The world is a wreck. Miss Scrimshaw won’t come out of her home. She orders everything from Amazon and her local grocery and reads ebooks while she waits for the masked semi-literates to arrive. “And it’s always semi-literates,” she tells me as we interface via Zoom, who invariably fail to read her note on the door instructing them to “set the box or the bag on the welcome mat, knock hard, and walk away.”
As I’ve mentioned in an earlier blog post, Miss Scrimshaw (an alias she insisted on) is a multifaceted woman. Having emigrated from Nigeria to Great Britain as a child, then immigrating to America as a university grad, she knows some French and speaks a couple of African languages I’m ashamed I hadn’t heard of until she mentioned them. As a result, she expects American adults to properly speak, write, and read their native language, especially if it’s the only language they’re expected to know.
I remind her that most of these delivery people are teens, which is bad enough, graduates of public schools, which is worse, and that literacy is not a commodity in their world. “Besides,” I remind her, “one mustn’t judge an entire culture or country based on the young. They tend to mumble, slouch, and ignore traffic signs.”
Miss Scrimshaw gives no quarter. “They’re spoiled little shits.”
I can’t blame her. She hasn’t always had the opportunities, the infrastructural amenities the rest of us take for granted. Our indifference to what she considers crucial skills for a well-informed and savvy society can frustrate her.
On my twenty-four-inch widescreen monitor, I notice she hasn’t bothered to prep for social interaction. Splotches of her hair dance to a different song, and her face, unmolested by paint, is a blend of cocoa, carmine, and turmeric. It’s both lovely and raw. I can understand why Napoleon would write his wife, “I’ll be home in three days; don’t bathe.” I tell her, and I mean it, she “looks more beautiful without makeup,” and she fakes a frown, cautions, “Keep it up and I’ll disconnect.”
“Oh!” I tell her, “You might find this amusing. None of my acquaintances have so far.”
Her brows flinch. “Do your worst.”
“Saw an electronic marquee in front of the dentist’s office late last week, the one off of Jewel and 84. Said, I kid you not, We heart our patrons, all caps, with a Valentine heart instead of the word heart. But here’s the funny bit. They’d incorrectly used the possessive o u r. Spelled it instead as the copula, you know, the linking verb: a r e.”
Miss Scrimshaw smiled.
“But that’s not all,” I said. “Someone evidently caught it. Because earlier this week it had been changed to We heart our patience, only this time, and get this –”
Miss Scrimshaw’s smile widened. “They used the synonym for forbearance.” She spelled out the word patience. “Not the plural, patients, for those receiving medical treatment.”
“How’d you know?”
“It’s a homonym. Most likely heard all their lives but never read. Besides, we went from patrons to patients. Forget façades, Mark. Despite the uniforms, diplomas, and, I don’t know, take your pick, making it to work alive, people are idiots.”
I chuckled. “There’s the cynicism I know and love.”
Admittedly, over the course of these ten months, we’ve both gained a bit of weight. For all intents and purposes, the gyms are closed, unless of course you’re willing to wear a mask while running on a treadmill. However, research shows doing cardio while masked deprives your blood and brain of nearly thirty percent of the oxygen it would normally receive in the mix of air you breathe in. Miss Scrimshaw warns me my brain can’t afford such deprivation.
Miss Scrimshaw further assures me the cinemas are closed not just for the duration of this scare but forevermore, that this chemical, foreign invasion has permanently changed the landscape in ways we as a society refuse to acknowledge much less address. I remind her she’s part of the problem, since the few local businesses who haven’t yet closed will if our communities continue shopping exclusively from Amazon. She corrects me. “No, no. Not drive-thru restaurants or those that do delivery. Grocery stores. Any place dealing in produce. Those are safe. They’ll endure.”
I’m not so sure. Meanwhile, our cowardly leaders impose rules on the entire country that should apply only to the very old and vulnerable. Worse, some of these same state leaders flout the very rules they’ve imposed, providing fodder, I lament to add, for conspiracy theorists.
