How to Run Out of Time in Quarantine

If you anticipated an embarras de richesses of that particularly valuable commodity called "free time" once you settled into your sheltered existence, you may be feeling some of what I'm feeling: When does that get started, please? The answer to that question increasingly seems like "It doesn't." But at least we can use up a little more of the disappearing substance in looking for reasons for this unpleasant surprise.

1. At some point I came to the exasperating realization that I could actually stay home 100% of the time and never have enough time to get anything done. It's not because I'm writing a COVID-19 blog. It's not because I'm writing a blog and a poetry chapbook, or because of my 50 other writing and music and photography and carpentry projects. It's because I could rearrange the refrigerator four times a day and not feel like it was excessive, or scrub all the sinks with Comet for no good reason other than that if there were a coronavirus germ around what better place than the sink for it to relax? Being at home for reasons of life and death creates different priorities from being at home because I'm retired. You've got a colony of humans running around their anthill and if you don't constantly make sure it's in order it will return to wetland in no time. At least that's the fear. Staying home creates its own list of time-wasting tasks to replace riding the subway, waiting for traffic lights and standing on lines.

2. There's no such thing as too much fruit. Or snacks. Or paper towels. We're all home all the time, so it gets used. Quickly. Time to order more. From where? Wherever, as long as I don't have to face the Darth Vaders in the supermarket. Ordering a pencil takes forever. How I miss wandering into Rite Aid, even when I don't buy anything.

3. You can wash your hands. Take a Clorox wipe to the door handle if you have one. Wipe down the groceries. Rinse the Clorox/Lysol/Hydrochloric Acid/Nuclear Waste from the groceries after 10 seconds. (10 seconds? Did I only leave it for 9? Let me do it again.) The problem is that now you ought to sanitize the Clorox wipe container. And the door handle you used to get to the container. Maybe you should just do it all again. By this time you are ready to sanitize something else. We are hinting at the normally psychotic idea that you can never really clean anything because you need to touch this in order to clean that and then touch that in order to clean the next thing, and basically in order to really be thorough you should just blow up the house and start again. Only now, it seems just a little less psychotic - enough to send a pulse of anxiety into your consciousness once you decide to give up because you would rather die than touch a wet wipe or wash your hands one more time.

If seven maids with seven mops
Swept for half a year
Do you think, the Walrus said,
That they could get this clear?

They could with a Shop-Vac, at least. But that wouldn't necessarily clear the beach of viruses.

4. Speaking of germs, did you ever wonder what the other .1 percent of germs is? I mean, after the cleansers you've been using are done killing 99.9% of germs, what's left? Botulism? Actually that's anaerobic, it should be easy to kill, just take it for a walk and give it some fresh air. Ebola? Malaria? What I really want to know is: how on earth do they know that the germs it kills are in fact all but .1 percent of germs? Have they counted all the germs that exist? The answer to these questions is that the figure "99.9%" is half science and half marketing. The marketing part is obvious: people see "99.9%" and think that's just about every germ that exists and the rest are probably only found in some small third world country at the bottom of a ravine. So when the label mentions the specific things that the agent has been tested on and it's a few common viruses and bacteria, people believe that that means "and whatever I will come into contact with in my life". Not. The "99.9%" may be 99.9% of the germs that it has been tested against, not of all germs known to exist. The science part is that the products claim to have been tested against these common varieties of bacteria and viruses and shown to be effective against them. But none of them have been tested against SARS-Covid-19. In fact, neither Fantastic nor Clorox Wipes say they are effective against Influenza type B; they only claim to kill Type A. So if they are not known to work against some common viruses, why would they be certain to work against a new coronavirus? Comet, which says it kills "99%" of germs, does not claim to be effective against viruses at all. On the other hand: if you read the label carefully, Clorox Wipes, for all their 99.9% deadliness, claim to be "2X effective" - against what? A wet paper towel! So even if they do not kill coronaviruses in 10 seconds, or at all, you can at least have the peace of mind of knowing that they do at least as well as a wet paper towel, being wet and made of paper. The takeaway is that we are not completely wasting our time wiping everything down with disinfectants, but we may be wasting our money. When I run out of Clorox Wipes, which will be soon, I have a bottle of Ouzo which I never drink. Maybe I will just pour some on a paper towel and call it a sanitary wipe.

