Content Nausea No. 19: Picture of Health
Wine glass drowning, postponed narration, make every new draft no mere frustration
Welcome to the 19th edition of Content Nausea. I’m trying to do things a little differently, starting this week. I tried to catch up last week. Here is the welcome blog. Please click the heart at the top of the page and maybe forward this to someone you know.
No one cares about your self-isolation routine, but I woke up this morning, did yoga, ran to the Art Museum, ran the steps three times — isolation has changed me for the worst — ran back, cleaned my living room, FaceTime’d Anastassia in Spain, drank some red wine, ate some pasta, FaceTime’d Emily, drank some more red wine and then wrote this.
My normal daily routine — even before self-isolation — is to wake up an hour after my alarm goes off, drink coffee, read a book for 15 minutes, mainline a bunch of bad new to ruin my day before 9 a.m., work in my pajamas until I reach a stopping point, which could be at noon or 5 p.m., do yoga, wash my face, get dressed and then try to work more. There is also food in there.
Everyone has been trying to find the right comparison for the coronavirus over the past couple weeks, and I don’t think there is a one. NFL reporters have brought up the league playing games two days after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 — of which commissioner Pete Rozelle said, “It has been traditional in sports for athletes to perform in times of great personal tragedy. Football was Mr. Kennedy’s game. He thrived on competition,” according to the Dallas Morning News — in light of the league going pretty much business as usual during a global pandemic, but I am not a historian nor was I even close to being alive, so that doesn’t quite work.
Side note: the Google search “nfl jfk assassination” yields this juxtaposition:
It is sometimes refreshing to see things through the lens of state-run media.
I also wasn’t really conscious for 9/11, and while I have been alive for so many mass shootings, those events are typically contained in a brief moment of time for those whose lives actually aren’t irreparably altered. Sandy Hook is probably the lone exception, at least for me.
When the various sports leagues were canceling/suspending/postponing their seasons/postseason tournaments over a two-day span, it reminded me of the week of the Boston Marathon bombing — I do not want to steal #BostonStrong Valor — where the event just kept expanding over the course of a couple days, and every time you checked, there was a new development. It was honestly transfixing to watch the scope expand with an entire city shutting down in 2013 (still insane to comprehend even now) and the entire sports world (save for my friends in the NFL) screeching to a halt. I do not know if the coronavirus will get a problematic Rolling Stone cover, though. Maybe they could put Rudy Gobert on it? But that’s where my comparison landed.
I think I had another one that would have worked, but I forgot.
I spent St. Patrick’s Day making my ‘final’ preparations for the coronavirus. My car finally got Pennsylvania license plates, so I dropped it off at the mechanic in Fishtown in the morning for the state inspection, walked past empty ReAnimator and La Colombe coffee shops and down an eerily deserted Frankford Avenue — the weather was also gross — and got on the El to go back to Center City and hit up Trader Joe’s. They were letting people in one-at-a-time, and it was fine.
I walked home, worked, made a run to the liquor store, worked some more, took a Lyft to pick up my car from the mechanic — he had Fox News blasting and told me not to get married — and drove out to the big Target in Port Richmond. There was no toilet paper, but there was simple syrup.
And then I didn’t leave the house. It’s been 13 days since I’ve self-isolated, aside from a handful of runs and one walk. The only real life, face-to-face contact I’ve had in the past 13 days has been the owner of the good cider bar when I got out and walked over for a takeout order last Saturday and my chemistry lab partner from my sophomore year of high school, who I ran into on Broad Street last week when I went for a walk. That’s it.
Of course, I’ve worked to mitigate the isolation through FaceTime and Google Hangouts, which I kind of avoided before, and just being a person and checking in on my friends. Quiplash via Zoom with the Boys was exquisite, too.
An aside: If you want to be gchat buddies, just let me know!
There has been a real disconnect of being outside on a sunny afternoon where it is easy to feel like everything is fine and that things could almost be good again some day and then returning and logging on and realizing how things actually are. It is difficult to stay grounded.
