It’s morning. Whipped egg white clouds bunch up on the horizon under an aluminum sky. The days fold into weeks and weeks into months. I hear children outside laughing. Schools are closed. In-class learning is moved online. With mixed results. Despite the propensity of youth to gaze at screens and…

I am trying to learn patience. It is not easy to be able to sit quietly without an endless stream of mental chatter, without the impulse to do something, to fill every moment with activity, to move from one thing to the next without stopping and just watch my breath…

I’m taking a pain killer that takes me down memory lane. I’m playing iTunes on my old iPad — albums I recorded from my collection several years ago. I select random shuffle and Nina Simone’s “I Want a Little Sugar in my Bowl” roars to life; a song both personal…

I am fasting. Not because I am trying to lose weight or rid my body of some toxin, but for discipline. In case the food scarcity and increasing incidents of empty store shelves portents a famine. While we are holed up, venturing out only to get essentials in order to…

I’ve been thinking about fractals. And Nature. A fractal is a never-ending pattern. Fractals are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales. They are created by repeating a simple process over and over in an ongoing feedback loop. Driven by recursion, fractals are images of dynamic systems —…

I am still spending most of my time alone, so my weekly drives to town to purchase essentials are usually combined with pleasure. I meet a friend for lunch, visit a gallery, walk around the streets. Just to be among others. I notice tourists in their running shoes, coordinated dress…

I reread “I and Thou”, a slim text by the Austrian Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, about dialogue and relation. He wrote it in 1923, a time of great world upheaval. Crushing debt after the first World war. Unemployment, hunger, social unrest, assassinations. Mussolini and Hitler rose from this rubble. Buber…

I’ve been here a while now. Disease-free. At least I believe I am. I have none of the usual symptoms, but the virus has a different effect on people I have heard. Some don’t even know they have it. Others need to be put on oxygen, lose their ability to…

There’s no one on the highway. No one except transport trucks. I realize I have instantly categorized them as no one. These No Ones who are long hauling necessary goods — like food — across the U.S. border, a Nation with the highest cases of the virus, risking their safety…