The Clothes Make the Man, Woman, Etc.

"Let's play dress-up," I told myself, in words not so foppish or dandy. Home alone, I was not sure anyone was listening.

"I'm tired of nothing more fancy or formal than jeans, T-shirts (long- or short-sleeved), sweaters, casual summer shoes in winter, matching or unmatching socks, deodorant-off days, pajama bottoms off-screen from the Zoom camera, and the absence of mouthwash that would have played a supporting role in any 'normal' 3D encounter." 

Those were not my exact words. Hardly. (And what difference would it make? I was the only one here, talkin' to me is who I was talkin' to, to paraphrase Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver.") Besides, the sentence in my head was more meandering, sloppy, zig-zag, and self-referential, if you can picture that in your ears. Imagine a locution more or less halfway from the first sentence above to the second.

Why get dolled up? anyone would ask. To break up the monotonous habits of quarantine, isolation, or solitude during the coronavirus pandemic. This is not original. You hear people every day referring to "Groundhog Day," the movie. (Coincidentally, today, as I write this, it is Groundhog Day.) The Groundhog Day-ness of these days stems from the ceaseless repetition of customs and practices that no one observes or feels the effects of, except for yourself. These hamster-wheel marathons of déjà vu have become a shared code, a wordless nodding understanding, even if such recognition is only to yourself. Crazy, right? Will this sound crazier in years hence, assuming, Deo volente, that we get to the "years hence"?

So I got dressed up. I pretended I had an office to go to. Before leaving the apartment, I sprayed onto my neck an evanescent mist of Tom Ford Ombré Leather, because I like it, hope others do as well, and as a test for and a spur toward reacquiring my sense of smell post-Covid.

Again, this is not unique or singular in any way.

Is human dignity at the root of all this? I have a picture of my dad in a hospital bed, New Year's, 1958, when he nearly died of bleeding ulcers. I see shaving cream, a mirror, and the long single blade he used. Was he shaving himself, or was someone, one of his brothers, performing the kindly deed? And I see the same sort of image, with a more modern twin blade, of my dear friend Doug Sullivan in 2005. He would die a few days later. My mom, at a nursing home which she would never leave, became buoyant and brighter when the on-site hairdresser "did" Mom's hair. Whether it was cut or permed, it gave her a bounce, like a shot of espresso. The simple act of my combing her ever-matted bed-head hair, best as I could with her rake comb, yielded heart-breaking gratitude. A few days before my mother died, at 102, one of my daughters polished (painted? "did"; I don't know the technical term) her grandmother's nails. It elicited childlike pride and delight. Mom wasn't going anywhere. We knew the end was near, but uncertain as to exactly when, of course. I have a photo in my phone of her ancient, papery hand with its freshly done nails resting in my hand in her last hours.

Human dignity.

But that wasn't the primary motivation for me as I donned a blue dress shirt, a pale blue tie decorated with pink and lavender blossoms, a dark tweed sportcoat, olive-gray dress pants, and brown dress shoes (despite snow on the ground). I did not get an A+ in Proper Matching. Although the temperature was in the thirties, I wore no overcoat.

I stopped at Salt City Coffee to grab a cup to go and to visually strut and brag to Gabi, my barista-friend. She was not working.

No matter.

I swaggered back to my car as the boulevardier I have declared myself to be on my "business" card. Let's throw in "jaunty."

I carried this élan with me when I went to Spectrum to sign up with them and get a new iPhone. I kept my costume on when I went home and participated in a Zoom meeting that evening.

Outside in? Or inside out?

For me, the driving force was to "act as if." If the wearing of my uniform managed to lift me out of a rut, to raise me out of any lingering doldrums, all the better. In this unscientific experiment, I wanted to see if I could "act myself into a new way of thinking," as the saying goes. Although I won't be writing a peer-reviewed paper on my qualitative or quantitive (if that were possible) findings, I can report anecdotal evidence.