5. Consider this exercise: put off making out a Will until Covid-19 goes away. (Not to mention a Living Will - while you are perchance living.) If you can manage to pull it off, then you can do so as long as you live. Because there's no time like a deadly pandemic that reliably fills cemeteries and mass graves to finally get around to that. Of course you have already figured out that this is a catch-22: you can't do a Will (or a Living Will) when you are most motivated to do it, because the reason you need to do it is also the reason you don't want to take the subway to visit your lawyer, or sit with him for two hours, or visit a notary, or find a witness, or make out Power of Attorney forms, etc. You can at least make a resolution: as soon as I don't need a Will (or a Living Will) so urgently I'm going to do one! Sure you are. Since you have so much free time on your hands, why not use some of it to figure out what to do with your shit when you have zero time? This can have unexpected benefits. For example, you might realize you have more shit than you thought. If you call that a benefit.

6. Showering and bathing are of course optional now, as long as everyone in the family doesn't do it, so we are each as stinky as the other. Households will begin to each have their own unique smell, and it's not that of your cooking or gardening but your BO. A pleasant thought, anyway, but there is a catch here too: suddenly the Shower appears in the form of a Life-Saving Device, washing away every last living or dead virus particle caught in your hair or fingernails, and providing a Mental Health Break which, paradoxically, feels liberating because it is your time alone in the smallest corner of the smallest room of your house.

7. Have you experienced cell phone blindness? Me too. It is altogether normal to lose it once a day or so; now that we are home all the time, that translates to roughly four times a day. But the new best way to lose it is by looking right at it and not seeing it. Or searching upstairs, downstairs and in my lady's chamber for something that's in your pocket.

"Honey, can you call my phone please?" ("Please" is not to be read in the supplicative mood but the peremptory one.)
"Why, when it's right where you left it?"
"Where?"
"Under this newspaper I just put down on the table."
"Oh, my bad. Are my glasses there too, so I can find my phone more easily next time?"

8. How time flies when your child is doing remote learning! She may not be on a real schedule, but you are on the schedule known as "On call". There is a simple mathematical transformation from this into the schedule "Never complete anything without being interrupted". Fortunately remote learning ends around 2:30 or so; after that you will be on the schedule "Play with me", which does not end, ever.

9. I've heard not a few people utter the words "I never cook", which I think of as slightly more likely to be accurate than the even more popular claim, "I never get sick". So, my Palinesque question would be, "How's that not-cooking thing going for ya?" "Fine," I imagine them replying, "we are doing what we always do, order in or take out, except now we are heroes for supporting local businesses." And I would have to hand it to them - having other people prepare your food for you every day is certainly heroic at this moment. For the rest of us, it is not merely a time to hone our cooking skills and learn new recipes, but a time to constantly solve the complex puzzle of how to use the most ingredients that are likely to go bad in the shortest time in one meal, while keeping a balanced diet and, if you are so fortunate, feeding fussy kids at the same time as possibly fussier adults. Sure, we do some version of that all the time, only now failure means an extra trip to the store, or a day getting frustrated trying to order online. Neither one is an acceptable trade-off for cutting the brown spots off that cauliflower, chopping up the not-quite-rotten tomato left from the six unripe ones you bought three weeks ago (just in case), possibly adding a little leftover yogurt before it gets moldy, and (thank god that on a whim you bought) some curry powder: now you've got curried cauliflower, you can throw in a little frozen corn and, well - no, there is not really any way you can get the once-fresh mozzarella in there, even if it didn't smell like the inside of your leather shoes, when you used to wear shoes.

10. Exercise! You have to get some exercise, every day. I have friends who say they go out for a walk every day; that may not be the case for the next couple of weeks, though, as the weather turns miserable, in sympathy with the general mood. Nor will I be able to jog with my daughter (6) as we have been doing - in the backyard. Huge backyard, you ask? Sure, here in Brooklyn they're enormous - compared with, say, a ticket booth. But that doesn't deter us. I measured the distance from the garden door to the back fence, and figured that at roughly 70 feet round trip, all we have to do is 80 laps and we've put in a little over a mile. So that's what we do, 40 laps running, 40 laps walking. Then we have a workout routine, which goes from leg lifts to stretches to pushups and jumping jacks, about 20 minutes. But none of that entirely accounts for my losing weight since we got slamdunked into the house. For that I have to thank things like: wiping down every food item that comes through the door and running around looking for a place to put it, upstairs, downstairs or maybe in my lady's chamber; answering the call of the remote learning magpie (upstairs, downstairs, etc.); washing and cleaning everything three times as often as normal and six times on Sunday; and our daily indoor sporting event: beach ball bounce! (More about that one in another post.)

