so tired tonight, but just not able to go to bed. one reason is that i need a shower, but i'm too tired and sore to get up and do it. i've been working on a deck. it's hard carpentry but kind of fun in its way. it's been sunny and part of my problem is a bit of sunburn.

the scrap wood comes from our old deck in the village, and was just brought out here where it's been kind of sitting around, in the way, for a while. finally i got started on it today, and ripped out a rotten part of the old one so that i could start in on the new one. then i sawed about eight boards and nailed about five in. altogether, maybe about an eighth of the deck.

it's really quite beautiful out in our front yard, and i have a good view of everything while i do it, but i was a little concerned about getting it right - measurements, nails, that kind of thing - and i didn't appreciate the beautiful day as much as i could. during this pandemic crisis, a lot of us are staying home a lot. time to develop these skills that one can only get by staying at home and working on them. my wife is working on her cooking and baking - an endless cycle, with lots of dishes - as we get used to basically not going out like we used to. a week at a time, in one place, with our single trip into town (see last post) full of getting everything we need.

i think there are tragedies the world over, that i'm trying to simply avoid. there are multiple deaths in all states, all cities - mostly friends of friends so far, no one i know well - but i think it's getting worse, not better, so i'm riveted to the news these days. who will it be next? elizabeth warren's brother, or, my sister's former colleague and his mother, or, the cousin of an old friend. like i said, it's mostly friends of friends so far. and the locals (our county still only has four, officially) who are related mostly to each other and not to anyone out of town - well they hardly know anyone.

but i think what they say about economic pain is more than real too. we here have enough money - we can go to the store, get groceries, come home, eat for a week. we are not in any danger of starvation or pestilence. we are vulnerable to the virus, so we're avoiding contact. but i was about ready to do that anyway, being sixty-six and all. but what i was going to say is that in a lot of these countries, being forced to stay home is the same as being forced to starve. with no money, and no ability to get out of the house and make some, people don't have much choice, no future, no food, no life. they can up and walk back to some village where presumably some relative has a garden. but even that is little comfort in this world. if there is no economy, then this huge underclass - which includes musicians, ubers, etc. even in this country - has no income. money runs out fast in this sector. countries can print a few trillion, and pass it around, but that will cause trouble too, eventually. it's a kind of mass chaos, but with mass starvation right around the corner.

and then there's still war. news comes today that the u s is still bombing people in spite of the coronavirus - so they have two pestilences, with us being one of them. do we have to bomb people? it was never really clear why we were doing it in the first place - these are for the most part undeclared wars - everyone knows we hate the islamic insurgents - but, i guess what that means is that someone is going to get hurt. coronavirus and bombing to smithereens.

thinking about my mom tonight - she was the one who told me never to drink bleach. that was when i was maybe two or three. that's all i'll say about the news. i think it's more complicated than that, drinking bleach, but i'm voting life this time, and staying away from it. off to take my shower. it's a fine spring evening, and we can finally leave a window open.

we go to town once a week these days, and i may talk to as many as six or seven people each time. i've gotten to figuring out risk for each exchange. it's all things we need; lots of "non-essential" things are going by the wayside. but yesterday, i talked to maybe seven people. they ranged from virtually risk-free - like the walmart pickup - to dicey, like the purified water.

at the walmart pickup, the woman never got within ten feet of me, and we were outside. she just put the groceries in the back of the car. she spoke loudly and i agreed that she could sign for the purchase for me, and she did. it was a warm sunny day and it didn't seem like the covid could come anywhere near me.

at the mcdonalds there were two people - after i gave them the order. the first took the credit card and handed it back with a receipt. i'm not sure if she sanitized after handling those credit cards. but i sanitized after getting it back. she wore a mask. i'm trying to figure out if you can physically hand something to someone - like a card - at six feet, because it seemed to me that it was about four. there was air between us, and a hot sunny day. at the next window they gave two sacks of food and the drink tray with all the frappes. once again, hand san - assume they've got it, and they're assuming i've got it. only three cases in all otero county so far, but we're all still assuming. i use hand san and then eat the food. i don't think the virus is living on those mcdonalds sacks, or the coffee cup for that matter. but the kid with the hands, i'm not sure. once again, less than six feet, or there's no way he could have handed it to me.

