35mm
29.7.20
27.7.20
Day 138----
We left the apartment directly after breakfast, trying to beat the heat of the day--I don't think it cooled off at all overnight. Even sounds were muffled by the haze of heat.
A small tote filled with film to be developed, a pink book of poetry (too hot to pause long enough to read), water bottle for bambi, hand sanitizer (it's the stinky one, dammit), one popsicle mold to return to the coffee shop round the block (we were testing their new recipe), cash for the cash only photo lab on Elizabeth and Hester, keys, phone... I forgot alcohol wipes for the swings.
I pick up my birth control from Gigi at the corner chemist--the socially distanced line got complicated by the very elderly man who needed to sit on the bench but was next in line so the rest of us bunched up in the back till one lady entered, took it in and skipped us all. But in the end Gigi knew what everyone needed/everyone just shouted their order from the barrier in Chinese and she just brought me my birth control without my even asking.
Every time I leave the city and return I'm first teary with relief then awkward with how much I've missed. Even just six days-- homelessness has visibly increased since before we left. It's shocking and it's not at all.
I took bambi to Hester playground for the first time since March (longer even maybe? it's very cold there in the winter) and it has less non touching options than Seward Park has so I've avoided it but it was always our favorite. The diorama of the city for matchbox cars that she'd giddily packed three cars for in her baggie wasn't shaded by the time we got there and it was impossible to play on. I let her swing for a bit since they were the only things shaded at the time. It was so hot the hand sanitizer evaporates before I can fully coat my hands.
She is the only child in the entire playground. Every shaded bench is full of elderly and homeless people. They are mostly silent to preserve energy, reading papers, drinking (hot always) coffee and tea from the pink paper cups from the bakery on Grand St. Some are showering and dabbing their foreheads in the sprinklers periodically. The sprinklers and the shade trees are the only cooling centers the city can offer this summer with libraries and rec centers closed.
A couple ballroom dance to the beat of a boombox in a nearby handball court, the pace of their movements incongruously fast compared to everyone else. They only manage three songs before they load their boombox into a tote bag and leave.
She offers no protest when I say we have to head home, climbing right into the stroller, pulls her mask down briefly for a gulp of water and puts it right back on.
As we climb the stairs back at home (my eyes blacking out, waves of nausea--we definitely stayed out too long and how are those elderly people ever surviving???), she holds my hand and walks up the first flight herself, carefully avoiding touching the shared railings. "The white things on the stairs look like moons, Mama." I reply--vaguely--I cannot see anything resembling a moon and she can tell. She firmly pauses (I hate this, I badly need the momentum, the shared stairs are perhaps the most important place to wear a mask and the most searing), turns and points to a perfect tiny half moon imprint in the slate of the stairs, as if someone dropped a half moon hard. We were home by 11am.
The moon tonight is also a half moon.
We left the apartment directly after breakfast, trying to beat the heat of the day--I don't think it cooled off at all overnight. Even sounds were muffled by the haze of heat.
A small tote filled with film to be developed, a pink book of poetry (too hot to pause long enough to read), water bottle for bambi, hand sanitizer (it's the stinky one, dammit), one popsicle mold to return to the coffee shop round the block (we were testing their new recipe), cash for the cash only photo lab on Elizabeth and Hester, keys, phone... I forgot alcohol wipes for the swings.
I pick up my birth control from Gigi at the corner chemist--the socially distanced line got complicated by the very elderly man who needed to sit on the bench but was next in line so the rest of us bunched up in the back till one lady entered, took it in and skipped us all. But in the end Gigi knew what everyone needed/everyone just shouted their order from the barrier in Chinese and she just brought me my birth control without my even asking.
Every time I leave the city and return I'm first teary with relief then awkward with how much I've missed. Even just six days-- homelessness has visibly increased since before we left. It's shocking and it's not at all.
