Sun, Apr 12, 2020
Read in 3 minutes
From the United States
I hear my neighbors having sex again… our bedrooms are adjacent. They have sex in the afternoon and evening before they sleep. I had to move the desk from my bedroom to the living room – talk about a sad distraction for an alone man restricted to his apartment during a widespread quarantine. It’s a better spot for my desk any way… I look out the window to a mountain ridge in the distance. It’s a big window that faces the sun in the morning… the plants love it. A pothos plant hangs above me… a jade, aloe and coffee plant are on the window sill. I have two dozen little cabbage sprouts in egg cartons there too… started germinating them a few weeks before the suggested timing for the zone here (which is in a somewhat rural part of the country). I wanted some company… even though they don’t speak too much; obviously he didn’t mean it literally, but Mark Twain said “cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.”
I dropped the SCOBY in sweet tea I brewed yesterday… have homemade kombucha to look forward to… I’m thinking about putting the sprouts in cans so the roots can continue to grow while indoors. I have some empty beer cans in the bin… drank Coors Banquet beer during a virtual chat with college friends this past Friday night. Cabbage is a lot better than cauliflower any way (in my opinion). I enjoyed the chat with my cauliflower college friends… but it’s been a long month of computer screen meetings. I think of Rad Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 with the wife so immersed in her digital community and her emotionally removed husband. Prior to starting up a graduate school program, I wanted to read “all” the classics by the time I turned 30… or get through as many as possible. Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, 1984 – I liked the dystopia novels. This is a pretty dystopian situation we’re living through… approaching two million confirmed cases in the world with a death toll that passed 100,000 last week. Additionally, despite virtual work rooms and class rooms and virtual social conversations, it’s been a lonely experience… at least for me. In dystopian novels, the societal developments portrayed seem permanent… the main character has an epiphany, or slowly starts to realize the flaws in their society… and then they do what they can to burn it down. I hope this is temporary and I really believe it will be… but when will it be over? Will we ease into our pre-coronavirus norm in June like we ease into the cold water of the Atlantic Ocean in early summer? Anyway, it’s time to rest – I let out a fart while lying in bed. I wonder if the neighbors think: that guy always farts before bed and in the morning after breakfast.