The Isolation Diaries No. 8

“The US response tells a different story. Two days after the first diagnosis in Washington state, Donald Trump went on air on CNBC and bragged: ‘We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming from China. It’s going to be just fine.’” Ed Pilkington and Tom McCarthy, The Guardian

The sun is shining here in Santa Barbara, shining on the shutdown American Riviera, on the white stucco and red tile, on the vineyards and the beaches, on the palm and eucalyptus trees. A mild breeze stirs the gum trees in my backyard. If I didn’t know about the Covid-19 pandemic, the day would appear full of promise. 

According to an MSNBC report I saw earlier, there are now 121,000 cases of Covid-19 in the US, and the death toll has topped 2,000.  By the time I post this, those numbers will be outdated. 

I had this frightening thought yesterday: What if Trump is the last elected (by the un-democratic Electoral College, let’s not forget) president? What if this pandemic deepens, overwhelms the healthcare system, snaps the spine of the economy, and Trump declares martial law, or cancels the 2020 election? 

As self-isolation continues, I am struggling with patience and focus, with staying in the present moment. In my head I create all manner of doomsday scenarios. I think of The Road by Cormac McCarthy and my mood darkens and Fear leaps on my back. How bad will this get? Where will we be a month from now? My daughter blames her mother and me for keeping her from seeing her friends. “I hate you!” she screams when we forbid her, for the fiftieth time, from visiting her boyfriend. She doesn’t understand the risks because she’s young and feels invincible. She doesn’t see that she can place our health in jeopardy if she fails to practice social distancing. 

Trump has the state mouthpiece (FOX News) to help him launch his propaganda missiles at the American people, but the corporate media is doing Trump a big favor with live coverage of his daily “briefings”. Carpet-bombing with lies is a better description of these affairs. As lie after lie tumbles from Trump’s lips, blood splatters on Trump’s small hands, the direct result of his incredible incompetence and ineptitude, his reliance on what he believes is an infallible gut instinct, and his running professional people out of government agencies; political hacks, sycophants, grifters, and weasels are no help in a pandemic. 

But here we are. No coordinated federal response. States, cities, counties and hamlets are on their own, forced to fill the leadership vacuum as best they can while Trump tries to rewrite history, from a tale of abject failure to  the greatest triumph in American history. Trump is Patton, Eisenhower and MacArthur rolled into one bloated, bloviating package. With the help of FOX News, Trump stuffs his past statements down the Memory Hole, sends them spinning into oblivion, but with every death that might have been prevented had Trump’s dysfunctional administration acted in January, when it was told a pandemic was coming, the statements return, the lies return. The dead do not. 

I need a haircut. I haven’t shaved in three days. I am fascinated by the fragility of human existence, and how quickly life changes. The apparent solidity and predictability of our lives has been upended by this pandemic. Nothing is ever as it seems. The stories we tell ourselves are often misleading, false, incomplete. The one aspect of human life we know with certainty is that it will end, but we are not allowed to know when or how. The ground is always shifting beneath our feet; only the mystics, sages, and artists can hope to maintain their balance. They know that death is our nature. 

I wonder what happened to Donald Trump, what physical or psychological trauma bent his soul and left a scar on his heart? How did he become indifferent to suffering? Why must Trump make the pandemic about himself? Who told young Donald that the universe revolves around him, that only his needs and desires are valid? How did Donald Trump become a failed human being? Why is he so insecure? 

Cradle hope like a newborn child. In my reading I come across this bit from Maria Popova: “We hope precisely because we are aware that terrible outcomes are always possible and often probable, but that the choices we make can impact the outcomes.”

Finally, a thought: elections will not produce the necessary structural changes that the United States needs; only mass protest and acts of civil disobedience can tackle that daunting task. 

Under the Cobalt Sky

Most of the country is snowed under or enduring freezing rain, but here in Santa Barbara it’s a balmy January evening with a full moon rising over the Lobero Theatre. My wife and I are walking down State Street toward the beach with no particular destination in mind, out mainly because we don’t have our kids and the evening is too lovely to spend indoors. Tourists and pods of young people pass us by, a panhandler plies his craft without much success, and a street musician strums a beat-up guitar.

We stop before a vacant storefront and struggle to recall what had occupied the space. I think it was a jewelry store but my wife remembers it as a place that sold imported bric-a-brac. Not often being in need of bric-a-brac, imported or domestic, I can’t say if she’s wrong or right. We move on, enjoying the air and the cobalt sky. The recently shuttered Borders book store looms before us, hollowed out and empty, outlines on the carpet and walls where display shelves once stood. Across the street Barnes & Noble has also closed, so except for the venerable, cozy Book Den on Anapamu Street, downtown Santa Barbara is without a bookstore. I know my wife is also contemplating the demise of downtown bookstores; over the years we spent many, many pleasurable hours browsing the stacks in Borders and Barnes & Noble and it’s hard to imagine our downtown without a major book retailer.

“Our downtown” is perhaps overstating things because, in my opinion, downtown SB hasn’t belonged to locals like us in a long time. SB was a town but has been transformed into a travel destination, hawked in glossy magazines and on the Internet in the same way advertisers sell soap or beer. Brand recognition. The American Riviera they call it. Santa Barbara Magazine makes it all look beautiful and refined, clean, safe, a charming paradise where life is fulfilling and rich, and unpleasantness has been forever banned.

I’m old enough and have lived here long enough to remember JC Penny, the White House, Lerner’s, Lou Rose, OTT’s, the lunch counter at Woolworth’s, the Earthling Bookstore and the Copper Coffee Pot – all relics of memory now. My wife reminds me of the many banks that lined State Street in our childhoods, which brings to mind Crocker Bank, where my mother once worked as a teller. How long ago did Crocker Bank close its doors? Twenty-five years at least, perhaps longer.

A hazard of living in the same place for many years is watching it change. Whether the changes are good or bad depends on one’s sensibilities. Businesses and people come and go, landmark stores and eateries close their doors, slip into memory and become fodder for conversations that start with “Do you remember…?”

We continue strolling as the moon climbs to mingle with the stars, lost in reverie and nostalgic feelings for childhood and a bygone era, and the trance holds until our senses are assaulted outside Abercrombie & Fitch by pulsing music and the overpowering smell of men’s cologne. Abercrombie, Juicy Couture, Old Navy, Macy’s, Nordstrom, GAP, Betsy Johnson, Restoration Hardware and Banana Republic, big name retailers that have displaced locally owned mom & pop stores. Some might call this progress, and they would be right, of course – cities either change or perish—but it leaves me feeling alienated from the main street of my hometown.

At Cota Street we cross to the other side of State and head back uptown, past the fountain near the Metro Theatre where a kid with matted hair and a dragon tat on his chest asks for change. He smiles politely when we decline to aid his cause; I’m sure he has no idea that Crocker Bank ever existed or that SB boasted a Woolworth’s with a lunch counter. He may not even realize how quickly the present becomes the past.

But his moment will come.