Virus makes world dangerous, yet smaller
Staying healthy and sane in an insane world
SANTA FE — The news suggesting the use of household disinfectants against the coronavirus had barely echoed around the White House briefing room when it bounced across the pond to the United Kingdom and back again in an email from my friend Julia.
She sent a mocking photo of a Dettol (England’s version of Lysol) cocktail and the promise of more news soon from afar.
I met Julia Bower in 2017 at a Vivaldi concert on a trip to Venice while living in Madrid for seven months.
The email made me think about how a network of friends and relatives in the U.S. and Europe, accumulated by dint of birthplace, extensive travel and a number of journalism jobs, were doing in the new reality the pandemic has forced upon us.
The very thing — travel — that brought me an eclectic group of friends and acquaintances around the world — is, for now, a memory.
I have been reaching out to my cousins and friends in London, California, New York City, and in Madrid and Paris to see what the pandemic is doing to their world.
I met Irish poet Tim Murphy in Madrid, where he still lives, and we have stayed in touch. Tim helped show me the ropes in Madrid, including a hole-in-the-wall bookstore that dispensed a shot of whisky to customers from a bottle hidden behind a shelf. “Madrid has been hit very hard by this,” Tim wrote in a recent email. He and fellow Madrileños have been locked down for six weeks with a further twoweek lockdown starting last week. Children were allowed outside for the first time last week.
In my email to Tim, I mentioned my daily bicycle exercise rides through Santa Fe’s mostly empty streets. “We have no outdoorexercise rights!” Tim wrote.
Madrid is a multinational city that is home to many expats from the former Iberian colonies, such as Ecuador and the Dominican Republic. I met baristas from those countries while passing afternoons and evenings at the Cervecería Alemana, Hemingway’s old hangout on the Plaza de Santa Ana. We passed the time talking about Bruce Bochy and my San Francisco Giants. I never met a Dominican anywhere in the world who didn’t like to talk baseball. I wondered about Anna and Celia from Madrid’s Jazz Bar, and friends Ulysses and Paco.
In the virus hotbed of Queens, New York, my bartender friend Andy has been laid off and the restaurant he worked in closed. He assured me he, as well as his ex-wife working from home, are fine and he passes his time with daily walks.
In Taos, my former home, my friend Anthony was heading to New York to see his daughter run in a soon-to-be-postponed marathon, when he canceled his trip on the day of departure and convinced her to join him in Taos.
Back across the pond in London, my cousin Mandy tells me she hasn’t left her flat for five weeks, working at home “helps keep my sanity,” she wrote. “As with everyone, I am sure every day is the same as the last. Who knows when this will end, but as long as we all come out the other side what more could we want?”
A 100 or so miles north of London in the lovely city of Norwich, Julia says a gentle rain and busy hands in idle times have left gardens “looking pristine.”
She is busy with a sailing course via Zoom, learning Greek through Skype, a Pilates class, and lots of walking and cycling.
Her experiences do not seem unlike ours.
“Apart from the initial rush to strip the shops bare of produce, everything has more or less returned to normal in the supermarkets. I think a lot of people are making greater use of their local shops (this is food only), so it is great for them,” Julia wrote.
Procrastination though, like the virus, respects no borders.
“Like everyone else, at the start of this, I went out and bought a tin of paint with the conviction to paint my dining room. Well, I have not started that yet,” she wrote.
The virus couldn’t have hit closer to home for Julia. Her lodger contracted the virus, but they are both well and sanitize the flat daily.
The social problems associated with the disease seemed to have created universal global problems.
“The incidence of domestic abuse is well up. Many people are suffering financial hardship despite the substantial help from the government. We keep hearing about a group who have fallen through the net and receive nothing,” Julia says.
Tim, in Madrid, may be exercising daily outdoors starting this weekend “as long as the declining daily death toll keeps declining,” he writes. “It will likely be several weeks before any bars or restaurants, or anything like that, are open here.”
With a nod to health, Julia signed off in her email: “Take care and stay well. I’m off to have a stretch now.”