THURSDAY

Last night, dreams were mostly mundane, neither serene nor apocalyptic. The main one I remember is me having a long talk with my nephew about getting a job, paying debt, and figuring out how to do all those things. He's all of twenty, and recently moved from one coast to the other, and I love him dearly. It was a quiet dream, and I did most of the talking, which was weird. Usually in my dreams, I am tossed about like a piece of driftwood, and when I speak it is in reaction to something that has or is happening. But this was all must my, of my own volition, giving financial advice to my nephew. And it didn't even wake me up. Of late, my dreams have made a point of waking me up at least once in the night. But I slept right through to just a few minutes ago, when my dog made his "I need to pee" semi-bark.

Finance. What a dull subject. I usually don't like thinking about it all that much. But that has changed. Less work, more and more people losing jobs. At least several more weeks of being in our national quasi-isolation with walks, howling, social distancing, and many many many Zoom meetings. We are more fortunate than some, less fortunate than others. Average. And what is going to happen to us? To all of us? What if this goes into the summer? What if more and more jobs evaporate? What if our economy, under the unsteady leadership we currently have, tanks? I've seen the words global depression on more and more headlines, and I don't think they're talking about sorrow. I mean, how many of us are very much anxious for our little one time checks to arrive? How many of us have already spent them? We must rethink how we are doing things, both in the nation and in the world. Last fall, Andrew Yang's universal basic income idea seems a bit nuts. Now it seems like the least we should do. In the best of times, economic inequality seemed like a bad idea. Now it feels like a crime against humanity.

Put another way- the powers that be have let us all down, in almost every conceivable way. Global pandemic ravages the world, sending us hiding in our homes. The environment was getting so bad that, now, thanks to this plague closing factories and keeping cars parked, people in India can see the Himalayas for the first time in thirty years. Most people I know- and I bet you're the same- live paycheck to paycheck, with at best a month or so of savings to cover bills if something should come up.

Something to come up.

Like, oh I don't know, Corona Virus?

Or as I prefer to call it, the Trump Flu.

Here's what I want, my Five Pillars for a New World.  First-: freeze mortgages, rents, student loans for everyone. For six months. This will give us all time to figure things out. Second: forgive all tax debt for anyone making under $100,000 individually, or $200,000 as a couple. All of it. Third: eliminate the tax breaks given to the super rich and corporations. Being extremely wealthy in a time like this comes with obligations. And if they say "jobs will go away if we do that", tell them to look around, smell the coffee, and grow a soul. Fourth: rejoin the Paris Agreement on climate change. The world is already taken apart, when we put it back together (and we will) let's do it in a way where we stop killing the planet. Fifth: Universal Healthcare.

Also, please federalize the response. Now. Please continue to support testing for the virus. How can we know who is sick and who can go back to work and who should stay home if we can't all be tested? And if you own stock in a possible cure, come out front and say so.

Oh, and let's make it a felony to lie, obfuscate, or do anything for personal gain at the expense of the population in regards to this disease. I want investigative panels, like we did during and after World War II, that deal with such criminals. And no immunity for anyone, regardless of office. You do the crime, you do the time.

OK. Now a few happy thoughts. Last night, played Dungeons and Dragons with my wife, my brother, and my sister. It was awesome. Just playing a game, chatting, laughing, spending time together. Also, we grilled some burgers in our back yard for the first time this year. And they were awesome. While I do want things to change, the joy of BBQ in the back must remain. Also, new script has taken a turn, and I like it. I don't know what is going to happen in regards to film and tv work after all this, what people will want and what state the entertainment industry will in after the Duration, but I know I am writing something that I enjoy fills my heart. And best of all, a few old friends who have been sick seem to be on the mend. Not all of them. But some. And that is a good thing.

Today, I think I am going to call my senators and representative and let them know what I think. It is still a democracy. They still have a job. I am still a citizen.

OK. Here's a song. It's Thursday, by Jim Croce, and I like to think of it as a song sung by America to our current despot.

AFTER THE WOMBATS

Things were pretty rough after Daddy Jay headed north to Alaska pursued by Wombats. Money was tight. Mom had been an elementary school teacher before she had us, and hadn't worked in years. Now, she had three kids, a mortgage, and an ex-husband who wasn't paying alimony or child support. At this time, there was a glut of teachers in Strawberry Park, meaning no work in that field other than some substitute teaching- which doesn't exactly pay the bills for a family of four. We didn't know any of this. My brother, sister and I were busy being kids, and things seemed pretty much like before. Maybe we all got hand-me-downs more often when it came to clothes, and maybe we didn't go out to eat pretty much ever, but life didn't seem too weird. Yet.

