buhhhhhraingfoggly notions
ordinary sounds, commutes, the bruncheoisie, and squeezing a big giant book into a budget tighter than an ant fart
a before times playlist
I struggle to be hopeful, improve energy levels, to not go absolutely crazy, but every day feels like the same day, like one big never-ending day punctuated by naps, chores, remedies, the needs of cats, and not much else. I wear out too quickly, unroll a futon and flop on the floor, and make playlists or just listen to music with a bandana over my eyes, seeking music that suits my newly restructured brain, beautiful sad songs, rain sounds, waterfalls, waves, birds, trains, and airplanes to help me sleep and ease my nerves. The most ordinary soundscapes soothe me, a memory of how the world sounded when the pedal broke off my bicycle and I had to walk everywhere, how walking from my neighborhood to the new-ish mixed use area on the way to the commissary felt uncanny, so many sounds, so many changes in terrain from day to day due to construction and unloading vehicles. I still see it in my mind as many places at once, places that all exist now like map overlays, a “before” when I walked my oldest daughter to first grade, an “after” when I passed the little school on the way to a new job.
The buildings feel tall for the Eastside, they aren’t, but there used to be so many trees, green, wild, tangled, deep-scented jasmine and trumpet vines so thick that they shielded all buildings behind them and darkened the sidewalk. Now there are piles of scooters carelessly dumped in the paths. Groggy dog walkers and stroller pushers nod a greeting in the pre-dawn foggy morning as I move one out of the way, sidestepping crusted vomit on the sidewalk from the night before, fat grey cat guarding the neighborhood bar where we used to see friends and play pool when the kids were out of town.
On the way home from work one lovely Sunday afternoon not long before we started worrying about covid, the street is busy with people stepping around sandwich boards advertising brunch specials. Long queues of locals and tourists wait to heal hangovers with coffee, mimosas, breakfast tacos, and cantaloupe. I wear my kitchen rags, hair up under a bandana. As I walk I wonder if I am on Mars or from Mars, alternating between outsider and 90’s relic, anthropologically curious about the bruncheoisie but not at all wanting to engage, preferring to stomp home in my work boots, look in shop windows, and say hey to fellow kitchen people taking smoke breaks in the cross streets or selling chai out of a window.
Brunch is winding down and I hear a scooter behind me on the sidewalk. I stop, and a woman in a long pumpkin spice floral maxi-dress and a floppy hat zooms by, laughing like “ah ha ha ha ha!” as she weaves through the crowd, bombed to another dimension on champagne and orange juice. Ahead, the crowd parts to reveal a couple scrambling to scoop up a tiny pug on a long leash. The leash is directly in the path of the maniacal scootress, stretched out like a finish line1. I gasped and before I could shout “look out!” the dog was whisked out of danger. The scooter lady was completely oblivious, maybe she was using the Force to find or create a clear path. When I caught up to the scene, the couple was comforting the little dog, who looked happy for the attention and not near as traumatized as everyone else on the sidewalk.
Weeks later, after cleaning the kitchen and closing forever, I left a note and some apple pastries for my co-workers who still had shifts and locked the door for the last time. The street was deserted, brunch was cancelled, the wind whistled through the alleys and up my overcoat. I bought chai from the window for the last time, said goodbye to the barista, and powered through the cold and windblown paper litter, passing a ripped poster on the ground advertising the 2020 Star of Texas tattoo convention. The only sign of life was a grackle looking both ways before crossing the metro tracks.
dapper ghost
a memory of biking home from a different job long ago near midnight in summer, when the sap from mountain juniper in the cemetery mixed with mountain laurel flowers on street corners is still warm and fragrant hours after a day spent hammered by the sun.
it becomes the cologne of a dapper gentleman ghost who walks the neighborhood, moseys along a slow breeze up the sidewalk and around the alley on his constitutional, whistling along to the sound of the wind. He tips his hat, I nod, speeding through a wake of spicy tree resin and grape soda sillage from bark and flowers. he hums a sound like sugar spilling from a paper bag into a glass jar and shimmers as he fades through the invisible, crackling tissue that separates the worlds, not a word could I catch from his song, just a whiff of pipe smoke and puff of soot linger as he merges into night.
Wondering what other long haulers listen to, I search “long covid” and specify “playlists.”
I scroll through sad songs, laments, and instrumental music. Like me, they listen to rain sounds, waterfalls, waves, birds, trains, airplanes. Many playlists have aural bath playlists with Hz frequencies, which is interesting to me because while I get the idea of it — I did try — I prefer to listen to something like “highway traffic” or “air conditioner,” something real.
Maybe I didn’t listen to the right ones but they make me feel like I am in one of those sci-fi movies where the main character is alone in space, there’s no way to go back, so they’re doomed to float around until they get space madness or die, and the robot in charge or some mysterious space being tries to make them feel better by singing weird little Hz frequencies and making little holographic friends for them to talk to (but they know it isn’t real, and would give anything to hear ocean waves, the neighborhood on garbage day, the hum of an old refrigerator). I get a Solaris or 2001: A Space Odyssey vibe, and it makes sleep a little unsettling.
