A Beast: With the parks closed, I walk anywhere I can find space for the dogs and me. A mile stretch of back road takes us along wetlands and meadows that fall to the French Creek. I keep my head turned in their direction both coming and going, and I let my eyes drift for movement.
I remember a movie I watched long ago, a black and white WW II picture set on an island invaded by the Marines. They were moving through a coconut plantation when one was shot by a sniper. No one saw where the shot had come from. A good ol’ boy kept a watch and then shot and killed the sniper. How had he seen him? He said something along the lines of “I just look for what don’t fit.”
‘I just look for what don’t fit’, for shapes that aren’t right, for shadows. Our eyes are the eyes of both prey and predator. They have evolved to pick up movement. Here is something to eat. Here is something that wants to eat me.
The fox had been perfectly camouflaged in the tawny grasses until he moved, and then he came into focus carrying a big rabbit in his jaws. We looked across at each other, and then he vanished into high brush.
The rest of the world vanishes in these moments. Those who dismiss nature or who want it confined in a safe box do not understand how something wild and inhuman can enlarge what is best in human beings — our sense of release from the misery of living exclusively inside our own heads and skins and a subsequent entrance into a creation that cares not a whit for status or color or us. That release into nature makes for thankfulness and humility and the deepest peace I’ve ever felt. Even a fox glimpsed for mere seconds can elevate a day and make the Virus temporarily disappear.
A Book or Three:
Hilary Mantel has concluded her trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, servant to and political fixer for Henry VIII. William Gass wrote that “Great character makes great literature.” Cromwell rises from a blacksmith’s boy to become the second most powerful man in England, an advocate for the Reformation and an implacable foe of the corruption of the Catholic Church, one who works to keep the King happy and to tear England away from medieval economics and superstition, a country and state of mind where noble blood is more important than merit. In Mantel’s creation, Cromwell is the first man of modernity as well as the keeper of a Prince’s delusions and needs. He is destroyed by his own hubris and by Henry, a bloated, self-pitying, ruthless man who ‘knows’, above all else, that others are meant only to serve him.
The pleasures of the trilogy are enormous and varied, but chief among them is Cromwell, a brilliant man who never forgets his origins, who does much good for those like him who were born rough and low in England’s class system, but who also breaks men and women for revenge and to please Henry’s appetites. Seeing 16th century power plays and daily life through his eyes is a great enjoyment as all good books must be. He is a great character and these are books that will last.
Two Pictures:
I can feel the isolation working in me, this low level, persistent hum of disquiet. It is a mix of a kind of turbulence and a longing for company and the normalcy of daily life. If I were suddenly unemployed and unable to break through the tangled communications and understaffing to register for unemployment assistance, and if I had bills pressing like threats against me, and if I had children dependent upon me for safety and food, I would be angry and fearful and pacing the streets just to burn off the jitters. I understand all of that. I do not understand showing up on the Michigan Capitol’s steps arrayed with automatic weapons and ammo packs because you dislike the stay at home order. I do not understand calling for the abandonment of measures 
meant to preserve life, especially the lives of doctors, nurses, of anyone who works at a hospital or is a first responder like police and EMT’s. I do not understand those who think the Virus is fake, or as benign as the flu, or that it is limited only to the coasts. (Lauren Leander) I do not understand shouting at nurses that they are “fake” or brandishing weapons as if those fat, vapid men were freedom fighters instead of Fox News zombies in thrall to our degenerate leader and in the pay, one way or another of monied interests.
Even in tiny groups (and they are tiny), protestors of this ilk show that ineradicable stupidity and uber-selfishness, once it hits TV and social media can make it seem as if we are being pulled apart, bone from flesh. But the quiet, daily work of millions of Americans — doctors, nurses, aides, the custodial staff who clean the hospitals, the cafateria staff who feed all of them, the mechanics and electricians who keep those institutions up and running, the cops and grocery store clerks and stockers, the scientists going sleepless trying to stop the Virus, the men who collect our garbage, all of them, all those whose occupations I’ve forgotten, they are the best of us, the weary millions who go to work and have no need to wave the flag in someone’s face or strap on a gun and parade about pretending to be men who actually matter.
Two Birds: Across the bridge and west, slowing past the walkers, and then climbing to the sharp turn and up the steep road to home … a movement blurring to my left … a diving, a pair … and I’m stopping my car and pushing out of my seat onto the road and looking up into that cornflower blue sky and the trees are bending hard in the wind and a bald eagle is chasing an osprey in great circles over the water and the road and fields and they are so low and intent on each other they take no notice of me and this goes on and on for close to a minute, up and over and down close and skimming the tree tops and below them and curving up and away again, and I’m looking around for the walkers and calling out, “Do you see, Do you see” and pointing and bouncing on my toes. I’m waiting for a car, for more walkers, for anyone to show this once or twice in a life time encounter and then they go slicing south east over the hill and it’s over.
