Saturday, Mar. 14 - The Long Night 

Day 50. The Long Night 

Two ways veered round a grassy shrub,
And knowing that I had to choose
Far from the cities and the club,
I gazed from inside the poisoned dub
past time's corners and rainbow hues.

A hill swapped condolences to die,
And perhaps it could be time,
But I, unready to say bye,
into the dance, to amplify,
My perspective and the sublime,

Poison beat, curse disenchanted,
I found the happening to lead,
no horror grips the lionhearted,
dancing with feet bloodied to mud.
Media, garden the roses; weed.

panic crested, surf must be made
obstacle shines to virtue's way;
eyes wide as stars; a masquerade
Fear flies like a bird's cabaret
I lean into the dance again.

Day 50. I'm no Robert Frost, but Robert Frost's first draft was no Robert Frost either. I wake up, gutted, and numb. It's 9 AM, and I have six hours of teaching starting at 10. Coffee beans grind, a kettle boils, the French press percolates, and I wait. I don't want to listen to the news today. 

I teach for two hours; my life's moments dripping away like the tears of a syphilitic fiddler. I drink more coffee and play a jittery game of hockey with my dad online. We eat some noodles and I relax before I teach again. I don't want to take notes today. I haven't slept more than a couple of hours a night in a week, and the last 50 days and emotional turmoil of worrying if I'm doing enough to save the lives of the people I care about around the world is too heavy to carry one more step. So I stop to rest. 

After the last class, at 8:30 PM, I decide I'm not going to write at all today. The warmth of a pre-spring Chongqing day is gone with the sun, and the remaining chill creeps into my bones. I close the window and crack a beer and then another. Xiaolin and I watch some movies and try to enjoy a night off. So often lately, I've been spinning too many plates and dropping the ones that matter most. Scattered, like ashes off a mountaintop, everywhere, and nowhere. 

Part of me is terrified of what is to come. I want to leave the party early; focus on my life, head down, and try to keep on keeping on. If Chongqing and China's precautions are good, then we've done it. 50 days and 80,000 infections later, we're almost ready to get back to the business of living. If we keep a 14-day quarantine on anyone entering, we should be able to take our masks off and go to the movies soon. 

I've always had my other foot in Canada, though, this squirrelly, cold numbness grips me, wondering how could I go back to any semblance of normal life? A pandemic plague is on the shores of my homeland. 

I've already had friends from around the world message me. Some want me to speak to their member of parliament, or doctor, or mayor and share my data and Chinese methods for containment. Others write to me late at night when they can't sleep, nerves frayed, panic rising. They want to know what they can do, where they can go. I reply I share facts, I debate with the angry and the scared and those in denial, and the more exhausted I get, the less I can field these questions. 

Some wonder what they will do when their jobs close, and their rent checks bounce and their mortgage defaults. What can I say? How desperate will social media be when they are losing their homes and sick or starving? 

It's unthinkable. I've always preferred to ghost a party on a high note than to bother with a hundred goodbyes. I've drained my batteries trying to light signal fires;my movies and music and posts will speak for themselves in perpetuity. Isn't it fair now to retreat to my mountain-dwelling and wait out the storm in some relative peace? 

Mais cela me semble être la voie du lâche; c'est sa propre forme de petite mort (But this strikes me as the coward's way; its own form of little death). 

I lie in bed until early in the morning again, thinking, playing through every scenario I can think of, and trying to decide which one will bring me the most peace. None of them are easy, but some of them are kind. 

I remember a dark night, long ago, with a good friend M. After our gigs were done, we had drinks and laughed, as we did merrily from coast to coast, year after year. It was the way. That night, someone had slipped something in our drinks, and slowly, a creeping cosmic madness had begun to settle in. It was an unspeakable, but fast encroaching awareness of an uncomfortable unfathomable void beyond ourselves. We gazed, stupefied, as the creeping abyss overwhelmed our motoriety. We shuffled off toward the bushes, and exchanged a look; is this how we die? 

No, M, not today. I shrugged it away for a moment, as inspiration burned away the shroud; a ball of fire in a spiderweb. I clung to perspiration and charged into the dance. In the huddle of gyrating revelry, I sweated out the intoxication and creeping madness until only I remained. 

I remember that morning, after the long night when that beautiful, damned blazing orange orb scattered the darkness and heated up my chilled bones. 

When the night is long and the darkness deep, any spark can be a guiding light. If we are going to go mad, I will do it with dignity and grace. I must lean into the dance.