CoronaFest 2020

CoronaFest 2020: La Cerveza por los Tiempos Enfermos 

     You can rest assured that Deluge of Lethe is monitoring the COVID-19 situation closely and we have made the difficult decision to try to post more frequently in the event that elective procedures at the hospital are cancelled and Jen becomes relegated to the category of "nonessential personnel" (only hearts are in my scope of practice, i.e. I don't do sputum and droplets.  We have a joke in healthcare that we select our fields based on which bodily fluids bother us the least.).  Please know that your health and safety remain our number one priority and that is why we recommend the practices of washing your hands after handling soap bottles, disinfecting your friends/family/pets, not venturing out without full hazmat gear, eating green leafy vegetables (unless you take warfarin), and using social distancing to your advantage ("I'm not antisocial - I'm corona-conscious.").  Is anyone else thinking nostalgically to themselves..."why wasn't social distancing a thing when I was in high school?"  How refreshing it is not to need an excuse for sitting alone, it's the new cool.  But not as refreshing and cool as a bottle of Corona with lime, a joy that is rapidly evaporating as bars in Florida close down for thirty days of teetotalism. 

Coronavirus.  No, just kidding, it's actually herpes.

    OK, hopefully by now I've been able to put a smile on your face (remotely, of course) in these difficult times.  When this all blows over, I think it's our civic duty to go out and have a Corona (for illustrative purposes only; I'm not on InBev's payroll) at our local drinking establishments.  Remember the folks who depend on tips and who are not making money during this time (in addition to probably not having paid sick time or health insurance).  

     

Juxta-poser

     OK, so what could Walden Pond and The Scream possibly have in common (yes, that is the actual Walden Pond, not a random photo produced by Creative Commons' search engine as a response to the query "tranquil pond."  What kind of charlatan do you take me for?)?  Thoreau and Munch were not contemporaries but they just barely missed the overlap - Thoreau died in 1862 and Munch was born in 1863.  In Walden, Thoreau reveals the unsettling news that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."  I think his choice of the word quiet is especially significant; poignant, even.  Walden Pond is quiet but The Scream certainly is not.  Of the two, which is preferable?  How many times do we find ourselves outwardly expressing an image of poised stillness such as Walden Pond while inside we are the very essence of this hairless person halted in a mid-fjord traverse by an overwhelming sensation that aligns us, without our express consent, with a primal anguish from the collective unconscious?        

In a Nutshell

  Given the gravity of some of my more recent posts, I have decided to introduce a bit of levity by sharing a culinary suggestion.  Next time you find yourself in need of pesto for your gourmet Italian dish, you generally will have two options: use a jar of store-bought (I've heard Aldi's is passable) or DIY it.  It's a simple enough thing to make: garlic, basil, olive oil, pine nuts...all crushed together by a mortar and pestle (or the modern day version, i.e. the food processor, although it lacks the stress-relieving benefit).  But what about those pine nuts?  Bane of a budget!  I have a sneaky substitution: raw, unsalted peanuts.  There's no reason to take out a second mortgage on your house for pine nuts.  Cheap and nutritious, the humble peanut is an unsung hero of the kitchen, especially for us herbivores.  George Washington Carver said it best (in his guide How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it for Human Consumption):

  "I doubt if there is another foodstuff that can be so universally eaten, in some form, by every individual."

George Washington Carver: horticultural genius and pioneer of plant-based protein (before it was cool)

    I'm sure you've been thinking to yourself: "Wow, Jen has placed an inordinate number of colons in this post and colons make me think of intestines which of course brings up (pun always intended) the subject of digestion and therefore food...I'm hungry!"  Don't worry: if you click on the link to Dr. Carver's booklet, you will find many of his peanut recipes.   

For Whom the Bird Calls

i tried to find you.

in vain, did i scan the treetops and the underbrush

having researched your favorite berries,

your morning and evening songs,

your profile both perched and with wings fully expanded,

your shadow, even.

i waited for you but you never came.

i was ready:

locked and loaded

(my binoculars).

"Visionaire dodo Army" by *SHERWOOD*

     Things proceeding unchecked, animals are finding themselves changing status: not from "Single" to "In a Relationship" to "It's Complicated," but from threatened to endangered to extinct.  As human beings, we are left with a painful exclusion from our experience of the world's potential biodiversity and much more pragmatically, an irreversible break in the ecosystem...potential effects often unknown until more damage is done.  If you get a chance, watch Last Chance to See (irony always intended).  It's a documentary follow-up of the 1989 BBC radio series of the same title where Douglas Adams travels the globe in search of endangered species in their natural environments. 