11. Sleep! Okay, I admit - listening to me on this subject is like listening to one of these mask-free politicians at a news conference telling us we should wear masks in public. I am the world's worst violator of good sleep habits, being the world's most driven person when it comes to other things. I figure sleep is some sort of biological trick meant to deprive us of up to a third of our lives. I try to minimize it to a quarter, and exacerbate the situation by having a cup of black tea not long before bed. Hey, it relaxes me and I can fall asleep in the middle of a cup of coffee when I'm tired, so tea is not going to keep me up. But it's going to mean getting up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, not good for whatever deep sleep I might otherwise get. If I end up getting 6-7 hours of sleep a day it's because I nod off for anywhere between 15 minutes and an hour sitting in a chair. Yesterday I had a long, complex dream while sitting at my desk. Weird COVID-dreams, like COVID-anxiety and COVID-sleeplessness, are recognized quarantine issues. My dreams are bizarre on an ordinary day, so you can imagine now. (This one involved a bike trip on which I suddenly realized I had smoked pot for the first time in several decades and was so high I couldn't see, but ended up in a remote area of Brooklyn where weird trucks were delivering things that included a space capsule which was to be used somehow in support of efforts against the coronavirus. Can you top that?) Apparently the lockdown has been responsible for both more anxiety and more sleep at once. That can easily be explained in one word: depression. Both of my older children, now unemployed, and both subject in one degree or another to anxiety or depression, are practically in sleep-reversal patterns. I have sometimes taken betablockers, prescribed for a different issue, before bed due to nighttime anxieties. One night last week I hit the sack at 3:30 a.m., but more typically it's lights out by 2:00 a.m. for me. So, to make a long story short, do as I say and not as I do. At the very least, getting 8 hours of shuteye is good for more of those interesting dreams, not to mention strengthening your immune system while lowering your cytokine levels. And this is something, like "thneeds" in The Lorax, that everyone wants, because everyone needs.

12. Write! Why else am I blogging away, careless of the fact that only a few people are reading my words of wisdom? The answer is, I go around all day analyzing the bizarre conditions of my life right now, and the results find their way into poems, stories and journals because if they didn't they would keep filling my skull, where stuffing in one more cotton ball always seems possible even if it already holds twice as many as I thought would fit. Then I need someone to decompress my brain, and the doctors are all occupied with coronavirus patients and are barred by executive order from doing elective surgery. So writing is the best way to siphen some of it off. Try it, you might like it. You might even get published and make money from it. Though that is a little less likely than that they will find a cure for COVID-19 tomorrow.

And before I sign off on another of my mind-numbingly long blogs, let me assure you that the long-delayed post on my Soundtrack for the Apocalypse is on its way.

Stay home, be well and read a lot of blogs!

Love in the Time of Corona

Amid the growing reports of items being snapped up and hoarded at the beginning of the crisis, only one stood out as unusual. Hand sanitizer? Fahgeddaboudit. Face masks? Gone quickly. Clorox wipes? Don't get your hopes up. Toilet paper, paper towels, every form of disinfectant, and, increasingly, foods like pasta, burgers and Annie's mac'n'cheese... all disappearing from the shelves in anticipation of a shelter-in-place order.

And, one more item - condoms. Condoms? Good to know that some people were thinking positively. My guess was that a certain 49% of the human race was more hopeful about the opportunities presented by being quarantined with their partner or spouse than the other 51%. But according to an article in the Hindustani Times, the owner of a "medical shop" in South Mumbai claimed that more women than men were buying. I wonder if I could confirm that at Rite Aid.

I mean, what an encouraging development for intimacy: thousands of people are about to die, the children are to be shuttered inside with parents for weeks or months, shopping will soon become a desperate and death-defying act of courage, and the cautious are about to engage in a non-stop wipedown and mop-up of everything that came in from outside or touched something that came in from outside or might possibly have a living germ on it after sitting in a backpack for three weeks. Let's stock up on Trojans before we miss any of the fun and games!

So how's the condom thing going for ya' anyway?

"Hey, honey, I'm done spraying the groceries with Lysol, one of the kids is almost in bed and there hasn't been an ambulance siren in seven minutes. Want to screw?"

"Sure, just what I've been waiting for. Right after I call my father in the nursing home and make sure he's still alive."

"Okay, let me go take my medication and I'll be right there."

"You need Viagra? Why? You're only 37."

"No, I need a Valium so I can stop worrying about whether I'll have a job next month. It kind of ruins the mood."

