I’m having more social contact while social distancing than I did antepandemic. It’s not even close. I said I was going to call someone every day but now I’m getting phone calls too. I had phone therapy yesterday afternoon. I told my therapist that she counted as that day’s phone call. Shortly after we hung up Jim called me, and we talked for a long time. So long that I had to say goodbye so could go out to by coffee from Marie’s Coffee and Gifts. I thought my time constraint was that I also wanted a free donut from Dunkin’ along with my $2 latte and that ended at 4 PM. After I left I realized that the deal on the lattes was from 2-6 not 12-4. But then I realized I had to get back home by 6 PM to see Deni Bonet’s birthday livestream. I had to go out in any event because I had a prescription to pick up. Google Maps when whacky and stopped telling me how to walk to Marie’s. I ended up taking a longer route than I needed to. There were more people on the streets than I expected or felt comfortable with. I was able to keep my distance, but it required more effort than I expected. I love what happens when someone comes walking in the opposite direction, We both veer away from each other. It’s like looking at two ions with the same charge interacting. A few people are oblivious, and I passed one grouping of young adults or teens at a playground. Mostly people were being good. I didn’t wear gloves. They don’t really help as they would get contaminated as quickly as my hands and I’d still have to not touch my face. I did get very good at not touching my face. I walked with my hands in my pocket or pulled up into my sleeve.
On the way home I passed a Dunkin’. I ordered a latte and donut with the app. I got there and it wasn’t ready. Instead of being open 24 hours as normal they closed at 5 and had already thrown out the donuts. They said I should come by another time and they’ll give me one. The problem is that it’s not in an area I’m likely to be near, especially during the plague. A bus came just as I got out of the DD and I hopped on it. They aren’t charging on regular New York buses and you can’t sit up front near the driver. The bus was empty enough that I didn’t have to sit with anyone. I was careful to not touch anything with my hands.
When I let the house there was a woman in a wheelchair in front of the building I figured taking the sun. I’m trying to be extra friendly and said Hi to her and had a brief chat. She was still there when I got home. I talked to her again and found out that the elevator is broken, and she can’t get back to her apartment. I immediately called the super. I got his voicemail and told him to get someone over here ASAP as that poor woman was stuck downstairs. I went down after Deni’s concert to check on her. The elevator was still broken but she wasn’t there. If she was I was contemplating calling 911 to see if EMS could carry her up to her apartment. I certainly couldn’t do it. I now know her name and will ask her how she was rescued next time I see her.
Late last night I had my first Zoom session. We are using Zoom for our Seder and need to learn how to use it. Joy volunteered to show me the ropes and last night we Zoomed. Joy is as far from me as possible, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Don’t pronounced it mel-BORN but MEL-burn. You don’t want to be taken as a tourist. I’ve known Joy for more than half her life. She was a Fruhead in high school when we met at the turn of the century, it was still the 20th century at the time. She lived in the US then, Sante Fe and we met when she came with our friend Kat, to see Great Big Sea at the Bowery Ballroom. She was in New Haven to check out Yale. She ended up going to Swarthmore which was close enough that we saw while not often, it also wasn’t rarely. That’s still how things go. We see each other only when she visits the US, but we find ways to talk. She’s my archetype of people that irrationally like me. I quite rationally love her.
I did much better with my movie of the day yesterday, The BFG than I did the day before with The Black Swan. Halfway through I thought the film was great but once they reached England I found it less satisfying. Till then it was brilliant. It’s based on a story by Roald Dahl. I’ve always thought of him as a kindred spirit, a hero in the guerilla war on reality. He wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the best episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Lamb to the Slaughter. He was brilliant and weird and original. He was also an anti-Semite. Here are some things he said;
- “There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity, maybe it’s a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews. I mean, there’s always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere; even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason. I mean, if you and I were in a line moving towards what we knew were gas chambers, I’d rather have a go at taking one of the guards with me; but they [the Jews] were always submissive.”
- I am certainly anti-Israel, and I have become anti-Semitic.”
- In book review written by Dahl in the periodical “Literary Review,” he referred to “those powerful American Jewish bankers” and accused the United States Government of being “utterly dominated by the great Jewish financial institutions over there.”
- The Israeli military activity in Lebanon, he said, “was very much hushed up in the newspapers because they are primarily Jewish-owned … there aren’t any non-Jewish publishers anywhere.”
How can an anti-Semite be a kindred spirit of this Jew? Because people are complex and filled with contradictions. We don’t all fall into one of two bins, good people and bad people. There’s a mixture of good and evil in all of us. One way I process it is that Dahl was a good and intelligent person who had an awful perceptional flaw. He didn’t see that being anti-Semitic is bad. He thought he was just seeing things how they are. I have an anti-Semitic friend who loves me dearly despite the fact that I’m Jewish. People are really complicated. I have another dear friend that is a racist and I told him so. It’s not a matter of hating blacks. It’s a matter of thinking that all the disadvantages they face are their own fault. Another kindred spirit author is James Branch Cabell. He’s even more kindred than Dahl. He sees things in the world that I also see but most people don’t. Yet in his letters, not his book, he said racist things. He didn’t use offensive language and he thought of himself as liking blacks, but he was a southern gentleman at the beginning of the 20th century and he thought of Jim Crow as natural and justified. I’d like to think that if he lived now he’d think differently. I don’t know that. Dahl is far more contemporary, and anti-Semitism was never as baked into the law like racism was, yet he managed to be an anti-Semite.I know the idea of not hating and even liking bigots feels wrong to many, perhaps most people. I think it’s part of the liberal world view. It’s also important to separate the art from the artist. Richard Wagner is not a kindred spirit, he’d not just a bigot but a terrible person. He also created some of the greatest operas every written. I’m not going to deny myself art that I love to spite him.
I wrote a lot today. That’s fine; times are weird. Some days I’ll write 1400 words and others 400. I write what needs to be written.
Wise Madness 