Quarantine Diary #320

How many feelings have you cycled through since the Inauguration? I’ve been the Lance Armstrong (without the drugs or cancer) of ups, downs, responses, relief, and outrage.

I read that the Twitter word trending last Thursday morning was “slept.” As in “I slept well last night for the first time in four years. How about you?”

I went for a long walk last Wednesday morning; it was a charming 7 degrees here with no wind, so it was pleasant enough but not exactly a stroll on a beach. Len had turned the TV on to the Inaugural (we have TV on in the morning here about as often as we discuss Kafka with the cats). I walked back into my house just as Lady Gaga was singing the Star-Spangled banner. I stood there, sweaty in umpteen layers. My glasses fogged as my tears formed and fell with the swelling of her voice. And I don’t even LIKE that song…

I said aloud to the cats, “Yes! THIS is the nation I claim with all my heart.”

So much has been written. I don’t need to replay/re-say what we all saw and heard. It was a beautiful day.

Except I hope you didn’t miss Jill’s ivory cashmere coat and dress. What was not made clear enough were the embroidered flowers along that hemline; Delaware’s peach blossoms are over her heart. Since she is a teacher inside this coat is this Ben Franklin quote. “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn."

These photos are from the Instagram account of the designer, Gabriela Hearst.

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It's only been a week since the Biden administration took over. It’s a relief to have grownups back in the White House.

But what ridiculous irony is this? The more we learn about the deadly intentions and treacherous planning of the Jan 6th riot – the further away from a call to investigation and charges most Congressional Republicans move. I do not get it. Is the chaos and deception of Trump this influential? Still? This is dangerous and crazy.

I can’t fix it and I can do very little to influence what happens next. Paying attention is the American hairshirt; to love our fellow humans enough to witness what is happening and to care.

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Last night we finished Season 1 of The Bridge. The plot, which exists in at least three streaming TV series, is this. A body is found on a border; Denmark/Sweden, England/France, Texas/Chihuahua. Two detectives respond – one from each country. While they are sniping about who has jurisdiction, EMT’s try to pick the body up to put in an ambulance – and the body falls apart. Because it is TWO half-bodies. Half in one country, half in the other.

Now they both have to take the case for their half body, plus work together because it was obviously one murderer. Different laws, regulations, department staffs, and personalities create a story that pulls one’s attention away from everything else (I’m not going to tell you how often we have done the supper dishes at 10:30 because we got sucked into the show). The female detective is on the autism spectrum which gives her strong abilities to solve complicated puzzles. The male detective is on the lackadaisical scale; he's smart, experienced, intuitive, and not good with marriage vows.

They’re at loggerheads until they know each other well enough to trust each other. After that, their partnership is fascinating to watch. This isn’t a romance, its fiction about people working together.

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I’ve read two good books lately.

“Deacon King Kong” by James McBride is the comedy and tragedy of African American life. It’s 1969 and all the characters live in or near an urban housing project in south Brooklyn. The main character is Sport Coat who is a 71-year-old alcoholic widower. He’s charming, talented, irresponsible and he talks to his dead wife all the time. She talks back.

The book was dryly funny. There were also several times I had to put it down and walk away because I could see characters losing their souls to the ugliness and limitations. But then I would go back into that world where character and love are as powerful as racism and evil.

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“Transcendent Kingdom” by Yaa Gyasi is really powerful. She’s a new Black writer, her novel is infused with the racism that defined and infused her childhood.

Gifty is a researcher studying the brain chemistry and mechanisms that cause people to become depressed or addicted. She is focused, motivated, and very alone in her world. The novel flips between brain research on mice, her memories of her depressed mother, and her anger at and grief for her heroin-addicted brother.

Gifty (like Gyasi herself) grows up inside a Fundamentalist congregation. She experiences love, loss, death. She lives in the dark shadow of the undiagnosed clinical depression of her mother who doesn’t believe in depression.

Gyasi describes her adult angst and anger at the church which taught her that questions were sin and that faith required believing everything they said. This is one of the clearest novels I’ve ever read that worked from and through that dynamic. It 's a good explication of what we are watching now, iwhere “conservative religions” is a demand to ask no questions. 

As timely as hell.

Do you read or watch TV more or less when times are turbulent?

Are you reading more, or less, now?