There are various other theories about the condom rush that have little to do with the sexual fantasies of quarantined couples. For example, one Australian tabloid traced it to social media posts calling on people to use them to protect their fingers from germs. I guess the idea is that "spermicide" and "germicide" are so close phonetically they must have some biological connection too.

The U.K. Guardian posted a more plausible explanation: the Malaysian factory that makes Durex and other popular brands was shut due to social distancing requirements, leading to a global drop in supplies. Factories in China, India and elsewhere are also failing to pump them out. But how would that explain a rise in the sale of sex toys, also duly reported in the land of the Kama Sutra?

Whether there's a corona-related lovefest going on or not, there has been plenty of unrequested advice about sex in the infected city. Consider the NYC Department of Health memo advising everyone that your best sex partner is "yourself". Can I see by a show of hands how many married men needed that reminder? Not to mention single, unattached people of any gender without a current sex partner, and women whose chosen partner is not up to her requirements in that area. (This last category may significantly overlap that of "women who are married to men".) I think I figured out that "myself" was my safest sex partner when I was 13 - though my music teacher would have been preferred, safe or not.

Question: has Mayor DeBlasio ever followed up by promoting masturbation at one of his press conferences? (Note: necrophiliacs, you can ignore the advice; the field is wide open for you at the moment. Also, if you're a zoophiliac, please exercise caution, especially if your preference is bats.)

The fearless DOH, whose experience with straight talk presumably grows out of the AIDS crisis in NYC, has also noted the risk of COVID-19 transmission in rim jobs (if you don't know what that is, read on) and suggested that a condom on the tongue can reduce the risk. Now, imagine the kind of person who is out there trying to acquire new sex partners in the midst of all this, and ask yourself: are they likely to follow DOH guidelines on safe ways to lick someone's butthole? Even if condoms were available?

DOH's other helpful advice includes the observation that rather than meeting your online partner, "video dates, sexting or chat rooms" might satisfy your lust for now. Responsible use of sex toys and pornography are also addressed - make sure you sing "Happy Birthday" twice while washing those dolls, please.

As a citizen, I am relieved to find that my tax dollars are going to support the development of such socially relevant memos. But I think they left a bit too much to the imagination. So for example, while oral sex itself is not a known source of transmission, how do you do it while staying six feet away from the breath of a partner who's 5'4"? This is much harder to figure out than the fact that jerking off is your safest option.

Furthermore, they failed to talk about socially responsible bondage and S&M sex during the crisis. Which is weird, because the motivations are greater than ever, and the possibilities seem endless. Rather than actually strangling the person you are now forced to deal with all day long, you could act out your aggressions without causing real harm. And we're already locked down, so a few chains and handcuffs will feel like a natural extension. DOH could have advised about the health consequences of trying to get what you want from your restrained partner by threatening them with a non-disinfected package of pasta, rather than the traditional whips and candle wax. Or offered guidance on how long viruses can survive on leather. Or how you can tell when someone might be having breathing difficulties unrelated to the ball gag they're wearing. I guess with all the panic they are just too tied up to cover this.

For more condomless fun and games this article in The New York Post, always an intelligent source for up-to-date information, discusses a variety of options for virtual gratification, including more free porn than ever before, and online socializing of various sorts. Women constituting a tiny percentage of online pornography users, I guess that part is mainly directed to individuals of my own persuasion. Which is not to say I ever waste my time viewing such inane nonsense: the acting is so bad, the scripts are ridiculous, the women and the men are both ugly (well, most of them; not all), the situations are abusive, and the fetishes are too sick to describe. I got all this information second-hand, of course.

"George, what are you doing down there in the basement?"
"Um... just checking if Costco has any delivery dates available."
"Why can't you do that up here and watch the kids while I'm working?"
"Oh, sure. I just didn't want to expose them to... too much screen time."
"You've been down there every day this week and haven't scheduled a single delivery."
"Yes, well...  it's hard. To find dates, I mean. For deliveries."
"The kids need lunch and a little bit more structure."
"I'm coming in a minute. Upstairs. Two minutes."
"Hey, it looks like our Whole Foods order from two weeks ago just arrived."
"Oh my god, I'm gonna have an orgasm!"

Whatever the truth is about the disappearance of rubbers, it may be that far from a harbinger of winter babies (lovingly nicknamed Baby Zoomers, Coronials or Quaranteens) we're looking at a pandemic of divorces (unlovingly nicknamed "covidivorces"). Hopefully not both, I might add. But there were plenty of reports that the divorce rate in Wuhan and elsewhere shot up.

