As it always does when the three of us get together, our conversation quickly turned to movies, TV, and books (comics and serious literature are treated with equal respect). Our jabbering bounced from Orson Welles, who Chris knows more about than any living soul I know and who he portrays in one- man shows all around town, to Columbo, who Jaime loves as much for his rationality as his eccentricity, to what’s the latest best thing we’re watching on Amazon or Netflix (Babylon Berlin, After Life, Crazy-Ex Girlfriend).
We spent a good twenty minutes talking about the multi-talented actor/writer/director Patrick McGoohan, his far-ahead-of-its-time show The Prisoner, and McGoohan’s occasional guest spots on mainstream TV (his Columbo episode is one of Jaime’s favorites). A big part of the fun at these too infrequent get togethers is, as Chris pointed out right away, the chance to bat around words like dystopian, penultimate, and Shakespearean in the same sentence, like tennis balls, or given our age and physical abilities, like croquet balls.
Despite the great pleasure we took playing in our favorite sandbox, the conversation only served to highlight the fourth member of our little circle that day. The invisible guest. The unwanted interloper. The coronavirus. We’re all of a certain age, so we all wore our masks that morning and kept a healthy six feet or more of suggested separation as recommended by the experts all three of us trust.
Chris has a serious heart condition, and his mortality, as well as our own, is something we’re all quite aware of in these very mortal times. Because of his health condition, Chris’s very sweet wife has become uber vigilant in monitoring his health, a vigilance Chris describes as earnest. I found it heartwarming. Jaime maintained an effective neutrality on the subject as he’s divorced and thus wise to the complexities of long-term relationships.
As the conversation drifted from cultural and historical to current and corona-related events, Jaime and I began taking turns savaging the current president, an exercise too easy these days, followed by the bemoaning of America’s turn for the worse in general, an exercise that normally brings on a melancholy if not outright gloomy depression.
There was a brief lull in the conversation then to process the impending doom, and to socially distance ourselves a bit more. We took off our masks to breath in the genuinely fresh park air for a moment, and I took the opportunity to fill the void with a reflection that has been on my mind lately. The world seems to have gone crazy, I said, but I’m not really experiencing much in the way of negative effects. I feel like I’m in a kind of bubble, a safe haven, living a quiet life at home, taking care of my 93-year-old mother, and taking advantage of Amazon, Instacart, and cable TV to avoid the kind of public forays we all used to take for granted, but which now seem entirely unnecessary. And I don’t seem to miss those little excursions at all. I don’t miss much of anything really, not baseball, which I’m a huge fan of, or going to the movies, which I used to love to do, or venturing out to eat, which I always enjoy. The only things I really miss from the days before corona are seeing my extended family as often as I want and my regular Monday night card game with friends.
In fact, I’m actually doing pretty well in my self-imposed confinement. I feel oddly content and have been highly productive from a creative standpoint, working remotely on a documentary and keeping busy writing scripts. I got a bike from my sister, and when the mood strikes me, I put on my helmet and ride around my quiet little suburb, enjoying a solitary good time. As a college instructor, I always take the summer off to focus on my own projects anyway, but this additional exile from the larger world has not led me down a rabbit hole of deep depression, or even mild melancholia, and that, I told my friends, surprises me.
When the corona hit the fan in early March, I was in Los Angeles tending to some personal business when Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson came down with Covid-19 in Australia. Suddenly, what was just a mild concern turned into a cold sweaty panic. I could not wait to get back home to Cleveland. When I did return, I spent a week at a hotel up the street from where I live, self-quarantining myself so as not to chance spreading any germs I may have contracted in LA or on the flight home to my very vulnerable mom. After a week, my sister, who was staying with our mother while I was gone, insisted I come home. She’s a lawyer, and a very good one, and she had correctly assessed the situation at hand, and told me that since I felt fine and was showing no signs of illness, and since other caregivers were coming and going from the house, the odds of me personally infecting anyone were very low. So back home I came, though I still avoided being in the same room with my mom until another week had passed without symptoms. In that time, the governor shut down the state, teaching pivoted on a dime to online learning, and even our regular Monday night card game was transformed to playing Drawful and Codenames on Zoom.
As the months rolled by, I grew happier and more content. No pressure to go anywhere, no pressure to see friends, no need to commute to work, to deal with the small annoyances that sap the day’s energy. Meanwhile, outside my cozy cave the world went to shit. The virus savaged Italy and Spain, New York and New Jersey, and then Arizona, Texas, Florida, and Brazil. Millions were infected, and hundreds of thousands died. It was heartbreaking to watch. Then George Floyd was murdered, in cold blood, and Black Lives Matter protests rightfully and righteously erupted all over the world. And I watched in disbelief, from the eye of the storm, wondering whether the winds would change suddenly, and I’d somehow get caught up in the maelstrom. Peculiarly happy. Strangely serene. It all felt so surreal.
When I finished my strange little sidebar on the odd quietude that is my life these days, Chris and Jaime just nodded. They understood. They too were in their own little storms’ eyes, each of us clearly able to see the dark clouds swirling around, buffeted occasionally by the unsettling winds, and deeply thankful that Hurricane Corona hadn’t made landfall on our shores, at least not yet.
By then an hour had passed, and it was time to get back to our own places of shelter in this storm. Before we left, we agreed to meet again, and soon, to shoot the breeze once more, all of us in a better frame of mind after our morning gathering. It may be true that it’s the little things, as the cliché goes, that bring joy to life, and that morning was certainly one of those small moments. But there’s no doubt that it’s also that one big thing, that storm swirling around us yet somehow not striking us directly, that has made all the difference too. And for that we all felt more than a little grateful.
John P. Vourlis is a writer and adjunct instructor in film & screenwriting, with an MA in English and an MFA in Film Production. He’s the author of short stories, a comic book, and a travel memoir among other scribbles. He also produced and directed the documentary Breaking Balls, about the game of bocce. You can check out some of his creations at www.hometownmediaproductions.com.
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