Nothing Was Ever Normal

I thought I was at a new phase with all of this when I woke up one day last week and wasn't confused about what dimension I was in and knew exactly what was happening in the world outside my front door. A pandemic? Right: a pandemic; this isn't a drill; this is the life we all share, right here, right now. It's as real as can be, real as the mask fogs up my glasses, real as the online classes I've been getting more comfortable with, as the fact that I am teaching students scattered between here and China all at once, real as the fact that the only other person I've significantly interacted with in the real, physical world is Lee and likely still will be for a while, real as the weekly grocery runs, the trips to parks and waterfronts, the outings that make me feel we are criminals, escaped. The situation in New York is real, real as can be, real as the sirens we all hear constantly, the hospital tents I kept reading about and finally saw on our drive down to Coney Island yesterday. And like many of us I've been been reading about the numbers of people who can't breathe anymore, about those who are taking care of them and all they are sacrificing for us, for this. I know about the ones getting really sick really fast and dying alone at home, the ones spraying down every surface, the ones racing around the city to try and help who they can, the ones working feverishly in labs to understand all this, the mathematicians, statisticians, magicians, all the -icians. In one moment, I can grasp at all this and in the other, I am struck dumb again, feel like I'm living some silly future sci-fi prank of a dream. The phrase "new normal" is always on the tip of my brain and I hate it; I really, really hate it because of the complacency it implies, both the word itself, but also to the use of it. I think about the future and I think about the past, and I just can't really see how the present has anything to do with either of these other times anymore, but it must. And let's just keep one thing straight if we can: nothing was ever normal. 

Yesterday the realest thing I saw in New York , this city who wears her abnormal histories on all her surfaces, was Coney Island, that strange dream of a place, strange dream millions of years before all this corona-stuff ever was. Anyway, it was a chilly spring day in Coney Island, sky drying after a morning rain, layers of blue/purple/gray clouds, a band of emerald green sea, the birds suspended above it, screeching, and us humans somewhere in between sky/sea/sand/and our own muffled breaths. It was cold but felt so fresh, sweet, full, and we walked the length of the boardwalk, past handfuls of other people, past all the fairgrounds and food stands shuttered and forgotten. And we turned down the long fishing peer, where men fished, and others wandered, among them this woman, pictured here, who I watched walk blank-eyed to the end and look out at the expanse, while she mouthed a prayer and crossed herself, again and again, gently touching her own forehead as she whispered into the air, then quickly retraced her steps, fell out of view.