In stir, in medias res

I'm living alone with my partner. We practice social distancing in our sleep. It's so quiet outside I could throw my hearing aid out the window and hear it hit the street, if I had a hearing aid. I binge watch reality in multi-mediums--televsion, internet, and print--while being old enough to remember CNN as a 24-hour news channel considered avant-garde by the late Paul Virilio and other avant-gardists.

I'm writing this to stay warm. Really, there's no other reason. I hadn't realized until now what a good-news junkie I am;  that's why so many poets are among my best friends; poets know how to search for gold under the smoking rubble and are able to sing to us about the differences between both once they find them, if they ever find thern. 

I've run out of typing paper, but I can't imagine going to Office Depot, Office Depot is the last place on earth I'll go. There's only a drop or two of whisky in the bottle. I have no sandpaper for the painting I'm working on. My partner says I can vacumn the old sheet of sandpaper and use it again and again, that this is what people have done for centuries--gotten the most out of what they have. I look at the paintings of Helen Frankenthaler. She's a far better painter than I thought she was, she's the best as Clyfford Still was the best, in that there's nobody like them.

I work on a new design for my website with a designer in Berkeley without leaving our homes. I can see her picture on the screen opening and closing her mouth and then hear myself a few seconds later hear what I've said a few seconds before. 'Get Used to It' as my friends in Kansas, Kirk and Muriel, say.

I read the morning paper, a big mistake--TRUMP TO DEAL FINAL BLOW TO CAR POLLUTION GOALS, a story about the new rule written by the EPA and the Department of Transportation that will allow cars to emit nearly a billion tons more carbon dioxide over the lifetime of the vehicles than they would have under the Obama standards, and hundreds of millions of tons more than will be emitted under standards being enacted in Europe and Asia. I can tell that it hurt the reporter to have to write the story more than it hurt me to read it. 

While reading the morning paper I eat my oatmeal with 14 blueberry's and a spoonful of greek yoghurt, wash it down with a chaser of rubbing alcohol. I know what I can do with the rest of the day! I can practice reviving myself after having passed out while reading the morning paper.

Once in crisis is it best to pass the time as if nothing is happening, or to latch on to every moment as if it might be your last?