I had to take a pause from the self-isolation updates as, for one I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of posting my book about the Grand Canyon titled Stay In The Magic that precedes this post and covers the previous 18 days. Secondly, self-isolation had become a routine by the 1oth day; capturing the minutiae that define a day of trying our best to remove ourselves from going out due to the threat of this virus invariably leads me to think about the whole political situation, which is a serious dead-end. It was time to focus on other stuff, anything really, except continuously recognizing being thrown out of sync with the way things were before COVID-19.

What follows are random thoughts and memories that were happening over those days and came to define a new normal.

— We sit here reading more of The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann which talks about whiling away time when isolation, healing, and staying in place demands that one no longer pay attention to every minute – it feels ironic. In Caroline’s and my extra time, we’ve taken to watching the habits of our neighborhood birds, which become obvious when one takes the opportunity to peer into their lives. Birds have favorite perches and songs for the morning and calls for later in the day, or so it seems. Momentum has its own habits, and time spent in a new routine can make nearly anything feel normal. As I post my words about our journey down the Colorado River 10 years ago, I can see again how those nearly three weeks had gathered their own momentum, propelling us into new habits punctuated by time for thoughts and observations on a level previously unknown to this mind.

— Since November 1st, 2019, when I started picking up trash on a one-mile loop around our neighborhood, I wanted to think that the majority of the trash was stuff that was blowing down the street or that was falling from trash trucks as waste was being collected. I was wrong. I’d venture to say about 85% of it has been tossed from vehicles and the rest by pedestrians. I come to this conclusion based on the scientific guesswork of picking up cigarette butts. I’m only picking up about 15 a day during The COVID-19 Days, while prior to the reduction of traffic, I was probably gathering up at least 100 a day. It used to be common to have a nearly full 5-gallon bucket of trash on my outings now, I barely drag a 20% full bucket to our trash can. It often happened that I’d have to stomp down what I’d collected as no more trash would fit; I don’t do that anymore. So it is obvious that it is the careless and inconsiderate nature of people in their vehicles and walking through neighborhoods that cannot be bothered with taking their waste to a proper receptacle but instead feel comfortable enough that they should simply despoil the places we all share. If, on my one-mile walk, I’m collecting about 4 pounds less trash per day, I can only wonder how many millions of pounds and tens of millions of pieces of trash per day would NOT hit our streets if people could be a little more conscientious.

— The agitating noise of industrial silence has subsided, leaving a quiet unheard except on the rarest of holidays in our cities. The idea of what is quiet is being redefined as the more typical din of the ever-present machine of commerce chugged along but now finds its roar brought to a whisper. It’s difficult to capture what I don’t hear outside our open windows and our walks in a neighborhood where previously the sound of motorcycles, airplanes, a freeway that’s a mile away, and the myriad of other noises never subsided. Not only were we accepting the pollution of our streets, the pollution of the air and water, light pollution that obscures the stars, and the pollution rising out of the molecular world in the form of viruses, but we are also constantly bombarded with audio noise as a form of pollution. This audible smog arrives in ads, jingles, in-store muzak, espresso machines, automatic door openers, street lights and crosswalks, sirens, speakerphones, car and motorcycle exhaust systems that pander to egos, and not the quality of life of those who live in earshot. From my computer fans, room fans, refrigerator, washing machine, dishwasher, and a/c or heater, there’s noise that is now a constant part of the cost of modern life. Never should we get a break from other people’s horns, car stereos, or even the phone calls that can be heard through closed windows, along with ring tones and other notifications that are too often heard 50 feet away. This noise is like a constant subconscious reminder that the speed of progress and the gathering of wealth is the machine that rumbles on our behalf, reminding us that we are one of the deep cogs helping to make it all go.

The machine, though, has come to a slow idle. I’m certain that the majority of our fellow Americans won’t notice this effect as they likely turned up the noise around them to ward off boredom or the fear that their lives might be without meaning while they are forced to endure the non-existent dialog of a mind that doesn’t know how to converse with itself.