I took bambi to Hester playground for the first time since March (longer even maybe? it's very cold there in the winter) and it has less non touching options than Seward Park has so I've avoided it but it was always our favorite. The diorama of the city for matchbox cars that she'd giddily packed three cars for in her baggie wasn't shaded by the time we got there and it was impossible to play on. I let her swing for a bit since they were the only things shaded at the time. It was so hot the hand sanitizer evaporates before I can fully coat my hands.
She is the only child in the entire playground. Every shaded bench is full of elderly and homeless people. They are mostly silent to preserve energy, reading papers, drinking (hot always) coffee and tea from the pink paper cups from the bakery on Grand St. Some are showering and dabbing their foreheads in the sprinklers periodically. The sprinklers and the shade trees are the only cooling centers the city can offer this summer with libraries and rec centers closed.
A couple ballroom dance to the beat of a boombox in a nearby handball court, the pace of their movements incongruously fast compared to everyone else. They only manage three songs before they load their boombox into a tote bag and leave.
She offers no protest when I say we have to head home, climbing right into the stroller, pulls her mask down briefly for a gulp of water and puts it right back on.
As we climb the stairs back at home (my eyes blacking out, waves of nausea--we definitely stayed out too long and how are those elderly people ever surviving???), she holds my hand and walks up the first flight herself, carefully avoiding touching the shared railings. "The white things on the stairs look like moons, Mama." I reply--vaguely--I cannot see anything resembling a moon and she can tell. She firmly pauses (I hate this, I badly need the momentum, the shared stairs are perhaps the most important place to wear a mask and the most searing), turns and points to a perfect tiny half moon imprint in the slate of the stairs, as if someone dropped a half moon hard. We were home by 11am.
The moon tonight is also a half moon.
26.7.20
Day 137----
An unforeseen benefit of our pandemic summer: getting to wear the sexy summer dresses I always thrift, made from synthetic fabrics too hot to wear outside in the weather they are designed for. Just me and my cherry dress on an armchair in front of the window unit--and my husband, kid and cat.
An unforeseen benefit of our pandemic summer: getting to wear the sexy summer dresses I always thrift, made from synthetic fabrics too hot to wear outside in the weather they are designed for. Just me and my cherry dress on an armchair in front of the window unit--and my husband, kid and cat.
25.7.20
Days 80-137-----
The murder of George Floyd triggered a sustained revolution that has swept across the entire country, filling every city's streets with protest and retaliatory police brutality on par with the civil rights movement in 1968. It has been two months of daily protests today. They fill our very street. The punishing throb of police helicopter blades filled the sky every night for weeks on end--getting louder the more brutally the police attacked--so many innocent people protesting the very thing they are being victimized for every night--the particularly fierce battles are mostly on the weekends now. As the city opens up, some people have to work or lose all unemployment, even if their work is unsafe.
Everyone predicted the protests would trigger the second wave of covid, but as you can see in the second photo, protestors have been more careful to socially distance than any one else. When I was out most people were wearing two, sometimes three masks, at once, despite the stifling humidity of this sudden summer. We joined from the fire escape whenever protests marched down our street and once they passed during a nap and I threw on converse and mask and dashed out to join them. Of course bambi woke up and sobbed because the sound of the chanting terrified her at the beginning (now all her animals and dolls don signs and march around the apartment shouting "NO JUSTICE NO PEACE!").
The only times protests became unsafe have been when the police kettle us. They force us to stop or be beaten. That only happened once when I was out. But it haunted me and I quarantined for 14 days and avoided looking up all the emerging threats of the virus on children. One night during the first week or two the police trapped protestors on the Manhattan Bridge (half a block from us) for hours in pouring rain--thousands of people in standing room only. The helicopters were deafening and no one slept that night. The bambi is still terrified of helicopters, and rightly so. They always mean horrific injustices are being rained down on people simply asking not to be killed.