Then, things started to disappear. That was a little strange. First, it was all the old stuff in the garage. Mom had all this old furniture in the garage- things she had inherited after her mother died, a beautiful set of  mirrors, chests, things like that. To me, they were just unused stuff, but Mom was hoping to one day live in a big house where we could use all those beautiful antiques. One by one, they vanished. And then Juliet disappeared. Juliet was Mom's '57 Chevy. It was sky blue and white and very cool, and she loved it. Mom talked about Juliet like it was a person, an old friend who she had had many adventures with. Then one day, she was gone. Within a few years, Mom re-married, and so began life with Vern.

My step-father Vern was a complicated man. One of my first memories of Vern is from when I was five or six years old.  I was hanging upside down from a branch on our magnolia tree in the front yard and saw him walking up to our house. I shouted out "Daddy". He smiled and said "not yet".  He came across as really nice. He laughed a lot, told jokes, and let us watch Get Smart when we visited him at his apartment. He even got us a dog shortly after he and Mom got married. We had only had one dog before, a little white dog named Spot that Daddy Jay had given us. Spot ran away around the same time  my father left. We named the new dog Gigi, and I loved her very much. Life was pretty sweet. For a bit.

Something was shifting in house. At first, it was hard to pin down, just a tension that seemed to fill the air. Mom would get a little jumpy when we got loud or left our toys out. And in the mornings, especially on the week-ends, we were told to stay quiet until Vern got up. And he would sleep in pretty late. Sometimes, Vern would swear. It was exciting to hear these forbidden words, but also kind of creepy. Adults weren't supposed to talk like that.  And sometimes, Vern would yell at us. Now, being a kid, I was used to grown-ups yelling now and then. But there was something different about Vern yelling. More intense. More scary. Mom said Vern had had a hard life, and so he drank too much sometimes, and we needed to be understanding, that he just got into bad moods from time to time. Well, it was true about the bad moods, and we learned quickly that if Vern was in one of his funks, it was a really good idea to be on our best behavior. Life became something like dancing with a polar bear. Still fun and exciting, but now much more dangerous, and if you weren't careful, you would most likely get an eternal lecture on how stupid you were and how meaningless life was and told that you should never have to be asked to clean your room, you should just do it. Shouting and crying and fear were regular dinner guests. And somehow, I became Vern's favorite. He'd tell me jokes at dinner. I'd pour his wine- red with ice cubes. I'd ask him to tell me about his life, and he'd tell stories about being in the army and sitting through a hurricane on a base in Florida, or when he ran a television repair store near Sacramento, or about the Porsche he used to drive. And this seemed to calm the savage beast, to make him happy. And when he was happy, he was nicer, less prone to yelling, or throwing things, or getting into big blow out yell fests with Mom after we went to bed. So making him happy was job number one. I learned how to make him laugh, mostly through trial and error. If I said certain things a certain way, Vern would laugh. You could tell when a laugh was needed, when things were heading south, as they say. Usually, there would be the inciting incident- Vern would ask if we had done all our chores, or been good at school- some quotidian thing like that. And he would only ask if he knew that we hadn't. So he'd ask the question, there would be a moment of silence, and if you didn't manage to make him laugh, the interrogation would begin, dinner would be effectively over, and who knew what would happen next? Usually it would be yelling, but there was the occasional glass thrown, and on one infamous night, he back-handed my sister in the face. Vern was a big, scary man- and we were little kids, scared out of our minds. So whenever possible, when the moment came, if at all possible, I'd make him laugh, the moment would pass, and we'd all breathe a little easier.

But comedy would only work up to a certain point, for so many glasses of wine. After that, all bets were off, and the thing to do was shut up and look for the closest escape route. It is a very curious thing to watch someone change right in front of you, to morph themselves in a sort of slow motion imitation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; to see the eyes blur and grow mean,  smell the breath become danker and danker,  physically feel tension and anger fill a room, like an acrid fog. Curious and terrifying. And heartbreaking.

By fourth grade, I had abandoned all hope of Daddy Jay ever coming back. Life was harsh, and nothing could change that. There was only one thing I secretly hoped would happen, one thing that might bring a little bit of magic back to the world.

Snow.

I  realize that might sound like a fairly dull dream to a lot of people. But you have to understand, it never snowed in San Jose. Ever. Not once in my life. The only snow I ever saw was on tv and in the movies. Snow was glamorous, even mystical. You could go sledding, have snow fights, eat snow pies, make snowmen. I had a few vague memories of going up to the mountains, way back when Daddy Jay was still around- and I remember it being fun and that I loved it. And I wasn't alone in my hope for snow. Every kid at Strawberry Park Elementary wanted snow. If it got below fifty degrees, we'd look to the sky, and dream.  So snow was it. I became an avid fan of the weather reports- but the news was never very promising. Still, many nights I'd go to sleep wishing fervently for snow, praying to a god I wasn't so sure was up there anymore to make it snow.  Snow would make it all okay. Santa would return, with Melvin the Great sitting in his sled. Vern- or Dad, as we called him by then- would stop drinking. Everything would be all right again, all thanks to the Messiah called Snow. It was the last bastion my soul had against an encroaching reality.