ALL COOPED UP - THE STATE WE'RE IN

I like to get up early, before it’s properly light, and read the headlines. These days the habit feels more like a dumb sort of torture, a series of self-inflicted paper cuts. I tend towards a rising panic anyway, and should know better than to begin this way. Today I abandoned The Guardian and leaned over the sink and just peered blearily into the yard. The barely risen sun hit the new and, let’s be honest, really fucking crooked fence between us and the neighbours, painting it a wild gold. The walnut tree behind it is almost bare already, just a grey claw striving upwards, but the maple three doors down still flares with all the energy of a Meyer lemon. The lawn is wet and the concave ovals of dirt where the swing-set used to sit are the colour of iron ore. When I opened the window to get some gauge of the temperature (it’s October 11 and very nearly cold) I can make out the sound of Emberly and Al’s chickens chatting each other up and doubtless plotting their escape.

I can listen to any music I like at this time of day, before the kids get up. It’s part of the attraction. I use headphones I keep stuffed behind the stereo. This morning it was the new Metz album first and then Bob Mould’s. It’s dissonant, frantic noise, a lot of it, especially the Metz, which is feral, rage against the dying of the light sort of stuff, whereas Mould is writing punk protest songs that stand up sonically with the best of Hüsker Dü. It does and also doesn’t really help with the anxiety. I’ve been waiting for both of these records for months and these early listens are weird in that while they’re a real thrill, I know that I’ll like the music much better in a day or two, when the difficult hooks have risen closer to the surface.  A month from now, they’ll be old friends I lean on.

Work has slowed down a bit. Much of our business has always been concentrated downtown and I think that crowd has mostly turned its attention to the school year. To kids’ safety and exponential growth. We’re all holding our breath and wringing our hands. And those seem like appropriate responses to the mess we’re in. No denying that for all sorts of reasons I’m happiest when I’m busy, but this eye-of-the-storm sort of quiet is a moment (or a week, a month) I’m trying to enjoy. I’m picking away at the next novel, and riding the bike virtually through London and the French countryside (thanks to a Zwift subscription), and Cheri and I are in the early stages of a rebranding exercise that excites us, and which will change the way we present ourselves to the world.

My knees hurt. My right knee in particular. I don’t know how it happened but I’ve diagnosed myself online, of course, and that was stupid of me. And my neck has ached for the better part of a month. I’ll heal when the work picks up, is my guess, when I have less time to think about what I hope isn’t the beginning of some more permanent decline. In the meantime I pick over the bones of deals just finished. Last week, for example, we represented a buyer who, for her well-above-asking-price offer, got to keep the kitchen sink but had to give up the matching counter opposite because it wasn’t screwed to the wall.  She knew what she was doing, and was thrilled to win the house, but the sensation was still a bit like that of buying a new car and discovering it the next morning up on blocks with the stereo gone. Doing extremely well isn’t good enough any more, apparently, and dog-eat-dog is the new black.

The sun is higher in the sky now. The early calm has been replaced by a breeze that agitates the old lilac I can see from where I sit writing this. My daughter will be up soon and truth is I’d rather chat with her than list my troubles. But a final thought and a question for you:

I wonder how we would have reacted if, after a summer layoff, a massive factory (rather than a university) had re-opened its doors in downtown Kingston in September, and within a month twenty-some workers at that factory tested positive for COVID-19. Would we have been more pointed with our questions? Would we have expected more (and more regular) communication with the factory higher-ups? Would we have felt entitled to know what plans the factory had to prevent further infection? Would a less glamorous business get the same free pass the city seems to have handed out to the university?

I can’t help thinking that the answer is, we would have reacted differently, yes. The feeling I have is that the university has been immune to any sort of reasonable inquiry from the outside. It’s the Vatican City approach to town-gown relations. And that doesn’t sit well any time of day.