lxforever

“Our bones do blow away / in pink light / and in pink light we found each other / in the spring dripping with flowers / now in wind filled with human remains / the petals won’t stop blowing / with each setting sun asking / could there be another spring?”

-Phil Elverum & Julia Doiron / Mount Eerie, Pink Light

The news is there, but you’re not worried; you just didn’t know. Making cakes just for fun, making jokes about sneezes, it all seemed so harmless. You’re in a cheap Dells hotel with bare floors but the kids don’t care, doing handstands against the bed and throwing plastic balls at each other, cruising the lazy river and playing arcade games, washing hands, wash your hands, WASH YOUR HANDS!, don’t touch your face, but so far this is so far away, so we’re here riding rides and collecting tickets and trying the broken bumper cars again. Coffee and waffles by the river, beer and Jenga by painted bus-cars become food-trucks, jammed in a waterpark with hundreds of people, picking up dinner from a crowded bar…it was such a relief and now seems so sick. But we didn’t know, it was hardly March.

Going to give blood, going to happy hour, going to lunch…joking about how it’s the last time, going to standup to see faces because “it might be the last”…sanitizer tagged on your bag, telling folks to stay 6 feet away. Going to brunch?, no, going to the gymnastics meet?, definitely not, why not? (why not?! I wonder, exasperated, don’t you watch the news??), then the meet is closed to fans, then it’s canceled, then championships the whole season the whole seasons canceled. Olympics delayed, Twins bus turns around as it approaches Ft. Myers, Jazz game called off worryingly seconds before it began, touching microphones…no fans at March Madness, forget March Madness, forget anything, it’s all over. Worrying fear, panic edging in, breaking news every day, every hour, every minute is different.

“Why are we even here?” Doing all the right things, but the right things feel so weird, boxing up cables and keyboards and monitors, one early Thursday morning trip the store before things got out of hand, driving out of the parking lot for the last time with the whole lot of work-life shoved in the back. Scant workout class, then a panicky one, panicking while hearing breath, then cut it in half, then cut it to nothing at not at all; empty halls, sparse streets, messages with a teacher worried about her own family, school finally called off, stores finally closing, malls shut down bars shut down gyms and gatherings and events shut down everything SHUT DOWN, shut it down, cancel everything, canceling everything, doing the right things but it feels so weird. Never alone at home, apart together, Zooms and FaceTimes and digital media and Skype and screens. Gris and Blood of the Dragon and other doomsday music. And the worst is yet to come. There just aren’t enough masks and there just isn’t enough.

March.

EDIT: Closing comments on this b/c so much spam OH MY