So what will it be: love 'em? Or leave 'em? Are you suddenly beginning to think about the day when you are both retired and have no choice but to deal with each other minute by minute until death do you really part? Are you considering the idea that living alone in a one-room studio in Sheepshead Bay is not actually worse than constantly vacuuming snacks from under your loved one's couch pillow or being screamed at not to put the wet dishes on top of the dry ones? Or are you experiencing a renewal of that vital energy that drove you to the bedroom five times the day you moved in together? Have you rediscovered the fact that "bed" actually refers to any clear surface on which you can lay down a towel?

Don't feel any pressure to answer right now. You might want to wait a month or so and see if we are released for good behavior. But there's no need to wait longer than that, for both sex and divorce can be achieved online. True, there may be certain key features missing, like a warm body that is not "yourself", or a judge's signature.

For that reason among others, I suggest you consider the following solution: virtual playdates with your spouse or partner. Consider the advantages:

• You do it in separate rooms and stay out of each other's hair (so to speak)
• You can safely have your fun while the kids are watching a movie in the living room (just keep your voices down)
• You get to follow DOH guidelines on the safest sex partner
• You don't need any of those sold-out condoms (though for guys it could be neater)
• It might just save the expense of a covidivorce, or the even greater expense of a Quaranteen
• With a little practice you can check for Costco delivery dates while you play

Now aren't you glad you decided to read this blog?

Seder in Place

Why is this blog post different from all other blog posts? Other years we post either sitting or reclined, but this year we all of us post sheltered.

Passover has come and gone, at least for the less orthodox of us; we who don't first spend a week scrubbing the house of chametz, and then forsake bagels for matzoh for another week (or, god forbid, eight days, as some have it). One good thing about the coming of Pesach every year is that it reminds me the matzoh in the cabinet is now a year old and should probably be burned in lieu of the chametz.

In any case, two nights is about all I can handle of thanking god for his endless beneficence to the Jews, even in a good year. This year we had the additional irony of thanking him for his plagues.

I said, "Let's not do the plagues" when we got all the participants online. I was overruled by the Matriarch, who is 90 and therefore commands respect. She is hunkered down in her Delray Beach home with her 70-something brother and his wife and their dog, not exactly by mutual agreement - they were visiting her when it became unwise to travel back to Long Island, particularly for an elderly person with COPD. So the plagues were in. But the rabbis and their interpretive wisdom are still out, a decades-old tradition that will not soon be revised.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about then either you do not celebrate Passover, or you don't use the (in)famous Maxwell House Haggadah as a guidebook for the seder. It was all but universally used by American Jews from 1932 until maybe the 1960's, when some people started using peace-love-and-harmony Haggadahs, or modern language Haggadahs, or historically correct Haggadahs.

To all those Haggadahs my family said "Bah!" Not that we are especially conservative, either politically or Judaically. I think it's just the opposite: the venerable Haggadah, conceived as an advertising gimmick, is one of our few, tenuous links to tradition. Without it, our generally atheistic appreciation of Jewish custom would be on life support. Which, in the real world of today and the historical world of the Jewish diaspora, suggests a poor probability of positive outcomes.

So it's still Maxwell House, though Mom just offered the opinion that "we really should get one with updated language soon". Not to mention excising all that rabbinical wisdom. Inbetween the prayers and historical references, the authors of the Maxwell House classic thought it wise to insert what Rabbi Shmegegee said in 1473 regarding this or that fine point of meaning in the seder. We have religiously skipped over the rabbi paragraphs since I can remember, and it seemed particularly inappropriate to worry about them in a year when we are all, against most interpretive traditions, communicating via laptops and iPads during one of the holiest of Jewish holidays. (Try to buy something online from 47th St. Photo during any Jewish holiday or the Sabbath and you'll see what I mean.)

As for the plagues, I found it difficult to summon much enthusiasm for god's alleged visitation of plagues upon the Egyptians. Egypt has had a total of about 1800 confirmed cases and 135 deaths so far from COVID-19. New York State alone had 777 deaths in the 24 hour period before I started writing this. I guess the inference should be that god is fine with the Egyptians today, but with New York, not so much. Or, that plagues are not a good barometer of god's moral sentiments.

People in our extended family have been doing seders with the assistance of Skype or Zoom or whatever for a lot longer than the coronavirus has been around. Even the closer extended family is scattered to the four corners of the U.S., so parents have had their children participate remotely before. But now there are new conditions, which allow for new expressions of Passover merriment.

