1951), which explains why I wondered if it was Offenbach.
3. I haven't been keeping up with the obituaries, but I did want to register an objection to the death of Tim Brooke-Taylor. I saw him first on the nearly-all-burninated-but-miraculously-nearly-all-restored At Last the 1948 Show (1967), where he will always look to me like the automatic hospital visitor, lonely patients, for the use of. In times of illness, members of our household have been known to shout, "NURSES NURSES NICE BIG JUICY ONES."
4. I decided to do the American quarantine meme, despite suspecting it would be only sort of pertinent to my daily life.
1. Are you an Essential Worker?
No. I am the financial mainstay of our household (and working from home, albeit at reduced pay), but that's not the same thing.
1a. Are you in a vulnerable category?
Yes. I have an autoimmune disorder and an immune system generally that I joke about being garbage, but I have never yet failed to get a respiratory infection I was exposed to, which is why I am spending a lot of time trying not to be exposed to this one. I don't actually know if my vascular weirdness is a risk factor. I have been chronically ill in several different directions for the majority of my adult life, but I don't know what that does to the numbers.
2. How many drinks have you had since the quarantine started?
None. I haven't been able to drink alcohol for medical reasons since December.
3. If you have kids . . . Are they driving you nuts?
Fortunately, we have soothing cats instead.
4. What new hobby have you taken up during this?
None. I've been taking a lot of pictures of flowering trees lately, but it isn't like I never used to walk around Boston with a camera. I really miss walking around Boston with a camera. I miss the Charles River. I miss the bridges. I miss the harbor.
5. How many grocery runs have you done?
Since the state of emergency was declared, none. We did our last apocalypse shop near the end of March. We have benefited from a delivery of flats of seltzer for![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch from my gloved-and-masked father and a shipment of Rancho Gordo heirloom beans from R.B. Lemberg.
6. What are you spending your stimulus check on?
My stimulus check has not yet arrived, so, nothing.
7. Do you have any special occasions that you will miss during this quarantine?
I have already missed my father's birthday. I missed Pesach with my family. I missed Novroz withphi's family. I expect to miss my sister-in-law's birthday in three weeks. I'm not at all sure what the Fourth of July is going to look like. I hope it will be safe to hold ceremonies by September when rushthatspeaks and I have our tenth anniversary, but really, I have no idea.
8. Are you keeping your housework done?
Almost certainly more so than before the quarantine came down. I really want one of those little de-crumbing brushes you use on tablecloths, because we have a tablecloth on our dining room table now, and it's white and our cats are black.
9. What movie have you watched during this quarantine?
Quite a number about which I have written nothing, because my critical faculties have gone AWOL. I managed The Seventh Seal (1957) and have done jack about I Wake Up Screaming (1941), I Bury the Living (1958), Wide Open (1930), The Devil's Eye (1960), The Magician (1958), La Vie de bohème (1992), The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959), It's Always Fair Weather (1956), Day for Night (1973), Sitting Pretty (1948), and almost certainly some other things I've forgotten. Homecoming (2018) was TV and I enjoyed it immensely.
10. What are you streaming with?
The Roku we got last March.
11. 9 months from now is there any chance of you having a baby?
Short of COVID-19 and my cerebrovascular weirdness going blooey, I can think of few things right now that would be more detrimental to my physical, emotional, and mental health than becoming pregnant.
12. What's your go-to quarantine meal?
I mean, recently it's involved a lot of matzah. I am unironically looking forward to a sandwich on sweet bread tonight. We have made several iterations of noodles and cheese, but also chicken piccata, pork chops roasted in applesauce, pork chops pseudo-barbecued with turnip greens, a Seder, chicken soup from scratch, pulled chicken in barbecue sauce, steak with grits, hamburgers, a couple of different things with sausage, a couple of different things with eggs; I am essentially an obligate carnivore and I like cooking, even though like everything else it is about fifteen times more exhausting now. I have made oatmeal more often in the last few weeks, but that's mostly because I suddenly remembered how much I like it.
