Sars 2

A few days back I walked over to my friend Michelle's house about 10 minutes down the road from my mud hut. We talked about all kinds of matters. Somewhere, in the conversation I suggested we ought to get together with other friends and do that round of how tough we had it growing up. You know, kind of like a Monty Python sketch: " when I was your age we were so poor my father cut holes in my pants so I have something to play with." Then, the other person says: " I didn't have pants." Someone else replies: " I didn't have parents." And on. This got me thinking about the variety of Corona Virus experiences I have and am going through now. Let me introduce a distinction I created.

Coronacitis. Sars 2 is the virus. Covid 19 the disease. Coronacitis is the effect of the this zombie across all platforms and media. I say "zombie" because according to science Sars 2 does not meet the criteria of a living thing.
My sense of "agency" is at odds with the boundary drawn but that is philosophy for another time.

 In consistent ways, I remain serene and at ease with all the multiple responses and perspectives I encounter from friends and strangers managing the complexities of this 21st Century event. A whole lotta lightning in the atmosphere, for sure. First of all, Is not the humor circulating in the various media systems, the ingenious memes we see daily show up truly as sweet balms amidst deficits in leadership and vision?

I will hold back my wicked, wicked tongue on celebrity culture except to observe how ordinary some of them seem. Are they really worthy of our money and adulation? As I examine my own inner world, I tune to a kind of experiential immunology to crisis and threats developed from circumstances I cleared long ago. Sure, I grieve as well yet the intimacy that uncomplicated grief delivers feels part of a Greater Health. Before the age of ten I had: Seen my younger brother (RIP)trip, fall, and split his lips in two on the sharp end of a rocking chair. All that blood. My dad rushing to the jeep carrying Greg in his arms. I watched Greg through an operation window vomit several times as a response to the anesthesia the surgeons were given him to sow his lips back on. It left him with a scar that fucked with his psyche till the very end of his life. I was 5. This took place in Nicaragua where I lived for a bit. We moved between Costa Rica and Nicaragua often. About a year later, my father took to whipping me with a belt till I passed out inside our garage. Asshole! Yet, A few days before my dad died (20 years ago?) I asked him to apologize to me for disrespecting me in such a way. At first he defended himself claiming that the violence made me the good man that I am. I replied that on the contrary, the violence created all kinds of inner turmoil in my life. Much to his credit and change of ways he apologized with all his heart. He said he wish he had love me more. I said he love me enough. He died a few days later in his home in Managua. Allow me to continue, We moved back to Costa Rica after the brutal whipping incident. The dynamic between my parents got more volatile. My sweet mom had a demonic jealousy in her and my dad was a terrible womanizer. There are all kinds of side stories to this but I wll skip them for a particular moment that happened. One night, I saw my Dad strangling my Mom dragging her head across a wall to the bed room trying to kill her (?), I wanted to jump on him but our "maid" grabbed me and my little brother, and tore ass out of the house as I heard her scream, I remember blue lights swirling, hiding in the bushes, my dad driving up telling us to get in the car, the "maid" pleading with him to let us go, to drive away, which he did after we sat with him for a minute in the car. I was terrified. My brother and I went to live with my aunt and uncle Quito and Leyla (RIP) who became our guardians from then on. My grandfather, who was living with them died not too long after they took us in. Abuelo, Rafael, who I am named after (middle name) was a sweet man. He told me on the eve before his death (he was having cataract surgery the following morning) how much he was looking forward to finally seeing "his little angels." I rememeber running to his room excited for the new day and his operation. He had his back to me in his jammies. A glass with his dentures in them on the night stand. He was not moving. There was a weird quiet cold vibe to the room. I walked out and a few minutes later my aunt came in to my room with blood shot eye and helped me get dressed telling me I had to go away for a few days. One detail from that story is that my Mom was so beat up from the assault that she could not come to the wake. And yet, she did. She was all dressed in black with a hat that veiled her face. I was outside playing acroos the street since I was staying at a neigbors house(they did not want me inside my own place) and saw her walk in. She waived. I crossed the street to peer through a window. I could see a circle of women all dressed in black. Candles. A coffin in the middle of the room. More life went on. My mom and dad still kept at it on and off till they did not. There is more to tell here about that but that was worked out in therapy aeos ago. My brother and I lived in a pension alone with our mom after dad left the country. (My mom is in Costa Rica at the moment with Dementia). I recall a dickehead from Honduras shot a kitten at the pension's inside courtyard in front of all the tenants because it kept him up at night. I remember watching from a stairwell while the kitten writhed and screamed his last breath. Tough stuff, you know. Eventually, for all kinds of reasons my brother and I, our guardians as well, ended up in the USA. The whole learning another language assimilate to not assimilate to integrate rediscover/reinvent my "identity" is another cup of sopa. I have gone through all kinds of Intitations here in the land of the Free (freaky and I like you a lot). Telenovelas got nothin on this vato hommie mae, ameeegas y amigos. My guardian, Quito, worked in Forensic psychiatry during our stay in Louisville, Kentucky. Sure enough, a band of patients escaped and walked right into our house. I was with my friend Corbin Seavers in the kitchen when they walked in. I kept my cool, broke loose just enough to get Quito up and have him call security. Not to long after that another band of criminals broke out and came looking for Quito and other docs who had sent them to prison. I recall hiding in the yard when their car lights came up to our driveway yet pulled back. I got in the house unseen by them and slept that night with my first communion crucifix under my pillow that in my 12 year old imagination could become a weapon if needed. I knew Jesus would understand if I poked an eye out or two in self defense. Amen y gracias a la Virgencita as well. Friends, I was in Nicargua during the Sandinista Revolution. While staying in Managua with my Dad and his new family. I would go to bed listening to gun battles up on the hills. I could hear the back and forth of AK47s. Somoza's guards had checkpoints everywhere and for these poor men fighting against their own brother to pull a trigger and waste us seemed inconsequential when I looked into their eyes . Someone, I was loving at the time got brutally assaulted by those fucking guards. Gather round children. Gather Round. I am many decades into my life. There are all kinds of entry points and exit ways to what I could share about duress. LOve Love Love ,in all its forms has been there accompanying my path. All kinds of medicines. All kinds of ways bring me to Wholeness:  Meditation, avoid catastrophic thinking, cognitive distortions, projections. Most of us will survive this.

 Grieving and Celebration can co exist in one soul. Yours, Mine I do not know your pain or the level of sorrow you are experiencing right now. What can be triggered will depend on your culture, ethnic group, financial well being and more importantly on your medicine bag, cognitive tools, and innate resilience. As you adapt and shift to our current episode keep in mind that others around the planet are experiencing warfare, destitution and loss to a level that what i share here is a fairy tale. Remember our companion species.
  
Do not forget that your resilience, your soul depth, your deep intelligence out shines the content of your mind (games).

This is not a species extinction event even though I know some of you think that we are the virus, a scab on the skin of the earth and thus welcome a new evolutionary line to emerge besides us.
The term "interdependence" is more nuanced and complicated than some had ever imagined

Tell me, when you were growing up you were so poor that...

 Stayin sane on the love plane. I am around if you want to talk. a