Plague Diary (March 23-29)

“I read that one of the biggest icebergs in history”

March 29

I read that one of the largest icebergs in history, “a flat iceberg”, in Antarctica, measured “more than 31,000 km2. "Much bigger than Belgium", they add. I read that another giant iceberg, a species of an island 61 meters thick, "it took 17 years to be mapped". I begin to study the bunkers, the history, the types of bunkers. I also want to study the animals, understand habits and instincts. In the front garden the sun seems to make unacceptable invitations.How can the landscape be a trap, now without wolves or tigers, and no earthquake.Interview with the Spanish philosopher Emilio Lledó, in El País.He talks about that "danger that is not heard".He says that he does not consider himself a beacon of society, but nothing more than "a little candle with little wax". with little wax. I leaf through A Lifetime of Secrets by Frank Warren. Postcards with secrets. "I stopped believing in god since you divorced dad." Make a list: I stopped believing in god because. And another list. I started to believe in god why.Interview people, draw conclusions.Average reasons, borderline reasons.Crazy reasons.Letting go or clinging to what is strong.The moment one lets go or clings to god.Reasons to cling and reasons to let go.And after : the time between one thing and another. Lledó says: we have to be vigilant so that no one takes advantage of this virus "to spread indecency". My dogs Roma and Jeri play in the garden. Those are really their names. Names of cities .Roma, the shepherdess from Berne, and not Belgian, who looks like a bear, has some health problems. She is one year old. She now has ugly inflammation in the elbow area. Lledó says: "we are facing the inexperienced". Another postcard Secret: "My wife loves me. After 25 years, I finally understood that this is the only reason I love her." And on the bottom line: "This is not reason enough to stay and it is not reason enough to leave." "It's not enough reason to stay and not enough reason to leave."Everything very clear.A postcard with a clean background, without any drawing, the words stand out.In Italy 756 people died today, in Portugal 19.They talk about peaks and plateaus."Iranian authorities are looking for 54 escaped inmates."Some humans still want the same thing they wanted in the last century."The virus is very intelligent."A policeman carries the shopping bags of an old woman so that she is as little as possible on the street.In the two bags: vegetables of the day, fruit, biscuits, jelly, chocolate and chocolate. Isn't that too much? Asks the policeman, laughing. "The Lisbon chamber turns the National Swimming Club into a shelter for homeless people." I imagine a swimming pool empty now occupied by people who came from the air. Men who live in the air are now occupying the lanes of the empty pool. Lane number 1, lane number 2, lane number 3. France 292 dead, Greece only 6. The air is enemy of the house, the house is an enemy of the air. In 2020."Baby less than a year old infected by the new coronavirus dies in the US."Sunday, call the vet.No answer.Tomorrow is Monday.Ceremonies for entering and leaving the house.Van Gennep, I recommend it.In passing At the door of the house, the Jews touch "with a finger of the right hand the mezuzah, a small box fixed on the threshold of the door" containing a paper or "strip of cloth, with the sacred name of God inscribed or embroidered ."General indications, wikipedia:"The mezuzah must be placed on the right threshold of each home, synagogue or Jewish establishment as a memory of the creator."General indications:"It must be placed seven hands high above the ground, pointing towards the inside the enclosure with the upper end."Then they kiss the finger and say:"May the lord protect your exit and your entrance, from now and forever."Think of entrance and exit rituals.Boots off, boots on.A Pornography site announces new films in which the protagonists wear face masks. A neighbor plays a harmonica. Hilda Churchill was born in 1911 and died in 2020 of coronavirus. 108 years old. Music: e a vida vai melhorá, a vida vai melhorá sounds in the patio .The World Health Organization recommends exercising and perhaps also dancing.How to reach hands to feet without cheating.Adopt a song.Manu Chao has been adopted as a dog is adopted to drive away fear.My window has adopted Manu Chao, I open it to let the music in. I like the mountain, I like you. And there's a new Dylan song, I haven't heard it yet.