The episode planted seeds for future anecdotes that will surely be reviewed by peers, and others. Early drafts are positive.

cardboard ghosts of future past

Back in the old days, before cardboard cutouts depicted demographically apportioned faces, before stone-still, silent, opaque audience members dressed for the occasion (sports, symphonies, operas, bullfights), actual people were in the seats, stands, arenas, galleries. Can you believe it? In those days, people gathered en masse, in the flesh, prey to each other's coughs and sneezes, victims of unwittingly and unwillingly shared particulate matter. Vulnerable to any stranger's invisible or visible imprint. In the olfactory wake of a curnucopia of scents: body odor, body scent, soap, sweat, perfume, eau de toilette, cologne, and a gazillion unnamed human animal exhalations and excretions. Are you taking all this down? Believe it or not, in those days people thronged and congregated: in bars, churches, pubs, classrooms, assemblies, rallies, union halls, corridors of government, conclaves of commerce. Now, as you know, in every instance, such breathing, pulsing crowds (and individuals) have now been displaced by cardboard simulacra, two-dimensional facsimiles of mute stillness. You don't remember this? Of course not. It was before your time. It was before grim and horrid circumstances forced a consensus of care and protection: social distancing, masks, sanitary measures, disinfection. When these efforts failed, people endured lockdowns, shutdowns, closeouts, wall-offs, barrier-bastions, sealant seizing, communal-closeting, superquarantining. New words were invented to describe new fortifications. But it was too late. The damage had been done. The viral wildfires had, well, gone viral. Those who had mocked the seriousness of it all, those who attributed it to a political hoax or a foreign scheme were in the front lines of failure. They were among the legions to succumb first. But not all of them, not all the disbelievers fell to cruel fate and cold reality. Some escaped. Some went into exile, their whereabouts still unknown. However, the masses had no such escape hatch. Instead, they made the best of a novel way of living, three-dimensional forms floating in and around their cardboard fellow citizens. They learned to befriend the cutouts. They even importuned upon the cutouts to imitate them, to serve as substitutes, ersatz personalities, avatars. In this way, large numbers of the Three Dimensionals found gainful employment -- such as it was -- as designers, painters, artists, portraitists, fabricators, shippers. And so the old days became the new days, and everyone forgot about the old days. That is why I wrote this letter to you, my grandchildren.

curbside pickup

In the old days, in the days before the epidemic became a pandemic, when they innocently strolled boulevards, shook hands, hugged, and sneezed or coughed with abandon, curbside pickups were reserved for nefarious exchanges on streets with no lights, beyond the surveillance cameras, beyond the arms of the law and conventional decency. Unlike during the coronavirus age, curbside pickups were not advertised with lawn signs. Retail merchants were discreet; they mumbled. They didn't advertise curbside pickups by boasts and neon. The demimonde was a subterranean circus in the old days, secret and raucous. It's private culture made its entreaties all the more alluring. But when curbside pickups went mainstream the sizzle fizzled. What fun is a curbside pickup that is all aboveground, on the up and up, family-oriented, and sanctioned by all authorities, federal, state, and local? Curbside pickups became so legit as to garner praise from politicos for feeding the economic engine. Where was the praise when the economic engine was steaming ahead at full throttle on Demimonde Drive, no speed limit, no red lights? Why was the civic championing muted despite a rampaging-rapids revenue stream? They know why: pride, respect, decency. They wanted to keep the curbside pickups discreet, charming, and wink-winkable. Those days are gone, perhaps forever. The signs said Call Ahead. Curbside Pickups Only. Stay in Your Car. The cars lined up. A parade. A festive flotilla. What took so long?

Broken Windows and Silver Doorknobs

Bad neighborhood. Sketchy. Rough area. Borderline. Ghetto. Have you heard any of these descriptions, however offensive they may strike you? Have you heard either more negative terms or their euphemistic replacements?

Come, take a walk with me.

No. Right now. Don't be afraid.

Observe this block. Schuyler Street. Take in the parade of two-story, two-family houses, built in the 1920s and '30s. Lawns manicured, adorned with daffodils, mulch, shrubs, trees. No litter. Structures not thirsting for paint or carpentry. Across the street, much the same: different architectural styles, smaller, more modest. Up the block, historic Myrtle Hill Cemetery. Graves dating to the 1800s, including that of a Civil War Congressional Medal of Honor recipient. Several blocks distant, over on Milton Avenue, a house overrun by fallen maple limbs and uncut grass, by weeds, a house choked by its longtime neglect, its metal fence interweaved by sprawling hedge branches, an empty pack of Newport 100s, a discarded Brisk ice tea, a crumpled invoice for car repair, a lone latex glove. An official notice of condemnation posted on a window and door. Blue recycle bins, tires, broken trikes, and split-open trash bags on Herkimer and Emerson. And up the hill, on Pharis Street, overlooking city and suburbs, a pristine lawn with a sign warning against having your dog use the lawn as a private bathroom, in front of a pristine Arts and Crafts bungalow freshly painted yellow, brown, and black, with a shock of red on the door.