The number one novel idea this year is to show up for the video-seder with a face mask. Oi vay, you say. But a friend of mine recently questioned me as to whether there was really a virus going around - did I know that the symptoms of the so-called coronavirus are almost exactly the same as the symptoms of radiation poisoning? And couldn't it be that those 5G networks are what's causing all this suffering? For her, this meant there was no use in wearing a face mask. But is it much of a leap from this to the notion that one should at least wear a face mask when videoconferencing? Those CRT's used to be famously prone to emit harmful radiation, right? All the worse when operated over virus-like 5G networks. Zap.

For me, it was sufficient to complain about the mess I had to clean up after having all those guests. Although only my wife and daughter were physically on premises, it felt like I was making kneidlach and charoses for an entire family. Perhaps when they are actually all with us it feels to them like I am making it for three people? But I don't recall ever having to cut matzohballs in half to feed everyone. And as for the charoses, my impression is that if I didn't put wine in it there would be plenty left over.

Thanks to the near universality of those Maxwell House booklets, it was surprisingly easy to go around the table(s) reading the text where appropriate. If it seems a little disorienting that a weak Internet connection should suddenly cut someone off in the middle of thanking god for manna or plagues or just being a great guy, my answer is that if god would keep those connections stable for about an hour, two nights a year, we wouldn't have that problem.

But it was worth all the technical difficulties to hear my 6 year old daughter read the four questions, more or less handling unfamiliar words like "distinguished" and "unleavened" and "reclined", to the duly impressed remote ears of her grandmother, great aunt and uncle, uncle and two older half-siblings. Not to mention her proud Mom and Dad who went forth and multiplied, as it is said.

Less salutary was the contribution of Javi, aunt and uncle's Javapoo mutt. I believe it was just as my mother had embarked on a critical analysis of the Exodus when a series of shrieks suddenly emerged from behind the horizon of her countertop. I thought the voices of the dead had come to provide authenticity to the proceedings. Or someone over there had seen a mouse. But it was only Javi, protesting that he was in fact the youngest and should have read the four questions. I reminded him of the seven-year multiplier rule and he said, in a much more civil tone, "That's okay, Javapoos are used to suffering."

The rest of the seder was uneventful, but celebrating it with live telefeeds of Mom, my two older children, a brother and an aunt and uncle at once under these apocalyptic circumstances should count as some kind of miracle. So, though I stand less than impressed with god's historical protection of his "chosen" people (chosen for what, I ask - being roasted like a Paschal lamb?) I offer these short words of praise, in the spirit of Maxwell House:

Had he given us computers and not given us the Internet it would have been sufficient.
Had he given us the Internet but not given us videoconferencing it would have been sufficient.
Had he given us videoconferencing and not given us free programs like Facetime and Google Hangouts it would have been sufficient (though free is better).
Had he given us free videoconferencing programs but not given us a mostly stable Internet connection it would have been sufficient (that's okay, we're used to suffering).
Had he given us a stable Internet connection but not allowed us to take pictures of the text and send them to family members who didn't have it as the service was going on, it would have been sufficient, but very weird of him.
Had he done all that and not kept us all alive and well so we could use all these technical tchotchkes it would have been par for the course of our history - but thank the lord for small favors anyway!

And speaking  of said Lord and his prayers, this one probably captures the moment better than anything in the Passover service:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures: he leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul: he leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for you are with me; your rod and staff comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: you anoint my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

As we sat there kibbitzing and enjoying the company of those we love - as even in the midst of the crisis we had enough food and wine and matzoh meal - as we did not want, and did have our table prepared - I could not help hearing the echo of a different reality. What about those who are not talking about that walk, but taking it right now? What about the sirens in the background? What if one of those video images went dark? What if mine did?

It is always the case that some are dying while the rest of us, any of whom may for all we know die tomorrow, carry on as if death were no more than a distant tremor - eating, drinking, socializing, living while we have the chance. It is easy to put the others out of your mind when it is just the ongoing background noise of something we already know, the so-called human condition. But it's not so easy when so many of those nearby are suddenly and unexpectedly leaving us, without even the benefit of a warm hand on their shoulder, often intubated and unconscious, suffocating alone in their beds and headed for a refrigerator truck.

A thousand a day - in the Metropolitan area alone. It seemed unimaginable just a few weeks ago, as a mild winter began giving way to an early spring. Now it is Passover, and what can we say to them as we, the fortunate, go on to celebrate life, freedom, and what we hope will be a brighter future? All I can think of to say is that I hope you all had a chance to lie down in green pastures, sit by still waters, and walk the path of righteousness during your time here. We are never ready to say we are done - we always think about our time coming at some point in the distant future. What we have done is never enough, but it is something - and now it will have to be sufficient.