— I want to travel somewhere to see the wildflowers, sit down for Mexican food where chips and salsa are brought to the table after sitting down, fill up on gas, and get something to drink without considering social distancing and what surfaces I’m touching. For nearly a month now, my path has been mostly reduced to an area I can walk to. I have been to Costco, a German bakery that’s 14 miles away, a friend’s BBQ joint to support him while business is off, and a couple of nearby stores for some incidentals we needed, but other than that, I’ve not ventured out to see the larger world.

— Caroline’s made our first homemade surgical mask. They are time-consuming, to say the least, with the better part of Saturday and Sunday spent between washing, cutting, trimming, sewing, and fitting me with my first one. Experimenting with size and materials without certainty how they’ll work is a bit stressful as we do not have an infinite supply of stuff, and getting it from Amazon or Joann’s is not a certainty. No matter, though, as the next time I have to go to the grocery store, I’ll be wearing my “cat mask” and feeling a bit better about being amongst others.

Speaking of shopping, I’ve got a list going so I can minimize visits, and so far, it’s mainly fresh fruits and veggies, along with replenishing of eggs, yogurt, and soy milk. We are finally making a dent in our refrigerator of other fresh foods we’ve been eating for the past two weeks.

— Trying to maintain the momentum of posting my book Stay In The Magic here on the blog, but it’s so much work going through the images, titling them for browsers, transferring text and checking it quickly for the worst mistakes, and then finally posting a new day on each consecutive day.

— To divide my time, I’ve also returned to the stupidly long page that, as of this moment, is now 501 images long, where I’m posting an image and a quick snippet of the text of each and every day Caroline and I have traveled since we started shooting digital images back in 1999. The entry is listed on the right side of the page under “Other Pages” and is titled Travels in the Digital Age. Be careful about visiting it as there are a lot of photos. The reason I’m doing this idiotic exercise is that I wanted to see a snapshot of each and every day we’ve traveled over the previous 20 years, and I want to see them sequentially in one stream.

— Toilet paper has been a hot topic, and we certainly have enough until sometime in the future; just how far into the future was our question. We dated a roll on the 23rd of March, and by the 30th, we still had a few sheets on it, so we know we can get a week per roll as long as there is no surprise diarrhea. Yes, we are well aware that we have too much, but we had no idea before isolating ourselves just how much we’d need if we were both at home. With 30 weeks of TP in our cabinet, knowing we don’t have to buy it again for half a year gives us confidence that the shortage will be long over before our asses go dirty. [Before the gentle reader assumes that we have a storage closet full of loo rolls, I should add that our TP supply consists of one-ply rolls so that the overall volume is about equal to one of those big Costco TP packages – Caroline]

— I made more granola over the past day as this mixture, which relies heavily on nuts and seeds with oatmeal and oat groats, is acting as my comfort food. In two more days, it will be properly dehydrated and ready for munching.

— Time goes by, and I record nothing here. Maybe things were meaningful but not in any way that warranted notes or reminders.

— Per Caroline’s request, I’m capturing this recipe I made for our main meal of the day, which seems to be shifting to our midday repast. Yesterday, I emptied a 1-pound bag of dried crowder peas into the crockpot with a 32oz box of chicken stock. Added an onion, some chopped celery, diced bell pepper, a diced jalapeno, two cloves of minced garlic, and a chopped 8oz piece of tasso. I think I wrote about this Louisiana meat before, but as a reminder, it is a brined and smoked pork shoulder that I purchased from Cajun Grocer. I think this costs about $13.00 to make a full crock of stew/soup that should serve up two full meals for the two of us or about $3.25 per portion. I added a splash of vinegar to mine, which I thought enhanced it, while Caroline liked it the way I had prepared it.

— The isolated mushroom in the photo that accompanies this post was found along the path of our walks. I can’t figure out exactly what species of mushroom this is, but it’s rare that we find things other than weeds and cactus growing out of rockhard desiccated soil.