I Remember Day 18

Day 18 was a Sunday. New York is getting hot, and comparing the numbers makes the outlook poor. No country’s response to the pandemic has been poorer than that of the USA, and the cost will pass half a million souls, conservatively. I’m thinking of the cost because I wrote to my mother today for the first time in nearly a year. My father is continuing to work at the hardware store in their small town, where a handful of people have already tested positive. It’s a matter of time, she said. He wants to work until he’s 80, he wants to die working, is what she said. This virus doesn’t let people die working; it puts them on their face, or on their back, and that’s that. It’s that level of not taking things seriously that will be the American legacy of this time period.

We went to a coffee shop either yesterday or the day before. We went because we tried to buy cheap coffee on Amazon and it was too bitter to ingest. I asked Javi there how he was holding up and he said business was slow.

We went to the supermarket to stock up a little. My stress level rose exponentially as time passed. Savannah said that she was looking forward to the day when she wasn’t horrified by the sight of another person. I came home and got high.

We finished watching Tiger King, the show that will define this brutal period of American history. It’s about the trash that wants to be worshiped, the trash that is worshiped, and the trash that yearns for the time when it was worshiped. Who worships trash? The Anthropocene is a geological period of trash worship.

I have been playing a video game called Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The game features an extreme curvature of the cartoon landscape. The avatar catches bugs and fish and gentrifies a deserted island. It’s calming.

I Remember Day 17

On Day 17, Savannah and I took a walk in the neighborhood. It was the weekend, but didn’t feel like it. Time is sliding by in starts and lurches. It’s interesting, like having an adversary that is yourself, that is the environment, and these things inflame each other and are quickened to overwhelming proportions by the slippage of time. I wonder if there is a particularly good novel about confinement.

It is exciting in a way to be living in a time of plague. I suppose these posts should be more historically friendly, more descriptive of the mundane events of each day. Maybe from here I’ll just do that. That way, it’ll make sense with the pictures.

I Remember Day 16

Yesterday was the day that Boris Johnson, British PM and figurehead of Brexit, was diagnosed with COVID-19.

I Remember Day 15

Today, I got a sore throat in the afternoon. It’s the first time I’ve felt symptoms of any kind. Incredible the density and breadth of the anxiety and stress that a single, perhaps benign symptom causes. NO! How could I say benign in a time when no condition under the sun isn’t malignant and perhaps telling of a potentially lethal threat to one’s constitution?

Day 15 was the day when the forecasted unemployment numbers finally got to Savannah. This epoch is going to make the Great Depression seem like the Okay Depression - you heard it here first - and she became worried about the possibility of losing her job. She made a lot of phone calls to contractors during the course of her day and the prognosis in a handful of cases was grim.

I have been saying it a long time and here it is, possibly: the death of this version of capitalism is written on the winds. There’s gonna be a lotta pain, and shit I may not make it all the way through, but I can’t help thinking that it’s for the best. The coming period in American history should be called “post-capitalist America” and it would be nice if it bore all the hallmarks of a more Canadian socialist republic. I find it ironic and fitting that a paragon of capitalism, our own Cheeto Benito, was the one to usher it in. America went too far and has become a shadow of itself, and after ten years or so I hope that something better will emerge from the depths of this darkness.

And it’s written: those that voted him in looked for single issues in the conservative clearinghouse, like abortion, like religion (bizarrely, as the man only worships himself and pantomimes care for literally anything else save his daughter), etc. And their reward? The news now is around his suggestion that in order to save the stock market the US shouldn’t spend money on saving old people’s lives. It’s the old Eskimo tack! If someone is slowing the march across the tundra, they know it and the group makes them up an igloo and sets them adrift on a floe, or just leaves them behind to freeze. Problem solved! Right?! Our conservatives would have anyone believe that they yearn for days for which they weren’t alive to develop a nostalgia. The 30s, the 40s….days their parents experienced and were some of the boomer generation’s first baked-in lessons in living life. But alas! The cowboys range now not between mountains and mesas but between kerbs and home stores, feeding the horse diesel gas, itself with computerized guts where before you could simply disassemble an M1 Garand if your engine was acting up, and make the repair with gun parts like a PATRIOT. Sigh….those indeed were the days.

