Manifesting introversion

The world has gone mad. Blogger has zeroed out all my view counts. It's official. I have ceased to exist. I always suspected I wasn't real. Now I know. All sound and fury, signifying a failed attempt to garner attention. Clearly, no one cares. I guess we all have better things to do with our time now, right? Like worry about our unkempt hair. I have to laugh when I see shaggy-headed women carrying placards reading Open up the country. I need a haircut. Poor dears. It's moments like these I am grateful I am so self-contained. Not only to I do my own nails but I also do my own hair. I have the photos to prove it.

There's only one thing I want and I can't have it, so as a second choice, I have decided to see if I can practice my visualization technique to manifest something. I'm willing to start small. Manifesting stuff hasn't really worked before but I'm feeling lucky. Today, I would like to manifest some glow-in-the-dark paint. I'm not sure why, exactly. I just think it might be entertaining to have arrows to guide me around my dark apartment at night when I am wandering with insomnia.

I often wake up thinking about my mother. Usually I have a playlist running in my head, whatever I listened to before taking my nightly bath and going to bed. Last night I watched a YouTube video of the life of Cher so I woke up humming If I could turn back time. I'm not a big Cher fan; as a former fashionista, I was more focused on Bob Mackie. Still, that song seems like a good theme for an insomniac during a pandemic.

The news is not all bad. I'm heartened to see images of wild animals taking over empty roads, city streets, and yards, raiding refrigerators and busting into cars. Right on! I read that birds are altering their songs now that the world is quieter. I saw video of jellyfish in a Venetian canal. If we humans all just go away, the world will be fine. I'm willing to consider going away.

Then again, half the population would be delighted to kill off everyone over sixty. I reconsider my willingness to consider going away. I won't go willingly, I just decided. You'll have to take me out back and shoot me.

I did my part to tickle the economy by replenishing some footwear I have needed for several years. I didn't want to buy from the big mean online megastore so I bought from a different online megastore I hoped was less mean. How can you tell? I heard some American brands aren't paying their overseas contractors. This is not a good time to be poor. Hmm. Is there ever a good time, I wonder? Before I clicked the button, I gave some thought to the plight of the workers who would pick and wrap my package and the delivery driver who would drop the box on my porch, pound on the door, and run. Then I clicked the button. I could almost hear the funds draining out of my bank account into the pockets of the big online megastore.

I wonder how much my insurance rates would go up if I decided to become a delivery driver? Several months ago, I applied to be a Census taker, just for the experience. That so far has tanked; for me, I think that ship sailed over the edge of the earth. I could probably be a candidate for contact tracing training. You know, calling people to ask them where they went and who they talked to before they got sick. Ugh. Yeah, probably delivering footwear would be a better fit for me. I don't really like people up close, and I really dislike them on the phone.

Speaking of phones and people, I video chatted twice today, once with a friend and an hour later with my sister. I told my friend I thought that over the next several years, families with children (and resources, of course) would start migrating out of cities into rural farmland, seeking safety, space, and sustenance from the land. My friend listened thoughtfully and said, wow. We discussed the possibility that red counties could start turning purple. In contrast, my sister said she didn't think that would ever happen. I get the feeling she doesn't like to think about the possibilities of large cultural change. I mentioned my belief that we'd soon have robots doing personal care. She rolled her eyes. (Don't you love video chat?) I didn't tell her my other predictions about how children will learn to distrust people from outside their family tribe, or how there will likely be less personal privacy, or how new houses will be built with self-contained quarantine units.

I admit, I don't like change either. I'm still pissed off that all the hair on my legs has migrated to my eyebrows, nostrils, and upper lip. But like I said last time, what is fair to the cat is not always fair to the mouse. Or the other cat.

An acquaintance who works in the alternative wellness industry called me last week. As we were talking, I coughed. A short dry cough. Twice. Sounding alarmed, she asked me if I was sick. I said no, I just have allergies. Later in the conversation, I told her that I would be disinclined to sit in a small meeting room with a group of people anytime in the near future. Sounding amazed, she asked me why. I said because I would feel bad if I unknowingly spread the virus to someone in the group and they got sick or died. She had no response. I chalked it up to her youth.