A recent news report announced a third iteration of the COVID vaccine. I initially thought the report was from The Onion, a satirical outfit that parodies politicians and their inane policy proposals. But no. Turns out the source is as legit as one can expect from the press, which, admittedly, hasn’t much clout anymore.
According to the report, this new and improved vaccine has a 95% success rate fighting off the COVID virus, once contracted. Yet according to none other than the CDC’s very own website, a healthy adult’s immune system has a 99% success rate fighting off the virus, once contracted. In other words, an otherwise healthy adult will fare no better with the vaccine than without.
Understandably, those like me, prone to question authority, are convinced this crisis highlights the inherent incompetence, idiocy, and cowardice of our political leaders. Fools on parade in high office, ignoring the advice of the credentialed doctors and opting for a lockdown with no foreseeable end, need to have their shoelaces tied together and pushed down a flight of stairs.
I won’t chronicle those whose livelihoods have been crushed by these governmental strictures. No doubt you’ve caught veiled whispers round the water cooler. I’m loathe to appear dramatic when pointing to the proverbial pie chart, but our leaders’ solutions only either exacerbate the problems or create new ones. The increased rates of abuse in the home, alcoholism, suicide – these are hardly acceptable trade-offs.
Even though nearly forty-thousand people lost their lives on the road last year and another four million were seriously injured enough to require medical attention, we still drive our vehicles every day. In short, the COVID scare is a product of very few facts, mostly twisted to fit a narrative, and a smorgasbord of misinformation, fear, and paranoia, deserving of The Onion’s jeer.
I’ll admit when the initial lockdown struck, I assumed my routine wouldn’t change. After all, I’m an introspective introvert. I keep to myself. Apart from Miss Scrimshaw, I have no friend, no family. The current state of affairs shouldn’t impact me, right?
Plus, I’m one of the lucky ones. Still employed. But let me be candid. Since March, as we approach Christmas, it feels as if the tidings of great joy have been supplemented by discontent. As I listen to Christmas jazz music this December, as I did round this same time last year, to get into the spirit of the season, an unease persists this time round.
Apart from my job, which affords me the opportunity to visit the same half dozen clients every day, I am somewhat deprived (as are we all) of the staple, the heretofore normalcy, of human interaction. At one particular client’s location, one of the more friendly employees, Leigh, now masked, who in the past would greet me with a brilliant smile as I arrived, now might as well wear a balaclava over her head.
Handshakes are now an act of defiance against the draconian practices of these States no longer united. Breathing is both restricted and constricting, accompanied by a clamminess and a sense that the world is now a battlefield teeming with chemical warfare. Dare to approach or venture into a brick and mortar fraught with hyperbolic warnings of contagion and death and try to emerge without feeling disheartened and demoralized. The fragility and tragedy of life, or rather life molested, is palpable when in the hands of philistines who fine and arrest otherwise reasonable people for wanting to live their lives free of a government fast approaching an oppressive regime.
With that in mind, for many of us, especially in light of this most recent lockdown, the internet is essentially the only government approved contact, virtual though it be, with the outside world. Our political leadership, as of late especially, is an argument for anarchy. Not the ‘rioting in the streets’ kind of anarchy. Rather the ‘jettison government and privatize everything’ anarchy. But that’s another discussion and beyond the scope of this diary entry. Aren’t you relieved?
And so, it shouldn’t surprise, when not at work, I’m home. When home, I pursue my passion projects – reading, writing, cooking, drinking – struggling, at times, to ignore the most recent soul-crushing news of our social plight, since we’re powerless against it.
Given the above narrative, it might surprise you to learn, ironically, I’m generally a happy person. No, really. Optimistic, hopeful. More than I’d prefer, frankly, since my eagerness and generosity occasionally get me into trouble with those who wish to exploit it. Nevertheless, despite my beaming smile and sunshine attitude, a slight aggravation and impatience for all of this to simply go away trails me like a long shadow. And so, as is my wont, after work, night after night, there, again, I sit.
The place: my apartment. The time: circa the day before yesterday. The method or medium: the internet. I was thus engaged one evening at my kitchen table, planted before my laptop, Bluetooth buds in my ears, already dressed for the night – olive thermal wear and Pikachu house slippers – browsing the YouTube channels to which I was already subscribed, slowly nursing a libation of my own concoction (which included simple syrup and fairy dust so that my tongue could fly), and enjoying the quiet that visits my building for twenty minutes out of a week.