The truth to me about this time period, the one that is dying aflame before my eyes, is that it has been an exercise in mass hallucination. Fools in this country didn’t like that we were living in a time when they perceived a black man was telling them what to do and how to be, and was a painful daily reminder that inclusion and equity were eroding their sense of white entitlement. How did they go about future-proofing themselves? They elected an avatar of their fading dream: a huckster, a magnate, a man whose addled mind remembers the America they do and has promised its resurrection. He is the emptiest of suits, a homunculus consuming only fast food for the television cameras.

But this is all known.

What isn’t known is how far the country will have to sink in order to rid itself of its capitalist past. Perhaps there is no bottom too deep. We are on a ride, and trying to control one’s destiny at the moment feels like a vain exercise that can only produce anxiety and fear in the unfathomable quantities that I mentioned earlier. Speaking of which, here are today’s headlines as they have presented themselves to me:

British PM Johnson tests positive for coronavirus - Reuters

Trump claims U.S. states don’t need the amount of ventilators they’re asking for: ‘I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000’ - Newsweek

Gamestop to permanently close over 300 stores - Comicbook.com

Trump’s death cult finally says it: Time to kill the ‘useless eaters’ for capitalism. Republicans say the quiet part out loud: Americans must die of the coronavirus in order to save capitalism - Salon

Greek Australian Samaritan hands out $100 to each person at Centrelink - Neos Kosmos

In Belgium a first case has been reported of a cat being infected by Covid-19. The cat was infected by a human and also showed symptoms. - HLN.be

Corporate Socialism: The Government is Bailing Out Investors & Managers Not You - Medium

Amazon has been hiding product listings with faster delivery speeds - Vox

The discovery of multiple lineages of pangolin coronavirus and their similarity to SARS-CoV-2 suggests that pangolins should be considered as possible hosts in the emergence of novel coronaviruses and should be removed from wet markets to prevent zoonotic transmission. - Nature

German company Bosch produces 95% accurate test with testing time under 2.5 hours and no laboratory required - Faz.net

‘Holy Crap This is Insane’: Citing Coronavirus Pandemic, EPA Indefinitely Suspends Environmental Rules - Common Dreams

me, literally staring at the sun

I Remember Day 14

Two weeks.

I Remember Day 13

On Day 13 I took a photo walk.

On Day 13, I felt the pulse of blood pounding in my head synchronize with the footsteps of the upstairs neighbors.

As I see…

I am seen.

I am seen.

I am seen.

I am seen.

I Remember Day 12

This was the first day I woke up with anxiety tied directly to the coronavirus outbreak. At 5:00 AM, I was wide awake. I turned on Animal Crossing and played until 7:00 AM or so, and stopped in time to make Sav bacon and eggs for her birthday. She turned 32 during the quarantine, and we’ll see if I turn 38 during the quarantine. Even if the quarantine itself ends, the economic fallout of the quarantine period will last a lot longer, and together with the outbreak will define this part of the 21st century for the US. And that’s what woke me up: an article I saw posted, a headline reading out the context of the Fed-projected unemployment rate: 30%, whereas the maximum unemployment rate during the Great Depression was 24.9%. I woke up running scenarios about what we would do during a 10-year economic collapse, and by turns feeling angry toward all the people that voted for conservatives, voted for the policies that brought this country to this new devastation.

Yesterday, our pandemic president offhandedly said something about how people should go back to work to save the economy, in spite of the risk of infection and death from one’s respiratory system melting slowly. The country is being led by sociopaths, for sociopaths. This is an example, to me, of the corrupting influence of late-stage capitalism. How can it be countered?

