Day's End: Return from Self-Quarantine

As I awaited my Saturday roll, Downtown Portland
was oddly silent. Thankfully, its residents largely
remained at home to combat this pestilent
beast COVID-19 as our beloved city
endured an eerily-quiet vigil.
May our collective power once again propel
our fellow citizens with a renewed spirit of strength
and renewal, through our powerfully-inclusive spirit.

Deke's Note: In any collective history, the most difficult challenge leads to an uplifting victory. For two weeks, I self-quarantined in fear my son would develop more symptoms after being exposed to a COVID-19 carrier. My youngest child has always, just like his two siblings, has always emerged victorious to any challenge. Still, he self-isolated in serious concern for his "aging" parents and anyone else with whom he could come in contact with.

As a quickly-aging "Boomer" I have at least three health factors which place me in a "higher risk" population to the world's most-invasive viral threats. The last three days stuck at home rattled me more than any other catastrophe I've faced since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Blood pressure soared as I contemplated what could happen. As a lack of symptoms, perhaps due to my son's devotion or simple ancestral luck over almost 300 years as Americans made it clear that our family's nucleus was past immediate danger,  I confronted returning to my job as a bus operator. Fear and consequences be damned, it was vital that I regain the seat. Besides New York,  the Northwest is one of the hardest-hit areas in our country and Canada. There is, literally "danger in the air out there", yet the work of transit knows no vacation from any of humanity's constant perils. Thus prefaced, I give you this operator's return to service after two weeks where my brothers and sisters have faced what I temporarily could not.

As I remained sequestered except for an occasional grocery jaunt, my subconscious treated it as a vacation. Knowing I would burn up the rest of my sick leave and May's signed vacation week, what else could I do but enjoy it? Spending time with Beloved, we also supported friends and other family members who have been severely-affected by this pandemic.

Finally, I found time to read again. Oh, how I missed caressing the pages of a paperback! To engross oneself in reading a work of fiction is pure bliss. For the past several years, I have toiled upon this blog while also writing short stories both fiction and non-, and until I moved into apartment hell, gardening. Returning to turning pages has brought me great comfort during this viral interference.

In the past decade, society has evolved into nonsensical-cellularism. Anything pre-cellphone is now considered quaint or antique. True, our internet dependence has allowed information to flow through our fingertips at a rapid pace. Unfortunately, too much of it is laced with nearly- or somewhat-factual nonsense. Most of it may be designed to inspire great fear. Paranoia. In the past few decades America has moved from honoring each others' differences to fearing and sadly at times, hating them.

Divide and conquer as I have often mentioned, makes us all slaves to the Masters' Plan to seize even the slightest of our collective dreams. As we battle this tiny bastard Covid-19, our fears allow THEIR control of US. We fight each other for life's supposed necessities, but our heartless masters fear little. They have little to lose, but we could be rendered completely helpless. We constantly fight each other while gaining nothing from it except further nightmares. Why? Because we are conditioned to do so.

From the beginning of humankind, as agriculture separated the dishonest from the working class,  those who have control others who have not. The latter has always envied what the former controls, and therein remains our constant struggle. Problem is, the former has never wanted to share what the latter produced. Each time the supposedly-weaker have risen in protest, the stronger have held the advantage through dishonesty, bribery, threats culminating in ultimate power. Humanity's rise has rewarded the misdeeds of a few whilst the masses doing their bidding suffer the most. 

I hear that four-letter word all too often now. Before hate, came compromise. However, the former has replaced the latter with growing intensity. Why? Because the weakest minority of humanity's soul has replaced the majority's ingrained goodness. Whenever we have worked together, greatness has been achieved. When we fight amongst each other, we lose in many ways. Our freedoms, resolve and ability to rise together can be rendered fait ridiculi with a singular stroke of some YouTube video appealing to the basest, least-Godly ideals occupying humanity's most-horrific depths. Unfortunately, America seems to be negativity's biggest fan. Our revered founders must surely be spinning in their hallowed graves at this point in our history. 

Fear-induced hoarding has left grocery shelves empty, as if the rest of humanity doesn't deserve its daily bread, let alone tomorrow's. I was always taught that God commanded us to love one another, no matter our differences. I don't see much of that right now. My own brother seems to consider me an enemy of the state, even though his earliest ideals of equality and justice buoyed my own political party switch in the 1980s.

