Five Days In August, In The Year Of Our Pandemic
A Zuihitsu.
Wednesday
Tiny pixelated alien faces — some toothy, some mouthless — pace about on my computer screen. Harvesting minerals, gases. Splattering in death, attacking and defending bases. They are actually powered by 1’s and 0’s, decades-old video game running on my three-year-old laptop. Actually actually they are powered by wind generated by atmospheric and planetary forces and photovoltaic conversion of light from our local star. And yes, harvested gases.
Thursday
I thought for a moment yesterday was Tuesday and today was Wednesday.
I jogged this morning for a mile — the first time in two weeks — because the Air Quality Index finally dipped below 60, after days in the hundreds. We saw blue sky! A sight because deathly yellows, duns, and filtered-red light had been bathing our land. The smell of vegetal combustion from tens of miles away seeping through the ill-fitted windows of this century-old house. Like how Laphroaig and other Islay whiskies are smoky, I taste the air in my nasopharynx with each breath on those worst-days. Indoors.
There wasn’t as much ash layered on my car this morning, compared to Tuesday.
Friday
Journalist friends and I catching up tonight via Google Meet. We unconsciously calendered it as “Zoom hangout” — realized, and laughed. I gasped — by chance we took to Twitter to track down a joke and that’s when I saw the trending headline: Chadwick Boseman dies, aged 43. Colon cancer, four years later. I quickly message my brothers via Messenger ahead of our weekly video game night. We sighed.
I turn 40 this year. What Greek chorus judges our own unfinished lives?
Saturday
The smoke returned overnight to the Valley but this time from the north. Spin the compass needle right now and you’ll find a fire somewhere.
Lightning have consequences.
Sunday
My brother — my actual actual brother — posted on social media photos of his Sunday outing in a green-wetted arboretum I’ve seen in movies and my childhood. As I thumb-swipe through the gallery I see my parents whom I’ve not spoken to in years. A selfie three that reminded me of one of those gauche pharmaceutical commercials on TV where you are missing from the family portrait. But I am.
A choice — sparked then by thunderheads of depressive logic — now decades-old anguish and anger smoke and smolder still. 35% contained.
Lightning have consequences.
Sickness and death have filled this week to the brim against a year already so. The scent and taste and heat of a memory and place in time — you can feel these vapours seep uncontrollably when I ask you to think of one, no? Triggered. Amines and ions zipping down the detcord, explosively.
It’s a wonder how we all keep it together — fuses and wires twisted and tangled and mangled. Pacing about. Harvesting hope.
