Other Stuff

Years ago, a friend suggested that movies should be watched while wearing HQ headphones. More immersive will the film become, and you’ll notice additional auditory details, as the explanation went. Her words resonated, yet brought little impact, for I lacked decent headphones and being tethered to the film in such a tangible way seemed like it would be intrusive.

Eventually I transitioned to Bluetooth noise-canceling headphones and found myself streaming films as I cooked or performed various household activities. While my commitment to the movie lacked the observational commitment promoted by the friend, with this device my adherence to her suggestion skyrocketed. Sensory stimulation became rich, sonorous, even if life activities vied for my attention. Then, I set up a passable surround-sound stereo system and found myself delighting like a child mesmerized by some new facet of existence each time a noise traveled across the room or originated from behind or beside me rather than from the visual stimulant before my eyes. Really, each time an explosion or voice or anything of the like plays via a rear speaker, I find myself giddy.

Lately, I’ve been listening to a couple of QCODE podcasts, The Left-Right Game (TLRG) and Blackout. When TLRG released several weeks ago, I hadn’t heard of QCODE. A blog I follow mentioned the release, so I investigated it, and discovered it to be a modern-day incarnation of a radio play. One episode a week to occupy a short run would be a worthwhile addition to the queue of things to listen to while running. I suppose that the first episode intrigued me enough that I downloaded Blackout as well, finding the summary of its plot to be a fine addition to the limbo that social distancing invokes. TLRG begins with a warning that is also somewhat of an advertisement for Sonos, a sponsor of QCODE. Basically, each episode warns you to be mindful that TLRG provides an immersive-sound experience, that noises may startle or confuse you. Appropriately enough the first episode includes noises of a car crash, and at the same moment, an ambulance came down the road with its sirens blaring, synchronized events across podcast and life. Hearing the ambulance before seeing it, I had reminded myself: it’s just the podcast, to discover that, no, it wasn’t simply the podcast that I had heard.

TLRG has a strong horror element to it. Given the relatively quiet streets, and the general state of unease populating our world given COVID-19, dark thoughts sometimes creep into mind. I imagine how different periods spent outside might be were zombies or aliens or general warfare have overtaken us rather than this disease. Going outside would be less safe, in rather dramatic fashions. I often contemplate danger. A source of this paranoia arising from having grown up with the DC Sniper being at large, and generally being terrified by the reckless monstrosity of mass shootings. These societal calamities likely magnified something innate and nascent that had been within me since birth, for even as a small child walking to the bus stop, I would conjure scenarios of bullets from people and laser beams from antennae atop houses streaming at me, alongside options as to dodge or combat these assailants.

Thus, it’s not surprising that as the podcast played, I anticipated a bullet streaking down from any of the surrounding Pentagon City buildings toward me. I spied options for cover, ways to maximize my odds of survival. With so many gun nuts, and the increasing numbers of their kind, as this disease situation magnifies, along with it peoples’ growing inability to obtain required resources, perhaps violence will explode into our daily consciousness. People are always the most terrible sources of mayhem in nearly every post-apocalyptic tale, for we run off of emotions and lack the cognitive discipline to turn down other avenues, and engrained in our culture is this notion that we must do anything to protect our immediate kind while recognizing that for this goal anything goes, and that, in turn, each person out there surely behaves similarly, thus every atrocity we inflict is simply us averting a similar one in kind that would had been turned toward us, ourselves, otherwise.

As with the headphones suggestion my friend had shared, it seems that the more you enhance your ears to the world, the greater the vibrations you can sense, even if their source is mainly simply your head within. And as I listen to this podcast, thoughts of books like the Parable of the Sower, The Road, Station 11, among others play out in my mind, and I’m practicing agility training as I run, though I know the true cause, and it’s born not from a need of the moment, but a desire to get myself ready for when the shit truly does become the daily road upon which we tread.

Tucked in my home, I appreciate these days spent replicating familiar rhythms.

The midday run delights me. A different path each successive day. Every few days a course will repeat, however with modifications. It feels like replicating an electron coursing around a nucleus. Not being all that savvy about how atoms work, I can say such things and feel confident enough about my claim without having actual awareness of nuances like veracity. An uptick in birds ferrying straw or straw-like materials has been appreciable these past few outings.

A graph of new nest construction might appear to be exponential given how busy these birds seem to be. They call to each other in the greenspace outside of my apartment’s window. Cardinals to cardinals. Blue jays to blue jays. Grackles to everyone. Same with the crows, at least that’s my read on the scene. Flirt and succeed and then construct a home. Not a bad way to spend one’s March and April. May you find good tidings, my avian distractors.

Other forms of physical activity populate my day. Rehab exercises keep my shoulders, elbows, and upper legs intact. Various core regiments maintain my general fitness. Same with squats and lunges, as well as with pushups and pulls ups and other manners of exertion. Books also serve as stimulants and expanders, of another sort.