next was the tire place. the tire place had customers waiting outside, in the sun, while they took tires off, filled them with air, patched them, handed back the truck. they agreed to take my tire and i could come back in an hour. they were doing a brisk business, and customers, waiting in the sun, were friendly. i still had two places to go, though.

first was what i call cadillac water. fine filtered water through a faucet into three five-gallon jugs. the building is big but you still have to go in it and breathe people's air. they had a plastic screen in front of the worker - apparently they didn't want people to come up to her/him and breathe anywhere near. all i had to do was yell though, my name and the fifteen gallon part. i was able to stand in the open doorway for part of it.

i considered getting water at the outdoor faucets for a while. you pay a lot more that way, and i've already paid for the fills in the building. so i decided to chance it, in the building, but i'm not totally happy about it. maybe if i can reduce my risk by paying outside, that's a better method. reducing risk is what it's all about. i kind of see that virus hanging around that air as one of the three otero county victims could have walked in at any moment.

then back across town to domino's pizza. there the lady said she'd bring the pizzas out to us. once again we handed card back and forth, had to be less than six feet. when she handed me the pizzas again, less than six. i'm sure she had a mask, and i might have too but i can't really talk through a mask. besides i'm from the mountains, haven't been down for a week, and know in my heart i don't have it yet. could have got it back at the water place, but even then i wouldn't be busy giving it back away. i figure i'm clean, it's her i'm worried about.

back to the tire place. this time i had to come into their building to pay them. i couldn't quite hear the guy because i was trying to stay six feet and i can't wear both mask and hearing aids, so i had a mask. i don't think it helped. i stood in a doorway as i paid and then we loaded the tire. when we were loading the tire we were out in the high afternoon sun and i think it was no problem. when we were paying i got the sense that i was breathing what everyone who was walking by was breathing. i didn't like it. that there is risk. not from the guy itself, but from the doorway. i tried to keep it short and grab that card and run, and then, hand san.

up the hill we had to stop at the fam dol. this is in a small town, 8700 feet, at as far as we know doesn't have a single case. but my wife and sister also say that if there are three official, there are probably at least thirty in the county, and i would go further and say if it's anywhere, then it stopped in this high mountain village on its way from here to there. so it's only a matter of time, and we're all being cautious.

this family dollar is in a huge, fifty-foot high pole-barn, but has narrow isles. one of the sets of customers were two older ladies that had masks; another were slightly younger ladies who couldn't stop talking, more or less to each other, which is less than six feet. one thing about six feet is that you have to shout, and in my case i have to have hearing aids, or it just isn't going to work. normal conversation distance is like two to three feet, i believe, so being six is not easy. and not that i have a ruler either. but i want to be respectful and not threaten these poor people who just have to work, or have to get their groceries.

they rang me up and put my stuff in sacks. i think we were less than six, but she was wearing a mask, and i was trying this time not to sneeze or cough or do anything like that. their life is hard enough, as i've said, that i don't need to come in there and give them stuff to worry about. dying, that's what we worry about. i don't want to do it; i'm not ready. we're hoping this virus just passes on by.

groceries in the car, we set off. car was pretty full, with a truck tire, three five-gallon jugs of cadillac water, a week's worth of groceries, and four pizzas. not to mention three teens, all of different races, which i think made the police look, as rowdy crowds aren't supposed to be driving around having too much fun. there we were. three of the kids came, because they wanted the mcdonald's and they wanted to get out and see who was out there. town was kind of empty - not many people were out there. it seemed like there were plenty of cars around, but at the same time it seemed like a lot of things just weren't open, or up as usual.

