Pennywise … and compounded foolishness?

There is a large grate in the sidewalk by the corner of my apartment building. I stopped walking over it very early in my time living here because the metal covers are uneven and tripped me a few times. 

Not long after I stopped walking over it, I noticed that there’s something that makes unsettling noises down there. Sometimes it sounds like the clearing of a large, long, very phlegm-y throat. Sometimes it’s a deep swallow. Sometimes a gruff grumble. 

So yes, obviously, a monster lives down there. I mean, obviously. Some kin to Pennywise. And I was lucky that I only stumbled over the uneven grate because an actual trip and fall would clearly have made me easy prey.

I’ve heard the noises nearly every day of the years I’ve lived here. Until these last couple of months. The grate has been markedly silent.

Did the monster find a better lair? Did someone pour a bus-load of rat poison down there to end the monster’s reign? No clue.

This morning I left for work late. Late enough that a full work crew had not only set up across the full intersection at my corner but already dug up a lane-wide rectangle in the street and piled a shipment of giant yellow pipes along one side of the road. The traffic light was out and a somber-faced crewman was in the middle of the street with a sign that said “slow,” drowsily directing traffic, occasionally pointing at a larger sign at the curb that read, “SHARE THE ROAD” (with each other, with the work crew, with the monster?).

The monster’s grate was covered in pylons and the full corner was cordoned off so that I had to cross mid-block in order to walk down to the subway. 

So … is the city finally seeing about the monster? Are they rooting it out or bringing a large-animal vet to find out why it’s gone quiet and tend it? Are they doing an elaborate catch-and-release so they can lay all the new, yellow pipe? Where will they release it? What makes a good replacement home for a sewer monster? Are they setting motion an “Incredible Journey” story that will see the monster beating all odds and finding its way back to its original home?

(Yes, I’m silly. But I’ve been thinking about the monster a lot lately, almost missing those creepy sounds from underground in these months of silence. Seeing all that activity in the street this morning made this flight of fancy inevitable.)

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Fastening My Seatbelts

Because this ride is clearly going to be much bumpier than I’d anticipated. Happy start to National Poetry Month, everyone! Welcome to my April 1st post … which has no poem.

Sigh.

Yes, so … what had happened was … I discovered that ghazal’s are trickier than I’d imagined. I mean, every form I’ve tried for my April poetry excursion has been trickier than I’d thought it would be … but learning more about the ghazal and then sitting down and trying to actually write one? Yes, that’s proved to be beyond me for tonight.

I’ll keep at it and catch up this missed day along the way between now and the 30th, but this is a frustrating start.

To get us all on the same page, here’s the Poetry Foundation’s description of a ghazal:

Originally an Arabic verse form dealing with loss and romantic love, medieval Persian poets embraced the ghazal, eventually making it their own. Consisting of syntactically and grammatically complete couplets, the form also has an intricate rhyme scheme. Each couplet ends on the same word or phrase (the radif), and is preceded by the couplet’s rhyming word (the qafia, which appears twice in the first couplet). The last couplet includes a proper name, often of the poet’s. In the Persian tradition, each couplet was of the same meter and length, and the subject matter included both erotic longing and religious belief or mysticism.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/ghazal

The rhyme scheme described here is actually different from what I thought I’d be working with this month, and I’ve run aground on it over and over again as I tried to write tonight. Lesson one: don’t leave writing your poem until 10pm.

The Poetry Foundation offers up examples of the ghazal, and I really liked “Tonight” by Agha Shahid Ali … and found “Even the Rain,” another beauty from Ali, on the Academy of American Poets site. And, while these poems make more that much more interested in this form, they also made the form seem that much more challenging to take on. Lesson two: don’t study gorgeous examples immediately before trying to scratch and scrabble your way through a first draft.

And so we begin.

Yes, totally fine.

How’s my pandemic going? The tl;dr? I have become the human embodiment of that crazy-eyed cartoon dog in the flaming room. Fine. Totally, totally fine.

