Smells Like Quarantine Spirit

Old City of Jerusalem in the evening.
Noam Chen/Israeli Minister of Tourism

For many it was fun, pretending the economy is a libertine romp that can run forever on quick gratification. Some figure nature will always cut us slack if we just throw bigger and bigger parties for speculators. Forget the big risks. Uncle Sam bails out his gambling buddies if something big goes wrong.

Feeling stupid and contagious ain’t nearly as profitable as it used to be. Here we are now, making bigly sure we can wipe our butts while navigating life without bars, rock concerts, ballgames, or incomes. Can we build a real economy that prioritizes stability over short-term growth, one with a strong social safety net that provides essentials like healthcare and food?

We’ve been sent to our rooms to answer this question. For most of us our first task at hand is to re-boot morale and sanity in a quarantined world. We must find productive ways to learn and work and play together, by remote. Fortunately, humans have never been so connected while we’re hunkered down in our respective holes. We can use this common hermitage to discover what’s inside us, integrate ideas, harmonize prayers and move in synch with beauty.

Or we can blow our brains out with click-bait conspiracies, bleak obsessions, and mean memes that troll us into the bowels of doom. Dudes, like, we get to choose.

Tech-challenged oldsters like Jennifer and me are improvising new ways to roll. Some evenings we put the phone on speaker and imagine we’re eating out with loved ones. One kindred spirit lit up our literary bulbs when she pointed us to “The Decameron.” One delighted us with her newfound appreciation for “Gunsmoke.” One shared a wonderful song she wrote expressing love for every quarter of Jerusalem.

The internet makes it so easy to follow breaking news about the world we have broken. Information is a gift, yet panic will break us more. Survival requires that we tend to our mental health with little threads of fellowship, stitch our psyches together in ways that affirm everyone’s membership in the cosmic whole.

It’s not like we haven’t done this before. Giovanni Boccaccio completed “The Decameron” in 1353, a few years after the Great Bubonic Plague swept through Eurasia. That massive wave of infection comprised the most devastating pandemic in recorded history, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 75 to 200 million people. Such info comes to us by way of Wikipedia, part of the virtual Library of Alexandria we’re locked up with.

Boccaccio imagines a mosaic of tales shared by ten young people who are cloistered in the outskirts of Florence. From what I understand, these folks owed their survival in part to storytelling. Words boosted their social immune systems, helped inoculate them from despair. In their day this medicine was delivered orally, for the most part. Nowadays folks send texts over digital phones. Boccaccio advocated the most advanced technology of his time to circulate words. Books.

“You must read,” quoth Boccaccio, “you must persevere, you must sit up nights, you must inquire, and exert the utmost power of your mind. If one way does not lead to the desired meaning, take another; if obstacles arise, then still another; until, if your strength holds out, you will find that clear which at first looked dark.”

And so I’m pawing through “The Decameron” for the first time now, having nabbed an old Norton Readers Edition from my bookshop, a copy I’d hoped to sell to some literary tourist. The shop is closed, like all non-essential businesses here in Oregon. But thanks to a dinner conversation and the worldwide web I’m learning about Boccaccio’s masterpiece. Here’s another timely quote.

“It is obvious that all vices have a grievous effect on those who indulge them and often on others too. But I believe that the one which can transport us with the most unbridled haste into danger is anger. This is nothing other than a sudden thoughtless impulse, provoked by some perceived offence, which banishes reason and clouds the eyes of the mind, rousing the soul to blazing fury.”

These words jumped out at me recently, when a tsunami of day-trippers flooded small towns along the Oregon coast. A notion somehow spread that citizens should take a breather from all the stress and migrate to the ocean for a spell. Sounds pefectly reasonable, yet in some spots it turned into a beach blanket bingo. Local residents watched with alarm as visitors descended upon communities where healthcare facilities are scaled to a smaller population. In addition to quickening the pace of a pandemic, the thundering herd emptied out local grocery stores that now wait in line to receive back-ordered inventory. This fueled some heated confrontations between people who are usually mutual stakeholders in an economy driven by tourism.

Some shit can’t be cleaned up with a simple wipe. Often what’s needed are carefully calibrated protocols that incorporate a mix of factors. In such cases Prudence reminds us to temper our vitriol as we figure out the best course(s) of action. Unchecked rage, however justified, rarely clears a good path forward.

