Add Them Up

I knew all about 2021’s relevance. Not that it’s difficult math, but I wondered a lot about how we’d be and what we’d think on the 20th anniversary of Sept. 11. I never figured out if I would have anything to say about it (in print, I mean; I’m not having a press conference). There are so many stories, as always around something this huge and horrific, and so many good and sweet and heart-warming stories, but mostly everything went wrong and stayed wrong. The terrorists won. We know this.

I guess that’s my analysis, if anything. We made a big deal about not changing America, not just because some barely literate religious psychos stole planes and flew them into buildings, but we immediately changed, or reverted to baseline. A year after the attacks, I wrote a long essay for the Seattle Times. It was a big deal for me, a nice Sunday front page spread. I think it was crap now, for the most part. It was way too hopeful and nationalistic for a nation that deifies the individual.

But I did write about it this week. I wrote about how I was watching a 1993 movie with my grandson, and as they swung by the New York skyline I saw the towers. So I wrote about that. We all see them, and it feels weird, and it reminds us that so much has changed.

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We had minor sickness in this house for most of the week, and I am referring to the U.S. Open, which seems to be having a lot of terrific matches this year. I just know my wife has been parked on the couch in front of the TV for hours every day, screaming at impossibly young people playing this sport that just tires me out from watching.

She also had a little cough on Sunday morning, my wife, which inspired her to call in sick to church. Something that I think has never, ever happened. On vacation, hospitalized, pandemic – sure. Not for a cold, which is all (at the most) this ever was, a slight but persistent cough, and the image of her sitting in front of the church, double masked as always, coughing intermittently, didn’t feel right.

Since nothing feels right about gathering indoors once a week to sing and talk in unison, as much as logic tells me it’s fine, nothing to worry about, I approved of this, although I’m not crazy about tennis. This is how marriages work, young people. You go to your corner and be happy about it.

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A friend of mine texted me the other day and urged me to write about the pandemic. “There’s so much!” she said, and I kind of mentally shrugged. It certainly is right up my alley, trying to capture time in a bottle, attempting to find some meaning or truth or insight in real time, but it’s been kind of blah, you know?

The isolation is blah. Too many entertainment options becomes blah. No live music is super blah. And I haven’t felt like writing anything, to be honest. I’ve been doing the video thing and that seems to fill the void. I might not do much writing ever again, I’ve thought this year.

And believe me, it’s been like pulling teeth to write a column every week. There’s nothing going on, and certainly all the news is so polarizing and political that I’m not inclined to join that particular fray, knowing how it always ends. No minds are changed, no discussions are held. Some threats against family members are made, you know. Ugh.

So I can’t expect myself to be some sort of Covid chronicler, or be disappointed that I missed the boat. I’m sure there is plenty of wonderful analysis and retrospection out there. As I said, it was hard enough to write for the newspaper every week, since there was nothing but Covid Covid Covid all the time and…

We’re all just going to take this moment. Let’s just sit in it for a second or two. That’s what I did, last night.

Over the next few days, I’ll write my 80th column in a row during this pandemic, and they’ve all pretty much been about the pandemic. I didn’t need to journal about the daily adventures of living under house arrest in fear of a virus; I was doing it because it was my job. I was stealth journaling. It’s apparently a thing.

I read all of 2021 (so far) over the past couple of nights. It’s me, I’m subjective, I’m weirdly both dismissive and proud of things I write, but this felt compelling, week after week. The story continues. I’m not sure what to do about this. Contemplating. If I could find someway to post the entire whatever, whenever that happens, online in an easy-to-read format, I’d do that.

And maybe I’m kidding myself. I’ve just been writing for the public for 20 years, most of that time desperate to find my own voice. I’m envious of voices I admire, the ease, the flare, the virtuosity of other writers. I use the word “stuff” a lot. It’s a good word but you know. John Cheever wouldn’t, I think.

But I rarely go back and re-read, assuming the worst, and this opened my eyes. It’s still not great writing. But there’s a voice there, and I guess it’s mine. I don’t mind it.

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I’m not crazy about lists, but I made a couple this week and it helped. Just a checklist for starters, things I need to do every day. And before coffee. That one hurts but it’s tough love here. I brush my teeth, wash my hands, and drink a glass of water. For no real reason I can think of (there are good reasons, just no real reason to start being good now). There are some exercise things, and some cleaning things. A really simple list, takes no time, and it’s been great. I feel really good.

And on the video front, I animated a little logo this week that made me happy. It was hard, it involved a lot of starting over, and as always I learned half a dozen new techniques. Again, keep learning stuff, people. It’s another good thing.

This week’s offering reflects a thought I had that in the future, I may just stick to animating shapes, ovals and squares and rhomboids. Not trying to mimic humans, in other words. At the very least, it’s fun to draw a few rectangles for legs and arms and then make my little robot man walk around the screen. My eventual goal is to get him to sing “Putting On the Ritz” because it’s good to have goals.