today's news is that the governor has extended our lockdown into the middle of may. nationwide people were talking may first, or earlier, but it's not looking like that. most of us would like to see those death numbers do something besides climb exponentially. we'd like to know that there's a hospital bed out there if we need it. i talked to seven people on this trip and have to trust each of them that they've been keeping good distance - as all civic-minded people should do - so as to not carry that virus to each of a string of customers. but i didn't know any of them from anybody. on my part, i simply had to trust them.

they trace viruses, generally, back to places where people shared the same air. it is not so much food being handed off in a sack, or groceries. it's air, and air in enclosed places. i'm convinced of it. that's why i rate that water place and the tire place riskiest. it's not the people i talked to - it was the air that i breathed.

but, so far, as far as i know, all clean. no dying around here, yet. i've had the same cold for about a month, but that's always been here, and i rate that as seasonal, allergy related. my family keeps asking me about it. as if it's going to change, or go somewhere, or isn't part of just the usual seasonal events. it seems people are highly conscious of every temp variation, every cough, every sniffle, like everything is a sign of something. it probably is a sign of something, but who knows. it's probably always been this way, even with the seasonal flu, and we never even paid attention.

it's my birthday, and things are going along with a very tumultuous air; maybe this is usual for late april. demonstrators are out there, trying to get states to open things back up. nurses are out there, blocking the demonstrators, saying, no, go home, stupid, give us a chance to save your life. the press is out there, looking for cases where demonstrations caused deaths, or failing that, where bad attitudes led to deaths. they aren't too hard to find.

of course there is a chance that what you read and hear is all baloney anyway. i think that's kind of what the demonstrators think. the press cooked up this virus thing, they don't know anyone who's sick, and the libs are just trying to bring down trump and the economy with it.

if that's the case, it's working pretty well. but i think it crashed on its own. who wants to get on an airplane anymore? who even wants to go to a movie? i'll tell you, i'm doing what i can to even avoid shopping in the market, even though it's getting hard to live without doing something. theories are flying around about how it started. some say the chinese did it on purpose. others say the americans started it and it got out of hand. still others think it was a dem plot just to bring down trump - coincidence, one woman asked me, that it happened right after they failed to impeach him?

the g5 hoax is the hardest to believe. people think g5 causes this virus? i guess stranger things have happened. or at least, as conspiracies go, it's one of the ones that a person could fall for. i used to have to go under these enormous power lines on my way to high school and back. they fed power, basically, from niagara falls to the entire east coast. and i knew, that whole time, that it wasn't healthy. they had thick, tough wires. but they couldn't keep the trouble away from affecting people.

now i have no such qualms about g5, and that's because we've gone g1-4 without that much trouble. yes i know that g5 was fixing to cause some trouble. but it wasn't fixing to cause a virus. a virus is different.

so it's my birthday, and we're knee deep in a pandemic, and the water's rising. the number of deaths per day rose to four thousand something, over double yesterday. meanwhile i'm trying to sit back, relax, enjoy the breeze. april is dry and sunny in new mexico. at our house, it's a little windy too, and sometimes cool at night - it snowed the other night - but basically, it's so dry, the snow couldn't amount to much, or do much except blow around. it gives some things a greenish tinge, when there's a little bit of moisture. but there's so little of it that it's a half-green kind of green, just barely started. only the toughest plants can live through the dry spring with so little moisture.

I'm sixty-six, which means that it's a highway year - that's a highway that comes on through the panhandle and down through northern new mexico, and when it gets to albuquerque it has all that famous neon, which i believe they tried to preserve. i have good memories of the movie cars, and the way it celebrated that highway, and the wide-open southwest where you can open up, drive too fast, and still take in the monuments of red desert rock. people on quarantine are imagining those trips, drives up the desert and such, and we're finding out how long they can really take it, cooped up in their houses with no sports, nothing to do. the answer is, they've had enough. they're out there demonstrating because they've already had more than they can stand. and for the most part, i think a lot of these people don't know anyone who's been affected. i have friends around here - against the quarantine, against the shutdown, and they feel the quarantine has been imposed on them by people who don't understand what it's like to try to make a living - or to live a week without a paycheck - and they'll be the first to get out there and demonstrate. our county only has three at the moment, and it's a county that's maybe two hundred miles in every direction. in the country, a crucial factor is your isolation. if people don't come through here with it, we don't have it, and it's possible to believe we won't even get it, or if we do, it won't spread like wildfire.