During the first week I fractured my toe with the vacuum and couldn't attend anymore protests and by the time I was healed they were recommending no one go out who couldn't be arrested. I am still wrestling with that... does having a child count? She is so scared but how much more Black children??? I don't know what is right but there's much that can be done apart from marching. There were all these lists going around matching activisms to different abilities and giftings... the thing is, I think I'm really good at the marching kind of protest. But I'm also a parent. And I'm still there. I spent hours arguing with people who haven't talked to me in a decade but suddenly want to tell me why supporting Black Lives Matter isn't "christian" somehow.... But they refused to listen to me and I think I was trying to punish myself for not marching by continuing to engage them. And it was not helping Black lives so I stopped replying to most. But continued talking to family members--some--more on that later.
On day 100 of covid NYC parks re-opened. We use them cautiously and not at all daily now. I bring alcohol wipes for swing chains and we mostly stick to the sprinklers. Even sitting on benches feels wrong still. Although they now say its not spread by contact. So out of doors is reasonably safe and so are benches. But everything makes me feel crazy-- Haley Nahman explained the feeling well: "Compulsively sanitizing always makes me feel half crazy, because I'm either doing it unnecessarily or I'm literally wiping away a lethal virus, neither of which I want to be true."
I started working again-- selling books on the street, as it turns out, is a very virus friendly (unfriendly?) way to distribute used books. In fact, I and the other street booksellers are the only used booksellers open right now, that I know of. The Strand is sort of open but they encourage pick up rather than browsing and used book buying is best done browsed.
We've been going out more-- to the coffee shop around the block. They re-opened and I am now doing a weekly pop up with the bookcart in their street seating.
Street seating is now a thing. Pretty much any restaurant in NYC can convert the parking space in front of them into seating. In this way it's a wild and lawless summer. No rules apply. Unless you think Black lives should be treated with justice and not crushed to death under the knee of any cop who sees fit. Abolish police. NOW.
The small minded maniac in who is president for the time being is unleashing unmarked federal agents on Portland and now Seattle. They are arresting and attacking anyone who protests with impunity. I read a quote somewhere about the spread of fascism in Nigeria-- something about you will never feel like a line has been crossed because they will always move the line. I need to find the direct quote.
I have read so much these two months--at first I couldn't read at all, like at the beginning of everything in March-- but then I could and so much non fiction and anti-racist, anti- white supremacy, Black women books. And the more I read the less I know. For a blip I think I grasp it--my own culpability, that I am all of it. Then the trauma of that guilt pushes it out of my mind and I writhe in unacceptable confusion--confusion that I'd rather have than feeling sure of something that I should never feel sure and smug about. The sleepless nights, the beat of helicopter wings, the curfews broken then removed, shops happy to be looted, occupy city hall....
Calls to ignore my own privilege, not to pretend it doesn't exist but to simply not enact it: "I have privileges I do not enact because of the importance of just, ethical parenting." -Latonya Yvette
Then a vacation that we'd planned in the early days, when no one could leave their tiny apartments and there was no grass or public space. And when jesse's work said vacation time was use it or lose it before august. The guilt of leaving. How can we leave our city at this time?? And yet knowing everyone not vacationing would if they could for their kid's sake. Or is that what I have to tell myself?
The murder of George Floyd triggered a sustained revolution that has swept across the entire country, filling every city's streets with protest and retaliatory police brutality on par with the civil rights movement in 1968. It has been two months of daily protests today. They fill our very street. The punishing throb of police helicopter blades filled the sky every night for weeks on end--getting louder the more brutally the police attacked--so many innocent people protesting the very thing they are being victimized for every night--the particularly fierce battles are mostly on the weekends now. As the city opens up, some people have to work or lose all unemployment, even if their work is unsafe.
Everyone predicted the protests would trigger the second wave of covid, but as you can see in the second photo, protestors have been more careful to socially distance than any one else. When I was out most people were wearing two, sometimes three masks, at once, despite the stifling humidity of this sudden summer. We joined from the fire escape whenever protests marched down our street and once they passed during a nap and I threw on converse and mask and dashed out to join them. Of course bambi woke up and sobbed because the sound of the chanting terrified her at the beginning (now all her animals and dolls don signs and march around the apartment shouting "NO JUSTICE NO PEACE!").