Lan Zhang (1969-2020): A Personal Tribute

Lan speaking at our wedding reception in 2008

A week ago I took a break from this blog to mourn the sudden loss of one of our family's closest friends, Lan Zhang. This post is part personal tribute, part memorial. Friend, writer, artist, curator...  I don't expect to do justice to Lan Zhang and her accomplishments or her importance to us in one blog post, but I will say what I can say, just as she did in her much more widely read and admired blog.

On the morning of March 27, for reasons not entirely clear, Lan left her home in Fort Lee, NJ, walked a few blocks, and within five minutes or so was struck and killed by a van as she crossed a major intersection. From what we know, Lan was in a pedestrian crossing, had the right of way and should have been in plain view. Yet as the driver made a left turn he struck her with enough impact that she expired at the scene a few minutes later. Her bereaved husband Michael had spoken to her just before she left, offering to walk with her, but she wanted to go alone. Within 15 minutes several policeman appeared at the door to convey the grim news. 

How much can slip away in a moment's time? The time it takes to drink a cup of coffee, check your email, or take a shower? Everything, it seems. As the entire world focused on a deadly new epidemic, a more common kind of hazard took the life of our friend at 51 years of age. (The newspaper and police reports incorrectly gave her age as 59 - how we wish she had even those eight more years to fill the world with her energetic and generous spirit.)
  
My wife, Hui, met Lan some 15 years ago, initially through her popular blog, whose title is rendered in English as "New York Lan Lan". (Sometimes it is translated as "New York Blue", because "lan" means "blue" in Mandarin.) On the blog Lan posted poetic personal observations about her life in and near New York City. Her writing, which unfortunately I can't read in the original Chinese, became very popular not only among Chinese women in the U.S. but in China as well, and has been published in a variety of media. 

Lan and friends with Hui at our ceremony

Through Lan, her blog and a WeChat group, Hui met other friends, and as the circle expanded, our social lives increasingly intersected with that of Lan and her friends. She and Michael frequently hosted gatherings at their home, as did other friends, and from Fort Lee to Fort Hamilton Parkway, Long Island to Old Greenwich, CT it was a moveable feast of homemade dumplings, mung bean jelly, roasted duck, hotpots and other Chinese cuisine in its endless variety. Children found each other in mansions with endless rooms and small homes with backyards to entertain themselves; husbands and boyfriends played guitars and drank Chinese liqueurs, and the women sat around the table eating and deciding the fate of the world.

Lan saw two generations of my children as they began to grow up, those from my previous marriage, who got to know her children, and my young daughter with Hui. Her welcoming and generous spirit came home to us repeatedly at our wedding. First we held the ceremony, on very short notice. Although Lan and Hui had known each other only for some 3-4 years, it was Lan who read out Hui's vows in Chinese (this was especially important for Hui's mother, who speaks only Mandarin). The reception was several months later and Lan spoke again (see the photo above). Many people follow the unwritten code of giving a wedding gift that at least covers the cost of seating them. Lan and Michael left an envelope on the table when they arrived, but then we saw Michael striding down the aisle toward us with a large box on his shoulder: a complete set of china. For the past week, as we have been mostly confined to our home, about once a day Hui looks at something we have, and then looks at me, and quietly says, "That's from Lan".

Lan and Michael at Yue Minjun exhibit,

Queens Museum of Art

But Lan was important to us not only because of her social circle and generosity, but also because of her role in the contemporary Chinese art community. Apart from being a popular writer, a talented web designer, and an innovator who used technology to further her artistic and literary imagination, Lan was an artist and an art curator. Time and again one or both of us would make a pilgrimage to some museum or Chelsea gallery to attend openings of shows she had curated, or to jointly visit exhibits of Asian artists with her. Her father had been an artist, and many of her friends are artists as well. Thus Lan brought us into frequent contact with the thriving contemporary Chinese art scene. 

Lan (back row, 4th from right) with other artists at an exhibit that she curated.

As a writer Lan may have reached a wider audience than some of the better known Chinese-American women who have recently published memoirs or autobiographical novels. I'm told that a recent series of essays, based on observations in the New York City subways, and another on the current epidemic, were read by hundreds of thousands of followers; I can safely say that that is many times the combined views of every blog post I have ever written. This literary memorial site gives a couple of examples of her writing; it's in Chinese but if you have an Android phone you can send it to your phone and use Google Translate to read it.

