Covid 19 Slump

This week has been a tough one for me.

I think it was Saturday (totally unclear of days) that I didn't want to do a thing.  No walk, no hula hoop, no painting, no writing, no reading, no netflix, no news (that is fine) - no cooking, no anything.

I sat outside on my little deck and waited for the humming bird to come to the feeder - he didn't come.

Again, days or the markings of days unclear.  On Sunday I received whats apps from people in Israel as Yom Hazikaron would be taking place.  At least I could find a reason for feeling down, as if 6-7 weeks in isolation, and the general uncertainty of absolutely everything were not enough.  Of course I am down. Yom Hazikaron is coming up - I should be in Israel, with family and friends. I should be going to the alternative Ceremony in the evening and Kibbutz Ein Dor that day. 

But if I looked even further under - it is for me a complete existential crisis. 

"What is this all about?"

The pain of sitting with nothing. I could look for distractions;  zoom, texts, classes, music.  Just distractions.

What is underneath everything? money, security, partners, children, creativitiy, all the constructs we create and place our hope and trust in?

This is the time for me to go in deep and under.

I do accept this.

Random isolation musings

It is the small things that bring me joy

For instance, just before Pesach I made myself a cup of tea and wondered what to have with it, nothing felt appealing until I remembered with unbridled joy that I had ordered Ouma Rusks from the African Hut.  These are rusks from my childhood. Dipped in tea it is nothing less than heaven, (for me.)

Eating  rusks, spreading marmite on my toast, and loving my cream of wheat for breakfast is just part of my regression that I wrote about previously.  I was overjoyed (again - small things) to read that it is not just me, America is buying up comfort foods, the canned and boxed processed foods from their childhood, and of course drinking alcohol, in vast quantities, ice cream etc.

Another joy making episode. I have been knitting a sweater for several months now.  The photo on pattern made it appear like rather a simple, but lovely sweater.  Well, it turned out the pattern was translated from some slavic language, and was not apparently translated very well.  I attended knitting labs (a genius bar for knitters) at my local yarn store.  Of course this has been shut down. I struggled unsuccessfully to remember how I had picked up stitches for a sleeve.  Of course I looked at several You Tube tutorials, and it just wasn't working, causing me much frustration. After a few frustrating evenings I decided to look at one more tutorial - no sooner did the woman begin her demonstration than something clicked immediately. I turned off the video and am now happily knitting again.
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Another joy making event.  I went on a 6' apart walk with my 'daughter.'  Every day on my walks I walk up or down or around a new street.  At some point during the walk I noticed large expanses of green slopes.  I had no idea what that was - she told me it is a cemetery.  I have lived in this area for going on 30 years and had NO idea there was a cemetery here.  I always saw the mortuary at the top of Fairmount Avenue but I thought it was just a crematorium and had no idea there was a beautiful cemetery behind it!

What joy, I love cemeteries.  It is really beautifully landscaped with magnificent vistas, and quiet unobtrusive inhabitants.

More joy:  When I am washing the dishes sometimes the dishsoap lathers up and little rainbow bubbles float around

The Habad Rabbi coming before Pesach with a Matza Shmura and offers of help for shopping, etc.

And some of the delightful whimsical things I see on my walks

Covid 19 Insanity

The above photos are of beloved paintings which we grew up with.  My memory is that my parents brought them home with them after one of their trips overseas.  They were in a layover in Nairobi and bought them at the airport. My brother and sister each have a different memory of the exact provenance. The one shared memory is that they were bought somewhere in Africa and put up in our home in South Africa.

My parents took them with when they moved from South Africa to Israel and put them on the wall of a room in their flat in North Tel Aviv. After my dad died my mother moved twice again and carefully wrapped them and took them with her. 

After she died my brother and I chose things we could bring back  to our homes on either coast of America.  My sister kept the 'heavy' things, like the furniture, cutlery, etc.  It was an amicable arrangement.

I kept these paintings in the same newspaper my mother had carefully wrapped them in until I moved to my latest home.  I put them on the wall in my study/den/guest bedroom/ office. I used command strips instead of nails.  I had bought them from Bed Bath and Beyond or Joann's or Ace Hardware - they all carry them, and they have been there for 3 years.  Yesterday I saw that two pictures had fallen behind the sofa. I retrieved them and removed the old strips and looked in my storage for spare strips.  Oh woe, I did not have any extras and I absolutely had to put these pictures back, NOW. I read on the Nextdoor site that Joann's was still open.  I checked online and they were open until 5 p.m. It was now 3.55 p.m.  And so began my frantic internal dialogue - 'should I risk my life by going to Joann's, or should I wait it out until?  ........ Who knows until when? It could be months still, years even, the rest of my life .....????'

I decided I had to risk my life and hopefully I won't endanger others. I will go to Joann's with gloves, my mask, hand sanitizer.  Off I went and drove to El Cerrito Plaza and what did I see  --

a long line - a very long line of masked people - it snaked almost back to BART.  My mind was made up for me, I turned around and came home and ordered some from Amazon! 