on the other hand, country people do collect in crowded spaces, like feed stores and convenience stores, where people are all breathing the same air, and where one person could leave it in the air for another to pick up. my wife is convinced it's all over - that we have it, but we have only three confirmed cases. well, time should be able to tell that, and if it doesn't, maybe we can go back to life as we always knew it.

as for that, i'd say, not likely. for one thing, department stores, theaters, and sporting events are pretty much gone. they can open these places back up, but if the majority of us are home ordering from amazon and netflix, they won't make much money. restaurants, i'm less sure of. it seems we are a lazy culture, and totally willing to let people cook for us. and also, that it's reasonable that they can cook a meal and not transmit the virus at the same time. reasonable, possible, perhaps even likely. i think mcdonald's drive-through will survive, if not even thrive.

our walmart order is again a day and a half late; it was due today at noon, but now won't arrive until sometime tomorrow afternoon. and who knows what they'll have in it. we order pickup because we don't want to go in the store. the kids hock my wife about having their friends over and staying six feet from them, and she says, no way, it's not going to happen. we go another day with the supplies that we have; we have no victory garden (i'll be lucky to grow a couple heads of garlic), and i don't know how to hunt; we are now officially retirees. we have a hard time motivating our kids to go to school. i would jump in there and do more disciplining, but when i do, my wife defends the kids. having a lifetime of father-oppression, she won't tolerate it here, and therefore i am ruled out of that kind of role, because it will trigger not only her, but also the kids, or at least one of them, and she can't take that. so our kids are spoiled, undisciplined, and may even fail a class or two. meanwhile i, frustrated at having no say in it, or no ability to move on them, do other things. there is five acres to clear; there are stumps to pull, and if she wants total control over that sphere i'm ready to let her have it. but actually she needs help and she knows it. she is just unable to relinquish the control. she wants, somehow, for me to do the motivating disciplinary stuff, while she takes care of nurturing them on up the pike. it's not going to happen that way, unfortunately. we're stuck on the not getting anything done situation.

it's happy birthday to me, with people dying, and others demonstrating, and everyone seething, and millions at home either starving or worrying about the possibility. spring is indeed busting out all over, in its dry, spare pretty way (out here) - clear, forested, fresh air in the valley, with deer and rabbits hopping through grabbing what's green in the off hours. the dogs, sometimes, are on to them and make a lot of noise. i prefer the relative quiet, and i've even come to like the occasional gunshots we hear - of people practicing hunting, or actually hunting, or just firing up their guns out of frustration. these country people don't handle sitting still for very long.

so i wrote a book of haiku, a hundred, and i entitled it post-covid haiku: all else is now obsolete and i delivered it up to amazon about three days ago. it had some problems in the construction - at one point i spelled my name wrong, and, inside was a misspelled word, nowehere. i fixed those in the kindle version and went back and fixed it in the print version the following day, which would have been saturday, maybe. i was proud because i'd had a writer's block for quite some time - getting almost finished with things and then not quite finishing - and now it seemed like i would be able to not only finish and publish this one, but finish and publish maybe three more right behind it, not haiku; one is short stories, one is historical/genealogical, and one is my memoirs, which could be tough if i grapple with telling the entire truth.

the haiku were not incredibly controversial, in my opinion. i'll give you a few of them:
covid in punjab –
with spring’s blossoms, we can see
the himalaya

her pickup order
four hours late, and even then
it’s missing th’chicken

cap ‘n’ gown just arrived –
all twelve years he got good grades,
now th’schoolyard’s empty

you get the idea. the vast majority of it was from my own experience, and as in the second (my wife) and third (my oldest son at home), the experience of my family. like all haiku it has seasons in it, though some were a little sloppy, assuming that if it was about the covid crisis, it was spring. cherry trees sprung up to represent washington, as that's where we have lots of pretty ones. it was not acridly political but did have trump preening, blaming, etc. as we have all become familiar with.

