4/8
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| Masks by Mili |
We gather in our virtual booth for our Wednesday Underground meeting. No one has watched Tiger King yet. Here is a sampling offer collective wisdom:
Clyde tells us that we still have over 65,000 homeless in New York City. There are over 100,000 vacant rooms. The homeless coalition is requesting 30,000 be set aside. We could lose half of our homeless people. No one will act. Even though there may be as much as $100 million available for using hotels for housing, etc. Maybe it’s fear that once they are in, they will never leave. In the meantime, the virus spreads.
At the shelter on Wards’ Island, there is no discernible social distancing. There’s no soap. No sanitizers. When they do arrive, gone by midmorning. People shower in their clothes because thee is no laundry. There have been 68 deaths so far. And no testing.
On the corrections side, 280 have been released from Rikers, another 400 scheduled. But Governor Cuomo, despite his rising star, refuses to act on release from the state prison system.
What we’re seeing is a portal into our future society. Could it be a door? It has taken the lid off our social cauldron. And it's more clear than ever that though we are all connected, poor people don’t count. Our friend Steve always sees the possible, the blossoming something new. Others of us are are more sanguine. As a friend once said, cup half empty or half full depends on whether you are pouring or drinking,
It’s open ended. We could see the break up of the United States as we know it. Or the consolidation of an authoritarian autocracy. Or perhaps the birth of a real democracy. This time there are comparisons with the Hoover Presidency with it bread lines and Hoovervilles. Real resistance was rising. It took Roosevelt’s New Deal to preserve capitalism. It was Simone Weil, critiquing revolution, who said It is not religion but revolution which is the opium of the masses.
While the plague rages around us, our President uses this as an excuse to call for renewal of the war on drugs and diverts relief money to further sealing the border.
We are stuck in the present, it is all we know. In our isolation there is profound loneliness, the absence of God. Everyone is suspicious one another. Our job is to facilitate connection. We are to claim …and hold…sacred space. And according to brother Steve, dance.
All this conversation is related to our discussion of Albert Camus’ The Plague. It’s shocking to read this book from the 1940’s and see how similar our situations are…the denial, the hiding, the lying until it’s too late. People continuing to live their lives as if everything is normal until bodies start dropping around them.
Camus (and Sartre as well) is confronting the absurd. And perhaps nothing more than the absurdity of humanity, such amazing consciousness contained in such a vulnerable vessel.
I of course remembered this Camus quote, “Everything I know about morality and the obligations of men, I owe it to football (soccer).”
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I have given in and will wear actual masks. My friend Milica has made me two. Typically stylish. She comes down to the lobby to greet me. She says, "When I hear the cheering at seven…" and she tears up. She’s old enough to remember the bombing of Belgrade. The hiding.
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Lines now for the drug store.
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| Line for Rite Aid |
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Thirty eight percent of Americans surveyed said they would not drink Corona Beer under any circumstances. The Corona brewery is shutting down operations.
