Category: Essay

Frozen Laptop, Frozen Pizza: Assessing the Early Days of the Coronavirus Lockdown

~ johnbrandall

The weather forecasts are wonk.  Something to do with a sharp decrease in the number of airplanes in the air.  It wasn’t forecast to rain today.  But it has rained, and not just a few drops.  My wife and I console each other with talk of silver linings.  The air quality is improving, just ask the stars.  

Here in St. Louis, as March slogs on, the rain has been a cloying companion during days of isolation.  I can’t recall going on a walk when I didn’t have to watch out for puddles and dreck as the dog Hugo and I walked in our desultory fashion, neither one of us leading the way.  This month hasn’t been atypical in its raininess but I suspect the total rainfall is at the upper end of its historical range.

If only weather were the wackiest aspect of March 2020.... 


The essay continues...

Get Your Fix at Heman Park

~ johnbrandall

If, like me, you’re starting to climb the walls during this coronavirus lockdown, you’re also asking yourself: what can I do, within these newly instituted, claustrophobic confines that doesn’t run afoul of the Stay-at-Home order?  How can I look after my own mental health, the quality of which has for years depended on being able to locate myself as needed in wide, open spaces?

Under the Order, residents of the county are still allowed to go for a walk in public parks.  Indeed, the County Executive has urged operators of public parks—presumably he is speaking to municipalities such as my own, University City—to keep their parks open.  To console myself, I think about all of the county’s various parks remaining open. Whether it has been for the purpose of playing disc golf, going for a run, or taking my dog Hugo for a walk, I have spent a lot of time in the parks of University City and St. Louis County over the past decade.  One of the parks nearest to me, which I have come to appreciate despite its faults, is University City’s Heman Park.


Continue with this essay about Heman Park...

Tijuana Exodus & Old Tricks in San Diego

~ johnbrandall ~ 1 Comment

13:04. I'm in my room, 1415, at the Westin San Diego. This is two hours in the room I didn't think I'd have. Because check-in isn't until three o'clock. I'm grateful.

I've looked at myself in the mirror. I look rough! My cheeks are approaching brick red, or burgundy. I stink!

First order of business is a full-on shower. Then some walkin' around, looking perhaps for a notebook store. Then I'm going to that burrito place I went to a year ago. I'm-a get two burritos, one for this afternoon, one for dinner...


Continue with this short travel essay...

2017, Year of the Flying Squirrel

~ johnbrandall ~ Leave a comment

2017.  Year of the Turd.  That's pretty crude, I can do better.  OK.  2017, Year of the Flying Squirrel.  I like the idea of a flying squirrel, they have pluck.  No wings but they make do.  They fly somehow anyway, though not as well as a bumblebee.

I've heard references to 2016 being a bad year.  Because of Trump?  Please.  My dog died—or, rather, I had my dog put down.  I invited some horrible woman with a needle to come into my house and kill my dog.  If 2016 was a bad year it was because I had to make that hasty and rude introduction with death, the reaper.  Or for the people in Aleppo was 2016 a bad year.  It was a bad year for the people who lost mothers, fathers, daughters and sons, brothers and sisters, wives and husbands, friends they have known for most of their lives...


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April Fragment

~ johnbrandall ~ Leave a comment

A friend leant me a book about projecting—effecting an out of body experience.  I attempted to read it just now.  The attempt was a failure.  I picked up a few good lines in a short time, though.

Projecting myself from here to there, to drop the book off.  Down Page, through Westport, curving downward into the valley, past the small airport blinking here and there in the night, to the river, seeing it sidelong, the casino standing sentry along it, looking north, all the water moving that way between here and there before winding its way east and losing itself all south, into another river.  I've had dreams that have explored this question but never answered it.  Past the river—.  No, the OBE ends at the river.  Best to keep it short, and what exists beyond the river anyway...

Essay continues...

Brodkey Was Right, and Not Much Has Changed

~ johnbrandall ~ Leave a comment

In his story "First Love and Other Sorrows," from the 1950s he wrote:

"Toward the end of March, in St. Louis, slush fills the gutters, and dirty snow lies heaped alongside porch steps, and everything seems to be suffocating in the embrace of a season that lasts too long.  Radiators hiss mournfully, no one manages to be patient, the wind draws tears from your eyes, the clouds are filled with sadness.  Women with scarves around their heads and their feet encased in fur-lined boots pick their way carefully over patches of melting ice.  It seems that winter will last forever, that this is the decision of nature and nothing can be done about it."

Harold, you nailed it.  It blew like a beast today.  There isn't any slush left in the gutters, but there was not long ago.  The radiators have all been scrapped and women maybe don't wear scarves about their heads like they used to—but they are still wearing Uggs.  And I am not being patient.