Living in coronavirustime 157: sometimes I don't want to go back

9/3

Harlem gargoyle

baeball, 

The stadiums are empty this year for Major League Baseball.  In St.Louis, there’s a Budweiser bar right outside the stadium wall. It’s got a deck that overlooks the ballpark. The Budweiser Deck is selling seats at tables where you can watch the games for $100 (with food and drink specials included.) I write a friend, a journalist in Pittsburgh, that I halfway considered flying to St.Louis and getting a seat on the  deck to watch our Pittsburgh Pirates play against the Cardinals. But then I decided that would be, well, cheating.  This virtual season is a kind of fast. My friend responds that she keeps forgetting to  turn  the games on. Just doesn’t feel real, she says. What does? I say back. I hearya, she says.

At lunch I learn that the Department of Education has finally reached an agreement with the teachers' union. The start of school will be set back 10 days. After that, not much more is clear. For specialty teachers, like reading and language, eg, can they enter a class room to take a child for their special services? Can she have  more than one student at a time? What are the protocols for safe teaching? 

Someone has posted pictures of George Floyd on the St.John’s Cathedral immigration justice mural along Cathedral Parkway (110th Street.)  

George Floyd on 110th 

Go to visit my friend Beppe on his roof. When I enter his apartment, he sprays the soles of my shoes. Kind of shrugs. Well, its a kind of ritual now, he says. I have brought a fifth of artesanal rye whiskey from upstate I found at the farmers' market. Perfect for late afternoon.  We talk of our discoveries during this covid time. It’s been a kind of a gift, he says,. Yeah but it still sucks, I say.  I go over one more time my tension between observing the world and believing everything in the created order is perfect just as it is. And my belief that we must do everything we can to remove our President while there’s still time.  (Maybe everything’s perfect except for us.).  We remember what it was like at the beginning the quiet skies, the empty streets, the sense of calm and on the surface, peace. The return of the birds and the clarity of their various songs. 

Sometimes I don’t want to go back, he says. The way it was brought us here. To this crazy place. Sometimes I don’t want to go back there. (As if that will ever be possible.)I remember the people of Wuhan and the birds. The singing voices of Assisi. The pots and pans of New York City. I nod  my head. Take a sip of bourbon. Look out over the city. It’s going to rain soon.