Ample games keep me entertained. Every few days, I’ll dive deep into Cloudspire, Too Many Bones, 7^th Continent, and other games that work well as solo adventures. Additionally, multiple games of Just One, Half Truth (with alternate rules), Scythe, Pandemic, Innovation, Splendor, and others with a rolling cast of players have kept me entertained, social, and busy. Add in walks in parks, the occasional backyard gathering, and other diversions have made the days full so that nighttime feels like it comes too quickly. Never enough hours in the day, seems to be life’s full-time mantra. For, I wish to code apps and do other activities but never am I able to carve out hours for such outcomes. Though, a lot of cooking takes place. So much wholesome fulfilling food has gone from the kitchen into my gullet.

Meanwhile, for most people, I suppose, this sort of scene plays out. We’re blessed in that our daily lives are rather mundane. Whether we view them as full of purpose or as hours spent in limbo, there’s really not much about which to complain. Sure, I wish I was climbing, and there are people whom I’d love to see in person, but, overall, life is rather rich, and everything is fine. But, really, there’s nothing about which I would lament or gripe.

My lungs suck, yes. And, in a better functioning world, I’d probably visit the doctor to get treated with a respirator dosed with albuterol or an equivalent, for I cannot get full intakes of air and I find myself struggling to speak during meetings, sometimes. Wheezing and the like overtake me at times. Congestion is the story, but, again, this isn’t a new narrative for it’s spring and though the flowers are gorgeous and inspiring (e.g., see just about any cherry blossom), and I will confess that I lose it, in terms of being overtaken by joy, when I see the first crocuses of the season, so, whatever, I’ll accept some flailing of breath on occasion. All in all, life is fine, and that is the oddity of our situation.

And, I recognize that what I’m thinking isn’t new. At any given moment in time, I am one of the lucky ones. That people throughout the world struggle against poverty, hunger, war, diseases, and other afflictions. Life, for me, is pretty darn easy. I get to jest and relax and bring in money without too much difficulty (the ease with which it inflows makes me want to label it as lucre, for it feels almost dirty how mellifluous like can be at times for some in contrast to what so many others experience) and everything is smooth enough and most of my problems are of my own making and they can be resolved easily enough and that’s essentially what life has been for me, and, well, it’s sort of astounding how fortunate I’ve been. It’s like being nobility given how things are now when compared with how they could be. So, it’s nothing special or unique at this moment in time to think, holy shit, life is normal here but for so many people who are sick from this COVID-19 or are friends or family of such people or are doctors or nurses or technicians working in hospitals and living frenzied lives where everything is on the cusp of tragedy and reminder after reminder of our mortality remains at the forefront as people gasp for oxygen even while being intubated and, holy fuck, it’s strange to remark on how lackadaisical my days remain as others struggle.

And, sure, nothing is new here. You have Palestinians who have undergone such torments and adversity that most people would go numb were they to experience their lives. Pick a culture and you can pinpoint the oppressed without difficulty. Nine million people die from hunger or hunger-related diseases each year. That number makes no sense. I don’t even want to Google how many people are ensnared by the slave trade, because its surely a deplorable figure that will astound the senses: why must humans be so evil, which is, to say, human? And, so on, go the deplorable sagas we could explore, while here we go each day without needing to face such realities.

Fortunate, I am to be able to see friends via screens. Even though each day I wait for a bomb, dirty or not, to explode and make this world even crazier than it has become. Bombs that other nations face regularly. I envision planes crashing into buildings. I imagine updates in the news about mutations. My dreams, they’ve turned gruesome, full of revolts and uprisings and dismembered animals, beast as well as human. Perhaps a comet shall strike, or some mega volcano will explode. It seems that chaos shall beget chaos and that we’re on the verge of something gigantic.

Yet, then I tell myself, no, no, surely, you’re only in a momentary panic, and life returns to its usual percussions. Morning alarms. Coffee smells. Emails. Meetings. Kisses and play with my partner. So lucky to have her with me, she makes the days magical. Surely, the paranoiac in me thinks, I must be in a coma, that’s the sole way to explain this fusion of beauty—her proximity—with the chaos of the world, must everything wonderful have an opposite equal to its magnificence yet cast in terror? And, then, after work exercises and food and time spent at play before bed. Not a bad existence, not at all, and I’d spend all of my days in such a rhythm, for this entire experience seems more like a gift to delight in things I enjoy than a disaster, at least when I manage to keep in mind the fortunes that have befallen me.

Sure, I am excited to go on my travels, to climb in new locations (to me) and meet new people and do some of the various things that I would love to do; however, I recognize that this strange situation has enabled me to focus on things that also mean much to me, and I appreciate that I have the freedom to pivot and dive deep into pursuits that bring me pleasure.