Monday, March 23, 2020

While there may be no perfect time to transition yourself off an antidepressant whose main side effect is agitation, I can confirm that trying during a pandemic is very hard.
I watched an Agnès Varda featurette and she said something beautiful about the act of looking, but I can’t remember the idea because I didn’t write it down at that moment.
A journalist interviewed me by phone today and she asked what advice I would give to artists; the only advice I had was: don’t wait, keep making, use whatever tools you’ve got.

My 76-year-old dad decided to drive 20 miles to a neighboring town to get his pickup’s oil changed.
He has lived through two cancer surgeries and he is still undergoing maintenance chemotherapy.
I asked him why he’d put himself at risk like this and he said without hesitation, “had to get ‘er done.”

Sunday, March 22, 2020

Let’s watch a movie about gay dancers in Soviet Georgia.
Let’s read poems about ghosts and writing our names with stones.
Let’s give our niece a FaceTime tour of our overgrown backyard.

Saturday, March 21, 2020

After finishing a William Saroyan story about love, I am stunned by the sight of the back of my own hand,
dry, wrinkled, deeply crevassed, skin no longer taut. I marvel at the aging of my 46-year-old body.
We walk the dog to the park and I see two empty, discarded Lysol cans at the foot of a giant pine.

I hold the leash loosely as the dog plays hide-and-seek with my wife, around and around the rock pile.
In the nearby baseball field, a terrible pitcher pitches a bucketful of lime green softballs to a portly batter
as five outfielders spread out so far into the adjacent ballfields that it’s impossible to mark the distance.

Friday, March 20, 2020

Working at home together for three days, my wife has started calling me her “colleague” in zoom meetings.
For a mid-afternoon break, we walk the dog outside, cross the street to Cary Park, and he goes potty.
Everything is so quiet. The mall has closed, nonessential. I realize: My wife is the only person I can hug.

Thursday, March 19, 2020

Write three lines per day, minimum, says the U.S. Young People’s Poet Laureate.
We are talking via Zoom videoconference; she’s in San Antonio, Texas, and I’m in Fresno.
In thirty days, you’ll have ninety lines. Then she declares: It can change your life!