Living in coronavirusworld 40: the wild and unnecessary diversity of created being

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in the Conservatory Garden

I spend the morning doing my errands.  Standing in social distance lines at the grocery store, the Afro-French patisserie and the drug store. And the Double Dutch Coffee Shop which has just reopened. Thankfully.  In coronavirustime, the cost of fresh roasted custom ground beans is twice and change what it was before.  And Double Dutch has added toilet paper and paper towels to its menu. A volunteer group has set  up tables on 116th and a line reaches over two and a half blocks of people waiting for food.  This is only slightly longer than the constant line in front of the liquor store on Adam Clatyton Powell.  

waiting for groceries

In the pond, the turtles in an orderly file, fill every available rock space. At least two dozen of them. One reality of coronavirus world is you get to spend time contemplating things like turtles. 

turtles basking in a row

My walking partner is most taken by the white egret with its s-curve  neck and  expanse of white feathers when it opens its wings.  She follows it every spring when it returns. Is this the same one that cruises Central Park? Is it a solitary bird? Does is feel that?

the egret

I recall the PT Barnum Museum in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The signs  as soon as you enter that declare DO Not miss the egress….and right this way to the egress…urging visitors to go directly there.  Egress, of course means exit, so unsuspecting visitors, having gone directly there, find themselves out on the street having to pay again to reenter and see what they missed. There’s something quintessentially American about that, and we’re all searching for the egress from this virus or out on the street prematurely seeing a way back into our lives. 

AsI ponder the turtles, the egret, the red winged black birds in the park, I feel a sense of wonder at creation, that each of these, every one  is perfect, for what it is. (Well, maybe the platypus..). We share more of basic design than we don’t, but still there is beauty in the wild and unnecessary diversity of created being. Or hell, evolved being as it were. (Well, there is of course , the platypus…and some very strange fish..)  So much beauty in just what is.

The feral cat has returned as well. 

The feral cat is back

We talk as we walk of a wonderful sermon by Rabbi Noa Kushner at a place called the Kitchen. (Thekitchensf.org) Riffing off a wonderful midrash about Solomon and the Temple and being asleep. And how we are all asleep and it’s time to wake up. And Tara Reade and Joe Biden. Like any accusation, we need to take this seriously.   this needs to the take seriously . But. I wouldn’t put it past the Trump campaign to set Biden up.(Though I hear Trump has waxed understandingly, though come to think of it, even that…).And we talk about Michael Moore’s new movie “Planet of the Humans” with its message that predatory capitalists have hijacked so-called renewable sustainable energy movement and through it all, the sun feels warm and wonderful and the park around us is filled with life, masked and distanced as it is. 

Back home, I make a dinner of leftover Thanksgiving turkey found in the freezer.  And a baked yam,.  And stove top stuffing and gravy and cranberry sauce, And a glass of red wine. Why? I create a mini-Thanksgiving because I want to reexperience that day back in November at my sister’s house with the warmth of  family and the food and my mother  and I have no idea how long it will be until we can do that again.  Food taking on metaphoric and performative meaning. A means of reassurance. 

As Germany is reopening, they finally get around to churches. Well, now they can reopen. (Not that the crowds are all that big they big anyways…) But there can no public singing. Turns out singing casts as many or more potentially virus carrying droplets into the air as coughing. Several other countries are banning pentecostal “amens” and the exclamation for the same reason. 

The National Theatre of the UK has made available Danny Boyle’s production of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein written  by Nick Dear. (https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/nt-at-home-frankenstein) Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller take turns playing the roles of Dr. Victor Frankenstein and his creature.  While the original was among other things, a critique of science unbounded by  moral concerns, we live in a country where moral concerns are unbound by science. We could use some serious science.  Whereas Mary Shelley tells the story fort the perseptove of Victor, Dear and Boyle take it from the point of view of the creature  and come down squarely  on the “nurture” side of the old debate. Certainly the community of those othered by our cutlture, (even as Shelley felt othered and discounted) puts us at least into understanding if not identification with the creature. Both Cumberbatch and Miller won the Olivier award for best actor for their performance. Worth it.

I didn't want to leave the park. Or the day to end.