Day 36----

The sound of gears changing on a delivery person's bike-- alone in the deserted street.
Somehow essential.
Our neighbor's lights through the reflection of our own.

"It's funny to be sitting in such an uncommunal communal chair." -Ali Smith Autumn

reading: finished A Misalliance by Anita Brookner. I get the hype now. I do not get how Hotel du Lac won the Booker--a limp, apathetic book who's only virtue was it's brevity. But this one--this one delivers the heavy weight of trapped women.

Day 35----

grocery delivery day-- and wine. The feelings of having it too good are worse during a pandemic. As they should be. Then I wonder if it's worse to feel guilty. Rather than grateful. Cause guilt usually eclipses that.

such a cavalier day--I didn't wash her hands after she did this. I didn't think of it. Then did. Then there was nothing to be done and I think I'm numb? A saturation point where your brain can't worry anymore.

but it was a euphoria too-- the peace of mind having fresh produce, she napped, it was sunny and I sat on the fire escape.

then we had small group on zoom-- I don't have any friends close enough, here or elsewhere, close enough to miss.

Day 34----

I'm trying to teach the concept of quiet time... ostensibly to bambi but really to myself... learning that I don't actually know what I'm trying to teach. Around mid morning everyday this past week or so --that moment where I'm so bored of being Storkie, Mama Koala, Mog, Baby Deer, etc that I'm tempted to get out my phone out--or, in today's case, when bambi says, "HEY! Mama! get off your phone." and I realize I've been on it for awhile. So I set a timer for thirty minutes and got her and myself a big stack of books respectively (I finished another yesterday so I get to chose a new one today--or was supposed to but she didn't nap), sat on either side of the couch with the books on top of pillows on our laps. It was mostly loud and not at all quiet but it separated activities and she sat like this for a few minutes. "Reading" aloud to herself, "One day Cece stood there waiting for herself..." entirely not what the book says and entirely exactly what quiet time is.

However this didn't prepare her properly for a nap like past quiet times have done so I'll keep tweaking.

After her nap failed cacophonously, I pretended to be a librarian at the circulation desk and let her check out her games and puzzles one at a time and put her (my) library card in a box just like the one the Seward Park librarians use. Which is how this is getting written at this moment.

Day 33----

All through the nights sounds drift up from the street as if the speakers and walkers are doing so at the foot of our bed. We hear fill conversations--even whispered ones, murmurs of laughter, sighs even in all this silence. This isn't to say there're many people out... hardly any, that's why the ones that are are so audible. That and the no traffic besides busses and ambulances. And I don't grudge the ones who are out--the NYC emergency billets have asked people to take their outdoor time at odd hours to reduce contact.

A few of the conversations from the past few nights--

a woman across the street: "You got pot?"
very confusedly, man on our side of street: "What???"
--"YOU GOT WEED?"
--"What!! No!!"

a solitary man in a low phone conversation: "I just smoke weed so I don't smoke cigarettes."

People talk about stuff besides weed. Just not these last few nights.

Day 32----

A friend wrote to me today saying, "I miss window shopping." And she's right. All the things I miss the most are the free things-- public things.Wandering into shops, holding a mug in my hand to feel the fit and putting it back. Drinking a sly bottle of wine with our feet dangling in the Washington Square Park fountain. Laying in grass. Seeing trees, any tree at all. That patch of grass on Governor's Island with the ramshackle porch and the view of my home. Leaning against the rail and feeling the salt spray on my face at the East River under the FDR, just two blocks from here. Sitting on park benches. My library. The ease of sitting on a grubby rug in a public library, leaning against a shelf with my book while my kid turns strangers into friends surrounded by shared toys (and thinking, "she's building immunities when she not-so-pretends to drink from a plastic tea cup), games, puzzles, tins of broken crayons and a pile of scrap paper.

All the reasons I live in New York City.

And so we wait.

And revel in hearing voices from behind every door in our apartment building while I take the garbage down.

easter sunday, 2020

reading: The Mother/Child Papers by Alicia Suskin Ostriker
-I'm not finished and have a lot of thoughts about it for later.

Day 31----

A healthful tonic of a way to ring in one month of isolation--the least solitary solitude ever imposed on an introvert.

We've stumbled on a new routine of 30-40 min of quiet time in the mornings for all of us, then lunch and whatever phone calls or art or more animal hospital boat games till the full naptime in the afternoon. Jesse and I both finished books, started new ones (I finished the new one too--it was a novella though) and got better at alone time together.

Later we had wine and watched the new home video exhibit from MOMA that's online cause no one can go in person. We haven't been there in person in ages cause it's not a free museum and we don't have time to wait in line for the free night that opens at bambi's bedtime. We also are better at attending church now.

In some ways--many-- my brain was made for this. But then I yearn for Governor's Island, Washington Square, Seward Park Library, even Central Park. The Rose Reading Room all on my own. Pushing through turnstyles, reading against the subway door, laying on grass, just seeing a tree.

reading/read: As We Are Now by May Sarton
-a woman abandoned in an old person's home--mathematical poetry, theology, notebooks, waiting for snow drifts and revenge.

Day 30----

I read!--nearly a whole book today! I feel my humanness seeping back into my brain...I'm sure it's visible in my face, my hands, my shoulders. The pinch between my eyes less cavernous. The clinching of my body whenever anyone touched me, even the cat, slowly rolling away with each page turned, each half hour passed of this still happening nap. The first in six days. Someone besides myself made me tea... he brought it to me as I wrote at my desk... then sheepishly asked if he could have the room so he could have a phone call with his partner from work. I couldn't even remember what this felt like anymore. I feel bad that I need this time so much. But I feel no doubt that I do. I was even considering waking up at 5am to get two hours to myself--odds are she'd wake up then too and then I'd get none of the time and all the over-tiredness. I don't see any way around this need for naps still.

reading: I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

How have I gone thirty-one years without reading this?? This is one of those things that makes me want to do so much better by my bambi. I know most schools assign this. She will read this before she leaves home. And she will never go to a private school. The kind of place that makes itself the arbitrator of correct literature, the police of women and anyone of color. That thinks Uncle Tom's Cabin, Huck Finn and Othello are the maximum nod necessary to the liberal obsession with "diversity". 

I'm furious that the only women I knew could write were children's writers or mystery/spy writers ("candy reads" as my dad dubbed them), Jane Austen, and Charlotte Bronte (not Emily haha). All white, all old or dead. Angelou's prose is at a level I --and he-- could never believe possible. And that is his and my past's desperate loss.

I find it interesting that I could not read my Sarton, Adrienne Rich, Margaret Atwood-- all of whom are excellent and there's absolutely value in their writing. But right now, in a time of global crisis, I needed to read the true narrative of someone, one voice among many, who's entire life would qualify as a global crisis if it happened to a white person. To grow up black and female in the US in the 1930s, to do so now still-- is to live with the gravitas, the fear, the slightest edge of which we are now all experiencing. And communities of color so much more.