Care and neglect coexisting. Pride and privation. Gain and loss. A fabric of multicolored threads and textures, sewn and patched, stitched and shored up. Some more than others, some less, some not at all.

Let's walk some more, keep pace, stretch your stride, down the hill, toward the creek. Oh, you'd rather not, this is a "bad neighborhood"? Be brave. Suck it up. Trust me. Really.

True, that broken, rusted pickup in the driveway looks unsavory, so does the mosaic of tossed Burger King wrappers and soda cups. An eyesore. It makes my eyes sore.

But look across the street, that Victorian painted lady, emerald and cream with surprises of vermilion. Do you see its new siding, every storm window sparkling new, the shiny metal roof? The rebuilt porch? That house could pass for brand-new if you didn't know better.

I am sure this is obvious, but I can't help noting it: we are not dodging bullets, street-corner hustlers do not catch our eye, wondering if we covet their gaze and proffered wares.

Form your own conclusions, as you will. 

In my Age of Coronavirus walks, the gods and goddesses of surprise have been my tour guides.

Surprise, surprise.

If we look for broken windows, they appear. If we search for silver doorknobs, we find them.

p.s. Ever hear the expression "my mind is a bad neighborhood"? (It's popular in wellness and recovery circles and can possibly be traced to an Anne Lamott quotation, but its provenance is uncertain.) As with the physical neighborhoods described above, be careful what you look for. As Leonard Cohen suggested, "look among the garbage and the flowers." You never know what you will find.

20QQs

Twenty quarantine questions (20QQs) from a self-isolating, elderly, single, non-roommated, non-petted, healthy white male during the Time of Coronavirus (TOC) .

1. Should I get out of bed?
2. Might I stay under the covers for a full 24 hours?
3. Will I brush my teeth?
4. Is today a shower day?
5. How about deodorant-antiperspirant?
6. Shall I apply Tom Ford Ombre Leather, or similar, to my body?
7. Will I wear yesterday's clothes?
8. Where will I walk today, and can I devise a route I've never traversed before?
9. Would you suggest I wear my hearing aids, and why or why not?
10. Should I drive my car today?
11. Have I meditated yet?
12. Would I consider prayer, and would you, and pray for what?
13. What am I grateful for today?
14. Should I shout out something to the walls to exercise my vocal cords and to remember what my voice sounds like?
15. Do I dare to eat a peach?
16. That sound, is it the mermaids singing each to each?
17. How long will I nap?
18. To whom will I reach out?
19. What will we say?
20. How much of human touch will my skin remember?

PC: post-coronavirus

Me: Hey, Alfredo, you know what? Things just aren't going to be the same after this. They're really not going to be the same.

Alfredo: They never are.

And here I was the one pretending to be a Buddhist.
 

AC/DC

AC. The time before coronavirus. Those days before the Age of Coronavirus. Ante Coronavirus. AC. The antebellum when things were more civil. (Barely. Maybe. If. Not at all.) AC. When the air was conditioned differently. Surfaces, too. And lungs, limbs, skin, psyches, hearts. All different. In the time before the Age of Coronavirus. Ante Coronavirus. AC.

When did that age end and another begin? Was it a single day or a string of days? Or was it a particular pain, a personal loss, a headline, a sign in a doorway, a face mask, a ventilator, a news report, or a rumor? Was it one of those things that drew a line in the sand? The end of an era. The beginning of a time.

That time is now. We are in the During Coronavirus era. DC. We are experiencing, suffering, enduring, coping, failing, prevailing -- and living and dying -- in the During Coronavirus times. DC.

There are heroes. Some named, some anonymous, some known, some unknown.

There are many heroes.

There are silver linings. No, too much shimmering and glitter in that term. How about: there are truths, rewards, heroics, discoveries?

Gratitudes.

Amidst the dark, the harrowings, hauntings, emptinesses.

