Month: March 2020

He could never really understand, no matter how hard he tried, what deconstruction was, but COVID-19 seemed to be as close as he got to knowing it in its full energy. The virus itself was almost like an echo or a shadow of the idea materialized in physical form the way it wiped clean the blackboard of one’s future self, that is, all one’s plans for the immediate future, and how that changed the meaning of the past, and one’s identity itself.

Yes, the future was something he could no longer see, that thing he never knew he could see, or at least imagine, prior to it disintegrating just like that. There were vacations planned, and between them, various places he expected to go – a brief trip to his in-laws for a weekend, to his parents in Vermont – people he would see off and on, moments they would share, the jokes, the expressions on their faces – all gone, because who knows now, with this year disrupted, what was going to happen? Whether he and Liz would keep their jobs, stay in their Brooklyn apartment? Who knows if even the New York City school system, where their children would be in high school, would even be able to provide the education they’ve promised and intend to? Fuck, one or more of them might even be dead in the next few weeks.

Well, he wasn’t too concerned about the being dead part, though that was a possibility, however vague. But what was beginning to occur to Peter was how often he found himself dumbfounded, and at the same time relaxed and calm, or at times in a state of complete giddiness.

It was as if the whole rigamarole of having his expectations slashed, left in shambles, had begun to destroy the image of what and whom he thought he was, and it would just stop his thinking dead. And since he had trouble understanding who he was, it was actually harder to imagine his death, since he was unclear who it would be who was dying.

There was this aspect of deconstruction that was like the termite of all identity and civilization, all moral standards of truth that everyone tends to rely on, but there’s this other side of it which seems like some of the more rigorous side of Zen Buddhist exercise, not the popular, hokeyness that sold books in the business section at Barnes and Noble, and that was the more rigorous and flagellant part that interested him most of all.

Yet there was a book that his professor of many years go had written, condemning Paul DeMan, and deconstruction in general. He thought of it guiltily, having never read it through completely.

And yet, this same man poured an enormous amount of energy promoting many similar ideas, as well as John Ashbery, whom Peter thought of as the most deconstructive poet of them all, the way his words and phrases seemed to slip out from beneath the need to mean anything at all, or tended to mean too much, to be a kind of – no…not that… a kind of aporia.

And David himself played dangerously close, with his poetry of formal contrast, of paradox, the way it stitched together incongruities and irregularities that somehow worked, and seemed so simple. This was maybe the sneakiest form of deconstruction, when you put two or more things together that shouldn’t be together, and make them seem comfortable, the lion lying beside the lamb, that kind of thing.

But if it worked it worked, and if healed something within one, or helped to set one free, then that’s a good thing, is it not? It’s like telling the crystallization process that tries to turn us all back into earth and stone to fuck off, isn’t it?

After all, wasn’t it Stevens who said “How should you walk in that space and know / Nothing of the madness of space, / Nothing of its jocular procreations? / Throw the lights away. Nothing must stand // Between you and the shapes you take / When the crust of shape has been destroyed…”

Yes, to Peter that was all of deconstruction and all of schizoanalysis. Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari, they mean well, they really did. But Stevens, he explained it.

He didn’t know what would happen, who and how they would survive this, but reports were saying that carbon monoxide levels were down 50% in New York City.

“Thanks for calling. I think it’s just bad cold but I don’t think you should come by, you know, just in case. I do appreciate the soup idea.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, sure as shit. I’ll just lie here in my many layers like a Joseph Beuys sculpture.”

“Joseph Boyz?”

“B-E-U-Y-S, first name probably pronounced Yosef, in his native language. He was a German sculptor. Hold on a sec, I’m gonna switch my phone to my other hand.”

“Oh, another one of them German artists, aye? I feel the gray clouds of despair wrapping around my head like a wet blanket.”

“Funny. He actually made a lot of things out of fat and felt, and that’s what it feels like under this pile of wool. In fact, I’m the fat and felt part, since felt is hair. The other part I think is maybe obvious.”

“Geeze, you mean art made out fat and felt? Why?”

“The story goes, and some people say that it was just a story, that he was a bomber pilot during the war, and was shot down a few times, and the last time he was pretty much left for dead. But some nomadic Tartars found him and wrapped him up in fat and felt, to keep him alive, and dragged him around for a while.”

“Hmm… Right.”

