Special Entry – Final

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Tuesday, December 1st, 2020

This image of a 2019 postcard by John Amber was going to be sent in early March with one of the first Covid Entries. There were few visuals to choose from in those early days, when Covid was not yet visible on the streets. It was decided that this image might be inappropriate for that raw period when death filled the air.

Now, more than half a year later, it feels safer to share this image of penmanship practice or a punishment assignment. Either way, it reminds us of an important truth: We will not live forever.

In Covid Entry 24, I wrote about feeling lost and alone as I rode home on Greenwich Street toward a nearly full moon. A disconcerting sensation shot through my body like when you answer a phone call and sense bad news before hearing the first word is spoken.

The cold wind and unnatural silence rattled my sense of place and time; I had forgotten that my hometown emptied out. Despite being less than a mile from home, on a route I’d traveled hundreds of times, I felt lost, doubting my surroundings were familiar.

Reflecting back to that mid-April night reminded me of how quickly things can change. I recall enjoyable walks in the woods when everything feels right, body and mind synchronize, each step becomes as effortless as breathing. Attention drifts from dappled sunlight in a green glade of ferns to unkempt hickory bark, or from an owl’s call to a falling leaf. Then doubt appears. Maybe I’m on the right trail, or not on any trail at all. That doubt can expand very quickly.

Luckily, my bike knew to turn south onto MacDougal Street. I got home in less than 5 minutes.

Samuel Beckett used the phrase “a dispeopled kingdom” to refer to where he lived in his short story “First Love.” I too was living in a dispeopled kingdom.