WFH: Week Six

I'm not a television viewer, but was exposed to the airwaves in order to watch the broadcast of Jesus Christ Superstar last week. I'm not sure what I expected, but the combined stream of commercials for prescription drugs and those that were pandemic-themed did nothing but heighten my anxiety.

Those drug commercials are ridiculous. Seriously. Soothing music, lovely images, and a legalistic recitation of possible side effects (all ghastly, and pretty much the same from one remedy to the next). This is what people watch, all the time?

My mom has been gone for nearly five years (already?), and I am relieved that she is not here, now. Even if she might have weathered this storm, we would not have been able to keep her calm in a sea of catastrophic 24x7 news reports.

I still smile when I think of the Thanksgiving we spent in Manhattan. When she was young, she had worked in the city. When she was older, she grew afraid of it (thanks to the nightly news). Somehow, I persuaded her that we should spend the weekend there and see the parade, live. We had dinner at Tavern on the Green and walked around Rockefeller Center in the sunshine. Another night, I scored a pair of tickets to see Showboat by waiting at the box office for a cancellation, but that left no time for dinner before the show. I figured we'd duck into a hotel restaurant later; flipping through her Playbill, Mom pointed to an ad and said “Let's go here.” And there we went, strolling up 7th Avenue after 11 p.m. (!) to the Carnegie Deli. Reality: 1, Nightly News: 0.

Five years ago today I sought solace where I can always find it, along the shoreline, as I prepared to lose her. I could use a coastal walk today. But that's out of reach, for now.

Ten years ago this week marked my first bike ride to the Panoche Inn—which immediately became one of my favorite routes.

One year ago this week I stopped a moving minivan with my bicycle (without any damage to me, or the bike).

Our cooking class for the week was Molten Chocolate Cake, which looked surprisingly easy. Our chef made a point of taking ramekins out of the oven at different times, to demonstrate what happens if you don't let them bake long enough (or, too long). He mentioned a recipe that's possible to freeze (before baking), which would make this practical (since I'm not going to eat four of them). [Well, I could, but ... I would certainly regret that.]

For entertainment, I watched the 25th anniversary performance of The Phantom of the Opera, which was so stunning I watched it twice. I was lucky enough to see it on Broadway during its initial run, but not again since. I particularly loved seeing four former Phantoms (plus the Phantom of that night's production) reprise The Music of the Night. I wish I could have seen all of them in the role. “Silently the senses abandon their defenses ...”

I finished The Adventurer's Son, fully empathizing with the family's frustration, anger, and despair as the authorities clung to the warped narrative they'd concocted. Which the media ate right up. [Nightly news, see above.] And by quoting from her poem Sleeping in the Forest, the author introduced me to the work of Mary Oliver.

This week I heard that one of my colleagues had fallen ill with COVID-19 (and recovered); that's the first case for someone personally known to me. The week opened with 1621 confirmed cases in our county, and closed with 1903 (a 17.4% increase).

From another poem by Mary Oliver:

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.