"Salvation hangs in the small fissure"

March 28

"Salvation hangs on the small fissure in the continuous catastrophe", wrote Walter Benjamin.It is necessary to save in the small intervals, in the pauses.When the devil is distracted for a second, there is a fissure.And that's where he enters Salvation. Spain. March 26: "on the 4th floor, in room 429 of the Hospital del Mar." A video. At the Hospital del Mar, a nurse takes her own cell phone and makes a call to the son of a patient. 4th Floor, room 429. She makes a video call, takes the cell phone, directs it towards the patient's face. "He breathes well, yes, without the machine," she tells the son of the bedridden patient. And repeats, smiling: "Don't you see? Can't you see?" He wants to show her that his father is not so sick, that he has improved. He repeats: he is breathing without the machine, he only has the mask! son.But no.He is announcing to a son that his father is still alive.The patient raises his hand and takes it to the image of his son.The nurse approaches the cell phone.Her hand remains a few centimeters from the screen.Touch the face of a son on the screen is these days to touch the face of a son.Hello! I am Susana, the nurse says with a happy tone to the son who is on the other side of the screen. It is necessary to infiltrate joy into the cracks. As if joy were a medical material. Almost a salvation material. Certain nurses use that material. Good job, José, says the nurse. Dress your son. The one who films everything is a roommate of the sick José. The one who was filming him, another patient, ends the recording by saying, in a tired voice, the phrase: "Much happiness for everyone." A person who is sick talks about the happiness of others.A person who is sick manages to change the subject.The subject is not me, he says —from a hospital bed— the person who wishes others happiness.There are obvious and even beautiful cracks in the catastrophe continues. Benjamin talks about a necessary investigation. Understanding whether or not the extremes of salvation have two names: too soon and too late. I write. Salvation is halfway between too soon and too late. Salvation only exists as an effect of absolute aim at time. Hitting time like a moving target that has two outer limits: too soon / too late. It has already been seen that the plague is not a fissure, it is not something that is easily mended. Joy is not enough, but it is necessary. A joy that would save, that would be a machine to make someone who starts not being able to breathe breathe. A machine cannot give joy. Or maybe yes, but not directly. A machine whose function was to install in the fissure of sickness a heightened or at least minimal joy. Ordering machines that do not exist in factories that do not yet exist. I read La Repubblica and shudder. I say the sentence aloud. Repeat a sentence aloud until it dissolves into the air, as if it had not existed. Repeat a phrase 100 times to make it disappear. As if repeated use were a way of destroying phrases and things. In La Repubblica they say that in Lombardy there are no grandparents anymore. This is the phrase .It is necessary to repeat it until it disappears in the air.Hide it under the ground or then repeat it until it disappears in the air.In La Repubblica they say that in Lombardy there are no grandparents anymore.

The Tchaikovsky Hall, Moscow

March 26, 2020

The Tchaikovsky hall in Moscow has been empty for several days.Pope Francis tested negative for the Coronavirus.I imagine, in some churches, the recordings of the mass reverting to Latin.It is necessary to go back.In Europe, people leave her tongue on the door, outside. She abdicates her old language and starts speaking another. Latin is a possibility. We can also shout. A ninety-six-year-old woman has recovered and I'm sure she vowed not to is going to die. In the Tchaikovsky hall in Moscow, they will undoubtedly have to remove the piano from the stage. Next door, Manu Chao: I like airplanes, I like you. I like traveling, I like you. the head is scared, the feet are not. Bolsonaro says that churches and supermarkets must remain open. Military disinfect nursing homes. There are old men all over Europe transported in military trucks. air, when stagnant, becomes too solid and heavy. Apparently, some useless parties have been cancelled. Manu Chao: I like marijuana, I like you. I turn on my heels to fake a lot of movement. In newspapers, the pages of advertisements have decreased All the aroused body pics are old. We have two months to update what's important. It should be there, the ad. They say orders for beauty products online have increased a lot. There's news flashing in my head. Moscow closes restaurants, shops and parks. 157 dead in Iran. Spain exceeds four thousand dead. I teach my dog ​​Roma to stay still, just watching. It seems to tell me: you are a fool. Elias Canetti: "Everything I learn I transform into fear."Learning to wait as if waiting were doing something.I open online the newspapers that explain how to disinfect the boots with which one goes to the street.Spain 498, France 365, Iran 157, Italy 712."Man executes his rival with two shots on the terrace of a bar."The bullets are not obsolete."The New York stock market goes up."In the French Revolution, many began to shoot at watches.I get up from my chair, take a bath.One shot on the back of a clock. Shot in the face of a clock. Jeri the golden has melancholic eyes. Roma the Belgian shepherd has dumbfounded eyes. She is always surprised. your watches. It will change the schedule this Sunday."The men in the street now have stupefied eyes. We are all surprised.I imagine government employees starting to shoot public clocks.A full bullet to stop time.As if time out the animal to be hunted."The Maracanã will become a hospital to welcome the sick."United States 116, Germany 33, Portugal 17, England 115.A friend on the phone tells me: I need to shoot someone I'm talking about the history of watches. The generation of humans with dumbfounded eyes. A new generation of humans. Surprised humans. The 21st century split in two by a virus. Two centuries in this century.