Here are some headlines from the news today:

Governor Cuomo: “My mother is not expendable. Your mother is not expendable. We will not put a dollar figure on human life. We can have a public health strategy that is consistent with an economic one. No one should be talking about social Darwinism for the sake of the stock market.” - Twitter

Italian priest who gave respirator to a younger patient dies of disease - A 72-year-old priest who gave his respirator to a younger Covid-19 patient he did not know has died from coronavirus. - The Independent

White House: We’re Going to Have to Let Some People Die So the Stock Market Can Live - Vanity Fair

Asterix creator Albert Uderzo dies at 92 - The Guardian

Plague Inc. Getting New Mode That Lets You Save the World From a Pandemic, Not Destroy It - PCMag

Tokyo Olympics to be postponed to 2021 due to coronavirus pandemic - The Guardian

UPS partners with Wingcopter to develop new multipurpose drone delivery fleet - Tech Crunch

Harvard researchers found a way to correct for signal loss with a prototype quantum node that can catch, store, and entangle bits of quantum information. The research is the missing link towards a practical quantum internet and a major step forward in the development of long-distance quantum networks - Nature

Cuomo fires back at Trump on coronavirus: ‘No American will say speed up economy at the cost of human life’ - CNBC

Heating sinuses with hairdryer, taking lots of vitamin C will not prevent coronavirus: Debunking COVID-19 myths - Cleveland.com

China permanently bans consumption of Wild Animals - Veg News

Ireland: Private hospitals will be made public for the duration of pandemic - The State will take control of all private hospital facilities - Health Minister: “Patients with this virus will be treated for free, and they’ll be treated as part of a single, national hospital service.” - The Journal.ie

‘Big Brother Canada’ officially ending Season 8, ceasing production due to coronavirus - Global News.ca

Texas’ lieutenant governor suggests grandparents are willing to die for US economy - USA Today

Hillary Clinton mocks Trump: ‘Do not take medical advice from a man who looked directly at a solar eclipse’ - NBC News

More than 1,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Quebec - CBC.ca

Bill Gates says the US missed its chance to avoid coronavirus shutdown and businesses should stay closed - CNBC

I Remember Day 11

Actually, I don’t really remember Day 11. I missed posting yesterday due to lack of will, and I suppose that is significant. In a quarantine, you lose your will. I’m sure we went out and did something, but I don’t, at this moment without coffee and before breakfast (I’m trying intermittent fasting) I can’t summon an image of what two days ago looked like.

I Remember Day 10

On Saturday, Day 10, we ventured out to the supermarket because Savannah was craving a salad that she would sometimes get in the Illinois Center, and wanted to replicate it. Objectively, it was a mistake to go out. We went to Cermak Fresh Market around midday, and it was crawling with customers. I couldn’t help looking around, seeing screaming children, seeing people handling goods on shelves, seeing people brushing past one another, and feeling dread and a sense of doom turning my heart to lead. Savannah felt terrible about us going out. We came home and disinfected ourselves, and I Lysol-wiped the packaged goods. Maybe it was enough, but who knows? For the rest of the day, because my nerves were shattered, I played Animal Crossing and got high. I barely ate or drank until later in the day.

I Remember Day 09

On Day 09, Animal Crossing dropped on Nintendo Switch. What is Animal Crossing? It’s a game (word used loosely) where you just exist on an isolated island, populating and terraforming it. I found it a fitting analog to the current situation. I played it all day. I didn’t even look at the news, because I knew what I’d find there: more about the spread of the virus, which is vital and interesting, sure, but I’ve been following it closely since January and have visualized this outcome for months. I received light jabs for stocking up on canned goods a week before the US went into full panic mode. Was I a prepper? Not nearly. I just foresaw empty shelves and well, panic, and now everyone is paying attention and the moment to slyly prepare has passed.

So I sat in my living room and existed elsewhere for a day, as childish pixels.

I Remember Day 08

Hello, Day 09. Let me tell you about Day 08.