I’d been enjoying music videos of my favorite band – a Japanese hard rock group known as バンドメイド。Pronounced, in Japanese, bond tomato. In English, Band Maid. Five female musician songwriters in their late 20s dressed in cosplay maid outfits, with white aprons over black skirts and embroidered caps, red ribbons, and corsages in their hair.
My session continued with a YouTube cooking video. A somewhat lisping chef showcased his favorite Mediterranean entrée in a kitchen to die for. As I finished off my third cocktail, a disheveled book reviewer, amusingly animated, betimes maniacal, and surrounded by tomes stacked precariously high round his den, lambasted a popular but poorly written young adult novel. Then, realizing I’d sat in my chair for nearly half an hour, I decided now was as good a time as any to do my evening stretch. Nothing like a bit of yoga while enjoying a slight buzz, I thought.
As I stood, I raised my arms, reached for the ceiling. I have one of those popcorn textured ceilings – a cheap, two-dimensional effort to mimic cloud coverage. Tacky. Whoa! Did the floor just nod? I bowed at the waist, touched my toes. A slight yaw, a pitch. I glanced a few yards away to where I could utilize my living room rug while watching my monitor. The magic carpet banked as if aiming for the runway. Then, perhaps influenced by the alcohol, butterfingers, blast, I stumbled haphazardly, clicked, some might say fortuitously, on a YouTube video unfamiliar to this seasoned adventurer, and entered a lair, one might avow, whose treasure trove, it would transpire, was guarded by a dragon.
A raven-haired Korean nymph, reminiscent of those in traditional, perhaps indiscrete, paintings celebrating the female form in its prime, languidly sat on a yoga mat. She was the poster girl for tranquility. Would’ve passed for a soapstone statue but for the slight heave of her chest.
The marble floor of her Industrial loft was a burnt umber. An entire wall, comprised of an acre of glass, from baseboard to ceiling, overlooked an expansive skyrise of what could have been downtown Seoul. Morning sunlight blazed through these vast windows, bathed the young woman’s skin in kisses and thereby transformed her flesh into a kaleidoscope of cornsilk and bisque, apricot and alabaster.
The nymph allowed herself to be drenched in these kisses, at rest, eyes closed, her beautiful face sunward, throat exposed, producing a simulacrum of ecstasy. She was dressed in a peach leotard whose close association and familiarity with her contours evoked my envy. Then, easing herself backward, raising a cream thigh, bending at the knee, she slowly straightened her leg. Her calf was bright butter, her ankle a champagne pink. As she grasped her foot with her hand, the underside of her forearm shown, and a faint blue vein appeared just beneath the surface of her wrist like a sapphire winking within a bed of snow.
She remained mute throughout, placed her weight on an elbow, and swiveled. I confess, dear reader, when her milky hip landed on the mat with a slight bounce, sending an almost imperceptible quiver along her thigh, tingles raced up the back of my neck, and I shuddered. This must be akin, I thought, to what ASMR fans experience.
Then the nymph cast her spell by facing the camera and producing a slight smile that evoked the delicately curled lips on the Mona Lisa. Her almond eyes found mine, and lo! The dragon did stir.
Once the video ended abruptly and an ad drew me out of my paralytic hypnosis, I realized where I was, slouched at my kitchen table, my windows darkening, cocktail in hand, never having ventured to the living room to stretch myself. Oh, Yonini Sang-a! With that subtle smile and those Asian eyes. Alas that I have only this lowball glass to caress.
The obnoxious YouTube ad was followed by a young man behind a formidable desk. Turns out he was an atheist making what I assume he considered an equally formidable case. But I must save that diary entry for another post. One I expect to entitle What’s Wrong with Atheism? …Let Me Count the Ways. Title subject to change. Or I might just opt for my scribblings on the hazards of trying to study multiple languages at once. I call it 箸でブリトーを食べる (Eating a Burrito with Chopsticks).
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