What Day Is It?

It's taken me three weeks to get used to feeling unmoored to daily schedule. I have to check my iPhone to figure out what day of the week it is. I can tell if it's day or night, refine that to morning or afternoon by looking outside. I need a schedule or I feel like I'm trying to hold water in my hands. I tune into Governor Andrew "FDR" Cuomo every morning for a dose of facts from a man with command of them, a sense of empathy aimed at New Yorkers, the elderly, the entire medical community, neighboring Governors of New Jersey and Connecticut,  the Federal government when applicable, and clearly separates the facts from his opinion. The whole country tunes in for his daily fireside chat.

I need a sense of structure and routine each day to counter a world out of control just outside my door...so, I ...

• play whatever appeals to me from a pile of CDs I haven't listened to in ages... classical (Claude Debussy's "Images 1894, Series I, II),Glenn Gould's "Back Goldberg Variations" recorded in 1955); Jazz (The Modern Jazz Quartet (Lonely Woman 1987), Bill Evans "Conversations With Myself" 1963); Django Reinhart (Jazz Masters 38); Opera (Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheoghiu "Duets and Arias").

• reconcile months and months of my checkbook

• finish at least one household task on my long to do list

• look out the window

• let a day go by doing not much of anything

• improvise the day's meals with an ever diminishing supply of food in cupboard, fridge and freezer

• learn how to order groceries online (still feels so strange)

• get lost in youtube rabbit holes

• download Zoom to talk with a bunch of friends, make sure i shave and have a decent backdrop for the session

• wash my hands

• worry about running out of toilet paper

• get over feeling like a Martian on the rare times I go to the market and wear my mask

• steer clear of others in the one way aisles in the market

• obsessively worry about how to wipe down every damn thing from the grocery store

• have a staging area just inside the door before taking anything inside

• appreciate silence

• take a walk every night around midnight

MIDNIGHT RAMBLES: Not a sound outside, nothing, no cars, no people, the silence is unsettling and eerie.

 

Photos and videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Comments

[Susaan]

Thanks for the midnight ramble ! I can certainly relate to your list of activities! And the moon pictures were a delightful bonus.