I liked what we did yesterday, so let me explain it in more detail. I’ll be going into more detail, I think, because I believe that in its own small way, this may be read as a narration into America’s decline and eventual collapse. Things are getting grimmer, so I’ll continue to write as this dream returns piece by piece, in flames to the Earth. Yesterday, I wrote about Day 07 as I was drinking coffee (in my house we jokingly call it "covfefe”, or “all the negative press covfefe”…if you think about it, it works) and I listed the news stories I saw as I refreshed Reddit over and over again. I will do that, but let me make coffee first.

In the meanwhile, have a listen to Sumac Dub’s new album, Norska. They’re this group out of Grenoble that makes fitting music for a pirate broadcast.

Before I go into what is truly a litany, a list of complaints the country makes as it grows, I’d wager, (not dies) away from its adolescent totalitarian edginess, I’ll mention that I listened yesterday to an address by a real politician: Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot. She ordered, as far as she has any capacity to order anyone, she ordered anyone with any signs of illness whatsoever to remain in their homes indefinitely. We all thought she was going to implement a “shelter-in-place” order, but she did not. She spoke well and clearly, with some positivity too. All that said, she is delaying the inevitable, and I can’t decide if it’s a good or bad tactic. By shutting the city down in stages, her kindness is in protecting her people from a jarring lifestyle shift. On the other hand, this is real and Italy was the test case and it’s on display right now, on the world stage, what happens in a western democracy when this fucking plague isn’t taken absolutely seriously. It’s like a sci-fi movie over there: all the buildings and infrastructure and cultural notes are there, but there are no people to be seen. Think about it: that is the type of sentence an archaeologist might write upon unearthing what has been purported to be a lost civilization’s remnants. So while it’s up in the air for some people, we’ve been self-isolating a week now.

Let’s look at some of today’s headlines:

Entire Georgia Senate told to self-quarantine after Republican shows up despite coronavirus test. “I’m shaking with rage,” a colleague said. “He irresponsibly stayed all day at the Capitol and exposed all of us.” - Salon

‘Nature is taking back Venice’: Wildlife returns to tourist-free city - With the cruise ships gone and the souvenir stalls closed, the coronavirus lockdown has transformed La Serenissima’s waterways - The Guardian

Pixar’s Onward is coming to the US tonight on digital download and will be streaming on Disney Plus on April 3rd - Twitter

Four US Senators sold stocks before coronavirus threat crashed market - The Hill

More than 50,000 people in Italy charged with breaking quarantine rules - those flouting the rules can face fines or even a prison sentence, as Italian authorities fight to stop the spread of the coronavirus - The Local.it

Hong Kong netizens estimates real Wuhan Coronavirus death figures in China to be >10 mil using domestic ISP subscriber loss figures - LIHKG (This is an example of fake news. How exciting! How does one tell? Because OP titled it “Wuhan Coronavirus”, which is a variant of a phrase American conservatives are trying to push into common parlance. The cumulative cognitive effect, if the world starts using phrases like this, is that people will believe that only China is to blame for the outbreak. This is a lie, of course, as each country’s government is responsible in its own territory.)

They. Sold. Their. Stock. They could have made a difference, but they made a profit. - New York Times

“ It’s almost like the United States has no President - we are a rudderless ship heading for a major disaster. Good luck everyone!” - Donald J. Trump, March 19, 2014, Twitter

Not-yet-published article: Obesity is a risk factor for the exact same reason cancer is. Too many cells which make the binding enzyme for this virus. - PrePrints

It’s time we hold the president and conservative media accountable for their misinformation campaign. - Yahoo News

4 Senators sold stock before steep market losses from virus - Las Vegas Review-Journal

Sen. Richard Burr, who sold stock before recent market decline, voted in 2012 against banning insider trading for Congress - Washington Post

A critical care nurse in Britain has made a tearful appeal to members of the public to stop stripping supermarket shelves of food after she came off a shift and was unable to buy supplies for her family. - Twitter

First arrest on UK soil for ‘failing to self-isolate due to coronavirus’: 26-year-old male faces 10,000 pound fine and three months in jail after arriving on isle of Man then ‘refusing to go into 14-day quarantine’ - Daily Mail

George R.R. Martin Says Coronavirus Has Led to More Work on The Winds of Winter - CBR.com

So that is the climate today, as it has presented itself down my newsfeed. Some people are advocating for the return of the guillotine for those senators that insider-traded around coronavirus news, and I have to agree that it would set a good precedent for the wealthy, a reminder about what the underclasses’ last line of defense remains to be, even in these sophisticated times. Make not beasts of men, lest they behave as beasts.

