September 24, 2020
5:30—alarm goes off and I hit the snooze twice. Had been dreaming, vaguely disturbing, but can’t remember what. I had woken maybe an hour before but not looked at the clock. By the time I get out of bed it’s
5:50 by the clock on my phone. I go into the office, set the phone alarm for 15 minutes, and meditate, not very mindfully but with a few decent moments. I look at the Washington Post on my phone and then remember: yesterday was the Breonna Taylor verdict. Two police officers were shot in Kentucky at protests. My heart sinks; I think I need to listen to the news driving to work; I was too busy to let it sink in yesterday.
I go to the kitchen, put water and coffee in the pot, and press “on” then brush my teeth and shower, semi-conscious. Thursdays I leave for the office early so I can take my therapy appointment via Zoom in my office and then start work immediately, so I have a rushed morning routine. C. is still mostly asleep though she mutters something congenial when I turn the bedroom light on to dress. In the kitchen, I slice a rye bagel and smear it with cream cheese; pack a lunch, fill a go-cup with coffee. I gather my brief case and my lunch bag and take it to the car, leaving the coffee cup behind for a second sweep so I don’t spill it while I’m loading the car. It’s cool and still quite dark outside and the air smells nice.
Inside, C’s just finished in the bathroom; I tap at the door and tell her I’m leaving. We hug and kiss and, as I’m leaving, she says, “Do you have everything?” I do the inventory: wallet, phone, lunch, bag—MASK! I forgot my mask. I go to the bedroom, put two masks in my pocket, and leave at
7:02 a.m. – and drive to work. Another sunny, nice day is dawning though it’s going to warm up and get a bit humid later, they say. It hasn’t rained in forever; grass is brown in the yards and berms as I drive to Binford Blvd and up to I-69 for the daily commute. I listen to the news for a couple minutes then turn on Bob Dylan’s “Theme Time Radio Hour,” which passes the time with his oddball patter and selections. The theme is “California” and he plays “Do you know the way to San Jose?” which (I’m writing this several days later) became lodged in my head for a few days. At 8 o’clock I turn back to the news and hear the headlines.I get to work at like
8:10. I’m anxious—there’s a ton to do; I have a meeting at 11 that I’m a little apprehensive about (it’s a task force working on delicate issues, and it’s the first meeting, and I’m sort of in charge of it). A lot of work tasks are emotionally freighted these days: faculty wanting to teach online, an administration that wants as many classes as possible to be in person, people dealing with EVERYTHING. It feels even, slightly, more amped up than usual because a few deadlines are coming and it’s late in the week and I teach at 5.
I talk about all of this and more in my therapy appointment at
9 a.m. – via Zoom. Shrink-in-a-box, as it were. I’ve been seeing this therapist for getting close to 10 years—sometimes I cut back to once a month or even less but since The Crisis it’s been every two weeks. It helps. Generally, she helps me navigate the emotionally changeable landscape, and I usually leave reassured that I’m doing things mostly right. We’re efficient on Zoom, I’ve noticed. I’m off just before
10 a.m. and answer emails and prep for this meeting. The meeting is at
11 a.m. and goes rather well, I would say. I can see that my role is going to be the impatient one who wants to speed things up and keep things moving and break things down into discrete tasks, while some others are going to want to think and talk about things more. That’s fine—that tension will be healthy, I think. This goes until
Noon – at which point I put my desk in some order. E. texts and asks if I can talk for a few minutes: I say sure and she calls and we de-brief for a few minutes about the meeting.
12:30-1:45 I eat my lunch—heat up my leftover Indian food in the microwave, go downstairs and buy a diet Coke from the machine, then sit at my desk and eat it: some vegetables and a few chicken bits in a thick creamy sauce (unhealthy & delicious), along with some triscuits and a pear. As I eat I bounce between answering some emails and reading the papers online. I read about baseball. My team has the worst bullpen almost in the history of baseball. Nothing like a little extra anguish right now: that’s what I need. But I read the postmortems on last night’s baseball debacle; flip to the New York Times and the Washington Post and bounce among the headlines; etc.
I start making plans for the afternoon. I’m supposed to have a one-on-one Zoom at 2, but at like 1:56 my colleague writes to say he can’t get into the waiting room. I look and see that I set it up for the wrong day (for two days ago). I make a snap decision and ask him if he minds pushing it back till next Monday; this will allow me to complete a task that’s important—a scheduling, spreadsheety task that requires close attention.
