ALL BROKEN HEARTED

Do you remember pay toilets. I haven’t seen one in so long I can’t remember but they used to be in bus stations and such. You had to drop a coin in the slot and turn a handle before the door would open. I want to think this story is my own but it could have come to me 2nd hand. Sitting on the commode in a pay toilet, graffiti on the back of the door told a pitiful story, “Here I sit all broken hearted, paid to shit and only farted.” 

In the last few days the world (civilization) has changed. In my lifetime I can’t remember another time when class privilege and wealth dissolved and everyone shared a common risk. The plague in The Dark Ages would have been comparable but they didn’t know germs from worms. In either case, nobody could pay a stand in to take their place. Hunkered down in voluntary quarantine, by myself, I’ve exhausted options for keeping myself busy. All I can do is to sit down and write. 

When Africans were dying by the thousands in the Ebola outbreak of 2014, we felt a sympathetic but condescending sense of concern. Ebola was well understood and there were plans and resources to deal with it. The disease ran rampant in 3rd world countries mostly due to ignorance and a culture that put tribal customs ahead of survival. But powers that be were able to keep it contained and eventually suppressed. Most of us felt a diluted empathy that could be expressed simply, “That’s really too bad.” 

What we are experiencing is significantly different. The new ‘Bug’ is just that, new. Civilization was/is unprepared for COVID-19. Educated and sophisticated as we are, out culture drives us to high risk behavior no less than those Ebola victims of 2014. We, Americans, are rapidly getting the message but there are many who feel either invincible or (fake news junkies) who trust demagogues more so than experts. I’m afraid the bad news is just beginning. It won’t be over in 9 or 10 innings. I am not a doom’s day prophet but my experience tells me that bad news will be the new normal. Good news will not be that we have won, but that we didn’t die after all. I don’t know what the odds are that I come through the quarantine period unscathed but I’m guessing it’s no better than 50/50: too many airports, too many crowds. 

  I am not complaining, not making excuses, not feeling anything in particular, just writing. I was too little to experience social/cultural gravity when Japan surrendered in WWII, I just knew everyone was happy. When JFK was assassinated and on 9/11 I felt the weight but the instruments had narrow blades and sharp points. The new virus has the same kind of gravity but is wielded by a long, wide, blunt instrument. It doesn’t do its thing in a heart beat like a bullet or over a morning like hijacked airlines. I think it more likely to unfold like Noah’s flood; what a grim thought. When I personalize the feeling I think of the warrior Crazy Horse. Before battle he set the tone by telling his followers, “It is a good day to die.” I take that to mean, All you can do is what you can do. This is one of those things I share with people who tolerate my skewed views. The story goes; sometimes I have a life and sometimes it has me. I’m thinking, right now life has us. We have to do what we have to do but we will not push life up the hill. It will drag us along, wherever it decides to go. I just read an article by Dr. Tom Frieden, former CDC Director. He spells out what to expect in the immediate future and it is scary.

So here I sit all broken hearted . .  . like the guy in the pay toilet. I wonder, did I make a bad choice or did it make me? If I can’t use humor to vent anxiety, what else can I not do? I’m afraid I’m not bright enough to find my way by myself; paid to poop but only farted. I told myself I wouldn’t exceed 1,000 words here so I need to give it an ending. For me it’s a real gut-check. All this time I’ve been confident with approaching mortality. If you don’t know when or how it will arrive, you can focus on living in the moment. When you learn more than you really want to know, it gets difficult. It is no wonder our paleolithic forbearers created mythical gods. Certainly hunter gatherers feared the unknown, enough so they needed a security blanket. Modern humans haven’t changed much in that regard and it doesn’t leave skeptics much wiggle room. Still, all in all, I’m really glad my folks brought me along for the ride. This would be a good place for a Spaceship Earth or Star Dust story but I’m not selling anything.