Since then, I have asked several people how comfortable they would be going back to the old way of gathering in groups. Even my older friends are itching to hug their friends. I seem to be the only one reluctant. I guess in my case, introversion is sort of like a disease. Too bad it's not contagious. It could save your life.

What's fair to the cat

It's a great time to be a microbe. Seven billion humans on the planet means lots of moist juicy lungs to explore, conveniently crowded into densely populated cities. All you can eat, always open, never closed! It's spring break on the beach for COVID-19. The umbrella in the drink is humans' confounded propensity to move from place to place even when told to stay put—free mass transit, bring your family! Over eons, microbes always win the day, mostly by stealthily being too tiny for humans to see. However, humans are crafty, too, so I wouldn't count us out just yet.

It's hard for one person to eradicate the invisible. Just because I can't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there, lurking on my doorknobs, infesting my gear shift, congregating on my gaudy tatty plastic shopping bags. I should invent a bug bomb for humans, like we have for buildings. Just zip yourself into this here plastic body bag, hold your breath for a minute or so, and (if you don't suffocate), you will emerge sparkling clean, disinfected of every germ, even the ones you need, whoops. Well, I'll let you know when I have a working prototype. Maybe it shouldn't look like a body bag. The images I'm seeing daily on the news would probably not do much to boost sales. 

This pandemic is a slow-moving tornado, scouring the entire world. All we need now are a few real tornadoes to really put paid to the futility of human existence. The terrible choice is to find shelter together or die alone. Maybe more like, die now or die later. What are we surviving for? Does it matter? The U.S. economy is bleeding commerce, cash, workers, and customers . . . seeing a tornado kick a dead carcass isn't exactly a top headline. I hope no one dies, but well, like I said, die now or die later. 

Just a few long months ago, I used to drive the back road to my mother's nursing home. As I drove, I often said to myself, someday I won't have to do this anymore. I won't park under this tree. I won't stroll to the back door and enter the code. I won't stride along the hallway past the dining room, greeting the same people everyday heading painstakingly back to their rooms. I won't stop and check my mother's mailbox. I won't enter her room, saying howdy, howdy, Slacker if she's sacked out on her couch. I used to think, someday all this will be in my rear view mirror, a blur blending with all the other actions I've repeatedly taken and then suddenly stopped. Jobs. Schools. Relationships. The habit of participation seems forever engraved in my behavior until suddenly it's not. I'm amazed at how quickly I can let those old “habits” go, yet how stubbornly my compulsions live on.  

I expected my nightly ritual would end when my mother died. I did not anticipate that the ritual would end because of a pandemic. Now my ritual has shifted. Now I park in front, in the near-empty parking lot. I put on a mask. I gather a few items into my pocket and head past the front door, along the side of the building to my mother's window, where I peer into the gloom. I want to say, this is so unfair (to me). Then I remember, what's fair to the cat is not fair to the mouse. Right now, I'm the mouse. I have the whiskers to prove it.

She's always on the couch. Sometimes she's sitting up, eating her dinner or watching TV. Sometimes she's stretched out under her blue plaid blanket, eyes slitted, mouth open. When I tap on the window, she jerks to awareness like a wind-up doll. In slow motion, she gets to her feet, bent over at a right angle, and totters to the window, holding onto the coffee table, then the arm of the couch, then the top of the TV (I know!), and then the windowsill. She's a fall risk, a disaster waiting to happen. But aren't we all, these days.

The spring weather means her window is ajar just an inch, enough for her to hear my voice if the TV is not too loud. Some days, she doesn't seem inclined to engage. Other days, she's alert and talkative. I don't know why. I show her whatever little photo I have brought to add to her window collage. I tape it into an empty space. So far the one she seems to like best is an old photo of her as a child with her older brother and their dog, Tippy. She didn't mention her brother, but she murmured Tippy a couple times. 

A few days ago, one of the nursing home residents was sent to the ER where he/she/they tested positive for COVID-19. The nursing home administrator sent out an emotional email to family. Kudos to her for keeping us informed; bad news is better than no news. I'm doing a pretty good job of staying out of the wreckage of the future. Everything depends on how vigilant the staff have been. It's out of my hands. Symptoms take time to appear. So now we wait to see if a few wild viruses will make the leap to party in my mother's fragile lungs.