Seventeenth Entry
Finished today. (purchased 1988)
(Click photo for detail)
Friday, April 3rd, 2020
Today, the Mayor said everyone should cover their faces in public. By afternoon, the President said everyone should use a mask. He stated that he did not think he would be “doing it.”
It is the eve of sending out the first Covid Entry (April 2020); it includes a photograph of a sign informing potential customers that hand sanitizers and disinfectants are out of stock. The sign’s text ended with “Thank You.”
I took that picture on March 6th, one day after the President optimistically said, “It’s all going to work out.” Now, nearly a month later, that laminated sign is still posted at Staples. Some things change more quickly than others. There is still no hand sanitizer available in the big stores.
Today, two days before New York will run out of ventilators, the Governor passed a ruling allowing the State to seize hospital equipment.
This week, the world surpassed one million confirmed cases of Covid. How many people actually have the virus? Twice or five times that number?
The eighty refrigerated trailers which arrived to hold the dead are filling up. There is talk of temporary interments in city parks. Which parks, I wonder? Mortuary specialists are being dispatched to NY from around the US.
In his short narrative, “First Love,” Samuel Beckett wrote, “With a little luck, you hit on a genuine interment, with real live mourners.” Today it takes more than a little luck to arrange a genuine interment, let alone assemble any live mourners.
6-minute Audio
Eye contact, clang – clunk, a train car to yourself.