More Covid 19 thoughts

I have no idea of how long this new way of living has been going on for. As I said in a previous entry, everything is becoming a blur. I do know that every now and then during a day, or an evening, or a morning, after I wake, that it  strikes me that we are all in an entirely different world. And it happened so very fast.  We are living in a PANDEMIC. The word itself is not quite real, it comes from a world of illusion - movies, science fiction,  how does it even pertain to the world we inhabited just a short while ago.

I have donated masks which I ordered after our horrendous fires - and yes, the fires will come again, lets not forget that!

I handsewed a mask which I will don when I next venture out. Life in my lovely home is OK, I have beautiful views, I can still go on walks outside, which I do.  Spring is here and things don't look so unreal. The other morning I decided to drive into Berkeley, and after I returned to my sanctuary I realized that I was quite depressed from what I saw, or rather, didn't see.  Closed shops, masked gloved people in a line outside Trader Joe's and Target.  No people - just the ubiquitous homeless, and their encampment near the freeway on frontage road looks the same. Filthy, cluttered, bicycle parts, overturned shopping carts, dogs, an occasional bedraggled looking soul.

The apocalypse is upon us.

But for me it is the smallest most ridiculous things that make my day, like yesterday - a cold, rainy day.  I felt like something with a cup of tea, but wasn't sure what I wanted until I remembered that I had ordered Ouma rusks from the African Hut and they arrived last week.  What joy, what happiness, what excitement.  It doesn't take much.

And now I think of the Seder.  Easily condensed - only one question is necessary and the youngest doesn't have to ask because they wouldn't know. This present is all they know and they love it - being with family all the time.

How is this night different from all other nights?

Easy peasyl

And we don't need 10 plagues  - one is sufficient - dayenu!

We are still in bondage - to Covid 19. We have to be in bondage, to save us all.

When the time for freedom and liberation comes, we will know.  It is not upon us yet.

nailed it

Lets check, the up/down/around/ loading of pictures.

The following (hopefully) are from some of my walks:

Yahooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. Grateful thanks to Mike Dobson

Coronarial Days

Soooooooooooooooooooooo frustrated, because I thought I had at last nailed how to download (upload) whatever load, photos to my blog.  Now I have lost it again.

OK, so a post without pictures.  Hopefully there will eventually be some photos, because this spring is magnificent.

These strange days, as I have said - I awake and do not know the day, or the date, nothing really seems to matter.  Once again time has lost - for me anyway - the meaning it had before.  This strange new way of being seems to have been going on for ever, and it is all in the now. The news of the spread of the virus, and the numbers of the infected and the dead change by the minute, along with the most recent states and countries affected.

The other day, instead of going on my usual constitutionals, always to a new area of course, I found a playing field not too far from here.  I walked down the steps to the field and started walking around and around.  I saw the same faces walking round, just like me, but everyone seemed to be avoiding me, like I had the plague or something.  Then it dawned on me - it IS the plague, this is our new reality, and this is social distancing.  One sees a fellow human and walks around, avoiding them.

As I walked around I started to wonder whether this is a form of insanity - like a rat, around and around in circles, with no treat in sight, except for this high step count on my phone! 

Ye Gods and little Englishmen - I will try again ...............

Tales of Covid19

I have been busy today - since my very late rising. (more of that later)

Yesterday on the Nextdoor site there were requests for masks.  During the most recent fires I ordered both an air filter and 2 boxes of N95 masks.  No sooner did I receive both items than the air cleared.  I packed the masks away in a storage area knowing there will be more fires.  Of course I had no idea there would be a pandemic.

On the site there were a few places one can donate masks to.  I emailed both sites, and still have not heard back from either.  This morning, while drinking my coffee I received a text message from a friend from the kibbutz to ask if we can speak.  Immediately I called him, and he told me that he is on  a whats app group with people from his age group on the kibbutz who live in the states.  One of them is a girl (woman of course) who is a home occupational therapist in my area.  She asked whether they had masks as Kaiser is not giving them any because there aren't any!  Firstly I knew exactly who he was talking about (that too is another story), and of course I could give her masks,  I would be delighted to. He gave her my phone number and she called within the hour.  We arranged for her to pick them up. She texted me from outside the house and I went up the driveway with the sealed masks which I had put into a paper bag. I handed them over. We mutually gave each other virtual hugs, then she brought out a loaf of bread which she makes, (in a plastic bag) and handed it to me.   I hadn't expected anything at all, but was so touched.  I also thought how all this is, as I have said, like a dystopian movie in which people cannot be in contact with anyone and we barter goods and services.


The only other time I emerged today was when my daughter came with the groceries she had bought for me from Trader Joe's.

I haven't gone on my walk because it is cold and rainy - ideal weather for the delicious vegetable soup I made, along with a slice of her bread, which is really excellent.  Organic sourdough, fresh from the oven.

I had made a large pot of soup and doled out some for my landlords and left it on their back porch. We are like moles appearing quickly out of our holes, then back down we go.  If we do pass people on the pavement or the street we cross to the other side, avoiding each other like the plague, which is exactly what this is.