“Yeah. And eventually the German army found him and took him back to their hospital. But he supposedly had gone through some interesting psychological changes during that time. Being close to dead and all, and with these strange people who don’t even speak your language. Again, there’s argument that this may all have been a story he made up to sell art.”

“Whoa, that’s a pretty fucking crazy story. Do you think it’s true? The near dead thing, the mysterious ‘other people.’ Another fucking self-mythologizing artist, more likely, just finding a way to promote himself.”

“I think he also wanted to promote some other stuff. I’ve always liked some of his ideas, like how everyone is an artist. But he also got very spiritual, in a kind of witchcrafty, shamanic way. I think after the Tartars, he got interested in the mysteries of more indigenous people, or maybe the pre-christian people of northern Europe, when they were more like people of color, perhaps. Even though he claimed to be christian. A odd kind of christian, obviously.”

“You mean, Vikings and shit? Celts? I don’t think everybody’s an artist, I’m certainly not an artist. Not like you. I mean, I do some memes stuff on Instagram, but that’s not…”

“What he meant was that everyone is an artist because we have an endless number of problems we have to solve just to survive, and every one of our occupations, our jobs are like that. We are always creating something, sort of a continual work-in-progress, a social sculpture that we all participate in. Hold on a second, I’m gonna switch my phone back to the other hand. It’s kind of awkward talking like this in a horizontal position.”

“Sure. Half these chats we have end up feeling like a lecture, you know. I guess that’s the price one pays for having an art history girlfriend. When do I get a chance to see you?”

“Let’s see how things go by the end of the week.”

“Okay, you don’t think you’re part of the pandemic, do you?”

“We’re all part of the pandemic, deary. We’re just not all sick. I don’t think I have that specific strain of corona virus, if that’s what you mean.”

“Good. Just worried about you, love.”

“Thank you sweetie.”

“I’ve been Googling this guy – there’s this picture of him at the MoMA with a coyote. What the fuck. And what’s this thing with the metallic looking mask and the rabbit?”

“Hare.”

“What a fucking weirdo.”

“Yeah.”

“There’s also this video – I’ve got to watch this. It’s gotta be golden. He’s in his farmer suit and the hat, singing in a punk band or something. I’ll save it for later.”

“One last thing about him, and then I’m gonna have to go back to sleep. And I think you’re going to like this part. He had this concept he called Kunst is – he used an equal sign – Kapital.”

“What? Say that again?”

“It’s German for art is capital. He had this idea that true capital isn’t what the owners say it is, but it’s art, the art you make as an artist, solving your everyday problems. In other words, you are the owner of your art, which is the true capital of the world’s economy. Am I saying it right? I’m kind of confusing myself.”

“I think I hear you loud and clear, love. That’s beautiful. You mean, everything belongs to all of us, because we’re living in this system doing stuff.”

“I think that’s kind of what he meant.”

“Shit. That’s a right idea. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Ow! Stop that!”

“I’m just trying to wash away the little bit of blood. You have a little cut.”

“That fuck. That was a hate crime, you know. I’m a victim of a hate crime! Shit, I’ve been living here all my my life! And I fucking never!”

“Calm down. You’re gonna have quite an egg on your head, you know. But I don’t think there’s gonna be too much damage.”

“People hate Asians. Especially these days.”

“I love you. Besides, try being Haitian. Sit still. Did you report it to the cops?”

“Half the cops in South Brooklyn are these same thugs. You know that. You walk around at night.”

“Yeah, but you’re not as used to it as I am. I guess.” Philipe laughs. “Yeah, I hate it too. You know I come from that ‘Shithole,’ at least my parents did.”

“I never called it that.”

“You didn’t have to. I’m not blaming you, Alex. I’m being ironic. And I’m trying to keep processing it as a whole, in the context of all other things, and from a distance. I’m a Buddhist, ya know.”

“A Buddhist with a PhD in comparative lit. I still don’t know how you managed that.”

“I told you. I got a 1560 on the SAT, and nobody from my school was expected to do that. We were the poor, dumb kids from the shitholes. And for the Ivies, it was like sending missionaries out. They’d spend any money to look like nice white folks, cleaning up the natives, ya know.”

“Ow! Stop that! I don’t know how you put up with it.”

“You’re about to find out. Anyway, please promise me you’ll stay in? You’re supposed to, you know.”

“But we ran out of tequila.”

“Yeah, that’s a thing.”