Prudence’s cousin, Miss Kitty, had every reason to be mad as hell in that 1961 installment of “Gunsmoke.” The patriarch in a family of mountaineer migrants decided it was high time that his oldest boy Orkey went a “wifen.” Orkey obeyed his Pa like a good son and promply rode into Dodge. There he made his choice the minute he laid eyes on the city’s fetching red-haired madam. So he took her, literally, to be his bride.

The script for this episode titled “Marry Me” was composed by Katherine Hite, a cattleman’s daughter who came from a line of storytellers. She was the first female writer for CBS, after having snuck into that big boy band as a secretary. Our friend found Ms. Hite’s screenplay thought-provoking, so Jennifer and I gave it a ride too.

For most of today’s young viewers I suspect watching “Marry Me” would be a cringeworthy experience. It will certainly goose some of my Tennessee kin who are a might tired of hillbilly stereotypes. Though I don’t endorse the episode for pure entertainment, there is plenty to ponder in there regarding the evolution of popular media, gender relations, and the resolution of conflict that arises when different cultural traditions collide. Plus, the vernacular of Orkey’s pa is spot on and cool. And while the rest of the story is unfolding, as a poignant side-plot, Doc tries to flatten the curve of a cholera outbreak that makes no distinctions between migrant hill-heads and the other agents of “manifest destiny.”

My proud kin who’re slowly sequestering in Appalachia might not like this episode one bit. Yet it’s an important time to acknowledge that we’re all temporary guests here in the gardens of creation. And the economy of Dodge City, Kansas is in real life dependent on migrant workers for its contribution to America’s food supply. We should reflect on this reality when we weigh our response to immigrant transgressions — yesterday, now, and in the future. For this, if nothing else, it was worth watching “Marry Me” and taking to heart the handshake between Miss Kitty and Orkey in the end.

Cities across the earth face challenges on a scale that even born-again pagans are describing as “Biblical.” Our lives all orbit these hubs of exchange where healthy relations must now combine civic solidarity with physical distancing. The stakes of getting this balance right are raised to a planetary level. Time to make our homes into mutually supportive cells, all parts of one resilient body. Exchange across these cellular membranes must slow in some ways, increase rapidly in others.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered in need of a new song. Lord fill us with the fire of kindly intelligence.

Thank goodness for J. Kreger and her husband Wade, venerable amigos who serve as medical doctors in California. Our mutual love is rooted in fertile memories. I’ll never forget when their rabbi led us in a passionate round of “Do Lord Remember Me,” at their wedding in 1995, where Jennifer signed their ketubah under a beautiful canopy and an elder Navaho friend offered sacred corn to the four directions.

For the record, J’s first name is Jennifer too. I didn’t say so up front because I thought that might be confusing to readers.

During our recent dinner conversation Doc Wade said he expected to host the new corona virus in his body, like most of us will at some point in the near future (if we haven’t already). Wade reckons this might as well happen up front so he can continue his work in the trenches with the hope of developing some immunity. He and J are two of the brightest lights I know, living testaments of compassion and clear thinking.

And as they sang the song she had written over the phone, I was flooded with love for the timely wisdom of her words. Later she emailed us the lyrics, which I’m including below, along with a digital version performed by Wade’s Garage Band with sweet instrumentation that conjures up aromas of ancient folk remedies. (Alas, it may not load on every computer or hand-held device.) With J’s permission I’ve emailed the song to friends, hoping it will be recorded in many forms and transmitted around the planet, part of a surge of spiritual growth.

As I write these words, folks in every quarter of society are taking the same big test, one we must ace together here in our global homeschool. We the people will replace a status quo corrupted by greed with teamwork for the common good. Or we’ll square off in seperate corners, sink the whole ship along with every selfish brat on board.

The days of “whatever” are over, fellow children.

In every quarter of Jerusalem
by Jennifer Kreger

The feet of travelers and the
feet of those who dwell
are polishing the barley-colored stone.
As the sun nears the horizon
the stone glows honey-warm.
Someone takes a picture of this calm between the storms,
and I love
every guarter of Jerusalem
I love
every quarter of Jerusalem.

(Muslim:)