Walking the Streets of a Shut-Down Town ... Waiting for the Silence to Lift ....

As quiet out there as an iceberg. So like a Twilight Zone.
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    “HAVE A GOOD SIX FEET!” I say to strangers amiably (spatially) passing by, and we exchange fast smiles. Mustn’t linger. It might jump the six feet with malice.  It has a mind of its own, and it can multiple in unexpected ways, we are told — something not so unlike an electronics startup turning itself into a giant of nightmare side affects.  Or the new property managers of the recently-sold apartment building in which I live,  who carry on like programed pre-robotic operatives off a space ship.  

   Have a good six feet – the new have a good day – in case you were taking it to mean something else!

    CONTRARY TO THE DRAMA of enforced isolation, we are not confined  24-7 to in-home prisons.  In fact, any of us are free tp go out for  walks, long as we keep our distance.   Though soon, this respite may be revoked.

    STRANGE: ON THE NEARBY streets of Piedmont, such as above,  which I walked yesterday  — love the contrasting architecture — there are never more than a few people whom I might pass, and it’s hardly any different now.  Maybe the sheltered in are working out between home theaters and drone ports.
  

    MOST OF LIFE has been ordered to a standstill, church services silenced, even roller coasters hushed   The opposite of when I was a wee thing during WWII, hearing sirens in the night (San Francisco’s fear of Japanese invasions that never arrived). By day, the Big Dipper roller coaster at Playland-at-the-Beach, just across the street, bolted with reckless force, clattering and screeching and  roaring on through the war years, sailors on leave or about to be sent off, and their make-do girlfriends, screaming their heads off in vague fearful abandon, not knowing what lay ahead – if anything.

    MY UNCLE SMITTY  managed the Dipper. My dad, seen here, right, and my uncles by night manned the grips.  In the surging distance across the Great Highway, blew the soft eternal moan of the Pacific Ocean, its incoming waves a never ending reminder of things eternal.  The war years were a boon to Whitney’s great sea side amusement spread.  Laughing Sal at the fun house laughed her woozy  head off, as if stuck in a marathon party.

    PEOPLE STILL WENT about their work, nothing stopped.  My Mom bought some of our groceries at a different store, where the wood shelves were plainer, and she handed the man coupons from a little book.  And after the war was over, I remember standing on a street curb downtown, where a great parade was passing by, and watching my father in his Coast Guard uniform marching proudly in it.  There was a great feeling of victory and relief in the air.

    HAVE A GOOD NETFLIX. Today, we have been ordered inside, and immersed more than ever in the electronics of bogus friendship and video game addiction., movies on demand, almost anything on demand.  Within moments, at your front door.  The United States of Amazon.

Besides which, we may also be spending more time facing each other in the flesh, how novel — driven to restart stalled relations — rekindling a natural caring for each other.  Real friends and real family come through, this I can vouch for.  So many best friends have passed on over time. And yet still, I am lucky.    

    SAID A LITTLE BOY to his mother, a New York psychoanalyst, “Mommy, I like coronavirus because I get to spend time with you.”

Might this kid be so starved for non-analytical affection, that he may one day himself seek the comfort of a paid-friend (psychoanalyst)? Perhaps his own mother, at special family rates?

    MIDWAYS IN MELTDOWN: The circus, remember it?, took yet another blow.  Ringling — planning to reenter sawdust land — “let go” 900 of its 1,200 workforce. Circus du Soleil laid off  95% of its  4000+ employees. This global giant was anyway facing serious set- backs — shows in rehearsal aborted, shows on the road failing to click.  How long before the public tires of what may come to  feel old and dated — the predictable ratio of increasingly fewer great circus acts to the ever more numbing Other Stuff?

    CARSON & BARNES, Circus Vargas, UniverSoul, all folding their tents for an indefinite stand still. Vargas hung in there till the end “Attendance at each performance will be capped at 250 which will allow spectator to maintain ample seating distance, limiting close proximity and contact between members of the audience.” You gotta admire their spirits.

    THE MOST HELLISH thing about this new virus, they tell us, is how devilishly contagions it is. And  when I shop, I have my scarf  over my mouth and nose. And I, though in the older age group at particular risk, yet have not one underlying medical condition. I am blessed with excellent health, and still vaguely afraid like everybody else.

    AND DOWN ON the beaches, here to Miami, carefree younger people who were romping it up in gleeful defiance, now being told the party is over.  They too, are, as it is turning out, at far greater risk than was originally projected.

Have a good new six feet, kids!