well here's the rub: amazon rejected it. they said something about not wanting anything about covid that was not from the scientific community, and i can understand that. they may not have had time to read it. maybe the covid title flagged their censoring machine. or maybe they were afraid it was in code, aimed at getting people to rebel.

when i finished it, i took my momentum to a book of short stories that i have been working on for a couple years. i just dropped stories in there, when i had the time to write them, and i'd gotten about 23 of them, and figured that was enough: edit, proofread, gather up a cover, and fling it in there. at the last minute i wrote one: hope beats the coronavirus; this was actually saturday night, and i finished it up today and did the last of the editing. now i'm wondering if i should just scratch out that name coronavirus and in fact bury any reference, just to slip it by the censors.

the thing is, it's not like i make any money off this stuff. haiku, in fact, almost zilch; nobody buys it. toward the end of my haiku days (in a rush i finished e pluribus haiku 2018; i never did one for 2019, and kind of left it behind), i joked about how i could express myself freely in haiku because nobody ever read it. now i'm curious whether someone actually read this one, but i also feel like it's genuinely possible that they are just flagging the word covid and rejecting anything they don't understand.

in china people were very critical of xi and began using trump to complain about him, trusting that they could say anything about trump that they wanted, and slip it by the censors, and thus speak freely about something that was important. i agree that freedom of speech is important. as a poet i've always used it to express my true mind and i have no intention of giving that up. on the other hand, it's no surprise that in such tumultuous times some topics are very sensitive, and people have no desire to get in the middle of a huge storm. i even told my wife something to that effect the other day. sentiment for "get back to work" is strong here and people have not yet really taken it seriously in our county, where we have only maybe three cases, and hospitals, rather than being overrun, are sitting idle as they've canceled all unnecessary surgery. it's as political here as anywhere: the "open-it-up" folks as vocal as the "please-stay-home" folks, and there is general suspicion both that devos and the wealthy are sponsoring the open-it-ups, while the liberal deep state and the mainstream media, determined to bring down djt, are sponsoring the please-stay-homes. in such an environment, it's best to lay low. i won't even tell my neighbors how i feel.

in that spirit, it's back to the drawing board for my haiku as well as the short stories. get that c-word out of there - both c-words, for that matter, anything that might flag the censor's attention. i don't see it as censoring on the part of amazon (createspace really, which is part of amazon) as caution, and staying out of the limelight. if people are out there making money on quack conspiracies (i'm sure they are trying), i'm out there just trying to document the turmoil of a single week in april, and writing for the history books, what it's like to read positively unbelievable headlines. just in the last two days were a couple that i'll mention; i'm not sure they made it into the book. in one, the fbi had actually confiscated hospital supplies from a shipment that a state had bought from abroad; they sent the fbi, who simply took the supplies, and didn't say what they were going to do with them. this sounds kind of like a war on the states: tell them they're on their own; tell them the feds will be of no help; make them compete with each other; prevent them from taking care of their own hospital supply chains. pure crazy making.

in another headline some people got up a demonstration against the quarantine, and it did appear to be funded by devos and the wealthy. they want pressure to reopen the economy. why? maybe to fend off the ultimate stock market crash, which i believe is yet to come, but which is in the balance. but do they not realize that lives are at stake? it begins to look like the feds and the wealthy are hoping to clear the deck, and get rid of some of these poor people who ultimately tend to vote democratic anyway. the heck of it is that what with church services being held in person, professional wrestling being redefined as essential, and beaches reopening, there will be plenty more statistics to chew over in the next couple of weeks that will make us wonder what they were thinking. it seems quite obvious to me that it's an incredible time in history, and i want to document a little what it feels like to be on the receiving end.