The past month has evolved too quickly to keep pace with what "shoulda" been done yesterday if we "coulda" known what we "woulda" if only facts had been presented us. Now, many are left with little while others gloat through soaking the needy with their greedy excesses. It saddens the kind-hearted and maddens many others.

Whatever. I seem to have wandered again. It's a luxury I have claimed through luring you via this blog for so long. Hey, I'm trying not to hit too many keys in this journey but sometimes it just happens. You know me, or should, by now. Brevity only reduces my heart's desire to explore this soul's ethereal journey. A writer's prerogative, the poet's lament. Whichever I am, both inspire these words.

So I take you back to the original intent of this missive. My journey back into the bus operator's seat after two weeks of viral terrorism propelled me to write this post. Yeah, the lead-up was hell, but the return itself once again brought me peace.

I lost a friend this week, the second in a month. My brothers and sisters have gathered together to fight the beast which still seems to control US even though WE do their bidding. To gain that mystical seat I have fought so hard to be honored with was one comfort which perhaps I needed most.

Sellwood Bridge was mostly-empty for the first time
I have ever seen it as I returned to my seat
within The Beast we all serve.

You see, there is more fear when we do nothing, than when we hide from what needs doing. I thought my self-quarantine shielded me and my beloveds from the dangers "out there," but it simply staved off the inevitable. When we do what we feel necessary through hysteria, consequences render past decisions ridiculous. Yet on occasion, we are glad to have acted in haste rather than agonizing later over not having done anything at all. Either way, it's a wash. Our survival depends upon that innate, DNA-driven desire to survive. While my immediate past self-quarantine may have saved me from COVID-19's initial infestation, it could also become my ultimate demise through the future's delicacy. Only time, as they say, will tell.

"So, I got a chance to sing, to find my voice on stage, and I TOOK it. And I still take it. Every single night, in front of every single audience. And I never, EVER take it for granted. When I leave this Earth I will look back with great love, because I got the chance to sing." 

-- Ann Wilson of "Heart" during the band's induction to the Rock&Roll Hall of Fame

As my two weeks of fear culminated the other evening, a soothing voice implored me to just be calm. There is no escape from the inevitable. We either embrace doom and dive right into it, perhaps to emerge even stronger on the other side, or hide from it and suffer anyway. We are not entitled to any protection no matter what precautions avail themselves to us. Each soul is given a finite time on Earth. My own is no more protected than yours. However, my whole life has implored me through faith and love to pray for your safety over my own. He bade me early in life to constantly pray for others, and through this action I might find my own salvation. Even though my faith has suffered years of hardship, I still find solace in One more powerful and holy than anything else I've found in these nearly-60 mortal years. This belief has empowered me to hold all others above myself: family, friends and everyone in between. Only through my deep love of others is the only way in which I have ever found peace.

When I returned home tonight from this viral hell transit workers constantly endure, my Beloved had me strip out of the uniform, place it into the washing machine, shower and don fresh bedclothes before I could even eat me dinner. Then, we snuggled together to watch the latest Outlander episode. This epic literary series propelled us to our wonderful Scotland/Ireland trip. It is our favorite foray into fiction.

Hopefully 30 years hence, when my heart beats its last, Beloved knows part of my ashes must be strewn within Arizona's Galiuro Wilderness and also along Isle of Skye's mystical beaches to join the Gulfstream winds of this world we now grace together.

We watched as Jamie and Claire's love sustained them through constant hellacious forays through future and past anguish. This is how we have always lived: together through many turbulent moments in collective time. My own has endured over a dozen years longer than hers, but Beloved's strength propelled me past intense pain and gave me hope for enduring happiness. Perhaps we have both time-traveled to always find each other. If this be simple fantasy, it is ours. Together. And as so, we shall always remain.

As my love for Beloved will forever endure, please remember I have love enough for you all. I wish you peace, safety and health through this hellish nightmare everyone now endures. If I remain when it passes, my prayers will hopefully aid those left behind. If I fail to defeat this tiny assassin, then it is my hope that these words will somehow sustain and propel you all to the greatness I know you are capable of, together. Within and among each other, you are strong. Divided, you will constantly fail. Pull together and STAND. As ONE. When you do, please remember my words imploring you to do so.

Meanwhile, you are sentenced to my transit soul's literate journal as one of many bus operators serving upon God's one Blue Marble. Peace, and all-encompassing safety, be blessed upon you all.

Always,

Deke