Strange, Strange, Strange

May 22,  2020

Day 62

To the extent that it is possible within the limits of their resources, every country in the world has tried to find a way to deal with all of the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Some have decided to say that it does not exist, some have decided to let it run its course and others have attempted, with varying degrees of success, to stem, if only for a little while, the wave of contagion. We are in the midst of the first months of what may prove to be a years long battle to defeat a thing that is not even technically alive, but which is multiplying in its billions of trillions and spreading slowly, inexorably to every living human in the world.

I fear that the end result of all our tilting at this implacable windmill of Mother Nature will be the sad fact that we are powerless in the face of its relentless march and that one will either catch it and live, or catch it and die. Those that live will either have no long term problems or they will struggle with the effects of the virus for the rest of their lives. But they will be alive. They will reproduce and those most resistant to the virus will pass on this resistance to their children. Time and tide will relegate the Covid-19 bug to the history books and the world will wait nervously or obliviously for whatever’s coming down the pike next from the wet markets of China. The virus is going to run its course and humans are banging their heads as it does.

We see this happening now as governments try to protect citizens who don’t want to be protected. We see it in the attempts by some nations to pay lip service to their stated goal of protecting the older members of society while devoting equal, if not more attention to protecting their economies. Fear and apathy are revealed in the morbid nickname of Boomer Remover coined by some who cannot begin to imagine that they might one day be the same age as those they are so dismissive of now. The disease is driving a worldwide wedge into the fault lines of party politics and the result is that those in power will begin to sacrifice the vulnerable in order to protect themselves. Billionaires build bunkers equipped with swimming pools, stock them with the best viands money can buy. They staff them with masseuses, cooks, nurses and personal assistants for every need, then hunker down to ride out the storm, aloof in isolated luxury. Celebrities utterly convinced of their importance fill their Instagram feeds with inane yammering about lockdown being like prison or how we’re all in this together. They describe the hardships they’re enduring and post pictures of their activities as if anyone cared and they pat each other on the back and dream of the day they can hobnob on the walkways again and be famous once more. We see it as governments realise they cannot remain shut down forever. With covidiots partnered with those who simply need to go back to work. With protesters marching on capitols carrying signs that say what amounts to, “If you don’t like my driving, stay off the sidewalk!”.

Through it all the virus continues to be spread by human activity, good or bad, well intentioned or clueless, like water finding its way into every space it can. It’s not overly virulent, as plagues go, and people are getting tired of it ruling their lives. So they carry it to their friends and neighbours and coworkers and fellow citizens and say, “Here, I’ve got it so you might as well have it too. Enjoy! You’re not too old are you? Diabetic? Overweight? Sorry about that, but you’ll be stronger for it.” In the end it will be like a good TV series that everyone eventually sees. Some watch it as it happens, week by week while others binge watch entire seasons a few years down the line. Sooner or later, though, everyone has seen it and then it’s gone, but not gone. It just blends with the scenery. A part of life in the bad old 2020’s. We’re in for a long, strange haul.

And that’s why I’m glad I live in New Zealand. It’s one of the last sane places on the planet and is a country that, whether through geographical isolation or enlightened leadership or just plain dumb luck, has managed thus far to slam the door on the world and then take great strides toward eradicating Covid-19 within its borders. This miracle mixture of luck and applied discipline has bought me some time before its my turn to dance with the devil. Time for the vaccine makers to do their thing, or, failing that, for the drug makers to whistle up some expensive brew so that I can ride this planet a few more times around the sun. I could not be in a better place and from where I sit and write, the view alone is worth the trouble.

 

 

Here are the numbers for the island nation that is my home…

1 New case, 3 Recovered cases. Ratio of recovered cases to confirmed and probable cases is 96.7%. 2 Zeroes on the board. 28 active cases left.

 

 

 

 

Maybe

May 19,  2020

Day 59

The skies are clearer than I’ve ever seen them in new Zealand and that’s saying a lot. After my appointment in Whitianga with my new optometrist I chased a beautiful sunset up the 309 Road and rolled down our drive with some groceries and a new car battery. I wonder where the battery was made?

There’s some sort of weird bookkeeping arithmetic going on in the count today, but for me the real number is the ongoing climb of the ratio of recovered cases to the number of confirmed and probable cases.

There are Zero new cases today, however, “the total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 today increased by four. These cases are people who returned to New Zealand from the Greg Mortimer cruise ship in April and who had all tested positive for COVID-19 in Uruguay. They were classified as being under investigation while we were awaiting information from Uruguay to avoid them being double counted by the World Health Organisation. We have now confirmed these cases were not reported by Uruguay. All four have recovered.” (This from an explanation by the Ministry of Health published today to explain the asterisks. Bookkeeping.)

