Time Speeds Up
Journal days 28 to 33 — Life in my little corner of NYC in the age of the Coronavirus, Saturday April 18 through Thursday April 23, 2020
Time, which has been playing many weird tricks on me since the shutdown, has recently seemed to speed up. It’s been six days since I last posted in this journal, and it seems like no time at all — while not so long ago, a week seemed to take forever.
In this time, I’ve seen more people out on the street. Maybe it’s because the worst may be behind us. The curves have been flattening. We’re far from being out of the woods, but at least we can set aside the fear that the infection rate would just keep on increasing forever.
Nothing much has changed for me this past week. I’m still settling into my new-normal routines — taking a daily walk, usually in the Gardens; talking on the phone; watching Cuomo’s news briefing; watching part of Trump’s briefing, though less than I used to; spending a lot of time trying to get food without going into a physical store. I did get my first Instacart shipment this week, so that was good.
I visited the chickens again:
A couple of geese also live in the chicken coop. I don’t know why. They hang out with each other but seem to get along okay with the chickens too:
The chickens’ food is in a big blue garbage pail. It has three openings where the chickens can poke in their heads and eat. Sometimes they fight and push each other away, even though there may be one or two unused openings on the other side. I guess either they are not too smart, or they need to fight to maintain their pecking order.
I saw a lot of cherry blossoms in bloom this week, even though many trees had been shedding before. I know the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens plants different species of cherry blossoms that bloom at different times to extend the blossom season. Maybe the Forest Hills Gardens does the same thing:
Sometimes I went for my walk in the afternoon, other times in the early evening when the sun was low. I love the way the light looks at that time. Nothing I have seen can compare to the late afternoon golden light in the California Bay Area, but sometimes the Gardens comes close:
One way to tell when you are in the Gardens is by the distinctive art deco-ish street lamps. Now that I’m noticing things more, I realized that every lamp is not the same, which I never knew before. Then I realized that they are not all different either. So far, I found two designs, and I don’t know if there are more.
One design has two trees with a creature in the middle that looks sort of like a rabbit:
The other design has what looks like three trees or plants in a pot:
One day this week there was a strong thunderstorm. After the rain stopped, the clouds still looked dramatic:
I still didn’t get my stimulus check, and I haven’t heard whether I’ve been approved for NYS unemployment, so I’m crossing my fingers that it will come through. My Social Security and Medicare appear to be taken care of, so that’s good. I will also be eligible soon for a half-price transit pass, which I had been looking forward to in the past but won’t be able to use any time soon. That’s one more point of privilege — being able to refuse to ride the subways now, while many people cannot.
