mental occupy

Summer 1954 I worked at Edgewater Gulf Beach Apartments, at the time spread maybe a quarter to half mile wide, across the road from the beach, and stretching from US98 that is now Front Beach Road, some blocks back; several dozen single-story red brick houses, duplexes and triplexes, each apartment fully contained, living room, kitchen, dining space, bedrooms, bathroom.

My job, along with another boy my age, was to deliver linen, sheets, pillowcases, towels, and washcloths, kitchen towels, soap &c for bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, to units as they were vacated, and offer fresh towels daily to guests in occupied units. It was a busy summer, full-time work, seven days a week.

Once or twice before in nearly ten years on this daily blog, I've reminisced about that summer, about the green Chevrolet express delivery truck we drove,

and the kindness of the black ladies who worked as cleaning crew, whom we supported by making sure linens were in each unit before they arrived to clean throughout the workday. With management permission, they brought their noon dinner each day and cooked it in one of the empty apartments, invariably delicious, greens, chicken & dumplings, all manner of delicious, and John and I were always invited and welcome to dinner.

What I'm remembering this morning though, as news of covid-19 spreads and we shelter in place expecting it to be indefinite, is what that seven-day full time job did to my mind. After two or three weeks of it, missing church on Sundays (which my family never missed, and they went to church without me that summer, and I resented that), and Saturdays off, the week disappeared, sense of time, weeks, calendar evaporated. I no longer knew what day it was, nor did I care, nor was it relevant to my daily life, get up, dress, go to work, come home, sleep, get up, dress, go to work, come home, sleep, get up, endlessly, without beginning and without end. It did a job on my mind. Linda and I did have a date every evening but one that summer, but eventually, in Time, I never knew what day it was, and I realized that a number was being done on me.

You'll see. You'll find out. It will be that way for us who indefinitely shelter in place through the covid-19 pandemic. Waking this morning, I thought it's Saturday and started thinking about what I need to do to prepare for my adult Sunday School class tomorrow morning and who's likely to be there, when I realized there is no Sunday tomorrow, not as I knew Sunday, there's just another day after this 'nother day. And Monday? There's no such thing anymore, just evening and morning, another day. People will become ill, some will die, and many, many folks will sink into mental shadow, like the unending half-light between day and night that the narrator, whose name turns out to be Dick, describes in what turns out to have been Hell, in C S Lewis' story The Great Divorce. 

It will require effort to maintain mental stability. For my part, I intend to study, read books I've been meaning to finish or start, watch again some of the DVDs with stories I have loved. Blog. Keep up with the Port news and Vessel Schedule and watch for ships

coming and going by 7H porch. Pray? IDK, I went to a Lutheran theological seminary, but priests who went to an Episcopal seminary acquired a daily devotional habit such as reading The Daily Office, that I do not have. We'll cook, and I'll eat. I'll watch the little red heart Health symbol on my phone to make sure I don't ooze into my chair cushion. Tomorrow I'll watch Holy Nativity E-Church and think about how to handle it when my preaching Sunday comes up, expecting to benefit from what the rector learns first. 

70°F out here on 7H porch at the six o'clock Saturday morning moment, 22°F at the osprey nest in Fairmont, Colorado, the nest is filled with snow, no osprey has arrived as yet
,

and, though I watched for several minutes, no early morning traffic moving in the background.

For nearly a decade (October 2010) I've called this daily writing My Nonsense. Some have been sensible, many have been non. I'll try to do better. I've renounced, as least for use in writing, the language I learned as a boy working around fishermen and our fish house, and as a KA fraternity brother at UFla, and my twenty years in the Navy, part of it at sea. Jiminy. Jeepers. Clean up my language? I don't know if I can do it. But unlike king Ahab, I'll put God to the test: I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:13)

That it may please thee to visit the lonely; to strengthen all who suffer in mind, body, and spirit; and to comfort with thy presence those who are failing and infirm,

We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.

Chase Bulker arriving to load wood pellets for Studstrup, Denmark.