9 Recovered cases. Ratio of recovered cases to the number of confirmed and probable cases is 95.9%.

The powers that be are talking about 28 days being the amount of time we need to go without seeing a rise in number of infections as being the benchmark for success in our fight against the Covid-19 virus. Level 1 may take place sometime around then. Right now there is still a good deal of social distancing being practiced in businesses. Less so with people. Some are aware and conscious when I stop to let them pass. My optometrist wore a mask, as did I. Cashiers are wearing gloves and hand sanitiser is the new normal, but thing are coming back. Life is returning to the town and the nation. I hope it returns to you.

 

 

There was a time when the world was a quieter, more peaceful place. The dentists were primitive and lifespans were shorter, but there were no cars and far fewer people. No penicillin, but no processed food either. The seas teemed with life, the skies were clear and the moon and stars ruled the night. Trade offs abound and answers are few, but the same span of years that has made me more susceptible to Covid-19 also has given me wisdom to make sense of its place in the tapestry of life. There is serenity in this knowledge.

I know where I’ve been.

I know where I am.

I know where I’m going.

 

Maybe I’ll see you there.

 

Goodnight.

 

 

 

 

The Things Not Meant for Me

May 11,  2020

Day 51

3 New cases. 15 Recovered cases. Ratio of recovered cases to active cases is 92.5%.

 

And this, since it represents progress toward wherever it is we’re going to be in a few weeks.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300009818/coronavirus-new-zealand-will-start-to-move-to-level-2-on-thursday

New Zealand is moving in three step phases to Alert Level 2. Most businesses will be able to reopen with new guidelines for social distancing in force and certain provisos re maximum capacity of establishments in place. I’ve got some timber to buy and there are some time sensitive documents that I have to get into the bureaucratic pipeline so I hope the government will be open for personal business. Those are the only things I’ll be out doing over the next few weeks other than, as you have no doubt figured out, watching the numbers.

We appear to have dodged the bullet, but as that fellow from Sweden warned, we still have to maintain our quarantine of incoming visitors and figure out how to cure/treat/prevent/mitigate Covid-19 for the long run. So there’s still people out there pulling the trigger and bullets will be flying and all it takes is a few bad breaks and happy people sharing a beer (Bars are the last in line for reopening for just this reason) to reverse the gains we’ve made thus far. But it’s another step in the right direction and that is good.

 

 

 

 

I started writing this diary because things were, across the board, on the cusp of going seriously awry. I had done what I could to prepare in a material sense and as lockdown loomed I realised I was like a passenger on a hijacked plane, cell phone in hand and little time between the slowly unravelling present and the implacable unknown future. Only I had more time than those poor souls who can only text a few lines to their loved ones before their plane disintegrates around them. It was a gift I did not want to squander. I had time to gather my thoughts and put pen to paper with that long arm from the grave to say…

That I apologise to all I have hurt in my long life. It was not my intention. I was young and ignorant, untried and unsure. I made decisions that experience has taught me could have turned out better had I gone another way. Much later, when I was older, Clavell’s description of prisoners of war in Changi fit me well. Of them, he wrote, ‘These men too were criminals. Their crime was vast. They had lost a war. And they had lived.’ In the eyes of the woman I loved my crime, too, was vast.  Like all the people who had ever hurt her, I was a man. My mistake was thinking that she would know that I was different. In the end her constant fear became a self fulfilling prophecy. I am sad at how things came to pass, but I was not those other men and to be tarred for so long with the same brush became unbearable.

There is the brother I never knew because I never asked about his life. It is a shame and a sadness that is hard to bear. My brother deserved more and I am sorry I never gave it to him. There was a sister once who wanted to be right more than anything else and got exactly what she wished for. Nothing to apologise for there, but had I known then what I know now, I’d have altered my course a few degrees to help her find a better way.

To my co-authors whose long and heartfelt labors of love saw only the slush pile of various agents offices, I apologise. The stories were good and true and though they float now on Oblivion’s Sea with countless others, there was worth in the writing.  I know this to be true and I offer this knowledge in exchange for the time we spent filling them with life. That they were stillborn, silenced before their time, is unfortunate. I apologise not a second for striving, but wish that you had been spared the long ordeal of being tied to my falling star.

To the keeper of the light across the channel, I would have loved to love you better. I am a slow learner and thank you for the patient way you showed me.