as i've said, i have ten children, some steps, three adopted, all with their own perspective, but we have the last four out here at the end of a road in the dry foothills of the sacramento mountains of southern new mexico. i have the luxury of being able to stay home, having just retired, and i have serious things i want to write, but have also developed a haiku sense of balancing nature on the incredible moments of daily life. i recollected those skills and figured, here's a spring to beat all springs. here's a blossoming cherry tree that brings with it the full weight of the president's karma. and i am determined to document it, from the point of view of virtually everyone who i know who was part of it.

back to the drawing board; results will appear soon enough.

no one cares, i figure, what i'm doing way out here at the end of the road, day in day out, while the coronavirus rages across the land and republicans steal elections in wisconsin. not much i can do about it, out here, so i take my dogs out for a walk, work on the land, try to keep my kids in good spirits about being cut off from their friends, and help my wife out any way i can. she cooks and bakes like crazy, and tries to oversee the kids' homework and classes. she also does the groceries though i usually go and pick them up. on the trip to town, kids get mcdonalds, and we buy pizzas to pop in the microwave as the week goes by.

most of the time i'm out on the land, raking, removing brush from near the house, cutting down dead trees, that kind of thing. it's an unusual thing to go to town, and i'm wondering if i should wear a mask, as we have several stops. we stop at the water place; we get the pizzas, we go to mcdonalds, we get meds, but the big thing is the groceries. walmart says the groceries might be as much as four hours late. we don't want to go back to the mountains, and decide to wait.

it's me and two teenagers with phones. when the phone dies we turn the car on to recharge it. we are in total suspension as we settle in at the walmart pickup bay and wait our four hours, actually more like three after we've done our errands. to them, it's all suspension anyway - school has let out, and they don't see anyone at home, and at least here there are some people around, people to look at. they are not angry. they are willing to wait.

i however am disturbed by the disruption of the supply chain and the whole four hours late thing. it seems outrageous to me although i am very polite to everyone. the walmart is down in the valley so it's really much sunnier and warmer than up in the mountains; it's a kind of interesting suspension in the desert clime. but nothing we can do will make the groceries come any faster.

so cheap, we are, with gas now, even though the price has gone down, and once a week is more than enough to go to town anyway. it's like this is how country life is supposed to be, although i am so poorly prepared to support us here, with no way to hunt, no chickens, no resources; we do have an income, and i even have two jobs though they don't amount to much any more. i'm perfectly happy to putter around my five acres every single day. it's a mountain hilltop, with sleepygrass on part of it, tall pines down here below, and a few pretty green meadows and clearings. it's really very nice, and whenever i go out in it, i find things i want to do to clean it up. i kind of avoid the bigger projects, like building a deck, or moving the huge logs.

but mostly i get sucked into the horrible news. day in day out, i wake up, and i go straight to the news. this saps all my creativity, so all the writing i'd like to be doing, forget it. people are dying out there. people are dying and other people are making money off it in a brazen sociopathic way. my blood does a steady boil, no writing for the rest of the day, the best i can do is something like this, when it's all over, and i make no demands on myself, but simply put back down some of what has happened during the day. today and last night, it was john prine - it so happens that my entire facebook feed, maybe all 800 of my friends, are john prine fans, at least it would seem that way. there was remarkable agreement on how terrible that was, to lose him. but it's part of the era. every day, there are what, a few thousand, and some of them are friends of friends of mine. and some die, just because their time has come up anyway. they aren't all covid victims.

people are so remarkably social, a lot of them are thinking, if life is just being cooped up all the time, maybe it just isn't worth it. they can hardly bear it, to not get out there and start hugging everyone and getting into their faces. and i'm pretty social too, though i'm getting used to this fresh air and the general pattern of pulling on my muscles every day. I yank stumps out, and pull rocks out. i walk the brittle straw over to the straw pile. i can be as attention-deficit as i want, and nobody's around to care too much. one young daughter helps me occasionally. but most of the time, it's just me and the shovel or the rake.

