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<\/a>The first few years I enjoyed every minute of the summer. I monopolized any bit of sun on my walks through Manhattan. Even in the hottest weather I walked on the sidewalk of the sun, which here is usually not for fools. It\u2019s necessary to take advantage it because surely it will be a tough winter. Over the years my aversion to cold dissipated. Also, of course, the Antarctic ice layer continued to melt.<\/p>\n
In the summers that followed, there were times when I had the feeling of walking inside a brick oven. Unbearable heat. Melting on those streets so inept for global warming. And people, always people, a person wherever you see look. A ubiquitous presence of being.<\/p>\n
Later I realized that people were the least of it. What distressed me the most was not seeing the sea. Walking and walking on that land tongue, with so much wonder, but without sea, without breeze. Two rivers, yes, but invisible due to the excess of concrete. We\u2019re like embedded in a magma. The East River and the Hudson are but a fluvial hint. The inevitability of the telluric. Saltpeter absent.<\/p>\n
Instant<\/strong><\/p>\n I never imagined going through a pandemic here. My fear was limited to some terrorist act. \u201cI don\u2019t know what you\u2019re doing there, in that cold\u201d; mantra preferred by friends and family down there. \u201cTake care. Don\u2019t stay out too late.\u201d Now, what they don\u2019t tell me, but I know they think: \u201cMy God, don\u2019t get sick.\u201d<\/p>\n Before my son was born, I sang in various places in the city. Guitar on my shoulder, I walked its streets. Once leaving the subway on the way to Oliva, a restaurant in Houston and Allen where I played for several years, I landed with my instrument and all in the snow. No one came to help me get up. I missed Cuba a bit that day. I remembered Mart\u00ed when he wrote about the great snow storm of 1888 in New York: \u201cThere have been courageous deaths, cruelties, charities, fatigue, brave rescues. Man, in this catastrophe, has been good.\u201d Well, not today, Mart\u00ed. At that moment I thought New Yorkers seemed quite inhumane. At the most, there was a distant \u201cAre you all right?\u201d I\u2019m okay. It\u2019s okay.<\/p>\n I later understood. It\u2019s something else. It\u2019s the naturalization of violence. A continuous state of alert. It\u2019s horrible how what is so commonplace can become so trivialized. The constant struggle against the elements: either you melt from the heat or you freeze. I became strong. I looked for my golden half-way point. I was able to live with that. I can live with that.<\/p>\n Today, however, from the epicenter of the disaster, we ask ourselves if we can live with \u201cthis.\u201d This is something else. The denial, the denial of the horror of the beginning of the pandemic, waiting for the news, the impression that everything is just a dystopian nightmare and that tomorrow we will wake up in another reality; it\u2019s been melting before our eyes like Dal\u00ed\u2019s clocks.<\/p>\n The dislocation of memory. Yesterday I thought it was Thursday. People begin to adapt more to the idea that this is going to last for a long time. The state governor has just announced that there have been 338,519 cases to date. 26,584 people have died. But in the next moment this figure will change. We are many living in this place, in super small spaces.<\/p>\n My Buddhist friend Naoko calls me. We share fears. What will happen in September? How are children going to be able to keep a distance of 6 feet in Manhattan schools? \u201cFocus on the present,\u201d she tells me. \u201cOn the instant. That\u2019s what matters.\u201d The instant and the present are really screwed, is the first thing that occurs to me. My mind skips a beat to translate it into English. An instant? of lucidity makes me give up the attempt. Lost in translation. The instant and the attempt.<\/p>\n Outside<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m the one who goes out for food. From the beginning the tacit law was established that I would be the one to do it. That way I can sleep easier. I\u2019m more careful, but I\u2019m getting tired of the strenuous ritual. Two pairs of gloves. I don\u2019t put on my heavy coat because afterwards, who\u2019s going to wash that? Instead I wear layers and layers of sweaters and pullovers, just in case I have to wait outside in the cold.<\/p>\n I wrap my head with a colored cloth. I don\u2019t want a single hair to be left out. At first I was a little embarrassed. Then I remembered that this is New York. You can go out with a bathing duck on your head and nobody stops you. Also, my Burkina Faso neighbors have made it easy for all of us. Any old piece of cloth on the head doesn\u2019t attract anyone\u2019s attention. You\u2019re simply one more.