13. Is this whole situation making you paranoid?
I don't know what this question is asking. Am I worried about our neighbors breaking into our apartment to steal our stuff? No. Am I worried about catching and transmitting a disease that could kill me or ruin my lungs for life? Yes, obviously. I worry about cruelty and devastation and no consequences and even worse inequality afterward. I worry that the administration of this country fucked up everything so badly that there will never be safety or physical community again. I am probably extra gun-shy about protective measures and potential vectors of contagion, but I'm not sure if it's unreasonable and if it keeps me and insofar as it is in my power the people I love alive, I'm not sure I'll ever know. If we return to some kind of interactive normal and I flip out and scream at people for not maintaining quarantine practices even when it is objectively safe to have relinquished them, I'll bring it up with my therapist.
14. Has your internet gone out on you during this time?
Thank God, no. We get brownouts in this apartment on a not infrequent basis, but that is a function of some of our appliances running on the same circuits as the upstairs neighbors and, we suspect, vice versa. This building was never meant to be three apartments and I really wish it wasn't.
15. What month do you predict this all ends?
I don't. Disregarding the vast vagueness of the definition of "this all," I don't feel I have the information to make an informed estimate about when it will be safe to resume social intercourse at closer intervals than six feet masked. I want a reliable vaccine as soon as we can get one, effective antivirals to mitigate ditto; in the absence of both of these things, I expect social distancing measures to continue through the summer at the very least. At the moment I'd just like to make it through April without the hospitals getting swamped and then I'd like everyone not to breathe such a huge sigh of relief that they promptly rush out and swap germs and drop dead.
16. First thing you're gonna do when you get off quarantine?
Immediately, enjoy the ability to exist outside my apartment without a mask on. After that, probably hug a lot of people.
17. Where do you wish you were right now?
Other than a timeline with a fucking functional federal government not run by genocidal profiteers? I miss the sea.
18. What free-from-quarantine activity are you missing the most?
Being able to leave my apartment without disinfecting three sets of locks and wearing a mask that makes my brain scream at me.
19. Have you run out of toilet paper and hand sanitizer?
We have not run out of toilet paper. We don't have hand sanitizer; we have a disinfectant made from isopropyl alcohol and hydrogen peroxide that we have been using to clean the aforementioned locks. We also have a lot of soap. Paper towels are an endangered species and I am considering Kleenex vulnerable.
19a. Have you run out of anything else?
I gave this question to Rob, who responded: "Seltzer, soda, snacks, sanity—a lot of S's!"
20. Do you have enough food to last a month?
Counting from now? Yes, I think so. We will run out of some perishables quite soon and then we will be somewhat more bored, but we will be able to eat.
21. Has anything major happened in your life during the lockdown?
I've had some stories and poems accepted and published and discovered at least one hair-raising medication side effect I plan never to interact with again.
22. What are you grateful for?
I am miserable but I have not disintegrated.
23. Is there anything you'll miss about lockdown life?
I am enjoying cooking meals with Rob, who is home in the evenings now that the theater at which he normally works is closed. Otherwise, no. It's like all the stresses of regular life plus new ones I didn't want in the first place and minus most of the things I do to feel better.
5. I find the video negligible, but I love this poem to music: Sinead O'Brien, "Taking on Time."
Last night I got out of the house far too late and far too cold for much of a walk, but I did manage to catch some excellent Edward Hopper light on the Litchfield Block. The April page for the Edward Hopper calendar which I have hanging beside my desk shows Second Story Sunlight (1960), which feels peculiarly appropriate. I see a lot of people hanging out on their decks and porches lately. Often they are talking to friends in the street below.
1. I had no idea that spiders performed courtship dances. The music is extra-diegetic, but the dance of the Maratus speciosus is just spectacular. The brilliant colors of its mask, too.
2. I got sick of not knowing the musical source of the jingle I learned from my grandfather decades ago ("My ma gave me a penny to go see Benny / I didn't go see Benny, I bought some chewing gum . . . My ma gave me a nickel to buy a pickle / I didn't buy a pickle, I bought some chewing gum") and futzed around on the internet until I discovered it was something called "La Sorella" by either Louis Gallini or Charles Borel-Clerc. It shows up brassily in An American in Paris (1951), which explains why I wondered if it was Offenbach.
