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I continue to be surprised at how the shelter-at-home rules have affected me. Having no demands on my time has led me to create them—not as many as my life used to offer me, but just enough to make me feel attached to life.
Yesterday, in response to yet another headache, I declared myself free of obligations for the day. I didn't even go near the sewing machine to make masks, which made it feel like a complete holiday. Instead I continued reading Richard Russo's Nobody's Fool, a 600-page tour de force of humanity and insight and humour as he presents us with the picture of a man and his town. I'm so engrossed in it that when I got up at 3, having been awake since 2, I read until 5 in the morning then went back to bed and thought about the book until 6. So there was as much Richard Russo last night as there was sleep.
In response to my reading this, DinoVino, whose film collection is peerless and endless, pulled out the star-packed film of Russo's Empire Falls, thus doubly immersing me in his very human world. But this one contains Paul Newman, and I later imagined that he was tucked away in the back of my mind ready to be pulled out on a whim, to star in my thoughts. Apparently film stars never die but linger on in our minds forever.
So where was I? I was abandoning my mask-making in order to read. Of course, I also spent time on the computer. Since the lockdown, the number of email messages has increased a hundredfold as every friend, relative, and acquaintance shares with me the latest articles or cartoons or bawdy songs or beautiful classical music concerts. Our hearts are so open these days that we are hit hard by the images and then of course we want to share them with friends. (Thank goodness I'm not on Facebook, is all I can say.)
A link arrives sending me to an a capella quartet singing a charming arrangement of "Smile" and I send it to two friends and the next day I want to send it to half a dozen more. And at each impulse to send I have to balance who the friend is, how much I might have sent her recently, whether the link I want to send is now so popular that everyone has already seen it (for even worse than receiving all those links is receiving them for the third time) and worse than that is receiving them for the third time from the same person, so I have to go to my Sent file and figure out what to send to whom and then in hesitation I don't send anything to anyone and I fret that this link might have been the one thing to bring joy to that person and it's all my fault that she didn't see it. And so my day goes: an agony of indecision and guilt.
Musings blog: http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com
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