After Concluding The Plague
By ice rivers
- 490 reads
Not only do we have an opportunity to explore the treasures of our own submerged galleons but we have time to appreciate and collect the diamonds of others that have been present but undiscovered, some for decades and some for centuries.
In other words, we have time to write and time to read and time to write about our reading and read about our writing. In the midst of our current international voluntary mitigation, ABC tales serves as a lighthouse and a gathering place.
So today I read and write about my reading.
Last December when we still had all the usual distractions of non-quarantined life, I became obsessed with reading Camus. Weirdly enough, I began my study with The Plague. Little did I know that I was getting a preview of the oncoming pandemic. After concluding The Plague, I moved to another galleon that had somehow avoided my reconnoiter....Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
While being overwelmed by the ferocious romance and magical realism of Marquez, I heard for the first time rumblings coming from China and began to imagine the claustrophoboc quarantine of The Plague.
At the end of February before the virus had spread to the United States. I came down with a suffocating something. I struggled with that something for a couple of weeks before writing about it in my blog on March 12th. What follows is my blog entry for that day.....
If I didn't/don't have the virus than I came/come real close. I'vd been sniffling, coughing, malaising and sleeping for almost two weeks now. Maybe I got lucky and it was/is only pneumonia cuz only pneumonia knows the way I feel tonight. I got flu shots and pnuemonia shots at the beginning of the season so whatever I had/have could have been worse without those shots which is a frightening thought.
I don't think it's the Corona because I got it before it arrived in the US and I don't get out much around here as a recluse I'm pretty much on a self-imposed quarantine other than an occasional trip to the movies. The last movie we saw was The Invisible Man. It was out of focus and I didn't even have the energy to demand my money back.
So since I didn't come in contact with many people other than a birthday party for a one year old which was attended by several sales people who fly all over the country for meetings (Ah HA), I don't know how this shit could be Corona although North Carolina is now in a state of emergency.
Whatever it is, it's getting better (can't get much worse), the coughing has diminished and the darkness has lifted at least to the extent that I can get back to work here at the keyboard which is a good thing.
Hopefully, next time that I write, I'll be back at fuller strength even though we early Boomers look like we're caught in the crosshairs of yet another catastrophe.
I wrote that less than a week ago, in another time altogether. Today, in real time, it's St. Patrick's Day. When I first started feeling sick at the end of February, we had imagined a festive day at our local Celtic bar which was planning a week of festivities, music, dancing, singing, drinking, storytelling all things Irish.
Today, again in "real"time", I sit and type about the joys of reading and writing. Whatever illness that I have/had has continued to subside and it's clear that I'm getting better and feeling stronger every day.
I have the suspicion that a flu epidemic is raging beneath the headlines of the Corona virus and is getting lost in the panic. The under-reported flu epidemic may well be weakening the respiratory systems of old cats like me in anticipation of the old one two delivered by the ensuing Corona but what do I know.
All I know is that I'm not goin' anywhere but here and here's a pretty good place to go when I'm not upstairs figuring out what to read next and then reading whatever I figured out what to read and then writing about how whatever I read has impacted my life and the future of the world.
Maybe for the good of civilization, I should just stick with porn.
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we look for reason when there
we look for reason when there's none. We look for widom, but it's sold out. Back to writing. That's a safe place.
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