3. I haven't been keeping up with the obituaries, but I did want to register an objection to the death of Tim Brooke-Taylor. I saw him first on the nearly-all-burninated-but-miraculously-nearly-all-restored At Last the 1948 Show (1967), where he will always look to me like the automatic hospital visitor, lonely patients, for the use of. In times of illness, members of our household have been known to shout, "NURSES NURSES NICE BIG JUICY ONES."
4. I decided to do the American quarantine meme, despite suspecting it would be only sort of pertinent to my daily life.
1. Are you an Essential Worker?
No. I am the financial mainstay of our household (and working from home, albeit at reduced pay), but that's not the same thing.
1a. Are you in a vulnerable category?
Yes. I have an autoimmune disorder and an immune system generally that I joke about being garbage, but I have never yet failed to get a respiratory infection I was exposed to, which is why I am spending a lot of time trying not to be exposed to this one. I don't actually know if my vascular weirdness is a risk factor. I have been chronically ill in several different directions for the majority of my adult life, but I don't know what that does to the numbers.
2. How many drinks have you had since the quarantine started?
None. I haven't been able to drink alcohol for medical reasons since December.
3. If you have kids . . . Are they driving you nuts?
Fortunately, we have soothing cats instead.
4. What new hobby have you taken up during this?
None. I've been taking a lot of pictures of flowering trees lately, but it isn't like I never used to walk around Boston with a camera. I really miss walking around Boston with a camera. I miss the Charles River. I miss the bridges. I miss the harbor.
5. How many grocery runs have you done?
Since the state of emergency was declared, none. We did our last apocalypse shop near the end of March. We have benefited from a delivery of flats of seltzer for
spatch from my gloved-and-masked father and a shipment of Rancho Gordo heirloom beans from R.B. Lemberg.6. What are you spending your stimulus check on?
My stimulus check has not yet arrived, so, nothing.
7. Do you have any special occasions that you will miss during this quarantine?
I have already missed my father's birthday. I missed Pesach with my family. I missed Novroz with
phi's family. I expect to miss my sister-in-law's birthday in three weeks. I'm not at all sure what the Fourth of July is going to look like. I hope it will be safe to hold ceremonies by September when rushthatspeaks and I have our tenth anniversary, but really, I have no idea.8. Are you keeping your housework done?
Almost certainly more so than before the quarantine came down. I really want one of those little de-crumbing brushes you use on tablecloths, because we have a tablecloth on our dining room table now, and it's white and our cats are black.
9. What movie have you watched during this quarantine?
Quite a number about which I have written nothing, because my critical faculties have gone AWOL. I managed The Seventh Seal (1957) and have done jack about I Wake Up Screaming (1941), I Bury the Living (1958), Wide Open (1930), The Devil's Eye (1960), The Magician (1958), La Vie de bohème (1992), The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959), It's Always Fair Weather (1956), Day for Night (1973), Sitting Pretty (1948), and almost certainly some other things I've forgotten. Homecoming (2018) was TV and I enjoyed it immensely.
10. What are you streaming with?
The Roku we got last March.
11. 9 months from now is there any chance of you having a baby?
Short of COVID-19 and my cerebrovascular weirdness going blooey, I can think of few things right now that would be more detrimental to my physical, emotional, and mental health than becoming pregnant.
12. What's your go-to quarantine meal?
I mean, recently it's involved a lot of matzah. I am unironically looking forward to a sandwich on sweet bread tonight. We have made several iterations of noodles and cheese, but also chicken piccata, pork chops roasted in applesauce, pork chops pseudo-barbecued with turnip greens, a Seder, chicken soup from scratch, pulled chicken in barbecue sauce, steak with grits, hamburgers, a couple of different things with sausage, a couple of different things with eggs; I am essentially an obligate carnivore and I like cooking, even though like everything else it is about fifteen times more exhausting now. I have made oatmeal more often in the last few weeks, but that's mostly because I suddenly remembered how much I like it.