An incomplete list of things I have watched over the past two weeks or so, starting from slightly before self-isolation:
San Francisco 49ers at Green Bay Packers, 1996 NFC divisional game
Green Bay Packers vs. New England Patriots, Super Bowl XXXI
Philadelphia Phillies vs. Tampa Bay Rays, Game 5 of the 2008 World Series
Minnesota Vikings at New Orleans Saints, 2009 NFC Championship Game
Oakland Raiders at New England Patriots, 2001 AFC divisional game
St. Louis Rams at Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Week 16 of the 2000 season
Atlanta Falcons at Minnesota Vikings, 1998 NFC Championship Game
West Virginia at Maryland, 2014
Houston Astros at Philadelphia Phillies, Game 1 of the 1980 NLCS
A bunch of live Sonic Youth videos
Run The Jewels, Tiny Desk
Tycho, Live on KEXP
Beach Fossils, Live on KEXP
Frankie Cosmos, Live on KEXP
The Drums, Live on KEXP
Whitney, Live on KEXP
Aldous Harding, Live on KEXP
Youth Lagoon, Tiny Desk
Houston Astros at Philadelphia Phillies, Game 2 of the 1980 NLCS
Some content (mostly about the coronavirus) I read last week
I mentioned reading pieces of news before 9 a.m. every day that make me feel absolutely awful, and this one from Osita Nwanevu in The New Republic destroyed me (and helped led to me getting a New Republic subscription ). Even in this moment, I’m attempting to approach Mondays with at least some positive vibes, but my week was already ruined at, like, 8:37 a.m. last Monday:
For what feels like the hundredth time in 20 years, we are set to be devastated and humiliated by a situation we ought to have seen coming and for which we ought to have been wholly prepared. But we are not. And people will die: needlessly, painfully, and in numbers no single, novel cause or event here has produced in generations. And so, there is cause for alarm.
We are a nation in quarantine. Whether we have been subjected to formal restrictions on movement and activity or not, America is now isolated, pent in, and getting reacquainted with itself. And while the faces we see in the mirror remain familiar, we are becoming, with each passing day, more unkempt and more undone than we would have thought possible.
Come on, man! Give me a chance!
Here are some links from The New York Times that I read this week and posted on Facebook or tweeted:
David Chang Isn’t Sure the Restaurant Industry Will Survive Covid-19 [this interview takes a weird turn about halfway through to be more about someone who will probably be fine when all of this ends, and he also makes a weird comment about his former employees not having healthcare anymore, which, dude, I think there’s something you could have done about that?]
The Lost Month: How a Failure to Test Blinded the U.S. to Covid-19
New Rochelle, Once a Coronavirus Hot Spot, May Now Offer Hope
‘White-Collar Quarantine’ Over Virus Spotlights Class Divide
Still, a kind of pandemic caste system is rapidly developing: the rich holed up in vacation properties; the middle class marooned at home with restless children; the working class on the front lines of the economy, stretched to the limit by the demands of work and parenting, if there is even work to be had.
OK, now just the rest of the things I tagged as ‘content’ on Pocket this week, which spoiler, is all COVID content:
Teen Who Died of Covid-19 Was Denied Treatment Because He Didn't Have Health Insurance
The Dangerous Push to Get Americans Back to Work [another great one from Osita Nwanevu, who has done some of the best work about these times recently]
The GoFundMe Recession Is Here [this one really broke me, especially with the scope of some of the GoFundMes I’ve come across. I gave to a couple, and it almost made me feel worse because I can’t do more.]
Well-intentioned as they are, these crowdfunding campaigns reflect a society-wide pattern of shifting the burden of the coming recession onto individuals already suffering from the economic crisis, rather than a government that has once again failed to protect workers. But GoFundMe isn't any kind of replacement for universal social programs. Donors with their individual biases, which can reflect entrenched racist and classist ideas about welfare, will often prioritize those with more social clout. And even when campaigns are filled, they’re still often wholly insufficient.
As isolation becomes a more immediate part of our lives, Snoopy begins to feel like a mascot for a common unease, and how we cope: retreating inwards, reconciling self-determination with the needs of our community, finding small joys where we can.
OK something, a little more uplifting:
Adriene rules.
Thank you for reading the 19th edition of Content Nausea. I cannot honestly say that it will be better. I will be back later this week. Please stay safe, and please take care of each other.
Frozen mid-sentenced smile
You were the picture of health
No prognosis implied
You were the picture of health
Plain-dressed, wilting, and wired
You were the picture of health
—D.G.