basquiat
One year. The planet rotates around the sun, the axis tilts us toward and away from its light and heat. One year. We measure its passage in cycles of sunrise, sunset, light and dark. One year measures the cycle of nature and of culture, the anniversaries of births, deaths, the seasons, the tempos of human experience — heartbeat to bebop, harvest to new crop, tires on a freeway,
Survival. From first breath taken, tumbling onto sidewalks, off rocks, over nail kegs, and down stairways, swimming to exhaustion, extricated from machinery, over-anaesthetized in surgery, riding suicidal motorcycle syndrome, a determined, strategic, and final 4-F refusal of duty in Vietnam, icy and precipitous mountain roads, high-altitude and deep-water inebriation, blood clots, hypertension, venereal and arterial disease, and four years of Drumpf. We survived. One year older.
Origins. Due to a distortion in the planet’s 3.5 billion-year-old biosphere, a viral spike protein begins to hook into human body host cells that grudgingly give life to the protein. Spiky offspring fly out of throats by the billions to find more hosts. A contagious filigree of eager protein spreads.
Accelerating as it multiplies, this spiky aerosol network floats over 7,830,000,000 humans and tosses us each into rapidly changing societal cauldrons. For a year now, we each float in an outward radiating helix. Each of our circles merge, converge, twine, intertwine, and ricochet off 7.8 billion other radiating rings. Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble.
At the center of each helix, arranged by circumstance of place, class, and fortune, we live safely or in jeopardy, stricken or recovering, dying or dead in the bardo. It’s happened so quickly that — according to outside sources — no one, not one of two million Covid casualties has yet to move on from the bardo to any form of transmigration. The place is jammed, busier than during all the wars combined.
I live safely. I am isolated but survive with the love, companionship, support, parallax viewpoints and annoyances that come with constant human and feline companionship. I am infinitely more grateful than I am annoyed by the company. I continue to work uninterrupted and I have food, water, shelter, warmth and I live in beautiful surroundings maintained by our own hard work.
Where my circles overlap with other circles, I see loneliness and community, jeopardy and support, patience and anger, confusion and contentment. I see people not wanting to leave their homes, people living out of boxes, desperate to escape their circumstances, people afraid to leave their living spaces, people at risk through the demands of their work.
I see families crowded together in small apartments with children whose energy has been smothered by isolation. I see fathers coping without mothers, daughters mourning the loss of brothers and parents and grandmothers. I see defiance, men with guns and no masks, dressed in little boy pants and big boots, gathering, not out of loneliness, but out of spite.
Then I see science move minds to build an ingenious remedy from existing parts, no wheels to reinvent, brilliant actors delivering dazzling tweaks to the microspheres of proteins. I see skilled hands moving with surety, meditative smiles on the faces of healers, the power of design and process in the layout of orange cones on a sea of tarmac. I see the presence of government. Government here to help; government, not to hinder, not to limit or prohibit, or steal but to rescue us. And to think that all of this has happened in one year’s time.
One year. The planet rotated around the sun. Our axis tilted first toward and then away from light and dark. A cycle of political violence, the festering boil of racism burst onto streets full of cops, the virus, and ecstatic resistance, an election that drove a stake through a zombie political party, endured a gaslit insurrection and banished its grotesque leadership. One year. Same as always, a year. But in that one year, the world has spun light years beyond the tic toc of annual cycles. It will never be the same; that’s a good thing; and that’s a bad thing.
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We each float at the center of a separate, outwardly radiating helix.
Charles DegelmanWriter, editor, and educator based in Los Angeles. He's also played a lot of music. Degelman teaches writing at California State University, Los Angeles.
Degelman lives in the hills of Hollywood with his companion on the road of life, four cats, assorted dogs, and a coterie of communard brothers and sisters.
Brilliant story, Charles. You were able to capture so many aspects of this past year and its varying impact on people depending of their circumstances.
Thanks, Laurie. I do find myself thinking in concentric circles that radiate outward from my personal circumstances to the chaos and loss that circles around us so visibly in the lives of others. Terrible inequities. I have hope that some of them will be erased. It’s what government is all about, a reality we have lost since the Reagan years.
Oh, my, Charles, you’ve said it all so eloquently, in beautiful metaphors and stunning visuals. I need to catch my breath …
Thanks, Marian. I enjoyed the wordplay involved in writing this piece. When finished I became very, very sad. Covid in all its vicissitudes.
Wonderfully descriptive essay, Charlie! My favorite line: “I am isolated but survive with the love, companionship, support, parallax viewpoints and annoyances that come with constant human and feline companionship.” That is so true for me too. Couldn’t have made it without the feline!
Thanks, Suzy. Einstein once said “the only escape from the miseries of life are music and cats…”
Absolutely brilliant…thank you, Charles!
P.S. The Basquiat is perfect!
Thanks, Barbara. I enjoyed picking, changing, and choosing words and images for this post.
As always Charles in your very finely crafted story you are wise and poetic and optimistic despite all.
Still pinching myself over the election , I’m a cat-lover too, and thanx for the Basquiat!
Thanks for the kind words, Dana. It’ll take a few ups and downs to shed the layers of PTSD and Stockholm sleaze that still coats skin and hangs in the air, but a change is gonna come
Others have already given you big props for the poetry you’ve written (and the great Basquiat choice for your Featured photo). Even your response to Dana was brilliant. I can only marvel at the way your mind works and am so grateful that you share this with us. I look forward to what you will write every week.
Thanks, Betsy! We have a valued community here. If you figure out how my mind works, let me know! Beyond my wisecrack, thanks so much for your support. It means a great deal to me. Warm regards. Me.
I’m not sure I needed such a poetic vision of the Coronavirus spreading–but if I ever did need or want one you certainly provided it brilliantly in some of the early paragraphs in this piece!
Like others, I also thought the art choices were a great enhancement.
I’ll try to spare you le poesie on the next pass, Dale. I was actually shooting for a distillation of the science involved and bingo! Poetry! Who knew? Thanks for your words.
Beautuful in all ways, Charles. And, as you note above, you do think in concentric circles, which particularly resonates with me as well. I wonder if it is hard-wired in some of us.
Anyhow, it is is beyond impressive that you could tell — or maybe I should say “unwind” — a story of such a horrible disease and a horrible year in such truly poetic terms.
Thanks, John! Strong and articulate praise indeed! I think so many have been fortunate thru this thus far, but the circles seemed the best way to describe the horrific awareness of what this plague —- and its cruel welcome by the Drumpf machine —- has perpetrated on so many in those outwardly radiating circles.
Wow! I am speechless!
Aw, shucks, Penny. Thanks. ‘Speechless’ is a good thing, right?