IN THE MORNING, as I open 20 browser tabs of political news, my son, Ben, puts his desk chairon top of his desk so he can stand while working, shoulders back, jaw squared like a sentry.
We borrowed a friend’s place in the country in May to get out of New York City during the apex of the pandemic, when hundreds of New Yorkers were dying every day and refrigerated trucks were serving as mobile morgues outside the hospital where Ben, 14, and his sister, Susannah, 10, were born.
I had not wanted to leave the city. I stayed after 9/11 and after 2008, and staying had become a point of arbitrary pride. But soon after the market crashed, I lost the job I had that tethered me to a podcast studio in downtown Brooklyn. I found myself short on income, an inessential worker. My kids asked to be somewhere they could walk around without a mask. It seemed like a reasonable request.
So we lit out for a house upstate, by a creek, that belongs to the best friends of my partner, Richard. They are in California, having come back to the U.S. from China in a rush when the pandemic began. The trees outside the house are strewn with Tibetan prayer flags. The kitchen is twice the size of ours in Brooklyn. Along the walls are classics of the far left—Noam Chomsky, The Radical Reader, Capital. It’s a little paradise.
Still, I’ve lapsed into a kind of fugue state. I can’t place it; life keeps slipping in and out of focus. One minute it seems perfectly clear how and even why we fell off a ledge—the country got a dangerous president, impeachment didn’t stop him; then this devastating contagion, the murder of George Floyd, the uprising of the protesters, the brutality of the police, and always the sadism from the White House. The next minute I’m sitting on the porch, watching a ragged squirrel, and I just can’t fathom it. By contrast, Ben and Susannah seem amused, alert, teachable, uncollapsed. As for Richard, he’s a professor turned handyman who is now collecting unemployment, since he stopped being able to go into apartments to build shelves and do electrical work. In May, his younger son, protesting back in New York, was punched by a cop in the back of his skull, which got him a concussion. I know Richard shares my anxiety about the Trump regime, the police, the virus, and the upcoming election, but he copes with it by cycling, running, fixing the car, and building a deck.
"control" - Google News
July 01, 2020 at 10:21PM
https://ift.tt/2YRsZMi
In Quarantine, Where Does Control End and Bliss Begin? - Vogue
"control" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3bY2j0m
https://ift.tt/2KQD83I
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "In Quarantine, Where Does Control End and Bliss Begin? - Vogue"
Post a Comment