Shuttered hair salon.

A child’s toy in the mud and amidst a constellation of cigarette butts.

If you look closely, you can recognize a subtly arcing magenta corona passing through the image.

I Remember Day 07

On Day 07, I talked with Shawn on the phone. Both of us see no way this quarantine ends in two weeks, but rather we foresee it stretching on through the summer, if not beyond. The American response has lagged behind Korea’s, for example, and that of several other countries. The American government, now hollowed out and full of hucksters and scam artists, is scrambling not to find a cure or vaccine but to find a way to profit from such a discovery made elsewhere. The governors of our states have taken up the mantle of leadership and have brought various measures to bear, while some state governments continue to sit on their thumbs. This approach most closely resembles the Italian approach, and so Shawn and I and a few other people I know that are watching closely expect America to endure a much broader, much more visibly painful version of what has happened in Italy. A few things could stem the tide: a vaccine could, a clear picture of how infection spreads could do it, well-thought measures by our federal leadership could do it, but so far none of these have happened in the US. For that reason, we used our phone call to make a plan for moving our photography classes online. So far it’s just a proposal for Jeanne, but she being herself, she probably has all this planned out already. Maybe she’ll write back today.

As I always write these the day after, as they are a memory exercise, I’ll share some news headlines from today to use as a marker in time. I expect to look back at most of this writing and marvel at how short-sighted I was.

Coronavirus jumped from 100 cases to 225,000 cases in just three months - BNO News

Coronavirus cure hope aas 79-year old man successfully treated with experimental drug - Telegraph

Numbers coming from Lombardy don’t mean anything anymore, hospitals, on the verge of collapse, refuse to test symptomatic patients and many people are dying at home, says Italian biologist Enrico Bucci - Il Post.it

Jared Kushner is reportedly leading a chaotic coronavirus “shadow” task force after telling Trump in the outbreak’s early days the crisis was overblown - Business Insider

Unions call on Quebec to shut down construction sites to protect against COVID-19

WHO walks back advice on ibuprofen, having told people with coronavirus symptoms to avoid it and take paracetamol instead - Business Insider

Burr recording sparks questions about private comments on COVID-19 - NPR

Susan Collins’ Obama-era vote against pandemic funding comes back to haunt her - The Daily Beast

New controlled clinical study conducted by doctors in France shows that Hydrochloroquine cures 100% off coronavirus patients within 6 days of treatment - Tech Startups

White House aides reportedly learned of the coronavirus test shortages from the media - The Week

Italian doctor dies of coronavirus after working without gloves due to shortage - Euro News

Trump reportedly almost tweeted that Tom Hanks had died from the coronavirus after misunderstanding reports about the actor being “discharged” from the hospital - Business Insider

So imagine that the picture painted by all these headlines - you should be feeling it in your gut and seeing it in the slump of your shoulders - just persists for weeks on end while you are relegated to your home, a fish in a barrel for bad news. Of course, half the US isn’t getting any of these updates; they are being told that the global quarantine measures and the hundreds of thousands of infected and the ramping number of deaths won’t, for magical reasons, affect them. And so they go about their days normally, and will no doubt be surprised when they or people around them start coughing.

To leaven the load I go outside. I walk alone and take pictures, touching nothing. I find myself nervous to walk through an area where I have seen other people, for fear that their breath has dissipated into the air, hanging there like a silent infectious miasma. Even so, I am calmed by the rise and fall of my body and the feeling of the ground beneath my feet. You may have noticed that the global pandemic is on my mind, and for that reason the pictures all have to do with it in various ways. The pictures seen here reflect my state of mind, and the action of me turning this event over again and again, trying to understand it. To do this, I break quarantine.