No one knows how long During Coronavirus will last. No one knows what comes after DC.

After AC/DC.

failure to thrive

When infants or children show signs of not growing according to standard projections, "failure to thrive" might be the diagnosis. The cause or causes might be a host of medical, nutritional, biological, genetic, psychosocial, or environmental factors. Sometimes the cause is undetermined. 

In some cases, failure to thrive, or FTT, is attributed to abuse or neglect. 

Some researchers have focused on maternal touch as a contributing factor to FTT. These studies examine mother-infant tactile interactions: their frequency and type (unintentional, intentional, during play, during feeding). In some cases, the mother or child may exhibit an aversion to physical contact.

Failure to thrive.

The term has poetic gravitas, a resonant summons for us to reflect.

In the Age of Coronavirus, will infants, children, adults, including the ill and the elderly, experience failure to thrive? Will our necessary, imposed self-isolations, self-quarantines, add the unintended affliction of FTT? At a minimum, will our severely restricted social interactions, our social distancing, cause human thriving deficit, or HTD?

We are social animals.

I know I am.

I already have a burgeoning case of HTD.

How about you?

And in the bigger picture, from a global standpoint, from a species perspective, how much FTT or HTD can the human race sustain? And for how long?

Oh, the longing for touch, our ardor for human texture, pining for skin and pulse, hungering for hugs and human scent, blood, sweat, and tears, tactile tension and tangible tenderness.

The Unkenneling

My favorite word in all of Shakespeare is "unkennel."

"If his occulted guilt / Do not itself unkennel in one speech, / It is a damned ghost that we have seen . . . "  

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2 

A Le Moyne College professor noted that word more than fifty years ago. I remembered. 

Unkennel. You can picture it. Angry, growling dogs. Barking, drooling, panting with ravenous rage.

We used to use the term "go viral." That video went viral on YouTube. The tweet went viral in minutes. Their Facebook post went viral.

Viral? 

Coronavirus killed that. Or should.

The unkenneled coronavirus.

an abundance of caution

 Signs in the Age of Coronavirus.

An "abundance of caution" is invoked. On decrees, doorways, doors of banks, laundromats, churches, temples, mosques, malls, ballparks, restaurants, schools, universities, coffee shops, barbershops, city halls, meeting halls, union halls, walls, apartment buildings, movie theaters, toll booths, brothels, insurance companies, brokerages, pharmacies, gambling joints, opium dens, cruise ships.

"Out of an abundance of caution . . . "

"If you have enough, you have abundance," goes the maxim for maximum effect.

And what is enough?

Abundance, such a fulsome and lavish word, billowing its bountiful message. Says the OED, an overflowing, to flow in waves.

Lap it up.

Caution. The OED: bond, surety, a taking heed.

Signs of our times.

And speaking of signs, try my tiny book: http://amzn.to/1Mz8RkY

social distancing vs. social proximating

I have been known to have social distanced. It is not the same as socially distanced. I have known social distancing. I have known social distancing, in its comings and its goings. Have you? Haven't you? The social distancing of snubs and snafus and near-misses. Or near Missus. The social distancing of forays and fumbles, dalliances and disasters. I have known them all. As T.S. Eliot penned it:

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

               So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase

I have known social distancing by any other name. Filed under the names of loneliness, alienation, indifference, rebuff, and buffering. Under the banners of taboo, time, and space. The labels of contagion or conjugation. Felt as intimacy or aridity.

I have socially distanced by one word, one sentence, a single faux pas. 

Haven't you? Have you?

Social distancing.

How about you?

How about us?

I have sung hymns to social distancing.

No one heard them.

Or no one replied.

Social distancing in the key of me, the key of you, the chords of coldness.

We sought the bridge.

They paid the toll.

They crossed the border.

I bridged the gap.

You narrowed the way . . . of distancing's definition, its social cues, its molecular matrix.

And while we're at it, at this safe distance, socially speaking, tell me, what is its opposite?

Social proximating?

As in: "I want to hold your hand . . . if you wash it." Or: "I want to touch your elbow (with my elbow) ..."

Social proximating, as in "Baby, socially proximate with me, babe."

It's a new brave new landscape, a brand-new vernacular.

Hold on.

But keep your distance.

For your good and mine.

For our good. And for the good of others.