Day 243 of Staying the Fuck Inside
Has it been this long?
It’s been this long.
Not exactly how I’d been planning to spend the bulk of my 50th year here, but whatcha gonna do?
COVID cases are rising. Deaths are rising. They told us this would happen, and on a level, I’m not surprised. Disappointed, perhaps, in a number of things and people, but not surprised. The number of cases in our zip code have doubled since I last looked.
I don’t look every day, anymore.
I’m not sure if this is a sign that I’ve “had enough” or a sign of “acceptance” or “new normal”, but if checking numbers ever day made me feel ghoulish, this makes me feel worse, in a way, like I’ve given up, or I no longer care. Neither of those, is actually the case.
I am reminded of Margot’s poem from one of my favorite Ray Bradbury stories – All Summer in a Day.
I think the sun is a flower,
That blooms for just one hour.
That’s what this feels like now, to me. Except I don’t know when we’ll have that moment of sun.
One of the weird things about living in an area and working in an industry that are dependent on agriculture is that you begin to shift your perception of time to a more seasonal model. I may have written about this before, but time is now a flat circle, as Rust Cohle once observed, and I’ll probably end up repeating myself a number of times before this is all over.
Time went from days/weeks/months, to vintages, comprised of Bud Break, Veraison, Harvest, Dormancy, and Pruning.
Now I find the measurement of time to be a bit more primal – light/dark.
The 2020 vintage is over, pretty much.
We will be hunkering down like we did at the beginning of this madness, back in March. I expect our hunting and gathering expeditions will be more dependent on delivery options. Cases are on the rise. Plus there’s the flu to contend with. And seasonal colds and allergies. And I really don’t feel like us all sitting around playing “is it/isn’t it?” each time one of us gets a symptom of something. Yes, we’re still wearing masks and latex gloves. Yes, we’re still religiously wiping anything down that comes into the house (whether or not it’s actually necessary – it’s ritual, now), and yes, we’re washing our hands, and keeping social distance.
Fall and winter seem like a good time to shelter in place, if not hibernate. Other animals do it. Grapes do it. We’ll do it.
Maybe the Spring will come with better news.