Saturday, March 21, 2020

I’m told that it’s been a nice day outside. I haven’t looked out the door at all, and the windows are too high in this basement apartment for me to see much. I heard rain this morning. I haven’t seen another person since lunchtime yesterday. I spoke to one relative on the phone this morning and to another by videochat in the evening, but to no one in person. I'm monkeying around a lot with inanimate objects. My two computers and my TV are now happily networked. I’ve cleaned out the innards of the vacuum robot. This is where we are now, not seeing other humans much. Back in the 80s, back before many of my friends were born, after another friend quietly died alone, a group of us swore that we wouldn’t let a day go by without encountering another person, even if it was to go downstairs to a deli (we all lived in New York City at the time) and get a coffee at the counter. I’d only missed two days since then, once when I was sick at home, and on a Christmas in Cleveland, when everyone else in my house was elsewhere, and I saw no one on a long walk through town. I’ll be back among people tomorrow, going to work and to get groceries. But Shabbat is going to be very quiet for a while.