The past few days have been very March and blustery, with the wind howling outside my windows most of the day. Today, I wanted a little fresh air and quickly had to close the open window, as if mother nature was like not just yet. When I was a kid, at the first school I attended, inevitably one day in the spring, they would roll in the film projector (because I am that old) and play us "Winnie the Poo and the Blustery Day", and it was one of my favorite things about springtime--though I am not really a fan of Winnie the Poo in general. But there was something about the chaos of the sequence that I appreciated, growing up under the shadow of the midwest's tornados.
Today was a lighter day, which I am not calling "bare minimum Mondays" but more like "low expectation Mondays." I've been busying myself with postcard designs, both packing up the Iphigenia series ones, restocking the bird artist set, and plotting some new ones. I took detailed notes for a lesson on a Hindu god shaped like a turtle who helped churn a sea of milk that granted immortality. I wrote more about slasher movies (we'll be seeing Scream 6 this weekend.). I took a nap. In between, I busied myself with new ice trays and throw pillows and blackberry syrup for Italian sodas.
The new poem project is moving much more smoothly now with less wind resistance. This always happens about 10 poems in. I am aiming for closer to 30 or 40, but I'm at around 15 now I don't hate, so that's something. On the horizon is what to do about COLLAPSOLOGIES, which I would love to get out this year. It's my 2020 dumpster fire of a book and I remember thinking that by the time it was published covid would be a distant memory. Not quite, and still things are a dumpster fire, but perhaps its time to put boots on it anyway and send it out into the world. Perhaps this summer. I forget how enjoyable some writings are when I don't look at them--the alternative facts poems are ones that I forget how much I love them. They are in there mixed with The Shining poems, the grimoire project, things specifically about the pandemic, and my Wasteland inspired series. It's about money and economics and unrest and only limitedly about the actual pandemic itself.
It's impossible, but I realized this week that we are closing in on three years of pandemic life. We actually went back onsite pretty early, so my tenure in isolation was not quite as long as others. Still, the last day before the lockdowns started, I got coffee in the morning before work. Despite it being St Patrick's Weekend, S. Michigan Ave. was deserted in the way it often was on colder spring mornings. It actually had nothing to do with the virus yet, but there were two men in front of me lugging large bags filled with toilet paper, so much they were having trouble walking. It was a strange sight, but probably one that became increasingly familiar in the weeks after. I was mostly freaked out since I needed to get groceries but was waiting to get paid, and already there was this sense of urgency and scarcity. I was just recovering from the studio move the previous autumn, so things were already tight. The book probably comes a lot from those feelings and the uncertainty of a world tipped on its side while you were already in a leaky, unstable boat. By noon, we'd been told to work from home starting the next Monday.
It seems like a decade ago. It seems like a week ago. In between there was much political turmoil. the weeks we spent under curfew over that summer due to riots where we had to move around before 9pm. The fall where I was terrified and wore double masks. The relief (temporary) of vaccinations in the spring. The two years since that still seem unsteady and most people apathetic and still dying in larger numbers than is comfortable. The time I spent fearing that worst thing would be for my dad to get it and wind up on a ventilator (he did not, but still somehow wound up on a ventilator, only in this case, was not even as likely to get off it.) It's all like a chunk of time that seems dreamlike, or slow nightmare like. And I imagine I am not alone.
