I haven’t posted for several weeks for a couple of reasons: one, until two weeks ago, I was busy finishing the first draft of a new novel, an effort that left me too mentally depleted to write so much as a shopping list; two, I was recovering from a concussion caused by a late-night fall down a darkened staircase. The novel, titled Memory and Desire, is now being looked at by an editor, who will soon make her recommendations for revisions. As for the concussion, it’s healed — no skull fracture, no bleeding in the brain.

Harry Rilling, mayor of Norwalk, Connecticut, sent out a blast message to his constituents the other day warning that Covid19 is on the rise in our city (as it is almost everywhere in the U.S. of A.) and that the National Guard is being activated to assist in testing for the virus. Right now, people who want to be tested have to stand in line for hours, as I did recently, and then wait three to five days to learn the results. I tested negative, by the way, which doesn’t mean a whole lot — you can walk out of a testing center and be infected five minutes later.

A friend of mine who lives on a Long Island mentioned to me during a lengthy phone conversation that he finds the pandemic “strangely euphoric.” Yeah, I said, that sure if strange, and he replied that perhaps euphoria wasn’t quite the word he was looking for to describe the feeling produced by knowledge that one is living through an extraordinary time. I agreed that this is an extraordinary era, what with plague, racial tensions, and economic pain everywhere, not to mention a president who seems determined to become an American Caligula. But I don’t find it euphoric, exhilerating, or exciting; dreary, rather, as if every day is a blue Monday. Human beings are social creatures by nature; it’s unnatural to stand or sit six feet way from someone you’re speaking to; to walk into a store or supermarket masked, as if you’re going to rob the place; unnatural to keep distant from your own family, as Leslie and I will be doing this Thanksgiving — for the first time in more than 10 years, we will not be spending the holiday with children and grandchildren in Florida. Nor are we sure if we’re going to make our annual drive to Arizona. Four days on the road, through some of the hottest virus hotspots, might not be wise. As I said, dreary. The country ought to declare the day when the much-touted vaccines become available to be  “VV Day,” and maybe pose a sailor kissing a girl in Time Square to mark the event with an iconic photograph.All that said, we’re grateful to have what we have, and to have escaped the evil little germ so far. Two of our friends have died of it, another survived but is suffering its effects six months after her recovery.

 

 

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