I have a daily project, which is to revise a book. Which is a splendid thing, unless the Book of Life is being revised for you, minute by minute. 

We all need routine. The sense of things happening, tasks being executed, responsibilities fulfilled on a regular basis…is a fine one. But these days I have to let go of routine. Abandon expectations. Give up on getting anything done. Lives are done, so many of them every day. The Pandemic of 2020 is what’s happening. And nothing will ever be the same again.

Which, of course, may not be bad at all. The death of neoliberal economics, several pundits are explaining, could usher in a more humane world order. This certainly is time for reform. But then, it was time for reform long ago. And I’m old enough to believe that this is all cyclical, that reform comes and goes, and corruption does the same. Still, it seems to good for all of us to give the wheel of fate a positive spin.

Meanwhile strange, perhaps wonderful, things happen. This morning two different people wrote from Germany asking if they were related. Among German Jews, Bendix was a latinization that began with ‘baruch’ and was transformed into ‘benedictus’ and wound up where it is. Rather long before my time.

Bendix descendents in the UK are helping sort this out. Meanwhile, what a wonderful connection. Out of nowhere…people around the world having more time to ponder and reflect. And it must also be said that the great distraction that the electronic world provides on the Internet has become less frivolous. Online family gatherings. Video chats with friends. I can’t say that I find the experience easy, but at least people are visible. And they are visibly trying. We have the ocular proof of each other, to misquote Othello.

More enjoyable are online classes. Especially for those of us whose mobility is limited. I used to think of adult education classes with my lower back. That is to say, I could feel the ache of taking public transit into the center of town, going to a classroom building, etc…before actually deciding if the class was worth it. All that is now out of the equation. Limited bladder capacity is no longer an issue.

The global supply chain is not what it once was, of course. Two months ago I ordered small plants from an online nursery in Oregon. Four small jalapeno pepper seedlings were supposed to arrive. Except that they didn’t. And they didn’t. And they didn’t. Then, just minutes ago, a package arrived with one. I mean that literally, a single plant. Things are like that these days. It’s okay. People are dying on respirators, crops are rotting in fields, two of the four horsemen are loose. And my jalapeno plant is not terribly high priority.

It is also spring. It is warm and beautiful, and we have a deck and a garden, and this is not the London blitz.