She noticed that more people were wearing masks that day. It had been a few days since she had been out. There was a line outside the new Food Emporium she hadn’t noticed, being surprised when the automatic door hadn’t opened for her, and she was directed to the end of it, where people were spaced at about six to ten feet apart.

Her scarf kept falling away from her face, no matter how well she thought she stuffed back into her coat collar, which was a relief, because it made her feel as though she was smothering, and the heat from her breath was stifling.

It was a lot better than the pandemic horror movies, where sudden depopulations sent civilization reeling into utter anarchy. This was merely a cold with teeth. Yes, it killed more people than it should, and put large numbers of people in the hospital, but it wasn’t science fiction.

Granted, it was scary enough just as it was, and Sarah knew she was of a “vulnerable age,” though she felt as strong as she ever was, and could run a mile in under ten minutes.

There was one movie she remembered from when she was a kid. A virus, instead of making people sick, made the healthier and happier, made them more inspired and loving.

However, the fallout was that fewer people were smoking tobacco, purchasing alcoholic beverages, prescription medications and expensive entertainments of all sorts. And fewer people worried about their investments, things like retirement, and so they quit their jobs so they could spend more time with others.

Of course, because of those things, it was a virus that threatened the financial environment, so it had to be cured as well. And when it was, people went back to their old sorry selves, just like old times.

Social distancing when you live in a two hundred square foot apartment was certainly not the kind of life he would intentionally design, not something he would recommend. It’s bad enough he only had the distance of two or three steps back and forth from his desk to the bathroom, but he also didn’t have his stove hooked up to the gas, and his refrigerator was a two-foot by two-foot cube — just enough for some leftover take-out and a six pack of beer.

Not that there was usually any take-out or beer left, and he was tired of microwaving the stuff anyway.

With all the bars closed he really didn’t have a life. He hated social media. He was tired of every single video game imaginable, felt nauseated each time he went into the App Store on his phone. So he tried reading some of the books he promised himself he’d finish eventually.

Wasn’t Infinite Jest like the pinnacle of late twentieth century novels?Gravity’s Rainbow? These were things his professors had raved about. A page or two and he’d fall asleep. He needed to move around more. He was beginning to feel like a piece of furniture left in storage.

What he really wanted was to see people, but there was nobody around. After what happened with Amy, a rift had grown between him and all of his old college friends. Not anything really dramatic, just a simple, fuck it, who needs it.

There were about three bartenders and five wait staff at his favorite hole-in-the-wall whom he felt closest to now, that is, besides the other jerks he worked with coding educational software. Yeah, right — tell me another. It was merely a way of selling a mishmash of snake oil psychobabble to supposedly increase one’s charisma and leadership qualities.

He’d go for walks, but there was nobody. Plenty of people scattered here and there, but none he’d imagine talking to, and they all swerved around him as he passed. Except for some bratty kid on a skateboard who almost took him off his feet.

No, it was best to stay inside, wash his one pair of socks, underwear and a teeshirt in the bathroom sink and hang them over the shower rod.

He stared at the wall, held his old beat-up guitar, and wiggled his fingers around the fretboard while his pick plunked the dull tones from deadened rusty strings.

Each sounding made the wall seem more brittle, liquid, or perhaps translucent, as his eyes fuzzed and he could imagine seeing through it into the building next door, and through that into another, and so forth, so many rectangular spaces one after another, he could imagine, going on indefinitely.

And the spaces would move back and forth as his fingers moved, and other dull tones were made, dancing in his head like a wind chime.

But there were no people.

He has had the cough for several weeks, and now he was only beginning to feel guilty about it.

Marion was driving the car, and he, Clyde, was checking the stats on his blog post. There was nothing so far, though there very rarely was.

After working from home for about a week and a half, he had returned to the office, and now he was feeling guilty about it. At the time, he was sure there was no way that it was the virus, just some strand of the multi-headed beast of corona type viruses that cause colds of all sorts. His having a low-grade fever and cough, after a few days of sore throat, was just a coincidence.

They were headed to the beach, Jacob Riss, specifically, sort of a out-of-the-way place out east of Marine park, where Marion and the kids would go some summers past. It was a good family place, mostly inhabited by locals. It was a nice early spring day, though colder than the previous one, and they had planned to just go for a walk along the surf, take in the air. It was a place to go without much fear of catching or spreading the thing everyone was talking about.