 

Every villain is a hero in their own mind. I never meant to hurt anyone. I’m sorry if I did.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The End (I Hate to say I Told you So…)

May 10,  2020

Day 50

2 New cases. 3 Recovered cases. Ratio of recovered cases to active cases is still 91%. This number is going to climb slowly from here on out, but climb it shall.

 

(A picture of the moon out of my window)

 

 

In other news today I found the video report below…

 

…and hope it is not inappropriate to quote Winston Churchill.

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

 

In the meantime Covid-19 burnout continues worldwide. People are tired of there being such an inconvenient thing as a global pandemic and hearing about it endlessly. Because I am sensitive to everyone’s feelings I am going to stop going on about the contagion. We as humans have seen much worse and survived to invent his one. The worldwide economy is reverberating discordantly, the skies are empty of chem-trails and the seas are getting cleaner by the day. Anyone who was reading has nodded off or found better ways to amuse themselves under whatever version of ‘lockdown’ they’re under, so it’s time to move on. If I don’t make it, I’ll send up a flare. If I do make it, you know where to find me, studying Kiwi and Mandarin and watching closely as one era ends and another begins.

Not having Covid-19 to kick around any longer I have decided to branch out into clairvoyance and share some predictions which will come true very shortly. It is my hope that they may help you to plan your soon to be changing future.

1. In response to the collective impotence and lack of vision evinced by the rest of the world and as a follow on of its already stated policy towards Taiwan, China is going to take over the renegade island militarily. It will crush all major resistance within three months of the start of hostilities (which will not be called hostilities) and will commence re-educating the survivors with extreme prejudice. There will be ham-handed attempts by America to intervene through a series of useless U.N. resolutions, vague bluster and empty threats, while China, under the policy of We Own Everything except Covid-19, will shut down all maritime traffic through the South China Sea save for its own commercial and military vessels.
2. A full court diplomatic and economic press will tie the hands of every country on the planet, giving China time to present the takeover as a fait accompli. As the nation of Taiwan will no longer exist (just ask China) the United States will reason, quite logically and conveniently, that it no longer has to adhere to any treaty obligations it had with the former non-nation. They will hoist a Mission Accomplished banner and leave the area before the paint on the new signs at Taipei’s airport has a chance to dry. What once was called Taiwan-sheng or Taiwan province will cease to exist on paper even as it is subsumed by the invaders who will name themselves something innocuous but patriotic. Something snappy like The Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere Forces of Reunification. What? It’s been used before? No matter. Move along please. Nothing to see here.
3. China’s Renminbi, or Yuan, will become a global currency and will challenge the U.S. Dollar for supremacy. https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-debt-to-china-how-much-does-it-own-3306355
4.  China will land men and women on the moon, set up a permanently manned base     there and claim ownership of the Earth’s satellite. https://www.space.com/13331-china-space-race-moon-ownership-bigelow-ispcs.html
5. https://www.china-briefing.com/news/china-proposes-establishing-moon-based-special-economic-zone/
6. China will take over Australia and New Zealand through aggressive commercial practices and strategic purchases of key industries and land blocks.
7. Before item number six happens I will have shuffled off this mortal coil.
8. Before I do that I predict that I will say I told you so.

 

 

 

 

Sink or Swim

April 30, 2020

Day 40

Skies getting bluer, water clearer. Too good to last? The gains made by nature will not be lost quickly. Air travel will rebound one day, but the question is when? New Zealand used to be able to count on 10% of it’s revenue coming from tourism. That was then… It’s all in the wind now to the extent that Queenstown, an utterly beautiful, formerly prosperous tourist destination on the South Island is now one of the poorest cities in the country. ‘Jafa!’ is a commonly used epithet here that means ‘Just another F#$%ing Aucklander. Now that New Zealand has basically quarantined itself, the city fathers of Queenstown are trying to lure locals to visit by rebranding Jafa to mean ‘Just another Fabulous Aucklander’. Kind of desperate, but these are desperate times so good luck with that.

Optimism of another sort is evinced by TWG, one of the major retailing groups in the country as they made a plea today for everyone to buy local by supporting their stores. This despite having a reputation for importing nearly their entire stock from China. Can they make a profit without China? Hope springs eternal, and it’s hard not to applaud a good try, but maybe people will be less gullible now.