Let the list below be more than an iceberg-tip of an answer. I’ve reached the phase of the pandemic where …

• I have placed my first Drizly order.
• I started planning my second Drizly order before I uncorked the first bottle of the first order.
• I have given up all the I’m-stuck-at-home-but-I’m-totally-handling-this-lockdown-like-a-boss things I’d kept up for the whole of last year.
• I am no longer comforted by chocolate.
• I have added more than a dozen fountain pens to my already outsized collection.
• With the exception of graphic novels, I have gone all-audio-books-all-the-time. The attention and energy required to hold a book, to turn page after page has become far too much.
• I have proven to myself that yes, I can eat a quart of ice cream in a day … or, to be most exact: I can eat two of the no-longer-a-full-pint containers that ice cream makers sell now and charge more for than they used to charge for a pint and act as if we won’t notice the difference.
• I have purchased not one, not two … but four manual typewriters.
• I have binged every episode of Forged in Fire on Netflix. Yes, the reality show/competition for blacksmiths. And that’s because I’d already gone through both seasons of Blown Away, the glass-blowing reality show/competition.

Again, to be most exact: Forged in Fire is about bladesmithing. The contestants spend all of their time making various knives, spears and other killing tools, the testing of their weapons involves a lot of fake blood and a judge who grins and offers the reassurance that their tools, “will kill.” It’s a weird-ass show. And I have already searched “blacksmith training near me” and found two different forges that offer classes. I don’t need a new craft, a new hobby. And certainly not one that could cause serious bodily harm. But I also need skills to carry into the post-apocalypse that are more useful than being the crotchety old lady shouting for kids to get off her lawn.

We’re closing in on a year of lockdown. It’s hard to believe. It feels both longer and shorter, feels both impossible and obvious. And realizing that the one-year mark is about to come up also made me realize that March is practically here, which means back-to-back months of daily blogging for Slice of Life and National Poetry Month. When I’ve been doing almost no writing for a year. It has taken me over an hour to scrape this bit of fluff together. And I’m supposed to post 61 days in a row? Wishing me luck!

Notes from a Slide into Totalitarianism

The snatch-and-detain situation in Portland terrifies me. This practice run for terrorizing Americans and seizing power is playing out in real time on our social media and in the news.

If the US had been invaded by a powerful enemy and was now under siege, I would expect to hear stories like the ones coming out of Portland. But, then, I shouldn’t be surprised because that is exactly what has happened. The US has been invaded by a powerful enemy … they just happen to be the ruling party in Washington. Caligula and his masters and minions are taking what little is left of our democracy and grinding it under their heels. Well, not really, though. They’re far too weak to do the grinding. They are happy to sit back and let the military do it for them.

Unidentifiable military police are disappearing people off the streets of an American city … and we all just go on with our days — place another Amazon order, wonder if the Key Food has toilet paper, hope we can get to the bakery before the baguettes sell out.

Not that I have any kind of idea about what to do. Yes, write to my senators, post rants on FB, rock myself to sleep in fear … beyond that, I’m at a loss. What can I do?

Portland is just a test run, a dress rehearsal. There are, as I see it, multiple goals:

• See if Caligula can get away with laying siege to a city within our borders.
• See if this terrorism succeeds in shutting down protests.
• See how easily people can be swept away … and what it would take to sweep up large numbers of people.
• Make people think twice before speaking out about anything.
• Testing the will/strength/capacity of the opposition party and the courts to see how the situation might play out in other cities, in November.

Is there anyone who doesn’t think Caligula has an encyclopedia of dictators in the residence … or, well, board books with one brightly-colored tome for each despot? He’s clearly been captivated by the volume on Pinochet.

I don’t think I’ve ever kidded myself that the US is the “more perfect union” the founders dreamed of in the Constitution’s Preamble, but I never thought we’d be here, either. Never thought I’d have to think seriously about dictatorial rule in this democratic republic I call home.

I’m puzzled by one thing, though. How are the military police okay with carrying out these orders? How are they not standing in support of the freedoms we’re all supposed to enjoy, the freedoms they’re supposed to have enlisted to uphold? How are they so comfortable and casual about enacting violence on their countrymen? How is this possible?

I am, actually, this naive. Yes, it turns out that I am. I wouldn’t have thought it so, but here I am.

Who fights for us, the fools like me who thought we had a firmer grasp on how things could work in this country? Who fights for us if the people who signed up to defend the country are now actively fighting against us?

Turns out, I’m even more naive than I just realized. After federal law enforcement attacked the BLM protesters in Lafayette Square in June, General Mark Milley acknowledged that he should have participated. And lots of folks saw that as a signal that we could count on Milley to side with the country and not the titular head of the country. I let myself be lulled, figured all those people who make a living analyzing this stuff must know what they’re talking about. And Mark Esper said some words, and those same thinkers papered those words over top of Milley’s statement and said we should all feel a little bit of optimism.