     I had the privilege of seeing Todd McGrain's sculpture collection of extinct North American birds (The Lost Bird Project) and I found myself struck by the poignancy that the only existence these birds now had was as art...as representations.  More sobering still was the word that The Lost Bird Project uses to refer to these representations: memorials.    

     I never could find the white-crowned pigeon despite searching relentlessly last time I was in the Keys.  And most certainly did I miss the ivory-billed woodpecker, now the stuff of legends.

An artist's rendering, unfortunately

     In light of these dark reminders, I find myself watching birds with a bit of restraint and uncomfortable pause, wondering if it might be my last chance to see.

Road to Dystopia

     This life is the epitome of luxury, though it teeters on the threshold of desperation.  It was an uncomfortable dichotomy of feeling mercifully yet momentarily safe while absolute chaos emerges nearby that I took away from reading Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower.  I had no idea what to expect from the book initially.  I was in the local library, perusing the shelves for a sci-fi book that wasn't as much sci-fi as it was literature; i.e. something that would, for thematic reasons, be necessarily categorized as 'sci-fi' but was essentially just a very well written story about weighty issues worthy of contemplation, as opposed to an action packed spaceship/alien adventure.
    I suppose it is a bit like online dating.  You know you are seeking this specific type of individual who is a "genre outlier" but all you have at your disposal are some profile pictures and if you click on them you can see a short blurb about them.

"The library is closing in ten minutes.  Please bring your final selections to the circulation desk.  It is now too late to apply for a library card."

 

 

  So I did the inevitable, the unavoidable, the ethically unthinkable...I judged books by their covers.  I weeded out any sporting spacecraft.  I alienated aliens.  I demoted any featuring fancy future military insignia.  For some reason, our library combines sci-fi and fantasy so I had to slay a few dragons too.  But then I saw it, a very unassuming book, pages slightly yellowed and dogeared, with a cover featuring a hand holding a book.  It didn't even look like a sci-fi book.  I didn't read the blurb on the back cover but I did read the first paragraph and the writing was clearly on point.

     Parable of the Sower is an eloquently written and absolutely harrowing story that grips you from the first chapter and doesn't relent; I actually read all 350-ish pages in one weekend, unable to put the book down because I was so concerned for what would happen to the characters in their precarious world.  This is one of the most plausible dystopian scenarios I have ever read or seen, rife with the effects of global warming (it was written in the mid 1990s), unchecked corruption and corporate greed, and the extreme results of societal distrust that has emerged as the zeitgeist of our past decade.  The narrator is an intelligent and pragmatic teenager living in a gated community outside of Los Angeles.  By gated community, I mean a neighborhood that has a huge wall around it, topped with broken glass and "Lazor" wire in an attempt to keep out not only rampant arsonists and other violent criminals but also the large homeless population who are forced to scavenge for their basic needs. 
    In high school I remember reading such cautionary tales as Brave New World and 1984 but Parable of the Sower seems much more likely and therefore, more frighteningly poignant.  It is a disturbing reminder of what happens when people are pushed to the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs: what choices they are forced to make from there and of how much life they are denied access.

  

Tannenbalmed

      It drapes and it smothers; it hides and it strangles.  Meet kudzu: the bane of abandoned buildings along Florida's roadsides.  It grows quickly in our subtropical biome (as do insects...come to the Sunshine State and you too can witness the world-famous Palmetto Bug flying through the air with the greatest of ease before alighting on your shoulder faster than you can say "Kafka").

Structures into which people once entered now become the skeletons of looming kudzu monsters; their odd shapes casting equally odd shadows beneath unflinching and unknowing light.

In the middle front, I think I see the fear monster from the Lost in Space episode "Space Creature."  There is a very memorable line from that show where the creature announces his true identity: "I am your id!"  From context and pronunciation it seems safe to assume he is referring to the Freudian term.  And would it not be like an id, to lie obscured beneath a thick layer of seemingly innocuous, verdant foliage?       

The Osprey

You know it has crossed your mind before.  Such a shrill, whining call seems inappropriate for someone such as myself: my majestic wingspan, piercing eyes, gnarled talons embedded inextricably in the flesh of my prey.  My name is synonymous with strength, agility, and tenacity and you use my monikers for all kinds of your human things from medical equipment to planned communities.  Speaking of medical equipment, you didn't like it when I made a nest atop the flat surface of this tank outside the hospital.  You wanted to keep me out, so you placed this triangular grate at the summit.  Little did you know, as you placed it there with your fleshy, fragile human fingers, that you were merely building me a pedestal.