A window sealed on the outside.

Universal symbol for ‘hazard’.

Butterflies and bars.

An inviting galley.

The interior must be very dark.

Trying different tints until one works the way you wanted it to.

Our artifacts.

A lot of small businesses and restaurants are hurting badly as their clientele has stayed home. The only options being allowed right now in the city of Chicago, if you want to eat out, are carry out or delivery.

I Remember Day 06

I remember I ginned up the courage to respray a price scanner on Day 06. Why a price scanner? It’s a piece I’m working on right now, after an idea that is a question: what comes after retail dies? The Rust Belt has seen industry come and go, and has seen retail usurp its place. It’s unclear to me what would stop retail from suffering the same fate that befell manufacturing, and so I find myself looking for an answer and I come to: experience. After retail, we will primarily sell experience itself. Taking this eventuality for granted, I am working a price scanner into an experiential piece for the gallery space. On Day 06, I set to painting it a highly reflective silver.

I didn’t really have facilities, so used what I could find. One piece of the scanner mount, a ribbed tubing, I fitted onto one end of a pottery sherd and stabbed the other end into the ground. I clamped two clothes hangers to the top of a ladder and made a cradle for the scanner and its cord. One piece was lain on a face-down thin mints box (RIP). For other parts, I used some brown butcher paper to protect them from the ground.

Painting was rough. I was using a dabber to apply the paint at first, and it’s dramatically bad for this job. I used a brush, and it left strokes. I haven’t tried a foam brush yet, but I’m not even going down that road. Some Krylon Looking Glass spray paint is my next route. I’ll just sand down the coat of paint that’s on there now with some 1,000-grit paper and re-apply. Should have the desired effect.

Just trying on different looks.

Skinless building.

This one is definitely set to “stun”.

I Remember Day 05

On Day 05, I remember that I finally acted on the idea to make pictures for something, meaning for a zine or record that showed some urban mindscape during our self-isolation. I walked with an umbrella under wet falling snow, wintry mix they call it now, and took pictures along the sidewalks in Pilsen.

The only interaction with another person was with an old man, who saw me framing up a shot on a Christmas light that had been manufactured in the shape of the coronavirus model going around in online and print publications. I nodded to him and he stared, as people often do when I have the camera. He passed me and every so many steps he turned to look back over his shoulder at me, must have been half a dozen times before he finally crossed the street. I could not shake the implication that I was in some way at some sinister task, not to be trusted, fit for suspicion, and a trespasser in a neighborhood I’ve lived in for four years now.

I missed my focus and have to go back to take the shot again.

Temples.

Ravaged egg racks.

The supply chain isn’t broken, so all of the people that could afford to stockpile have stockpiled, and now the stores will be restocking for the first time since the declaration of the national state of emergency. I hope that people will take the strategy of the quarantined peoples of Wuhan: elect an individual to shop, and send them out alone to bring back goods for the family as a hunter/gatherer would have tens of thousands of years ago.

A meeting-place.

Advertising for tables and chairs.

A meeting-place.

“Life isn’t worth anything. Guanajuato”

Say a non-Mexican or someone not from Guanajuato state, Mexico can read this and vaguely understand it. If they could, they might be alarmed at the sentiment. Life isn’t worth anything? The clue to this slick’s true meaning is in the place name: Guanajuato. With that information in hand, anyone could follow up and discover, for example, classic Mexican baladeer Pedro Infante’s eponymous song, released in 1955, about the bittersweetness you might feel about the place you are from, how it hurt you deeply in the past but also how you find yourself longing for it and resenting it by turns. In this case, it would seem that the owner of the truck misses Guanajuato while they are living in Chicago.

I have been to Guanajuato and can confirm that its charms are many, its culture is unique and very unlike what is to be found even in Pilsen, a home away from home for many of its residents, myself included.

Sidewalk memorial. I am not a religious person but I like this culturally, that a person can leave their home and immediately be greeted with a reminder of those they’ve lost, and are reminded to bend down and light candles in remembrance.