13. Is this whole situation making you paranoid?
I don't know what this question is asking. Am I worried about our neighbors breaking into our apartment to steal our stuff? No. Am I worried about catching and transmitting a disease that could kill me or ruin my lungs for life? Yes, obviously. I worry about cruelty and devastation and no consequences and even worse inequality afterward. I worry that the administration of this country fucked up everything so badly that there will never be safety or physical community again. I am probably extra gun-shy about protective measures and potential vectors of contagion, but I'm not sure if it's unreasonable and if it keeps me and insofar as it is in my power the people I love alive, I'm not sure I'll ever know. If we return to some kind of interactive normal and I flip out and scream at people for not maintaining quarantine practices even when it is objectively safe to have relinquished them, I'll bring it up with my therapist.
14. Has your internet gone out on you during this time?
Thank God, no. We get brownouts in this apartment on a not infrequent basis, but that is a function of some of our appliances running on the same circuits as the upstairs neighbors and, we suspect, vice versa. This building was never meant to be three apartments and I really wish it wasn't.
15. What month do you predict this all ends?
I don't. Disregarding the vast vagueness of the definition of "this all," I don't feel I have the information to make an informed estimate about when it will be safe to resume social intercourse at closer intervals than six feet masked. I want a reliable vaccine as soon as we can get one, effective antivirals to mitigate ditto; in the absence of both of these things, I expect social distancing measures to continue through the summer at the very least. At the moment I'd just like to make it through April without the hospitals getting swamped and then I'd like everyone not to breathe such a huge sigh of relief that they promptly rush out and swap germs and drop dead.
16. First thing you're gonna do when you get off quarantine?
Immediately, enjoy the ability to exist outside my apartment without a mask on. After that, probably hug a lot of people.
17. Where do you wish you were right now?
Other than a timeline with a fucking functional federal government not run by genocidal profiteers? I miss the sea.
18. What free-from-quarantine activity are you missing the most?
Being able to leave my apartment without disinfecting three sets of locks and wearing a mask that makes my brain scream at me.
19. Have you run out of toilet paper and hand sanitizer?
We have not run out of toilet paper. We don't have hand sanitizer; we have a disinfectant made from isopropyl alcohol and hydrogen peroxide that we have been using to clean the aforementioned locks. We also have a lot of soap. Paper towels are an endangered species and I am considering Kleenex vulnerable.
19a. Have you run out of anything else?
I gave this question to Rob, who responded: "Seltzer, soda, snacks, sanity—a lot of S's!"
20. Do you have enough food to last a month?
Counting from now? Yes, I think so. We will run out of some perishables quite soon and then we will be somewhat more bored, but we will be able to eat.
21. Has anything major happened in your life during the lockdown?
I've had some stories and poems accepted and published and discovered at least one hair-raising medication side effect I plan never to interact with again.
22. What are you grateful for?
I am miserable but I have not disintegrated.
23. Is there anything you'll miss about lockdown life?
I am enjoying cooking meals with Rob, who is home in the evenings now that the theater at which he normally works is closed. Otherwise, no. It's like all the stresses of regular life plus new ones I didn't want in the first place and minus most of the things I do to feel better.
5. I find the video negligible, but I love this poem to music: Sinead O'Brien, "Taking on Time."
Last night I got out of the house far too late and far too cold for much of a walk, but I did manage to catch some excellent Edward Hopper light on the Litchfield Block. The April page for the Edward Hopper calendar which I have hanging beside my desk shows Second Story Sunlight (1960), which feels peculiarly appropriate. I see a lot of people hanging out on their decks and porches lately. Often they are talking to friends in the street below.
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What, just because nine months still sounds too soon to get near a hospital if you don't life-threateningly need to?
(It's also a weird joke because it assumes everyone has forgotten about birth control.)
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I was mostly being flippant about the hospital, although this does seem to be a terrifying time to have a baby; I share your side-eye of the joke's assumptions of human sexual behavior.
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I don't know if it counts as a joke or just some sort of folk explanation, but there is the idea that there are so many November birthdays (it's a month with a disproportionate share) because of Valentine's Day. Of course, one could assume that those were intentional pregnancies, deliberately made on a love-centered date.
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