The glass half empty/full paradigm is a worthy one. Waking each morning, I wonder if I can get out of bed. No, not that way. I mean do I have the neuromuscular wherewithal to get myself vertical, then take a few largely unaided steps to the wheelchair, pivot and sit down. Just that simple. Do I?

And based on months of recent experience, which actually amount to years, the answer is absolutely yes. So what am I worried about? I guess that, simply put, I am afraid that it’s all going to go away. And it is. That’s the other thing. Everything is going away. And this, my 75^th year, could be seen as the aged calm before the geriatric storm. And what is there to do but blog?

These thoughts are disturbing enough to send me into an optical migraine as I begin my morning exercises, long about 8 AM. That’s a little too early for systemwide failure.

Jane and I both agree that the foggy weather isn’t helping. And since Jane is remarkably buoyant in her moods, I pay keen attention to this observation. Seasonal Affective Disorder could be making me SAD. So lighten up.

And the latter isn’t all that easy to do with heavy news ever descending on the viral front. And do note that even at this late stage, we haven’t quite decided what to do about Davies Symphony Hall tomorrow night. Vis-à-vis Prokofiev and Shostakovich. We have tickets. We haven’t been out to an event like this in quite a while. There’s even an outdoorsy spot to eat nearby. The San Francisco dining scene has heavily adapted to COVID-19. Massive investments in outdoor heaters, so called parklets, that is to say, somewhat improvised shelters built into the street in front of a restaurant. And the place we are thinking of, Arbor, has long had an outdoor garden. They were set for the pandemic before the pandemic set foot on them.

As for the concert hall, I see no real danger zone except for the men’s toilets. That’s the only place where too many people are crammed into two small area. That’s the only place where too many people are crammed into too small an area. And there is a solution, and this involves timing. It can be done, we are thinking. Whether we do it? Don’t know.

I am at the starting blocks, primed and ready to begin writing the next opus. But instead, I do other things. Principally, as soon as the ground fog lifted this morning, I went outside. There to read the latest Colson Whitehead in the full light of day. Harlem Shuffle is another fine achievement. It has taken me a while to get into this one, and the reasons are unclear, except that the distractions are numerous. And the rhythm of this particular novel is different. He’s a great writer. Very versatile. An impressive career already, and the guy’s so young.

Anyway, I am now reading about life in uptown New York City as it existed in my high school years. And what at first seemed to be a rather maddeningly episodic and discursive ramble, or as Whitehead calls it “shuffle,” is beginning to coalesce into a powerful story. I like powerful stories. They bring coherence to an otherwise confusing and naturally pointless narrative “told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,” etc. Anyway, we have enough of that.

So it’s unclear what we’re doing tomorrow. But it’s always unclear, isn’t it? Whether the virus is more or less gone by spring, or just lurking under a stone, things should begin to “open up.” And strangely, the way for things to open up for me right now is apparently to stay home. And I can’t tell if I am losing my transit nerve. But at the moment, boarding a Mquni bus seems like launching myself onto a rolling petri dish. So no buses for a while. Only BART, regional subway. Which does cramp my urban style significantly. But so it goes. And that it goes at all, well, that’s saying a lot.