JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Adam Sandler! “Doctors and nurses will save us from this mess if we get them the supplies that they need / And I hope they save us soon cause I’m really, really sick of my family.”

It’s positively indecent when people are climbing the walls, but I am in a good mood. Of course I worry about Apocalypse, which now comes in four flavors (with more in product development)—Pestilence, Starvation, Recession, and Unrest—but I can escape into a bubble of cheerfulness by practicing my Olympic-level talent in sleeping, or by reading a book.

Last week or the week before—I’ll have to consult my journal as I can’t tell time anymore—I said I couldn’t read contemporary fiction and could only take refuge in ancient and medieval history. This weekend I picked up Outline by Rachel Cusk, in which nothing much happens and people just talk about what’s on their minds (like an Eric Rohmer movie, but with even less plot). I love it. I cannot wait to get to the second book, Transit, which I will alternate with Jan Potocki’s The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, a wonderfully weird book I’ve been wanting to read for years.

It’s occurred to me that there are also many kinds of frontliners. There are the doctors, nurses, and health workers, the soldiers in this war against a tiny, invisible enemy. There are the workers who keep the groceries, pharmacies, utilities and essential businesses going despite the difficulties of going to work without public transportation. And there are the other frontliners who are desperately missed in this time of social distancing: the teachers who take the children off their parents’ hands during weekdays so they can keep from running amok (the parents, as children are already amok).

Have a thought for all the parents around the world struggling to help their children with their homework and having to spend every single second with their gene pool even as they work from home and worry about surviving disease and economic collapse. People like my sister, who had to correct her daughter’s spelling, overheard herself, and sent me the plaintive message: “I’m turning into our mother!!!” (To be fair, most people require years of therapy to get to that point.) I restrained myself from gloating that I cannot relate to her situation because my cats have perfect spelling.

Drogon’s allergic dermatitis is subsiding with regular applications of the beeswax and VCO ointment. According to the label the ointment contains myrrh, which pleases Drogon as he’s been expecting the Magi for some time. Speaking of which, Passover is coming and today is Palm Sunday. According to the barangay public address system yesterday, some statues from the parish church will be driven slowly through the streets to mark the occasion. Remember how people used to kiss the feet of religious images and wipe the saints’ faces with thin cloth towels? So much of our former lives now seem like invitations to contagion. What will happen to the annual traslacion procession of the Black Nazarene of Quiapo, the million people moshpit of faith?

What my friend is doing in quarantine: Playing the piano softly, so as not to disturb the neighbors. In my neighborhood all we have is karaoke. Mercifully, that has not been playing.

The BLB, whom I haven’t seen in years, remembered my complete lack of interest in food preparation and sent me (by bike messenger) some pasta which by default is the best carbonara in the city. We agreed that in quarantine we’ve realized how much money we casually threw away every time we went out. P150 for a cup of coffee?? This collective epiphany does not bode well for the restaurant business.