Living in coronavirusworld 264: the in between

 May 9

blooming trees

what was this?

Cold and rainy Mothers Day.  More people in Penn Station since before..... And in the train.  And at Hamilton Station.  Homeless scattered and sleeping throughout Penn Station, And on the streets outside. And nearby, Throughout the city. Record numbers. I’ve lost count. 

My whole family gathers together at my sisters for the first time since Christmas 2019.  We feel like we need  a Christmas tree and an Easter egg hunt, a years’ worth of holidays to make up. 

Last week I played live music in an Irish pub in Long Island City with glass partitions between every table. And Saturday in a bar with a full house of full tables. And no partitions. But wear your mask to the restroom.

live music

At a Yankee Stadium, there’s a tent for vaccinations. Get a shot and a free ticket.. You need a photo ID and mobile ticket, negative test result or tax proof and a temperature check to get in. Supposedly 10,000 tickets sold but maybe 2-3000 there. People still insecure. Even with empty rows in front and back of you. They’re talking about next month having vaccinated and unvaccinated sections. 

Germany still under lockdown. A new surge in Ontario, Canadian border still closed. The Blue Jays start their season in Dunedin, Florida and are now moving to Buffalo so the Bisons are playing in Trenton.

Funeral pyres burn round the round the clock in India. Brazil too is overwhelmed. In Jerusalem, the final pushing of Palestinians out of the East Jerusalem  Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood is underway and protesters amid Ramadan crowds at Al Aqsa on the Temple Mount are met with tear gas and rubber bullets. Shepherds in the south Hebron hills are driven out of their grazing grounds. 

With doors reopening, life returning in so many ways, our mood should be lightening. Like summer. My mom’s facility let me take her out in her wheel chair and we walk around the lake in the sun stopping to smell the the blooming  trees. It feels good. 

There were at least 10 mass shootings last weekend, 194 in 18 weeks.  Like the homeless, we’ve stopped counting. Yet another pandemic. 

every vote must count

blooms

I want to feel relieved, to open up to flourish again, as they call it.  But across the country Republican legislatures are launching the worst voter suppression laws since the post Reconstruction Jim Crow days. Seeking revenge against black voters for the defeat of Trump.  They say  they have to restore confidence in the voters the it was only the election result lies that sowed lack of confidence in the first place. Arizona puts a recount of already four times audited election results in the hands if a company called Cyber Ninjas looking for bamboo ballots from China.  On Fredrick Douglas Boulevard, marchers invoke the name of John  Lewis  and demand an end to suppression. 

Loyalty to the deposed Don in his Mar a Lago Elba remains the Republican litmus test as they prepare to drive out Liz Cheney, a true conservative, from her leadership position for the unforgivable sin of refusing to support a lie.

This undercurrent reminds  me that there is the reality like the 45% of Chileans still preferring Pinochet three decades after the return to democracy. That reality is still there, not even under the surface. 

A year ago, I cherished each day of spring as it passed. Marked subtle daily changes and embraced the quiet and sound of birds. Even on the midst of Central Park medical emergency field tents.  I could  imagine  a healed earth. 

Today the days rush by, melting one into the other and it's May  already and I continue to, as they say, languish. So far from flourishing.

I wrote in a song:

Like buds waiting to bloom

We ease our heads back into the open

What’s gone is gone, won’t come again

What will be is not yet seen

We are living  somewhere in between

It’s been a year

And we are here.

This is what it’s like. In the in between.