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Santa Maria della Salute in Venice, built in the 17th century in gratitude for the end of an outbreak of plague. Photo taken 2015. I hear the water is clearer now.

It was cooler all day yesterday, probably the last gasp of the Siberian winds before summer fully sizzles, and might it have something to do with the absence of cars, buses and people on the streets?

Those of us who have settled in to climb our mountains of tsundoku (books we own and have not read) should give a thought to our extrovert friends who do not know what to do with themselves with the malls, restaurants, bars, entertainment venues shut down. Try not to gloat when you remember how they used to taunt you for staying home.
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Why do I have the compulsion to watch Beavis and Butt-head?

I’m trying to figure out where my day went because it’s almost midnight and I haven’t gotten any writing done. All the time that lockdown was supposed to free up was consumed by the latest round of uncertainty.

My plan had been to go to James’s anniversary lunch (sitting far apart), then stop at the supermarket (because there’s always something I forgot), then walk around in the open air. But I woke up late for the lunch and over my microwaved meal I started wondering if I should go out at all, even if there are usually very few people on my walking route (but several cats whom I help to feed). Mariko, who was going to join me on the walk, agreed that we should stay indoors. News of crowds at the police checkpoints on the borders of Metro Manila—the optimal situation for spreading coronavirus—did not inspire confidence that the pandemic was being contained.
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I don’t watch horror movies because my brain won’t shut up afterwards, and I can’t sleep from imagining worst-case scenarios. What if the heroes are overwhelmed? What if an ally turns? What if the big bad can’t be destroyed that way? It’s my work. Fiction-writing entails answering a series of What if’s, usually with very little information. Pick an option and live with it, or produce nothing.
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The Milkmaid by Vermeer. Reason to live: to see all the Vermeers in museums around the world. (There aren’t many.)

On Friday morning I expected silence, but my neighborhood sounded the way it always does—cars and buses, tricycles, voices, music. I looked out the window and people were standing close to each other. Good luck to whoever has to explain social distancing: Filipinos like togetherness, i.e. getting in your face. You could be standing by yourself in a vast empty field, and someone will appear and stand right next to you.
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This is the novel coronavirus, the microorganism that is fucking everything up right now.

And this is an illustration of the earth’s internal fires from Mundus Subterraneus by Athanasius Kircher, the 17th century polymath who is a character in Daniel Kehlmann’s Tyll.

We knew it was coming. We sensed it in the air that might be carrying droplets of infection, we heard it in the pauses in our conversations, we saw it in the supermarket shelves emptied of toilet paper because everyone knew shit was going down. The empty official assurances, the blithe indifference and vehement denials only stoked our certainty. Humans did not survive this long by not expecting the worst.

Are viruses sentient? They are intelligent. I remember reading about an ancient virus that combined its genetic code with the genome of animals. It may be the root of human consciousness.
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