suspension is a good word for it, really. it's like we've been told to freeze, and just hang out as a family unit. that is, in fact, all we are. we are six people, only a few of us even biologically related to each other, but we are a unit, and these days we rely on each other for most things. that's why, in the end, the twins, the teenagers in the car, had to entertain themselves. basically, it was one's birthday - he was fifteen - and it worked out about as well as it could. suspended. not having to put up any front, whatsoever, in school.

sometimes i teach my granddaughter korean. we pull out the k-pop and try to read the lyrics. i'm not sure she cares all that much. she might be too young for k-pop. she loves her grandpa, though, so that's something. i try to give her whatever wisdom i can conjure up. we use zoom. she's in kansas and boy does she have a life, unlike mine. to me, she's about the only person i see outside of this little unit we have here, so i try my best to entertain her. today she played a game of chess even while she was learning. i should have been offended. but she's precocious, so i didn't mind. it reminded me a little of my brother. we learned useful phrases. she knows things like "i love mom" and "i love dad" and "little brother is a stinker." or, my favorite, "there isn't any." "little baby is cute," is a useful one, and reminds me of my korea days. it's a lively language. i just have to give her reason to want to use it.

might have to get some friends in on this.

i have plenty of time, though i have plenty to do as well. part of the problem is that i have no discipline. if i'm pulled to the horrible news, i just go there, and i might spend all morning there, or morning into lunch, and some of the afternoon too. it's the senselessness of the killing. and the utter lack of morality, to use a press conference to tout hydroxicloroquine, or whatever. to blame obama, or whoever.

the news got back at me when i read that the makers of hydroxicloroquine gave him $1.2 million. of course. it's all between friends. no matter that it doesn't work on covid. or that the people who really need it now can't get it. or that it kills people who aren't using it right. use the press conference to tout your buddy's chemicals.

spring is coming up around the mountains, and this means the tiniest wildflowers, and a few weeds, and worms everywhere, which get the birds going. things do turn a little green, even though basically it is dry from about january to july, and verydry in april, my birthday month. all those years in the north, and i though april was a rainy month, lots of rain mixed with occasional snow and thunderstorms, that kind of stuff. down here, not hardly an inch. you see some grass coming up and you want to make it wet, because that will green it up, bring it along - but water is scarce, and i, myself, feel like even doing the wash is an imposition on a hard-pressed reservoir.

better off than most people - i repeat that to myself, as we have the luxury, out here at the end of the road, in a remote south-central new mexico valley, to not really see many people. i wake up in the middle of the night worried about the supply chain, or about roving gangs in the cities when the money runs out, or about my various relatives getting caught up in the hard times, as i'm sure they will, eventually. but it seems all peaceful for now. people are not going bonkers.

i found out this morning how to keep a dow jones window open, and i do that. the stock market is fairly level, even going up, though there's a hint of trouble in the air. it's like nobody really wants to flip the switch that'll make it crash that much more. and, it's already gone down quite a bit, so its level, as it stands, is tenuously a new level that it could keep, if people really have the confidence in rebuilding and in the recovery of a real economy.

but there's also the possibility that some things are lost forever. department stores, i'd say, lost forever. lots of restaurants, lost too. it's hard to imagine now, what places would be like with a lot of people in them. it's not something i can see myself seeking out. the days of getting out on the beach, and just relaxing in a crowd, are over. even if you're stupid enough to do it, you surely won't relax in the process.

so, during the day, i pull myself back to the horrible news. i can't help myself. people are dying, right under our eyes, and we the lucky are out here in the country, time out, while they do it. in respect to them, if nothing else, i check the news. somehow i feel like i've paid them respects, by being horrified. they didn't die unnoticed.

and yet i've got three writing projects, one quilt, and a fireman's training program, all going neglected, in my morbid fascination with random deaths on the east and in louisiana. so far, nobody i know yet - people related to people i know, yes, and my aunt is in trouble (being ~96, being frail of mind, being in a nursing home that is contaminated - not a good place, at the moment). Everyone is suspended, like me. In a living room, probably with a television that's been on too much, probably overeating as i am - and we are all waiting for the "all clear" to go back to living our lives. it may not come right away.

