13 April 2020> We went to a party w/ Kevin last night. We went straight down to the basement to put our jackets away, into a windowless room where some artist friend of Kevin's was listening to mellow music + making art. Kevin lingered + wanted to hang out down there + not go up the party. We heard some of our cousins + friends whom we hadn't seen in forever were there, so wandered up the stairs on our own looking for where the party was. We were still wearing our dumpy down coat cuz all we had on underneath was a T-shirt + onion-skin running shorts (we had been working out earlier at a gym w/our bedder-½). We tried to go up sum stairs + a bouncer told us it was a private area, so we just went down + hung out w/ our dead brother doing nothing.

It rained hard all night so figured it was a good day for a walk, for the sake of our allergies + also cuz there was less ppl on the streets. We didn't have much time for a longer walk so opted for Vermont Ave NW, in honor of Bernie, who burned out last week. We went to Vermont a few times when we lived in New Hampshire, otherwise we don't have much experience w/ the state. We still haven't posted our journals from NH (late '90s) here, maybe now that we finished posting our complete dream log, we'll get back to our real world journal.

Going for a stroll in these times is strange as probly every citizen of the world can attest to... the 1 intresting thing is that it's something the entire moondough is part of... 9/11 was sorta like that, especially living in NYC, but it was an American thing. When we travelled outside the U.S. in the months after the general sentiment was that it was something that happened to Americans + "we" (wish we could say "they" but we can't take back the fact we was born here) deserved it, as some non-Americans told us. All of humanity is involved in this current crisis + no 1 is to blame (except humanity itself for letting ourselves get so overpopulated). Usually the planet is able to live in balance, but humuns have pushed everything way outta whack... Corona ain't the plague, humuns are. The powers that bee got so arrogant, thinking we was in fool control of our destiny + then along comes this little microscopic virus + everything goes to hell in a handbasket. If it ain't COVID it'll bee a volcano or an asteroid or whatever else.

Vermont Ave begins at Logan Circle

The last 2 microcosmic DC walks we've been on, we've seen paramedics in HAZMAT suits w/ stretchers picking up bodies. Likely they were O.D.s rather than COVID vicitims, but nevertheless the cops + medical personnel have to take precaution to assume everybody they encounter, living or dead, is infected, making everything seem rather surreal, to say the least.

2-lips + the Whitehouse (end of Vermont Ave)

looking up 16th from the White house twards our home

When our bedder-½ sees homeless ppl or dogs she says "this must be really weird for them, what do they think of all this?" To which we probly said something snarky like life is already really weird for homeless ppl. This is weird for every 1 on the planet, in diffrent ways. As a hermit, we must admit we feel a bit cheated... here we was minding our one business in self-isolation + suddenly the n-tire moondough has beecomb hermits w/ us! Everyone hanging out + typing on their computers like weave been doing for the past decade or 2, or 3.

A few showers hit us while we were walking + then it really started to pour, luckily when we were near our bedder-½'s workplace so figured we'd duck in (surprised the key even in worked since they were closed down). We took the stairs (not just for exorcise but for fear we might get trapped or spotted on surveillance cams) + then in this newfound survivalist mindset we started thinking of what we "needed" from her office. We went into the bathroom the but TP rolls were locked down. We grabbed a box of kleenex from her desk, but couldn't think of anything else. There was 6-pacs of beer in their communal fridge, but that crosses the boundary. Strange to think that there's 2 types of spaces in this world, where people live + where people work + all these buildings where ppl work are sitting empty, likely w/ lots of resources ppl could be using (we've always thought this was strange in regards to homeless ppl in Manhattan... u have all these buildings that could be providing shelter at least at night, yet all these homeless ppl are stuck down on the street). As we said in the last post (in regards to food), there's no shortage of anything, it's just that the regular disruption channels have been thrown in dissaray. There's a massive disconnect between supply + demand. W/ all this shared-economy technology to, say, match ppl w/ cars to ppl needing a ride, or ppl w/ a spare room in their house w/ ppl needing a place to stay, it's surprising no 1 bothered to create an app that hooks up farmers w/markets or even individual consumers. Instead tons of perfectly good food is being thrown out + shelves in markets sit empty.

14 April 2020> In this shelter-in-place state we've been reading My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh. Many moons ago she was in Sleepingfish (issue 8) + has since gone on to write a few acclaimed novels... guess u cd say she's "famous". We found MYoR+R in our liebury boox recently + figured this an appropriate time to read it (as the title wd imply, the narrator of My Year of Rest and Relaxation goes into self-isolated hibernation (w/ the help of prescription meds)). It's a bit weird to read not just cuz we've published her, but cuz we were living in Yorkville (UES) in 2000 just before 9/11, where/when the novel takes place. We was into the book at 1st but now (100 pages into it) we wonder if we can keep reading... w/ such a premise u wouldn't expect anything to happen, but the blasé malaise of nothingness gets a bit trying + tiring, which perhaps is the hole point. Or perhaps it's cuz her hermetic misanthropy is too close to home (see also Ms Ann Thrope), or maybe cuz it's laced w/ this holier-than-thou anti-hipster tone (sum of it pretty spot-on hellarious tho). We had friends like that in NYC around that time, who if u called hipsters they'd get all bent outta shape + deny they were + next time u saw them they'd chucked out their Chuck Martens, thin white belts + fixed-gear bikes + listened to the most unhip bands imagineable to prove their point. The narrator of MYoR+R lives in the UES + gives blowjobs to wall-street douch-bag bras just to spite the hipsters, to be so uncool she's cool. We're embarrassed to even admit we lived in the Upper East Side, the only reason we lived there (90th + York) was cuz that's all we could afford, given our credit + lack of references in those uber-competetive times. We were (+ still are) backword-ass country bumpkins from Arizona, so unhip we didn't (+ still don't) know what unhip was. And we still are uncool, tho not from lack of trying. But at least we never tried to be uncool... or are we now? Again, maybe our adverse reaction is cuz it all strikes too close to home + we shd keep reading to see if/how Ms. Ann Thrope gets herself out of her frumpy slump...