Day 983 of the self quarantine and the good folks around Dallas, LA, Pepper Pike and Kalamazoo have asked me to write a story about the Bonobo monkeys in the cover photo.
I told them my understand is they have lots of sex and that maybe if they’re lucky they’ll get a story.
Maybe, just maybe they’ll get a torrid tale of monkey sex and that might not be the greatest thing for them. If they are feeling sad and lonely they might not appreciate the torrid love affair story even if it is about animals.
On the other hand they might prefer it to asking questions like would you kiss the Shmata even if the pandemic had made things feel a bit uncertain.
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I suppose I could confess that today the stress of recent times caught up to me for a bit and I struggled for a bit to get through it.
The usual tricks didn’t work and for a brief moment I had a pain in my arm and my breathing felt labored.
So I walked into the bathroom, stared at my reflection and said “Not today.”
It worked.
Did I pull the line from a book turned into a series?
Hell yes I did.
Sometimes you have to do better than rummage in Felix’s bag of tricks and come up with something. Sometimes you pull out a move clip and that works just fine.
Or you say fuck it, embrace the fear, turn on some music and do a modified form of the workout you wish you were doing.
Put almost all of my cards on the table and reminded myself that what bothers me the most is the uncertainty and ran through a list of all of the crap I have been through.
Been beaten to my knees, but never fell and don’t intend to start now. That is not how I roll and I am not going to change now.
Might adopt some different tactics and strategies, but I don’t wear a sweater cuz others are cold. This is just a case of grinding it out and accepting some moments are going to suck.
Maybe not as I wish or hope, but not going to let them break me.
It doesn’t take effort to hear dad and grandpa talk about the anxiety that comes with the uncertainty of the unknown.
When you have the kind of imagination I do it is easy to picture some pretty damn nasty stuff but also easy to picture some pretty cool things too.
So I read a bunch of stuff about current circumstances and situations so I could arm myself with some facts because that always makes me feel better.
And then I sought out information I could use to educate myself in general. If I am going to have some extra time on my hands I am going to take some of it to learn.
Going to take some time to just have fun and decompress too.
No one is shooting at me. The virus has no malice or ill will towards me or anything else.
All we need to do is be smart and buy a little time and we’ll manage.
On a related note, since I used the Metallica video with The Gladiator clips I have to link to the opening scene.
Dad and I loved that part and would occasionally talk about and share movie quotes.
“Upon my command unleash hell.”
A thousand years ago in the days in which my good friend David still walked this earth and had not succumbed to brain cancer he used to tell me where he wanted to be when the big one hit.
“Josh, that major quake is going to hit and if it does during our lifetime I want be at JPL when it does.”
I remember rolling my eyes at him and asking if the Jet Propulsion Laboratory had some kind of levitation device or if they had installed rocket engines that would ignite upon hitting a particular mark on the Richter scale.
“Have face in science and scientists. We’ll come up with an educated and rational response to whatever is thrown at us.”
If David were still here I would tell him I do have faith in science and that I believe we’ll come up with a solution here, even if it is not a perfect one.
And then I’d remind him that science is generally based upon logic and reason and that people are not.
Which is my way of saying that I think many people won’t listen to science for a host of reasons not the least of which is if it takes effort to understand or inconveniences them that will be enough to ignore it.
That includes some scientists.
But I won’t view the world in terms in which I think that all people will ignore and or dispute science.
There will be many who follow and have faith in it and even those of us who do might have moments of doubt.
Moments where it is hard and we would rather think about monkey sex than an unthinking virus who can hurt us and cannot be negotiated or reasoned with.
So we have faith and we base that upon a history of advancing medical tech and success cuz hope keeps us going, especially when based upon scientific proof.