The cough started after that night out with his work buddies, after the five martinis they bought him, which he consumed easily, since they were so soothing on his sore throat he thought nothing of at the time. The next day he could barely talk – his voice was several octaves lower, and a bit of a croak. And he had begun coughing “in anger,” as his colleagues in London might say.

He was told to stay home the next day, which was a Friday, and he coughed all the way through the next Friday, and into the following week, though he showed up again at the office on that Tuesday. He coughed a couple of days, though much less, but everyone was told to work remotely the following days.

Until further notice. The memo said.

He was barely coughing at all now, and they were heading to the beach, he and Marion, and the guy being interviewed on NPR said something about a 20% improvement in air quality due to the virus.

He was only beginning to feel guilty about how he may have unwittingly spread the virus to people on his floor at work, just by going in on those two days. Though it was more likely they would have gotten it before he knew it was anything, when it was on its way up, rather than down. Still, he felt like a contributor, an early ally of this thing causing so much havoc, terrorizing everyone.

With fewer cars on the road, a general slow down of commerce, of all sorts of busy-ness, and who else knows why, there was a 20% improvement in air quality, but where?

Fewer exhaust pipes coughing carbon into the air. Perhaps a slowdown at power plants, and all kinds of production, and the birds now feeling the relief. They were pulling into the parking lot. There were gulls flying in elliptical circuits over the highway, as if in some military or magical rite. A Buddhist ritual of the feathered people, celebrating the change in the atmosphere.

Marion suggested that this was perhaps the way the planet took care of itself, all the other species that are being decimated. Nature does that, you know. It’ll tell us things like that, roll the dice and shuffle the deck. It will say, hey you, you need to create a different fucking economy. Or else I’ll fuck with you like this, stick it in your face.

The gulls seemed to like this nonsensical whirling around. It was time to get out of the car and go for a walk.

Cindy wanted to pick up groceries at the local C-Town, but Anne raised a fury, saying she wanted to limit their shopping visits to once a week, that way take less of a chance of either one of them being exposed. Cindy desperately wanted to get out, but was also hankering after her bok choy and pork dish that she recently discovered on some online compendium of recipes. She fumed inwardly at this restriction that her partner imposed, but kept her mouth shut, knowing it was probably for the best, and sat staring at a blank spot on the wall between a lamp and photo of them from last year’s ski trip. The crunch came to her mind, the mouthy sensations and the way they resounded in her head, blended with the flavors of the bok choy and pork, the garlic, ginger and soy wafting through her, and the way it brought pleasure to her entire body.

Pleasures were duller these days, hollowed, from too many hours of screen time, both working and leisure, the same stories marinated with deceptively similar details of the movies and series they’d been watching each evening. There were too many days sitting across from each other, overhearing each others’ work talk of various conference calls and the like, and those worst moments when they were both on the phone. The irritation of it all. They barely wanted to be together.

She stared so long it almost felt as though her head was screwed into the wall. It was quiet. There was a distant hum of a motor maybe a block or two away. She felt the warmth of her hand on her thigh, the cool of the chair seat. There was after wave after wave of frustration, of deep disappointment. And in between a glittering something that would begin to sing.

It wasn’t really a tangerine – that’s what they used to call it, what his mom used to get when he was a kid, but a different variety, clementine, bred to have fewer pits. It sat in his hand, and he rolled it up to his fingertips where he held it for observation, the dappled orange skin, the dull sheen, brownish and discolored scars, and wondered was the virus there, had someone coughed or sneezed and touched its surface while it sat on the shelf at the grocer, leaving traces of mucus or saliva. And if so, he would, in holding and pealing, spread it to the fruit he put in his mouth.

Funny thing life, always trying to obliterate itself, through need or the various motivations for war, or some parasitic venture to reproduce and keep itself alive, while unknowingly destroying the very thing it depended on.

No one individual of the virus was an actual individual, but in its entirety, spread over the world, like so many similar life forms that live a life like a cloud, not one with feet and arms and a head, not leaves and roots, not even like a fog, but invisible like a mountain air coming off the slopes with some sort of volcanic toxin. But this creature was instead made up of uniform mechanical toy-like objects that screw themselves into cells to reproduce their RNA.

It was smooth in his hand, rough but smooth, and such a happy color, orange, like dawn, a color of joy. He pealed off the skin without washing it and plied a section away from the rest, felt its flesh, not unlike his own in some ways, and placed it into his mouth. The juice ran back along his tongue, the sweet tang, the pleasure of it.