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Look! I made a little graphic of where I started the pandemic, and where I am now….  Zero to Boom. A year. I got my teaching schedule for the fall—I will be teaching classes face-to-face. A mistake! Rage—up! Terror trending...down.... 
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I started making covid graphics a little over a year ago. This is the first one:  I started making them daily March 29, the date I also started keeping a written covid diary. Right? I thought—I’m in a world historic crisis, and I might die at any time, so I need to document it all. Also—that first week, I had a weird sore throat and a cough. Was I sick? Maybe! (Probably not). But it all caught my attention, and I began documenting. The diary now runs to about 42,000 words—a compendium of rage and terror and heartbreak. I began making blog posts of it all some 23 weeks ago, whenever that was. I’ll keep posting about covid until this sad shit is over…. This week! I got my second shot on the 19th and was pretty darn sick for four days. Terror is trending down. But—Rage is trending up! The Provost announced this week that we will be teaching face-to-face this fall. An incredibly unwise decision….  I missed posting last week because of more pandemic exhaustion. (This is common! I have noticed that my students are physically and mentally stretched very thin. And we don’t have spring break this year, so the exhaustion will be worse next month). Some good pandemic news: I got my second shot—today! Terror is leveling out—it may even drop in the coming weeks. Rage still up, though. Trumpism/Racism is too fucking prevalent in our society….   Well-organized drive-thru inoculations! I missed posting last week because I was fucking exhausted. The pandemic wears us all down. Positive: got my first shot of the best available Moderna! Negative: our stupid governor has removed the mask mandate, an active of passive eugenics. His withered hands will be covered with bloody sputum. Fuck that guy. This blog is a mask-mandated zone. All goddamn indices are up. Rage leads the way.  Enough with the Roman numerals. Too complicated. My covid vaccination was delayed due to the weather disaster. And—all indices are up due to the weather disaster. Rage up the most. This is just bullshit.   So this was a day of hard driving. I had been up in the northwest corner of New Mexico, fishing the San Juan River, and was headed back to Austin and it was—icy. Had about 100 miles of this heading down Hwy 550. Fortunately, there wasn’t much traffic—that school bus in front of me for a long time, a few other cars. At one crossroads there were two big dogs cavorting around having fun. The road got better south of Cuba and I drove along fine. But then I made a mistake. I was heading south on I-25, and decided that I wanted to drive by the Trinity Site, more or less, so I headed east on 380 through the desert—and, yeah, the Trinity site was off there somewhere in the vastness, so that was cool. And I headed on east. But then the road past Carrizozo climbed up into the mountains. And there was fucking snow up in the mountains! And the sun went down and it was nighttime. Yikes! So I drove on over the mountains in a snowstorm in the dark. I had a cassette of Prince’s Purple Rain playing, and I listened to it over and over, a steady nice rhythm as the wipers thudded across the windshield. I remember anticipating how stupid I would feel back at the bar explaining how I ended up in a goddamn ditch or worse—and that anticipation of shame kept me alert. Shame kept me alive! And I did make it down out of the mountains to Roswell, where I got a motel and crashed hard.
The Austin ice storm of 1997. Another stressful day of driving.
I was driving the cab in those days, and I had a day shift beginning at 400am. So I made my way carefully downtown, and got my first ride at the (then) Marriott, taking a guy to the airport. On the way back from the airport I saw a Cadillac all up askew in the middle of someone’s yard, and a guy standing beside the car. He flagged me down. “I ran off the road!” he said. “Can you give me a ride?” “Sure,” I said. The guy went back to the Caddy and pulled out a shotgun, a woman’s purse, and a 12-pack of Budweiser. I guess I was looking at him somewhat skeptically. “It’s my mother’s purse,” the guy explained. I guess that made sense. We drove somewhere or other. The guy asked me, “How come you’re not running off the road like everybody else?” “Because I’m driving 15 miles an hour,” I said. I was the only cab in central Austin for most of the day. You’d think I would’ve made a lot of money, right? But I didn’t, really. Because I could only drive 15 fucking miles an hour, and every trip took forever. Oh well. We are under a winter storm warning this weekend. Ice! Snow! Cold! I have an appointment to get my covid vaccine Tuesday, and, if I have to, I will endure more treacherous driving to not die. The rest of y’all need to stay home. All indices up this week. Carryover insurrection Rage and unvaccinated Terror lead the way. I hope to get a vaccine shot this week—perhaps Terror will decline a bit. But maybe not!  I got an appointment for a covid vaccine! Yay! Then my appointment got bumped back a week because of a (temporary, we all hope) vaccine shortage…. Boo! But that’s not surprising, really. Vaccination is a gigantic national project that was started off stupid by the Trumpists, and even if it’s now on the correct trajectory, it’s bound to have to some stops along with the goes. Still—State of Texas, hurry up and give me a shot! Pandemic status? All indices—UP—Terror takes the lead....  All indices up, of course. Rage levelling off, but still rising—carryover Rage. Heartbreak as always a lagging indicator. Where the heck is my vaccine?  So Trump is gone and that is a very good thing. Trumpism survives, however, and will be a threat to our freedoms for years. And the virus hasn't gone anywhere. So: all indices UP. Rage might start to decline in the next few weeks, but I expect Terror and Heartbreak to continue to climb--for a long time.   Post-Trump America |
Lowell Mick White
Author of the novels Normal School and Burnt House and Professed and That Demon Life and the story collections Long Time Ago Good and The Messes We Make of Our Lives. Categories
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