Trying to Think
In Spite of it All
If you look past the existential threat to the world and the millions who have died, the COVID-19 pandemic had some really good things about it and I’m talking about thinking. I’ve done more thinking over the past 18 months than over the past 71 years, although that is somewhat misleading because I wasn’t able to think much until I was 10 or 11 years old.
But for these past 18 months I was able to breath and I felt like my mind had been given a dose of adrenalin and a shock from a cerebral defibrillator and I felt like Dr. Frankenstein should be screaming at me, “It’s alive. It’s alive.”
I started my day brushing my teeth, shaving, putting in my contacts and getting dressed before I take the dog out for a short walk where she pees and is just as happy after peeing to simply sit down and not move so I have to pick her up and carry her inside so she can curl up in her little bed and go back to sleep after such a grueling morning routine. The I heat up some oatmeal for my daughter and after she’s done, we wait outside for the van that takes her to her special program in Hackettstown. While waiting, we talk about nothing much but it’s such fun, bonding as they say. I might take my walk down to the river or I might spend an hour or so reading about the news of the world. I read about all kinds of stuff in the N.Y. Times and Washington Post. Typically, there was today’s headline: “Simone Biles Says She Wasn’t Right Mentally During Olympic Final” and this gripping, wrenching paragraph from the N.Y. Times coverage of the first day of the House probe into the Capitol insurrection.
“In excruciating detail, four police officers who defended the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot told Congress on Tuesday of the brutal violence, racism and hostility they suffered as an angry mob they said acted in the name of President Donald J. Trump beat, crushed and electrocuted them as they labored to protect Congress.”
Another headline: “CDC urges vaccinated people in high-transmission areas to resume wearing masks indoors as delta variant spreads” and “Outcry in Pakistan over beheading of former ambassador’s daughter.” Stories like these take me out of myself and force me to consider life that is so different than mine.
And the stories went from the sublime to the ridiculous as with the Washington Post report about the ex-trump mouthpiece Sarah Sanders who is running for governor of Arkansas.
“Former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders urged Arkansans to consider getting the ‘Trump vaccine’ as the state hovers below the national average of fully vaccinated individuals over age 12,” the Post reported and I feigned vomiting.
My brain has been stimulated in past months like it has rarely ever been and I found myself refreshingly aware of events in the nation and the world, really important events, and it made me feel connected to a larger, positive reality. I would try to think of something to write about in my daily blog, a sort of self-therapy and sometimes I’d get an idea out of thin air, from some kind of cosmic muse and sometimes I had to take my morning walk along the river in hopes of having my mind stimulated and it often worked. I can think of something new to write every day and people have asked me how I do it and I say I just open my eyes and it reminds me of the sad lines in the John Prine song “Angel from Montgomery” and it goes:
“But how the hell can a person
Go to work in the mornin’
And come home in the evenin’
And have nothin’ to say.”
It is so life affirming to feel that I can think original thoughts and that my thoughts are important, if only to me and that’s OK.
I should be paid for thinking but instead I returned to my regular job yesterday after 18 months on furlough leave. So I get up around 6:45 a.m., brush my teeth, shave, put in my contacts, get dressed and say goodbye to my wife and daughter and my son if he’s come home from his apartment in New York City. I pet the dog and I’m off, prepared to do battle with the daily traffic crush while my brain vegetates over nothing very important.
I got home early today and had time to write this blog. I also had time to walk the dog, say hi to the family and to take my river walk. So who said you can’t have it all. Tomorrow, it’s back to work and I can only hope that I will have some time to think.