My clothes still fit, and my ear holes haven’t closed up,
small good things. I do sometimes wear earrings for Zoom meetings, and I wore
some yesterday when I went back to work for the first time, processing library
materials in a closed library. Lots of hand-washing, careful use of three disinfectant
wipes (for door and cart handles, surfaces), and judicious mask wearing. It
felt good to see people—the few who were there, only four in the building at
all, I think, plus some construction workers renovating the bathrooms, but I
didn’t actually see them; I did see the smaller music collection, reduced to
make room for a new accessible bathroom. A pang, but 1) what’s done is done 2)
many people get their music in other ways now 3) we’ll have an accessible
restroom on the main floor!
It felt good to clear off my desk.
Mostly, I’ve been working at home. Learning a lot,
shifting to some tasks that are already in my wheelhouse (as a reader, writer,
and editor), and wondering if and how my library job might change accordingly.
All the articles I’m reading about libraries and workplaces re-opening do
suggest that, since there is no return to the “normal” of before, we might
consider who can still work from home and how to re-structure workplaces for
health safety, privacy, and fewer shared work stations. Sigh, more like the
cubicles of an earlier era. Not to mention the possible health scanning devices
we might need to walk through, like metal detectors but taking our temperatures…
Science fiction that isn’t fiction. Of course, the great
science fiction writers have always been writing about real science, often
predictive science. I was reminding my folks that zombie movies begin with a
virus, a virus that wants to live, and so it is very contagious.
On Wednesday (I think?) I was describing the plot of the
movie Children of Men to my mom. (I
still need to read the book, by P.D. James, no doubt as an ebook, under the
circumstances. Even though I went back to the library, I am not checking out
any physical materials till our policy is in place for that!) Pollution or
something has reduced human fertility, and yet there may be a baby, there may
be a safe place to raise a baby!! Oddly, this has been a go-to movie for me at
times. Like The Fifth Element, which
I also watched again recently, it shows me decent people acting decently
alongside those who don’t in a scary, chaotic world with aspects of regular
life and its ironic excesses despite the general dystopia of it all.
“What happens?” my mom asked, wanting some hope at the
end. I hadn’t wanted to spoil the ending, but she needed the hope, which I
could and couldn’t give her, because of the delicate, watery nature of the
ending, but I could stress the big boat of rescue coming near.
This is a Blue Monday in the blog, even though it's Friday. Some weeks, it feels like Monday all the way to Wednesday, when it starts feeling like the Friday that will never come. There are things I am saying to myself these days, in
words in my head that I’m not writing down—not here, not in my private diary,
not in poems. They are ongoing. They come while I am walking or working, they
interrupt my reading. They are mixed—like life. They have hope and fear and
despair, darkness and light. I don’t know if I will ever write them down.
1 comment:
Thank you for what you did write down. We must wear those earrings once in awhile. If all the pierce ears close the poles will shift. You think we got troubles now, kid, just wait.
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