Jane has said that she thinks it is inevitable that one of us will get COVID-19. Interestingly, I do not share in this pessimistic assessment. For once, I come down on the benefit-of-the-doubt side of things. Rightly or wrongly, I assume that one can get through this episode of pandemic 1.2  without catching the disease in question. Why I can’t say. Faith, perhaps. Or a determination to get out and do things with a reasonable level of risk. After all, my whole life is about that. Recently, with both knees giving it out and my one functioning shoulder promising to do the same, I have been more aware than ever of the transience of this, our mortal coil.

These days when I roll out the door, I am particularly conscious of the artificial underpinnings of my freewheeling. I just assume that wherever I am in this burg, I will also have a wheelchair with me. Not only with me but in working condition. And on this premise, I go bouncing down my street toward the shops and the subway station that constitute the center of the neighborhood. Without worrying…too much.

Today I met Donna in the Inner Sunset. We had Korean fusion food in a restaurant with a patio. The wise money is not being “in” any restaurant anywhere. But being in a restaurant with an outside. Strange how quickly this has taken over. 

There is absolutely nothing boulevardier about 26th street in the Mission District. This street is basically a fine place to park your car. And to live, of course, in a moderate rent apartment. Near the intersection with Mission Street you can obtain a tattoo. And fruit from an outdoor display in front of a bodega. But for some reason the sidewalks are unusually wide. And Al’s Place, a modest neighborhood restaurant that opened with little fanfare two years ago and soon found itself reviewed in the New York Times…fought its way out of the pandemic via this very sidewalk. With tables on both the restaurant and parking sides of the footpath.

While this is doubtless a healthier antiviral experience, something about it feels tenuous. The menu is delivered by a masked man. So are the dishes. And when the diner’s face is no longer ingesting food, it too reverts to covering. The Queen Mary is like this. Even after many days of lolling about and reading and dining and considering the vastness on this earth from somewhere in the North Atlantic, I am still aware of the aquatic underpinnings. Who knows if Man is meant to float?

Floating around San Francisco is like that these days, every minute. Nothing seems solid. Maybe it never was. Some things do seem fated, however. Take the fall of Afghanistan. If “fall” is even the word. Let us call it, for better or worse, the reversion of Afghanistan to the Afghanistanis. Not that the old or new rulers of latter are exactly desirables. Or that the Taliban’s takeover is somehow part of the natural order. I don’t know what it is. Besides, as Harry Shearer pointed out today, we have very similar fish to fry right here in the USA.

It is hard not to be highly annoyed with my fellow Americans who refuse to get vaccinated, wear a mask, or otherwise attend to the business of routine epidemiological precaution. It’s also not very useful. But the parallels are unfortunate. Afghanistan will now be ruled by a fringe subset of the predominant religion…which insists that it knows what’s best for everyone else. In fact, it probably believes that it is “everyone else.” And there is a cautionary tale. The first thing the Taliban wants to do is destroy education, and the second thing is to destroy women’s lives. Restoring family values, in their view. Doubtless they also know what’s good for everyone’s health. The parallels seem striking.

Can’t say we weren’t warned.