Skip to main content

2020 Pandemic Journey Day 40


April 30, 2020

Today’s image – There are tens of thousands of crew members on over one hundred cruise ships stranded at sea.   Every nation that could help has shut the cruise lines out of their ports, and crew members banned from air travel. “No safe haven insight,” so they can only wait and wonder what will happen to them.  I know how hard it is to wait for a day or a week when things are dicey or dangerous, all viable outcomes in a black box. We moderns prefer to look ahead and make contingency plans – the training begins early with a practice that lauds the one year plan, the five-year plan, even the ten-year plan. Yet if these pandemic refugees had done all this homework, would the no man’s land they find themselves in now have swallowed like the phantasmagoric dreamscape they wake to each morning? All they did was show up to work one day, albeit a day that proved to be not their luckiest. I imagine they must be righteously pissed, when they are worried and frightened, at the lack of empathy and action on their behalf.

What would I do?  What can I do? Not a thing. The socio-economic model to which our transnational free enterprise systems subscribe does not include a remedy for viral pandemics that appear to thrive on pleasure ships, creating floating diasporas of stranded and disenfranchised workers. I read the stories, and my inability to help turns into rocks in my belly. I seek relief by typing up a rant for my journal.  Close the page, and I do the next thing, which might be taking my dog for a walk or grading some papers.  Something is wrong with this picture.  Our agents in government contend that they have their hands full of national problems; the cruise ship companies registered their vessels in countries that hold no culpability in the crisis, and the crew members wait, some since the first week of March. Yes, the virus is a stress test, and another industry seems to in meltdown.  Maybe another dinosaur will fall, and perhaps they can evolve. A thought that rises to me is to refit these ships to be floating communities for islands as they submerge with the rising sea waters.  Yes, it’s good to be nimble in times like this.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Death Might Be Just A Holy Rend

  Death Might Be Just A Holy Rend And life a faithful pillow - a pillow to go flat, a spirit to drift off,  glaciers to melt and raise the sea. The blueprint is clear - Expect a tiny storm of mercy–  full of crows and bottle flies to debride the corpse,  to tithe the land.      And respect the putrid demise - things that fall apart make space for miracles.   Yet there persists the memory of breath rinsed in lavender and salt air. Then the dreams for blood and semen to revive, to metabolize  every tired, sad gospel into a hatch of octopus. Death confesses everything as she conjures her necrosis, as she feigns redemption, fools us with false devotion. She believes our defiance will set her free.   We must let grief to be the thread and needle to darn the rend, renew the cloth. then we can grasp the nascent green of winter wheat in spring.
Post a Comment
Read more

Covid Journal Entry 14

April 4, 2020 Today’s image – Exploring social cohorts. So, on campus now there is a small village of us living together, the remnants of those in residence this year.   We are an international population: seven from the US, six from Vietnam, five from China,   four from Morocco, one from the DR and two dogs/three cats.   We share four large buildings where we live, take our meals, study and exercise, on a five-acre campus. The rest of the two hundred and sixty or seventy odd community members are sheltering in their homes; some of the teachers and administrators dropping by during the week to work in their offices.   We have had little or no contact with them so far.   Our chef and his crew of two come in by rotation to prepare and serve the daily meals, a maintenance duo tend to the essential tasks and repairs, the city services haul away trash and recycling, the postal service, UPS and FedEx still deliver mail and packages.   It’s Iowa and the gove...
Post a Comment
Read more

Likely Liable

Daylight cracks its brittle seam snapping apart a wish bone night. Venus has mounted Jupiter already headed for the barn; water simmers in a cracked kettle, just enough for two. And you, dark man, curled like a leather belt in the back of a dresser drawer, unfurl; I’m curled too, like paperback pages in August; we’ll meld mauve dreams and first light. I study you like a self portrait, you hover pretending to understand the chaos of shoes about the room, they lay like punctuations, a tactile Morse Code. I study these dots and dashes, you haunt my sleepy head; we crawl under apostrophes behind question marks. Your gesticulations play havoc with runway lights as I struggle to lower landing gear. Our best intentions for enhancing this entry, have arrived confused. Even so I’m grateful for awkward aubades, dark coffee and you inside my skin.
1 comment
Read more