Maybe I’ll make an aural bath long covid healing playlist called “frequencies to mend yer hertz” but it’s all laundromats, box fans, grocery store checkouts, the city bus, birds, and shipyards. I miss walking around in the world so much. I want to look at a very tall tree, get donuts and coffee, go out to sea, hop a bus to anywhere.
This long covid shit is such a drag y’all. Protect yourself. They talked about long covid on the news today, so there you go, I didn’t make it up. I get that the Nightly News has parameters set by the oligarchy but they could have reported about mitochondrial dysfunction, T-Cells, and reactivation of Epstein Barre and herpes (if you had chickenpox, it counts) a long time ago.2
Yesterday, in even more boring, ordinary news, I did some household accounting, paid the utility bill, and because I pre-ordered the Emily Wilson translation of The Iliad3 and it just released, I shaved the grocery list down to the most necessary stuff we absolutely can’t run out of so we make it to next payday without running out of cat food, sandwich stuff, and caffeine.
The pre-order was delayed because last week’s paycheck was deposited this morning4 and they emailed me yesterday, telling me “rEvIsE yOuR pAyMeNt MeThOd.” I thought I paid when I pre-ordered but apparently that is not how that works, so after a weekend of us eating all the good food in the house with no care in the world I had to tell the old man that we have to tighten our belts a wee bit for some ancient literature.5
After the deposit, I budgeted to the penny. The electric payment always takes a couple of days to post (why are they like that? They could be like HEB and just magically post to the credit union but NOOOO they have to sleep on it a few days), and then I got a shipping notification for The Iliad, which means they just went ahead and tried again. While I am very happy that the book is on the way, there will be $1.97 in the account when utilities clear, and until they do, I’m trying not to worry about it. It will only be about a day, but I haven’t cut it that close in a long time.6
“Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears, lalala la lala la lala …”
I don’t want to go into all the awful possible outcomes, but will share the funny impossible scenario where she hits the leash and it sling-shots her backwards into the sun to the sound of a slide whistle, wheee!
Earliest scholarly mention I found in a quick google of varicella zoster reactivation in covid patients — January 1, 2020. Yeah, that far back. It was a small mention, but this is literally a day after 2019.
“Since being infected with SARS-CoV-2, 2.8% (2.3% to 3.3%) of respondents reported experiencing shingles (varicella zoster reactivation), 6.9% reported current/recent EBV infection, 1.7% reported current/recent Lyme infection, and 1.4% reported current/recent CMV infection.”
Davis, Hannah E., Gina S. Assaf, Lisa McCorkell, Hannah Wei, Ryan J. Low, Yochai Re’em, Signe Redfield, Jared P. Austin, and Athena Akrami. “Characterizing Long Covid in an International Cohort: 7 Months of Symptoms and Their Impact.” medRxiv, January 1, 2020. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.24.20248802v2.full
This is from April 14, 2020.
“Conclusions: T cell counts are reduced significantly in COVID-19 patients, and the surviving T cells appear functionally exhausted. Non-ICU patients with total T cells counts lower than 800/μL may still require urgent intervention, even in the immediate absence of more severe symptoms due to a high risk for further deterioration in condition.”
Diao, Bo, Chenhui Wang, Yingjun Tan, Xiewan Chen, Ying Liu, Lifen Ning, Li Chen, et al. “Reduction and Functional Exhaustion of T Cells in Patients with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).” Frontiers, April 14, 2020. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2020.00827/full
This article is from December 2020, so they’re mostly focusing on aged populations, and age factors into it for sure, but it is because elderly immune systems are generally a bit less robust (exceptions exist of course). Since covid can overwhelm the immune system, mitochondrial dysfunction is a possible concern at any age. I’m planning to write about mitochondria from a non-scientist pov soon because so much about it is fascinating, but for now, get used to the word because it will become so much less niche of a subject and I think if we can understand more about mitochondria, we can better understand why we and/or people we know are melting into heaps after doing the barest of essential things.
“Emerging evidence suggests that COVID-19 highjacks mitochondria of immune cells, replicates within mitochondrial structures, and impairs mitochondrial dynamics leading to cell death. Mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cell and are largely involved in maintaining cell immunity, homeostasis, and cell survival/death. Increasing evidence suggests that mitochondria from COVID-19 infected cells are highly vulnerable, and vulnerability increases with age.”
Ganji, Riya, and P. Hemachandra Reddy. “Impact of Covid-19 on Mitochondrial-Based Immunity in Aging and Age-Related Diseases.” Frontiers, December 16, 2020. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnagi.2020.614650/full.
I’m just going to stop here. If I knew I was going to be reading medical journals for three years (when I can READ because sometimes I CAN’T), I’d have gone to med school.
Haynes, Natalie. “Warriors Who Seek Immortal Fame and Find It, in Epic Poetry.” The New York Times, September 23, 2023. a little gift link to the article.
last week was so … I mean it just … ugh honestly I can’t really pin down what about last week was so … anyway, moving on.
looking at the fridge after playing grocery Jenga, I think we did pretty well. I’m making tortilla soup with some leftovers and it smells amazing.
update: the book is here and it’s beautiful, so worth it. The Iliad — Homer, Emily Wilson's translation