 

 

The old saying that ‘the bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price fades’ should be changed to ‘the cratering of the worldwide economy should not be forgotten just because a toaster from The Warehouse costs seven dollars’. If people don’t wake up and vote with their wallets, they might as well start learning Mandarin. A realist would.

https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/archive/thisweek/2008/06/02_made_in_china.asp

 

The road ahead will have these numbers as mileposts…

2 New cases. 12 recovered cases. Ratio of recovered cases to active cases is 84%. 16% to go. One Zero on the board today and it’s a good one for somebody. More power to them. 235 people still have it. An unknown number don’t know they have it and are in for a rude awakening in a few days time.

 

 

 

 

In the Morning You’ll begin to See the Light

100 words for Friday Fictioneers inspired by the photo prompt below from Claire Fuller, she of Our Endless Numbered Days. Though flash fiction ought to have a beginning, middle and an end, my story has an end and a beginning, but no middle. Think of it as a coda to a long and beautiful piece of music and please forgive me my taking liberties with the format.

 

(To all those of you who continue to read my work despite the above, and who have kept the faith with me these past months, thank you, always.)

 

(Copyright Claire Fuller)

 

 

 

A familiar and catchy tune issued softly from speakers somewhere in the room. Two men stood before a ponderous filing system, deep in conversation.

“The problem’s all inside our heads, it seems to me. The answer’s easy if we take it logically.”

“Still, unexpected from such a long-termer. How did he leave?”

“Slipped out the back…”

“Don’t say it….. Did you see him earlier in the day?”

“Briefly. We didn’t discuss much. He dropped off a key.”

“What files were taken?”

“Solitude, Mystery, Love and Beauty.

“Sounds like he has a new plan.”

 

 

 

“He’s got away from us, Jack.”

“Yes, I think you’re right, Mr. Helpmann. He’s gone.”

 

Qui Tacet Consentiere

 

100 words for Friday Fictioneers.

Unlike the many creatures we’ve sent, as W.S. Merwin said in For a Coming Extinction, “…to The End.”, I have returned, if only for this week, because the photograph is mine and speaks to me of teeming seas from a time long past…. No need to comment. I love you all. Aloha, D.

 

(Copyright Douglas MacIlroy)

“And they lived in the oceans?” At three years of age, my daughter was just beginning to get an inkling of the world that had gone before her.

“They filled the seas, Pearl. We were once just a distant rumor to them.”

“If there were so many, where did they all go?”

“To feed us, darling.”

“Every one?”

“Some say a few still live in deep canyons where nets can’t reach, but none have been seen for many years.”

“Will they ever come back, Daddy?”

“In time perhaps.”

“When we’re gone?”

 

These Shoes

100 words for Friday Fictioneers based on the photo prompt below from David Stewart. (I once spent a long day sleeping and sick underneath just such a gazebo, listening to people walk above me unaware as I waited for a friend. I cannot imagine a lifetime of that.)

(Copyright David Stewart)

 

Officer Sloan cruises by the gazebo.

“You alright, Sam?”

I nod and smile.

Long ago a robbery suspect shot him. I called for help with his radio and kept pressure on the wound until I was tasered and arrested. Dash camera footage changed their minds and since then the police department has looked out for me. Like elephants, they have not forgotten.

Am I homeless? Guilty as charged. Hopeless? You tell me.

You’ll never know anyone’s story until you ask. Never know where you’ll find yourself until you’re there. Never know how it happened until it does.

Be nice.

 

 

 

Snow Angel

One hundreds words for Friday Fictioneers based on the photo prompt below by Sandra Crook.

 

(Copyright Sandra Crook)

On the morning of my sixth birthday they were fighting again.

I took my Flexi-flyer to the estuary and hurled myself down chaotic tilted slabs of tidal floes and out onto the thinner ice of the river, which popped and cracked behind me as I passed.

At day’s end, cold, wet and tired, I felt something soft brush my eyelid. I lay down on the sled and looked up. Flakes the size of quarters spiraled from a featureless gray sky.

As the new snow fell silently with the night I closed my eyes and wondered whether they would miss me.

 

 

The Dog House

100 words for Friday Fictioneers based on the photo prompt below from Jan Wayne Fields.

 

(Copyright Jan Wayne Fields)

 

“What are you in for?” asked the old-timer.

“Disappointed my wife,” replied the new guy.

“Rough.”

“Failure to live up to expectations, failure to change and failure to be her first choice for a husband.”

“Rough again. How long you in for?”

“Life.”

“Double rough.”

“No, that part’s not that…”

“Rough.”

“I’ve got a roof over my head, some good company and best of all, she’s not talking to me.”

“Good point.”

“What’s your crime, buddy?”

“Humping your mother-in-law’s leg every time she visits.”

“Good boy.”