Heels up, then toes

March 27, 2020

I raise my heels, then the balls of my feet.A Grémio-Flamengo soccer match."Stop living with pain in your joints," TV newsreels.I press a button.The Pope's Prayer for Humanity, channel 1. Empty Vatican Square. The Pope speaks to a huge empty space. In many houses I hear people kneeling. There are things that you can hear at certain times and not at others. These days, you hear everything. Even the noise of someone who bends many kilometers away. The bells ring in the basilica of San Pedro. The art of ringing bells, an art of the hands, of the control of force. Bells that do not accept being played by mechanisms. Human metal bells. But these days it has sometimes been the machines that remain at their posts, fulfilling their mission, without fear. Sometimes it is necessary to pay homage to the machines. They remain. Someone tells me that there was no one to ring the bells. Only the machines. Auden: "...they suffer, they don't do anything else." He wasn't talking about the machines. Cartoons, Channel 2. Evening Shows: How about all this? Someone asks someone. I don't know what they were talking about, but one of them answers and another listens. News channels: one, two, three, four, five. I stop counting.Bergamo, a city terribly hit.Help us, says the director of a hospital in Bergamo.A 13-year-old girl dies in France.The luxury French perfumery industry produces protective alcohol.There is no better smell than the smell of a living human being. Four nurses lift a body at the hospital door and transport it supported on their shoulders: a patient is alive. In the United States there are thousands and thousands of infected people. Truck drivers advancing through a deserted Europe. A program about dogs that can't go to any home because they don't have the papers in order for them to be adopted. Dogs with mental problems, lack of company. Dogs with broken elbows, x-rays of dog's legs. rare to see x-rays of paws or legs. These days, it seems that the human body only has lungs. We are frightened by the presence of the rest of the body. It seems like an invasion. An insult. Television, channel change. A program called Love Island, where men and women covered in tattoos and in bathing suits pretend to care for a child who is actually a doll. A doll that imitates a baby, he cries, and I think every muscular couple gets points for the way he treats the baby doll. Covid 19, doubts in a channel: how to bathe and at the same time keep your distance from someone who is infected and unable to move .50 old people are transferred from a nursing home to a hotel. Here comes Everton, let's see what he does. The narration of Grémio-Flamengo.Match recorded and broadcast on a channel.I didn't see what Everton did.I got up to go for an apple.A knife, an apple, a black aura around it.It is necessary to eat.A girl, in Italy , he blows on an apple as if he were blowing out the candles on a cake, he blows on it to scare away the virus. There is a ritual. Eating an apple symbolically becomes a birthday. Birthdays become daily. Auden: "Here, war is as imposing as a monument"A friend sends me an SMS, asking me about my rag angel. I reply that I haven't seen him for days. That I lost sight of it.

