isolation

Hello, beautiful people! Well, here I am with the covid. It was only a matter of time, really. After all, I work in a health facility in a health authority that has a very large number of outbreaks. We all wear masks, but apparently the cloth masks are not any more effective against the covid than the advice of a ouiji board. Few of us wear paper masks, and some of the residents refuse, and not all of us consistently ask them to mask up.

So it’s a mess, really.

I started sneezing at work late on Wednesday afternoon. My colleague and I facilitated a pretty good group that evening. We all sit far apart and wear masks, well, most of us do. Anyway, who knows how I got it, or if I gave it to anyone. I got the test the next morning, as soon as the centre opened up. They were all closed when i left work the night before.

Isolating’s not so bad. It’s weird not touching my lover, or our dog — poor guy, he keeps flinging himself at the bedroom door to get in. He doesn’t know what the hell’s going on. But he’s a dog. Every day’s a new day. I feel physically pretty good now. Almost stopped sneezing, breathing is okay, and I’m doing yoga and kettlebell swings in the bedroom. We can go out for walks. Which we do every day. sometimes I wear my weighted vest (10 kg). sometimes I carry around the whole 10 kg, but often I go for longer walks with only 6 kg or so. Life’s regular burdens are not the kind of workout that gives you legs like oak trees.

This covid thing, it’s all manufactured. Out of the resources ripped from the ground and the critters killed by the same resource extraction that results in earthquakes in Alberta and floods in the grasslands. We did this to ourselves. I read on a sticker on a light post last year, “We were already in crisis before, there is no ‘normal’ to go back to” –I don’t remember the words exactly. We did this to ourselves. It has been a long long time in the making, and here we are.

Everyone is getting a bit thin-skinned. we miss our families. We yearn to embrace each other and then get pissed off when our loved ones come too close, or let their masks drop. Little things. The little things add up. for good or or ill.

I haven’t heard Opera Guy since last fall, I think. Been back to work full time since late October last year, and during y small weekends, I am never still. I don’t sleep in the sun on the balcony this spring, as I did last spring. I would be wrapped in a blanket one of my students gave me, and the magnolia tree would drop its blossoms. Opera Guy would sometimes walk down our street, singing arias, carrying a small bag of groceries. I once saw him acknowledge that he had an audience. He stopped singing, and some people started clapping and hollering, “Bravo! Bravo!” He raised one arm and swept down into a bow, s big smile on his face. Then he turned and carried on walking.

Other than that he has never acknowledged that there is an audience. I have never shouted praise from our window, either, too afraid to break the spell. Once I heard him in the park a couple of block north of our house. I peeked around the hedge and saw him with two of his buddies, talking and trading notes. He’d sing a phrase, and then his friend would sing a few bars. I didn’t go closer, just listened to the murmur of their voices, the small hummings of music they made together.

This past week, I’ve been in isolation on account of covid. The room in which I’ve spent most of my time faces the co-op courtyard. So on fine days, I hear the kids playing, toddlers toppling into each other, the swoop of traffic on Broadway. Songbirds in the early morning. But not Opera Guy. I sure hope he’s alright. Tonight it is cold and damp, not good for vocal cords, I’m sure. We need his music. I hope he knows that.