I leave the office to go to the bathroom; T., one of the secretaries, is looking at her computer with a pained expression. I say, “It looks like you’re thinking hard.” She laughs and says, “I’m trying to find an email.” The quiet and lack of interaction in the office is one of the many weird things these days. I sit in my office with the door closed so I can take off my mask; I avoid too many or prolonged face-to-face encounters. I kind of hate the shit out of it.
In the bathroom, it occurs to me that I’ve not written anything today. I try to write every day, or most days, as I find that it improves my mood to have made progress on one writing project or another, and the process itself usually feels engaging and clarifying. This thought makes me realize that I’ve forgotten about this diary, so when I go back to my desk I make some quick notes. Then, from about
2-4:30 p.m. I go from task to task, At about 2:45 I realize I have some important emails that need to be written carefully so I’m probably not going to start prepping class at 3 (which is what I planned); it’ll be more like 3:30. I get to it closer to 3:15 and spend a good hour or more grading quizzes and discussion board posts for my class and preparing the afternoon’s meeting.
In my class, I’m doing what’s called “Hyflex Response,” in which I see half of my students per class meeting, because the campus does not have enough classrooms to accommodate normal-sized classes with appropriate social distancing. So there’s more online work and more online grading. But I don’t mind it. Right now it’s mainly low-stakes writing, which gives me a chance to give students feedback efficiently. At about
4:40ish I start gathering stuff for class: computer (a kid needs to Zoom in because he’s in quarantine—that’s been the case with at least one student every meeting so far, sometimes as many as 3); legal pad with my class notes; book; adapter to plug the computer to the projector (so I can show some contemporary reviews, if there’s an opportune moment). I’m teaching The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, which I’ve taught dozens of times.
At 4:50 in the classroom, we’re all wearing masks and seated six-ish feet apart from one another. I distribute dried-out alcohol wipes for students to clean their desks with. I’ve gotten used to virtually pinning myself to the front wall (the blackboard) and walking from side to side there as I talk, to stay appropriately distant from the students. I set up the Zoom for the quarantiner, but he seems to be having tech issues. I call to him numerous times but never hear anything back. I start by asking students how things are going and chit-chatting. I ask whether they prefer online classes or face-to-face, and get various answers. One student says online helps her stay organized; another says the opposite; a third says she has two project-oriented, collaborative, immersive learning classes and they’re super difficult online.
This time that I spend in person, with my students, is one of the things that is keeping me sane. Even with the masks and the wipes and my back to the blackboard, it feels right and normal.
Class goes reasonably well. Lots of participation. As we wind towards the end I find myself stepping in and offering my own interpretation, perhaps a bit more than is ideal or preferable. “In the world Eliot depicts, there is no shared mythology, no set of agreed upon stories to make sense of the world, so we get these fragments of old stories, but it seems like they’re not shedding light; he calls them ‘withered stumps of time’ and says ‘these fragments I have shored against my ruin,” I say, or something like that. Too directive, really. I think I would have been more comfortable with a lighter hand if I wasn’t limited to one face-to-face class with this group per week. But: fine.
A student stays after class and has some questions—real, substantive questions, showing serious interest in the stuff we’re reading. And, since I am writing this several days later, I do not remember what we talked about; but I was pleased with his enthusiasm. Then it’s
6:30 almost, and I hustle upstairs to the office to pack up my briefcase (computer, all required legal pads, day book) and run into the office kitchen to wash my lunch dishes. I dart back and forth between the kitchen and the office, gathering this and that and hustling to get out the door. This is a delicate balance, because I’ll be working from home tomorrow and won’t be back in the office till Monday, so if I leave something important behind I am screwed. At
6:40 or so I’m back in the car. It’s like 72 degrees and lovely; I open the moon roof and window as I drive up McKinley to McGalliard and out to I69. At a stoplight I text C. and say “ETA 6:41.” She texts back the cartoonish thumbs up. And I drive, listening to Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour, the second half of the California show. Some weird songs I’ve never heard. Some 60s pop song called “Mendocino.” I’m home at about
7:40 and dump my things, hug C., get out of my work clothes, and make a gin and tonic. (It’s been a drink a day for most of the Pandemic. Next month I’m going to do a Sober October, just to try consciousness out for a change).
We sit at the dining room table and eat leftover homemade chicken soup and rolls, then retire to the couch and watch TV—a couple episodes of Arrested Development. We may have spent some time debriefing about the day or talking about the (horrifying) headlines: this has been the week of RBG and Mitch McConnell’s hypocrisy episode #2,674 and the Breonna Taylor verdict—new layers to the Catastrophe. But I don’t remember what we talked about; I was tired and the gin and tonic had done its work, so I just sat in a slightly sedated state and watched slightly amusing TV, till about 10, then went to bed and slept quickly.