I Remember Day 04

Without federal direction, I remember that Day 04 was our first real day of self-quarantine. We made appointments for ourselves, just to get out of the house: we went to the laundromat, we went for a walk around the neighborhood, we visited a drop box and donated clothing. We preserved our sanity by walking and taking the open air. I brought the camera.

Here, the globe is bisected by a foreign and obfuscating mark.

A jarring, perhaps toxic artifact. It’s not so much that it’s a bloody rag but moreso that someone was in such duress that it was discarded and left on the sidewalk for an indeterminate amount of time, and avoided by everyone that had passed in the interval.

I Remember Day 03

On Day 03 I mocked up our living room in SketchUp. Over the past three years our priorities have changed, so we’re in the midst of switching things around to maximize our space.

I took some pictures on Day 03. I figured then that I’d appreciate pictures taken during a once-in-a-lifetime global event like this. Here are some of the better ones.

I remember that there was a national run on toilet paper at the onset of the pandemic. Hoarders and scammers would buy up a store’s stock and resell online for extreme profits. In this way, the pandemic revealed an amorality that threads itself through the United States populace.

At our local grocery, there was a run on Mexican prayer candles as well.

Thinking of the government’s response to the pandemic, and thinking of the efficacy of face masks against the virus.

I Remember Day 02

The morning after the declaration of a national emergency, I remember that Savannah and I made a trip to pick up her desktop monitor from her office, which would be undergoing a sterilization. She was being allowed to pick up the monitor and to bring it home on the condition that she would not utilize public transit on the way to the office.

We called a ride share with my gifted credit, and a white ADA-ready van pulled up to our walk. The driver was wearing a face mask. The trip was uneventful until she started to cough.

She had pulled the mask up, covering her mouth and nose, and proceeded to cough loudly. She was quick to disclaim that it was only a cold, but nonetheless I was made immediately uncomfortable by this turn of events. She kept coughing, now and again, until we arrived to the office building in the Loop. Any conversation had died with the first cough, and for that reason and because claustrophobia was closing in, we were both glad to be out of what seemed to us afterward as a pressure cooker for disease.

I Remember Day 01

I remember that I was making an errand that day, and was nervous about the outbreak so I ordered a ride share. It arrived, and the driver quickly switched to Spanish to more fluidly discuss the coronavirus. It was an hour up to the art center, where I’d been warehousing the glass panes I was going to make into art pieces. They were going to have photographs of mine printed directly on their surface, using a new-ish inkjet technology called UV printing. I got along well with the driver, who must have been about my age and equally vigilant and ravenous for information. He dropped me off, and I went in to get the glass.

I remember that I was gifted ride share credit by some students of mine, who had especially enjoyed my photography classes at the art center. I felt ashamed to accept it, but I wasn’t making good money and had, finally, greatly appreciated the gesture. Because I had more credit to burn, I called the ride share again and by coincidence was matched with the same driver. He had opened a bag of fruit and was eating it, and waved to me smiling when he pulled around the corner.

I hefted a canvas tote, stretched taut with thick glass panes, three of them, that I was taking to the printer. We resumed our conversation. I’d been watching the virus closely for weeks, as it bloomed out of China into Europe, and the greater norther hemisphere. At the time I felt that my regurgitation of news headlines and secondhand reporting of anecdotes posted online could help my friends and family to understand the scope of what was to come. For example, I had read earlier that day that there was to be a press conference given by the US President and his menagerie of fools to announce a national state of emergency. It was to happen at 3:00 eastern time, and the comments I’d read about the event would make the pandemic “real” for Americans and spur panic at the supermarkets and drugstores. I relayed this information to the driver. He’d remarked on the tension and stress in the air, revealing itself in the increasingly gutsy choices being made by other drivers and pedestrians, but he only switched off his ride share app when he heard about the press conference. I told him we had about an hour left of relative sanity. He called his sister and told her, and quickly dropped me at the print shop. Mucha suerte, cuidate, we both said in unison.