And I grabbed onto that optimism. So naive.

And here we are, on the knife’s edge, watching people who could so easily be any one of us grabbed off the street, bundled into unmarked vehicles and taken away.

As I said, Portland is a dress rehearsal. Not a full dress rehearsal, though. This is a first run, a chance to see how everyone reacts. The disappeared have been released (so far as we know), and they have mostly been unharmed. In the next run-through, there will be far more violence so that Caligula can see how we respond to that threat. And then, in the full dress rehearsal, we’ll see the kinds of for-real disappearances the people of Chile could tell us stories about. Where will the mothers of the disappeared gather in this country? Who will create the American version of Madres de Plaza de Mayo?

Yes, yes, yes. Maybe you’re thinking I’ve gone from dangerously naive to histrionic. But have I? Have I really? Does what’s being done in Portland seem like business as usual to you?

And I sit here, choking on my impotence. Because, really, what do we do? I have been able, until now, to convince myself that my pen is my answer, my weapon in this fight. But what can my pen do for me now? My minuscule readership isn’t likely to mobilize and take on the anonymous troops in Portland, and I wouldn’t want them to. But there has to be more I or any of us can do other than look on in horror.

Clean up in aisle two …

I’ve been working from home. I’ve been putting together distance learning plans. I’ve been listening to the news. I’ve been talking about the pandemic. I’ve been looking at articles about doomsday hoarders. I’ve been looking at people’s pics of the chaos in their stores. I’ve been seeing my neighbors swaddled in face masks and blue nitrile gloves.

What I’m saying is that I haven’t been asleep. I’ve been fully aware of the state we’re in.

But … It seems I wasn’t really aware, wasn’t really paying attention, not real attention.

Today when I took a break for lunch (I finally remembered to take a break for lunch!), I thought, “Oh, let me just place a grocery order.” I’m not out of anything, just figured I’d set up a delivery for early next week so I wouldn’t have to think about it.

(And yes, I’m a person who gets her groceries delivered. Neither of my “neighborhood” grocery stores is in walking distance of my house, and the cost of getting Peapod to come to my door is about the same as getting a cab home from either market. I don’t think I would have become a gets-her-groceries-delivered person if I hadn’t torn my rotator cuff in late 2017. Rolling into 2018 not being able to use my left arm for anything and knowing I was going to be even less able in the immediate aftermath of the fix-it-up surgery I had planned was what introduced me to Peapod in the first place. I’ve been a devotee ever since.)

Yeah, so I went on the Peapod site. There’s a pop-up message warning of diminished delivery options and the new COVID-conscious ability to have “contact-less delivery” and what-all. I clicked past it and filled my cart. Then I went to check out.

…

…

…

And discovered that there are no delivery days or times available before some time in April.

WTF?

Yes, every delivery slot was sold out, and the customer service line is down because everyone’s been sent home to shelter in place.

Oh.

Oh, you mean all this pandemic stuff is impacting my life, too? Really? Oh.

Yes, I am this ridiculous. Apparently.

 

I finished working around 6 tonight and figured I go to my favorite of the two stores in my area. I took a cab because … well, because I’m obviously a pampered little so-and-so. The driver and I talked about what his work week has been like — awful, hardly any fares 😦 — and then I went into the store … to find it almost completely picked-over bare.

I didn’t take pictures because we’ve all seen the pictures. I mean, I’ve seen the pictures. I’ve talked about the pictures. But I’d also been to the store as recently as last Friday, and the store was totally full of food, was totally fine. What a difference a week makes.

I kept wheeling my cart through the aisles, looking, thinking surely I’d find some little something to bring home. And yes, I did find a few things to bring home. But not the things I had on my shopping list. No yellow or orange peppers, no bananas, no grapefruit, no honey-wheat pretzel twists, no hummus, no Chobani Key Lime Crumble yogurt, no, no, no, no. no.

(Don’t be alarmed: my house is full of food. Full. You know, of food I actually have to put some effort into preparing, as opposed to food I can just unpackage and eat. I’ll be just fine.)

But, yeah. In the last few days, the craziness came right up to my door and swept past me in a tidal wave, and I was so busy navel gazing that I didn’t notice.

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It’s March, which means it’s time for the
13th annual Slice of Life Story Challenge!
Curious? Head on over to Two Writing Teachers
and see what the rest of this year’s slicers are up to!