<\/p>\n The cap with the name of Cuomo, which I put on the other day, caught more attention. People stared at me. It really hints at Chris, his brother from the Cuomo Prime Time show on CNN. I think everyone thought it was because of the governor. Later, I realized that someone tried to get closer. Maybe it was to ask me where he could get one.<\/p>\n Cuomo, the governor, has kept the heart of New York state beating. He appears at press conferences 7 days a week. He broadcasts the same from Long Island than from Albany, or Poughkeepsie, or New York City, diametrically opposed places in this extensive territory of more than 19 million inhabitants. Cuomo is everywhere. Like God, he appears every day on our screens, distributing encouragement and commandments. Number of hospitalized, warnings; scolding those who don\u2019t wear masks; making hints to Trump; stories about his father, the former governor. His mixture of Italian toughness with New York sophistication has us all charmed as if we were snakes. Most obey.<\/p>\n In the market I come across a sign that says \u201cNo Way Out.\u201d I try to avoid any possible transcendental interpretation. Who\u2019s idea was it to send me to study literature?<\/p>\n Back home, the tedious task of washing the groceries. Outside, with hose and almost frozen water, in the cold. With detergent, alcohol, chlorine, whatever. I don\u2019t even want those bags in the house. Then, taking a shower, washing my hair and everything.<\/p>\n E Pluribus Unum<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I go out for a ride in the car through Manhattan to escape a bit of this confinement. Wearing a mask, as we call it here. Nasobuco<\/em> sounds too harsh to me. It sounds like a dirty word adopted for bad times. Mask is softer. It disguises the tragedy better.<\/p>\n I put down the car window, only for moments. I am thankful for having moved to Kew Gardens Hills, Queens. Here it\u2019s much less dense. We are close to several communities of Bukharian Jews. Two cross the street while I wait for the light to change. They\u2019re not wearing a mask. Someone yells at them, Put your f *** ng masks on! I raise the window.<\/p>\n E Pluribus Unum<\/em>, says a huge bronze plaque at the entrance to the Midtown Tunnel. In diversity, one. The phrase, which appears on the United States seal designed by Charles Thompson, refers to the federal nature of the original 13 states, part of one same nation. It hangs from the beak of the bald eagle.<\/p>\n I cross the East River under the tunnel. Back in Manhattan, I take the FDR, as the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Freeway, which borders the East River, is called. E Pluribus Unum<\/em>. The ironies of life. What would Roosevelt, the New Yorker who brought this country forward in the midst of the stock market crisis of the 1930s, and whose mandate coincided with World War II, do in the face of the pandemic? He who in the midst of the chaos implemented true policies in favor of plures<\/em>; who promoted replacing ultra-liberalism for the welfare state, with social security programs such as retirement, the right to unions, the 40-hour work week, and the minimum wage….<\/p>\n Obama has referred to the White House response to the coronavirus as an \u201cabsolute chaotic mess.\u201d As I enter the epicenter, I think of him and Roosevelt. I can\u2019t help but think of Trump and the governors who are irresponsibly calling for reopening states against the grain of common sense. Not to mention science. I think of the women in the Southwest, who annoyed, are screaming out for their beauty salons to open. Of the nonconformists of Michigan, those who come to the municipality with their combat weapons to \u201cliberate themselves\u201d from the \u201coppressive government.\u201d Of those annoyed because they have to wear masks. I think of Lisa, a nurse at NYU Hospital, who has to go to a hotel to sleep, separated from her six-month-old son, for fear of contagion. E Pluribus Unum<\/em>. Unfortunately, no.<\/p>\n Manhattan is a ghost city. Few cars. Few people. Much sadness.<\/p>\n I go through some streets of a residential neighborhood. The sun seems to ripen the buildings. A couple of joggers pass by.<\/p>\n I continue through Times Squares. I barely stop; I barely breathe. I pass a Cafe. Reflections in the store windows. Everything dark. New York looks like Comala.<\/p>\n A delivery boy is about to start his pizza delivery rounds. The \u201cessential workers\u201d are today the kings of the city streets. Finally, the streets are theirs. Not a taxi driver yells at them. Not even a bus driver harasses them.<\/p>\n I digress, heading to the Lower East Side. I stop by a sidewalk to answer a call. After a while, a commotion begins. I realize it is 7 pm. I hang up and try to catch every second. I realize that I\u2019m close to the Presbyterian Hospital. Casseroles, whistles, cowbells. Sounds without faces. Chilling. Beautiful. I cry. E Pluribus Unum<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>