Sometimes in the Terrible World

March 25, 2020

Sometimes, in the terrible world, people open the door of their house a little and spit as foreigners pass by. Foreigner, in a certain Slavic language, they tell me, means mute. He who does not speak my language is mute.He who does not have my story is mute."Virus detected in the drains of Holland.""The sun comes out, but the rain falls again this Wednesday."There are ships docked awaiting authorization to dump their cargo human.Nature must be looking at humans in astonishment.Why are they retiring?Two bitches.Jeri, diminutive of Jeriquaquara, Brazil.7 years old. And Roma, a Belgian shepherd. One year. My dog ​​Roma is restless. Excessive energy per square meter. "The number of doctors killed in Italy rises to 30." Enough; now something else. We are monks, yes, but without belief. Isolating oneself out of fear or precaution is not the same as isolating oneself by faith. Virilio spoke of the "destruction of the environment by speed". Accioli, in Italy, in the North zone , run in the same place, at home, so as not to go crazy. Stay in the same place, but quickly. Destroy the house itself by speed. Destroy the family by speed. Destroy the family by slowness. I see a race by Bolt. Record of the 100 meters, 9.58 seconds. "The sun goes out into the street, but the rain falls again this Wednesday." I imagine people leaving home and going to celebrate the world record with Bolt. Spend as little time away from home.Do the essentials and come back.Be a sprinter, but on the way do things with your hands.Buy food.Drive the car.The speed of the head and the speed of the hands.Listen the radio in the car and demand an increase in the speed of speech. That the radio began to speak with a wrong rotation. I remember a vinyl. The children's story of the three little pigs and the big bad wolf. On a record. He said that the wolf was bad, very bad, completely bad. But no one is bad, very bad, completely bad. "The catastrophe would be the simultaneous presence of all things," said Sloterdijk, in an old interview. catastrophe now as the absence of all things.Two-day news.In Croatia, an earthquake demands that people go out into the streets and a virus demands that people stay at home.People go out into the streets, but keeping the distance. They are scrambled, the options: I go out, I stay. Roma wags her tail, she's thirsty. Jeri, prudish, consumes energy looking at things. I take an angel eight inches tall. It's made of a strange material. It seems soft from inside. I go to get a kitchen knife. I stop. I put the angel and the kitchen knife side by side. Let's see if the knife makes the angel braver, let's see if the angel softens the knife. I'm looking at the two of them as if they had just become friends. But it is not like that. 738 dead in Spain. In Italy, 683. Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, United States, Brazil Iran, South Korea, Holland, Belgium. The temperature of a country it is measured by the number of dead. A black, grotesque temperature. Motherfucker, that temperature. Hearing a number like listening to an answer. But no one asked any questions. Burger shops in the UK are closing. I read a book about the characteristics of animals. Each animal has its own madness. There is a lot of fear in homes. It is like a public threat against the oldest. What will those who are over seventy, over eighty years old feel? Clothes have to wash at at least 70 degrees. Need to burn the enemy. There's a verse I like, but I forgot. Roma plays with Jeri, neither of them understands anything. My angel's jaws drop. But not of her own free will. I was the one who opened his mouth by force. But all this amazes him. Not even the beings that come from up there understand very well what is happening down here. The angel's mouth is open.

Are you bored?

March 24, 2020

"Are you bored? This is the music that will make you dance in times of epidemic."Yesterday Kenny Rogers died. Today Uderzo died of cardiac arrest."Rio de Janeiro favelas without basic resources to face the coronavirus." "What do the stars say in times of pandemic." I remember Asterix Legionnaire. Obelix insisted: for him, a medium-sized military uniform. Medium, go the middle path. Away from cars, from the walls. The middle path, try not to touch anything. In Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem, the colors of the Italian flag appeared. In Toronto, the colors of the Italian flag appeared. In Rio de Janeiro, at Christ the Redeemer, they appeared the colors of the Italian flag.We put on our shoes in the morning to pretend we are going to walk.A doctor in a gown, inside the hospital, speaks through a loudspeaker to encourage her colleagues.Surrounded by stretchers, patients and doctors. He plays the Italian anthem. Italy is proud of you! Shouts the doctor in a gown and mask. Like a soccer coach, but in the middle of a tragedy, not a game. Drones, in Paris, they tell the people to go home.Angela Merkel goes into quarantine after being in contact with an infected doctor.Trump says that true American energy does not allow them to stay at home.Ford, instead of cars, produces machines for urgent medicine. Instead of machines for speed, machines for salvation. Imagine the engine of a car next to the bed of a patient. Two incompatible worlds. An unsolicited speed. A wrong engine. I don't need that speed, says a patient. I have a black coat, with the zipper all the way up, I protect my throat. In the background, a lemon tree that insists, yellow, bitter fruits. Yellow should be protected. Happy colors protected by the Constitution. It is necessary to make the bed, pretend that We went out during the day and we went very far. The bed doesn't understand that we're cheating on it. We're all day nearby, a few meters away. Cheating the furniture, the door. Pretending we're going out, opening and closing the door. Naive door , everyone believes it. In China, the State controls the temperature of each citizen. More than thirty-seven degrees: dangerous citizen. Betrayal has come out of language, has entered biology. Being sick is a threat to the State. Every sick person immediately becomes a foreigner. If you are healthy, you are part of my nation; if you are sick, you speak another language. The language of the healthy, the language of the sick. At one extreme, shoot the sick for treason. The criteria change, the Law changes. An Italian chamber president joins hands to ask people not to leave the house. He seems to be praying, asking for mercy and giving an order — all at the same time. An Italian doctor says he doesn't understand why hairdressers go to their homes to do their hair for ladies. He says coffins are closed , that no one is going to see their hairstyle. He says it in a violent way. I keep quiet. And I remain silent.