The only times protests became unsafe have been when the police kettle us. They force us to stop or be beaten. That only happened once when I was out. But it haunted me and I quarantined for 14 days and avoided looking up all the emerging threats of the virus on children. One night during the first week or two the police trapped protestors on the Manhattan Bridge (half a block from us) for hours in pouring rain--thousands of people in standing room only. The helicopters were deafening and no one slept that night. The bambi is still terrified of helicopters, and rightly so. They always mean horrific injustices are being rained down on people simply asking not to be killed.
During the first week I fractured my toe with the vacuum and couldn't attend anymore protests and by the time I was healed they were recommending no one go out who couldn't be arrested. I am still wrestling with that... does having a child count? She is so scared but how much more Black children??? I don't know what is right but there's much that can be done apart from marching. There were all these lists going around matching activisms to different abilities and giftings... the thing is, I think I'm really good at the marching kind of protest. But I'm also a parent. And I'm still there. I spent hours arguing with people who haven't talked to me in a decade but suddenly want to tell me why supporting Black Lives Matter isn't "christian" somehow.... But they refused to listen to me and I think I was trying to punish myself for not marching by continuing to engage them. And it was not helping Black lives so I stopped replying to most. But continued talking to family members--some--more on that later.
On day 100 of covid NYC parks re-opened. We use them cautiously and not at all daily now. I bring alcohol wipes for swing chains and we mostly stick to the sprinklers. Even sitting on benches feels wrong still. Although they now say its not spread by contact. So out of doors is reasonably safe and so are benches. But everything makes me feel crazy-- Haley Nahman explained the feeling well: "Compulsively sanitizing always makes me feel half crazy, because I'm either doing it unnecessarily or I'm literally wiping away a lethal virus, neither of which I want to be true."
I started working again-- selling books on the street, as it turns out, is a very virus friendly (unfriendly?) way to distribute used books. In fact, I and the other street booksellers are the only used booksellers open right now, that I know of. The Strand is sort of open but they encourage pick up rather than browsing and used book buying is best done browsed.
We've been going out more-- to the coffee shop around the block. They re-opened and I am now doing a weekly pop up with the bookcart in their street seating.
Street seating is now a thing. Pretty much any restaurant in NYC can convert the parking space in front of them into seating. In this way it's a wild and lawless summer. No rules apply. Unless you think Black lives should be treated with justice and not crushed to death under the knee of any cop who sees fit. Abolish police. NOW.
The small minded maniac in who is president for the time being is unleashing unmarked federal agents on Portland and now Seattle. They are arresting and attacking anyone who protests with impunity. I read a quote somewhere about the spread of fascism in Nigeria-- something about you will never feel like a line has been crossed because they will always move the line. I need to find the direct quote.
I have read so much these two months--at first I couldn't read at all, like at the beginning of everything in March-- but then I could and so much non fiction and anti-racist, anti- white supremacy, Black women books. And the more I read the less I know. For a blip I think I grasp it--my own culpability, that I am all of it. Then the trauma of that guilt pushes it out of my mind and I writhe in unacceptable confusion--confusion that I'd rather have than feeling sure of something that I should never feel sure and smug about. The sleepless nights, the beat of helicopter wings, the curfews broken then removed, shops happy to be looted, occupy city hall....
Calls to ignore my own privilege, not to pretend it doesn't exist but to simply not enact it: "I have privileges I do not enact because of the importance of just, ethical parenting." -Latonya Yvette
Then a vacation that we'd planned in the early days, when no one could leave their tiny apartments and there was no grass or public space. And when jesse's work said vacation time was use it or lose it before august. The guilt of leaving. How can we leave our city at this time?? And yet knowing everyone not vacationing would if they could for their kid's sake. Or is that what I have to tell myself?
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