Apologies if this one has been posted before. It’s a vibe. It’s a mood (as the kids say). It seems to capture a rainy, lost Monday morning. The rush hour has started and there aren’t many cars out there. Two months ago it would have been a steady roar. Today it’s a couple cars a minute with tires hissing on the wet pavement. There’s a truck or two. There’s me sitting here, committed to showering today at some point. Anyway, this seems appropriate for the day after seeing photos of mass graves in New York City. It probably happens more than we hear about with or without a global virus.

The headaches were relatively mild last night. There was one crusher that sent me diving for darkness. There was no writing about it whilst in the throes. That idea was dispensed of without much thought. Even this morning it seems pointless. Even carrying on about it now seems pointless. My mood isn’t particularly foul in any way, but to be honest and fair it’s not good. It is wandering around the edge of melancholy but safely away from the edge. It would take a more than averagely large trigger to push me into it. I’m avoiding the news. I’m avoiding numbers. I’m avoiding statistics. We can play with those later. Suffice to say that COVID-19 caught us with our pants down and exposed everything that is fucked up that we don’t seem willing to fix.

Healthcare. Healthcare and race. Healthcare and poverty. Poverty and race. Government institutions like the postal service about to fail and I’m pretty sure that has always been the plan in some Beltway offices… and so on. We’re a hot mess.

I’m losing track here because when it comes down to it, there really isn’t anything to say. We’re all locked down. No place to go and it’s raining anyway. I do want to mention that the National Weather Service is posting a lot of high wind warnings. These notifications come in every so often but are relatively rare for NYC. There have been a few a week for the Northeast for about a month now. What the fuck is that about? This isn’t a doomer conspiracy theory. It’s just an observation. It feels like a red flag but then again, everything feels like a red flag these days, the detritus of being locked inside too much.

Another friend has traveled outside this quarantine zone up to another to witness what might be her father’s final days. It’s not the virus. Just plain old cancer, so he gets to go out with the dignity of not being one of these new statistics. There’s a lot of this going on lately. I’ve said it before. My generation is moving up to the head of the class. We will, in a very short time, be the new elders. I can’t speak for my peers in my age group, but I still feel dreadfully unprepared. It’s only occurred to me recently that there is no way at all to prepare. You work with what you’ve got. Our parents had to do the same. I don’t like to peddle cliches but I sure wish I could shave off 40 years and go back, knowing everything I know now. I’d still be painfully shy of well-equipped for the world but it would be a little easier. Not looking to undo anything but maybe just make moves that I was afraid to make on the first run.

I don’t know.