NASA Cancels Moon Research

March 23, 2020

NASA cancels research on the Moon. Matteo eats a mouthful of pasta by the window overlooking Vittorio de Sica street. Sica was the director of "Bicycle Thieves." In Lombardy, a woman screams the name by Paolo. A patient in a hospital in Lombardy sees the face of his wife and brother on an ipad raised high in the air by the doctor's white gloves. The Marriott hotel becomes a field hospital. The luxury rooms They are now rooms for ten people. All the space is used, distributed among machines, patients, and doctors. A new urgent agriculture sows patients and ventilators. The president of the Association of Pensioners tells the young generations not to forget them in this moment. Let them not forget their parents and grandparents. A girl cries next to me. A minister talks about measurements — weights and tape measures for what he cannot see. Andreotti, sixty years old, wearing a mask, walks a dog very small on a long leash.186 dead in France.My dog, a Belgian shepherd, is called Roma.Roma is intact and alive, and she wags her tail.She stands up and looks like a black bear.Roma doesn't cry, but she's not happy. I tell him: Rome does not cry. Thermometer, temperature 37.2. A single bag set. Go up, go down. The temperature. They say that the graves of the dead in Iran can be seen from space. The Chinese wall, the mass graves. It depends on the height. How high do you dare to go up and see. 37.3 temperature. The temperature of each country , the biological temperature and not outside. Human 2 has a high fever. Human 3 plays the oldest game on the console: throwing balls against the wall. Sports suspended. There is a macabre closet that announces a single number that no longer has adversary.A single number per country.Iran: 127.Rome is thirsty, I serve water in his bowl.My hand trembles, his paw does not.The end of the world has always been announced in the form of statistics.Karl Pearson in 1901 "founded the Biometrika newspaper". The century begins when it becomes necessary to take the measure of things. Measure the verticals, the horizontals, the size of the feet, the nose, the heart. The large numbers come close to the beginning of the centuries. Martha She says her grandmother is fine, but as soon as she hangs up the phone she starts crying. In 2020 another century begins. Martha says she can hear her grandmother crying even after she hangs up. That's not possible, I say. Yes, it is possible. says.Two-day news:"Italian economy shows sharp drop in the first semester.""Africa with more than 900 cases in 38 countries and territories.""Four pharmacies closed due to contagion from professionals."The general director of the WHO alert young people: "They are not invincible" and they can "spend weeks in a hospital or even die." Giotto is twenty years old and stops when he hears this. I imagine the phrase repeated endlessly on the loudspeaker: you are not invincible ."The United States cancels the issuance of visas."In Italian cities, loudspeakers are heard: you are not invincible. Céline recounts that, in the midst of the bombings of Berlin, a crazy woman shouted in the ears of the people who passed the Sound of the bomb, bruuummmm.The sound of something that kills without making noise."Standard & Poor's lowers the 'rating' of the Portuguese Air Transport."Jakarta authorities declare a state of emergency."The sound of a virus. "Public transport in São Paulo can be prohibited for people over 60 during peak hours." 462 dead in Spain. Roma drinks water from her plate, seems to be thirsty or is turning into a camel: drink for the difficult days to come. The turn of the century and big numbers. Catastrophes are all about statistics and not about the person next to you watching the statistics. "I miss TV," says a Foster Wallace character. "You learned to walk away," says another Wallace character. 601 dead in Italy. They say that even the smallest particles, like viruses, atoms, etc., produce sound, emit sound when they collide with things. The sound of the virus. Imagine specialists on the street detecting the sound of the virus. A way to kill it, first: knowing its music. 601, 601, 601 deaths in the last 24 hours in Italy. I look out the window, all empty: up, down, in the distance. A verse from Neruda. "Walking on a road / I found the air." An Italian woman says that Europe abandoned Italy. I turn off the television.

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