so the morbid fascination - the pull toward the horrible news - keeps me, really, from the productive stuff. it doesn't keep me out of the outside. i spend my days clearing brush, cutting old branches, taking sticks away. it's all fuel, waiting to burn. i'm trying to get it out of reach of the house, so that when it goes, it goes in another direction. i would also say this about the tragedy. the sooner we forget about it, the better. let the bad news go downwind, away from us.

i have a new theory, a new explanation. it has been pointed out that this is a time when the earth is quite crowded. maybe four or five billion people? it's like if you believe in reincarnation, every soul who has ever been on earth, is back on earth now. we have people like me who respond in horror to trump, and it's probably because we were here during hitler, and it doesn't take much. people who died in the forties, could very easily rearrived in the baby boom, and are the ones, like me, who are now vulnerable and have to go home, sit still, and hope the world doesn't come to us.

but if you believe in reincarnation, then it's also possible that a large number of souls are needed elsewhere, all of a sudden, and the disease goes through and grabs them, so that they'll be available, now, wherever that place may be. not on earth, surely, as there are no new ventures on earth. but if there is a limited supply of souls, and we have most all of them, and in fact we would do ok without a few thousand of them, then maybe this is a way of making that happen. those souls, from our point of view, died in vain, what a horrible place to go - and it even seems like it was totally avoidable. but, under this theory, they won't be gone forever. somewhere, they are coming back, and, reborn, having a new experience in a new place.

there are some patterns developing, as we all hunker down, and it's now been over three weeks, really, since we even left our house for anything more than groceries once a week.

we are lucky, compared to most, because for us staying at home still allows us to go for long walks, go back into the forest, spend the day outside, things like that. in some places people want to go to the park or the beach, just to get outside, and find it is a highly politically charged action, like going to church on sunday. it's defiant. there is social pressure against spreading the disease.

everyone goes a little bonkers, not talking to anyone, or watching way too much television, or talking to their furniture. about half a dozen of my friends posted that one post about talking to things around the house (the plunger told me to stuff it) and this is how i knew that they were suffering, alone, but still had a sense of humor. we are lucky in that regard, too, as there are six of us, and we have enough room to avoid each other but also have each other, when we are really bored, to get on each other or get some entertainment.

finally, we are lucky that the internet is working fine. the water is coming from the well. the power is still on. the food supply chain has been a little interrupted, but we are flexible in that regard. mostly life has been easy.

april is a very dry month in new mexico. i have a hard time getting used to that, because all my life, it was one of the wettest months; now, we're lucky to get even a drop of rain. the grass crackles beneath my feet. things i planted dry out and wait for the rainy season which isn't until the fourth of july. when there's a tiny drop of water, all the birds gather round and try to use it quick before i put it on the garden.

i am a creative person, but i am also very sensitive. i find it difficult to write short stories when a thousand people just died in the state i went to high school in (new york). april is going to be a rough month, my daughter says, and she's right - and furthermore, it is her birth month as well as mine. and the queen's too. we will all have a rough month. if a thousand die on my birthday, in my home state or in any state, that's a bad day. how is anyone supposed to write a short story? my creativity has dried up. instead i am obsessed with news and death. and geography, as usual. i am obsessed with where it takes off the most.

there seems to be a pattern - it's where people congregate in large numbers, and then go off in their own directions. they then give it to everyone they come into contact with, and this goes on for a couple of weeks, until they feel symptoms - suspecting something, they may limit their contact with people. but the damage has been done. and it goes about a month that way, because it takes another two weeks before they have to be hospitalized, or die. lots of people have not made it that far, but will, soon enough. john prine. boris johnson. some folks in various nursing homes. "we'll all know people," my daughter says. "it will come home to us."

we have been faithfully staying way out at the end of the road. our kids are restarting school, online. i am going back to work, online. we wait for the all clear. it may take a month, or two, or three. no telling where it goes from here.