Watching the twilight
We are set for a grief of ages
That thirst of living days,
thirst like salted drunkenness,
That pain, spreading like steam in someone’s retinae.
But still, no, not me, I can’t.
In Jeolla-do or Georgia or wherever,
somewhere, an aching dusk starts
and look, look, look, at that red sunset.
As if to die, as if to live, smearing blood all over the window,
someone is dying instead of me.
Painstakingly, the sun sets
Painstakingly, a person dies
Painstakingly, the Earth spins, and as it does,
I look out into the world inside an incubator
My job is, after you are done dying,
to put on white gloves,
glimmer coldly,
and only then, finally enter death.
- “노을을 보며 ” [Noeureul bomyeo; “Watching the Twilight”], by Choi Seung-ja, translated by Emily Jungmin Yoon.
I couldn’t sleep this weekend. At all.
I talked with my friends Elena and Ming Friday night, and confessed a looming dread. Long after the Zoom calls, and the gaiety, cheer, and bonhomie, the dread lurks; it hangs, like a miasmic fog, over everything. It is then I pray: asking for deliverance of my friends, of my mother and sister, of people I know, people I know of, and the countless more I do not. I am terrified: terrified of what this disease does, of what it can do, but most of all terrified of not knowing.
What if I am marked for death? What if my friends, my family are marked for death?
I could face death in war; I volunteered for the Army, and though I joined in peacetime, the essence of military service is war, and war begets death. In Iraq, I could gird myself for this — whether or not the scythe could come for me on any given day was unknown to me, but I knew it would not come past a certain date.
There is no certainty of that here and now. There is only increasing sickness and death, obscene in its randomness and indiscrimination. Even more obscene is the cruel indifference shown by the President, as he capriciously withholds and delivers life-saving aid: the very crime for which he was impeached. This is the scabrous summit of his depraved rule - a crime against our common humanity that I fear we’ll be compelled to overlook. We cannot be a nation of laws, a moral society, and dismiss this foul amorality.
Put it another way: the putative Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, was asked Sunday morning on Meet the Press if Trump was responsible for this calamity.
Asked Chuck Todd, the host: “Do you think there is blood on the president’s hands considering the slow response?”
“I think that’s a little too harsh,” Biden said. “He should stop thinking out loud and start thinking deeply... He should listen to the health experts. He should listen to his economists.”
This is the wrong answer, for it is not too harsh; if anything, it is too kind. Trump has blood on his hands, and so does anyone who deliberately fails to provide aid and comfort in this moment of extreme crisis. We have got to get comfortable with speaking these truths, and levying the consequences demanded by them, and any attempt to look forward is itself an obscenity.
These are going to be dark days; we can only get through them with love and compassion and kindness and it is those things that will drive our sacrifices for each other. That love, that compassion, that kindness, and that sacrifice demands bracing honesty, and nothing less. When life is reduced to its irreducible limits, as it is now here in New York and soon will be all across America, we cannot afford the kind of politics that treat saying the truth as being too harsh.
Our dead deserve better.
In true collective spirit, 19 self-isolating musicians from the Netherlands’ Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra came together to perform a virtual rendition of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”. Each soundtrack, recorded in time to a click track in the musicians’ bedrooms, was brought together to form the final, glorious section of the ‘Choral’ Symphony No. 9. This was absolutely gorgeous, more so for me because I love that particular piece.
"The Board Game Remix Kit is a collection of games that you can play using the boards and pieces from games you might already own: Trivial Pursuit, Monopoly, Clue and Scrabble." Now available for free download. Comes in handy, particularly if you’re over doing happy hours on Zoom and want to do something else.
An excellent thread on how people behave during times of crisis and disaster. Highly recommend reading it, saving it, and coming back to it whenever you feel like you’re losing hope.
From Apple, CDC, and FEMA, an app and website that offers up-to-date information & guidance on COVID-19.
Google cancels its April 1 jokes — thank fucking god. There is a place for humor, but I don’t think April Fools is it, at least not this year.
Yelp to stop auto-creating GoFundMe fundraisers without consent — Yelp was wrong for doing this, and it is good that it’s stopping this.
Why does every country have a bloody different electrical plug? Ok, maybe not every country, but with at least 12 different sockets in widespread use it sure feels like it to anyone who's ever traveled. So why are there so many? Funny story! Gizmodo explains.
I’m a poet, among other things, so I had to share this. From Apartment Therapy: “When you contribute to the Global Haiku Project, you start by sharing your first name. Then, you write the first line of your own, brand-new haiku. After that, you’re given the first line of someone else’s haiku and asked to write a second line. Finally, you add the third line to another poem that two people have already begun. If you leave your email address, you’ll be emailed when your first two poems are completed. Browse the gallery of completed haiku for inspiration and to see what happens when three strangers in different moods write a poem together.”
What Happens When Two Strangers Trust the Rides of Their Lives to the Magic of the Universe. Absolutely riveting story about serendipity.
I don’t care what anyone says, Coldplay are extremely underrated as a band. Plus Chris Martin seems like a decent guy, and their live show is fantastic. Backed by a fantastic nine-person choir (who previously performed with the band at a prison-reform benefit), Coldplay frontman Chris Martin and guitarist Jonny Buckland joyously perform a few of their songs (like Viva La Vida and Champion Of The World) as well as a rousing cover of Prince’s 1999. You know I’m here for that.
I love you all. We will get through this together. Let’s take this week to come day by day, hour by hour, and minute by minute. I am here if you need anything; just hit reply.