THE PIER IS FREED! Good times are at hand.
In what surely ranks as a minor miracle, the Water Quality Project People have unlocked, de-fenced, and opened the Pier through August! This is GREAT NEWS. Though their reasons were probably rooted in community goodwill and profound wariness of my abilities as a performance artist, their actions came just in time to be one small antidote to the bleakness of COVID 19.
I tossed dried flowers and welcomed the Pier back to the people who walk. Charlie thinks “coming back” makes it a zombie pier. Sigh. Who is his mom?
The Pier is a walker’s destination with no surfaces to touch. lean against, or sit down upon. No “social distancing” problem, as it is still gloriously undiscovered. Usually, the wind is enough to blow away a person’s dreaded droplets of sneeze or cough, and more good news, the ducks and gulls and occasional dogs don’t care.
THE PIER IS FREED! And for a bit each day, so are we all.
Surrounding that brief bit, is the too real ureality of. as Charlie keeps pronouncing the “pre-apocalyptic dystopian reality” that we are living. It’s a science fiction novel, he says, somewhat surprised, but up for it. COVID 19 or no, Charlie and I are fine He is driving me crazy with his pre-recorded admonitions: SOCIAL DISTANCING! and GOVERNOR’S ORDER–SHELTER IN PLACE! and I am keeping him on his toes by perpetually trying to go rogue. He is more worried than I, but I am not foolish –yet –and I love that he is doing his best to keep me well.
BRIGHTENERS FOR THESE DAYS: I love this puffin. I love the artist who looked at shoreline debris and saw art with purpose, process and joy — okay, horrifying joy. It would be perfect for the freed pier. Or maybe a gull or baby gulls and we in Seattle — and the Scots — could have a “Make Way for Scorries” moment. I’m also sending the Seattle Times article on to Richard Fernandez, the Pier Person who knows — for sure with two mentions –when an idea is really good.
One day Stephen Greenblatt’s NYer article noted that Lucretius saw, in The Nature of Things, “invisible bullets” or “seeds” which veer randomly and allow us to make choices. The god-fearers of his day disagreed, as only a god decided. Soon thereafter I read in the NYT of the ultraconservative Christian god-fearers of today dismissing the knowledge of scientists trying to slow, then stop the pandemic so much with us. So history repeats itself. Save me from “gut instincts” or “I just know” or ” I looked at lots of data” or “I read twenty-five books” or God knows. As a Continuing Day Brightener, Stephen Greenblatt’s book, The Swerve, tells how Lucretius’ treatise remains known to us these 2000 years later, which clearly leads us to a great read about how information moves, a perpetual personal pursuit.
In his NYT obit, I discovered, and now love, Wolf Kahn’s paintings. His alive colors of landscape are a great antidote to sheltering in place as glorious Spring arrives. I think we’ve finished cherry blossoms and are into apple blossoms. I’ll know more tomorrow when I walk the 4 blocks to have my pacemaker checked. I have never been so looked forward to having my pacemaker checked.
My name is O’Hoot. I welcome you with too few (Irish) coffee nips.
I loved Jess Kidd’s more-than-a-mystery, Himself. Maybe you have to be Irish to enjoy the familiar humor and ghosts, midst longing, questions, and the indomitable in pure Irish-speak. Or maybe you don’t.