If Lan already seems like the definition of a Renaissance Woman, according to a biography in the memorial site just mentioned, she was also Vice President of the New York Chinese Writers association, and "a founder of (the) Sina Mingbo and WeChat public account 'Yixiangfang Literary City". The same source lists about a half dozen journals and other media that have published her works. Another site suggests that some of her work was about to be published as a book; I don't have any further information about that, but I will update this if I find any. 

Lan's bachelor's degree in China was in fashion design, and in the U.S. she obtained a Master's Degree in Electronic Media Design from the University of Missouri. She also studied at Parsons School of Design and Syracuse University. On her web site she says she is "using Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing methods to produce a range of computational comedy experiences, hoping to create an alternative genre within the American comedy landscape." I don't know how far she went with this project but it is a little mind-boggling that she even conceived of something like that. 

Fundraiser for earthquake victims

As if she needed additional credits, Lan also involved herself in philanthropic work. In 2008 we attended a fundraiser that she and Michael organized for the victims of the Great Sichuan Earthquake. I don't know the full extent of her later philanthropy but I know it didn't stop there. 

At the fundraising event, before modern smartphones (the iPhone debuted in 2007), before Facetime or Zoom (without which we would all be lost right now), Michael demonstrated a technology he had developed that allowed him to project a live video feed from China through his cellphone. Apparently, whether or not great minds think alike, they do attract. And equally great must be the loss when they are separated. Michael and I worked in adjacent buildings for a while, for different New York City agencies, and got to know each other much better during that time. Among the many things I learned about him, one that I admire most is his deep appreciation of the arts, which I'm sure helped cement the bond he had with Lan. He began his long business career working for photographer Milton Greene, famed for his portraits of Marilyn Monroe. I also have an association with a 20th century photographer, my uncle Harold Roth, so we had plenty to talk about on that subject alone. But Michael could offer a personal anecdote about a famous CEO or senator, chat about a Led Zeppelin concert and make insightful comments on a black and white art photograph - quite possibly in the same sentence. The two polymaths seemed like a natural couple; Michael averred that he proposed to her 15 minutes after they met. I spoke with him the day of the accident, but there is no way I could hope to find words that convey my sympathy. For a loss like that, ongoing friendship may be the only balm one can offer.

Lan's accomplishments stand in even greater relief when you consider that at the same time she was raising her two daughters, Ivy and Lucy, now in their 20's. Brilliant and artistic, they remain her living legacy. We have known them both since they were young children, and never expected to be grieving with them so soon, especially at something like this. Especially with another kind of terror bringing the world to a halt and turning lives upside down, it is quite a jolt to endure at their age. If there is any bright side it is that they have the love, support and good will of Lan's worldwide network of friends, as one can verify by clicking on the above link to their fundraising site.

It seems to be human nature that when disasters of any kind occur - 9/11, coronaviruses, or even a tragic traffic accident - we look for hidden messages, meanings, motivations. So the Lanosphere (she was that popular) is alive with theories. Did she go out that morning to take pictures of the George Washington Bridge, all but empty of traffic, to accompany her blog posts on the epidemic? Certainly that is possible - Fort Lee is, if you recall, the city that was intentionally brought to its knees a few years ago through the unannounced closing of GWB access routes by vindictive aides to then-Governor Chris Christie. (It helped derail his presidential campaign.) The sparse traffic on the bridge lanes today is certainly an unusual sight for local residents. But we will never know for sure if that's what she was up to. Did she walk out abruptly because she was angry about something? With a global epidemic that has cooped up couples fighting for personal space while suffering major financial stress, leading to a rash of what has been nicknamed "covidivorces", it wouldn't be unusual if there were issues at a time like this in a modest-sized household with four adults sharing the space.

What we can say for sure is that without the social and economic restrictions we are facing as we wait for the worst of the viral nightmare to pass, all our lives would be different, our routines would be more typical, and this tragedy might not have come to pass.

I can't think of a better way to end this tribute to Lan Zhang that to borrow once more the words of the poet whose name and words I have used in the masthead:

"And now my work is done: no wrath of Jove
nor fire, nor sword, nor time, which would erode
all things, has power to blot out this poem.
Now, when it wills, the fatal day (which has
only the body in its grasp) can end
my years, however long or short their span.
But, with the better part of me, I'll gain
a place that's higher than the stars: my name,
indelible, eternal, will remain."
                           Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book XV
                           (tr. Allen  Mandelbaum)