Biggest Regret

 

The pride of Castro Valley: Cliff Burton

I have my regrets from this one life I will live; things I’ve done and said that I wish I could rewind and undo so they never happened. In this, the year of the Lord 2023, I feel like the biggest regret in my life is that I never really played in a band. Man, what a miss—and I feel like it’s too late at this point to aspire for, and playing in a band just isn’t the same thing it was in the Before Times (before, you know, that virus no one wants to talk about came into our lives).

Today's Generation

Photo by alex yosifov

Born in 1979, I am a proud member of the Xennials—or the Oregon Trail Generation—a micro-generation born between 1977 to 1983 that had “an analog childhood and digital young adulthood,” according to its Wikipedia entry. Since last year, I have periodically wondered what my son’s micro-generation will be dubbed. He was born less than three years before the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic started in late 2019. He and other children born before or just after 2015 fleetingly experienced life without a Biosafety Level 3 virus actively circulating throughout the planet; they briefly inhabited a planet before catastrophes and weather anomalies resulting from climate change became a regular occurrence.

Generation Doomed?

Generation Fucked?

Or, The Final Generation?

Kindergarten Graduation

Yesterday my six-year-old son graduated from kindergarten during the Age of SARS-CoV-2. Oh, man, what a school year. I can’t believe we made it through unscathed and evaded the virus practically everyone pretends doesn’t exist or affect us anymore.

Life-altering Moments at Artist Residencies

northern New Mexico, 2011

In June 2010, three months after a PET scan showed no cancerous activity in my body, The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico awarded me with my first artist residency. Then, on January 27, 2011, bulky luggage in hand, a guitar bag strapped around my shoulder, snowflakes fluttering through the night sky, I set foot in Taos for a six-week residency. I was living in San Francisco at the time, sharing a flat with three roommates. After ridding my body of Hodgkin lymphoma with over half a year of chemotherapy and radiation treatment, it was my first adventure away from the city where my body had manifested a blood cancer.

The Wurlitzer Foundation provided me with a home: Casita 9n on quiet Burch Street. The tiny adobe home was nestled beneath cottonwood trees. The casita’s backdoor opened to a snow-covered field. Every day, scores of crows and magpies squawked and flew about the trees that had sprouted from this land. Albeit fleeting, it was the first home of my own. I was thirty-one years old.

End-of-the-Year Blues

 

Winter chills by dbolan_wir

During the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the last full week of the year is when I struggle the most as I naturally reflect on what happened and what may be coming. In 2020, a survey of the American Nurses Association—the largest such association in the United States—provided demoralizing results in regards to their “nurses’ knowledge of and attitude toward COVID-19 vaccine development.” Only 34% of their nurses said they would voluntarily vaccinate themselves against COVID-19. Around that time, similar polls with disheartening results for long-term care facility workers were also being reported. A few articles had already been written about how we have never been able to gain durable immunity against a coronavirus. Then, on December 30, 2020, a then-record 125,220 hospitalizations and 3,903 COVID-19 deaths had been reported in the United States. Meanwhile, on my Instagram feed, many of my friends and family members were outwardly pumped and looking forward to getting past 2020 but I thought, for what? This coronavirus pandemic wouldn’t magically end at the turning of the calendar. Instead of optimism for the year to come, all these pandemic-related metrics just made me downright depressed.

My Pandemic Experience as a Lymphoma Survivor

11th chemotherapy infusion, November 2009

October 29, 2022

As I write this, my mother is far away in our homeland of Perú, visiting family for the first time since the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic began. I felt emotional when I hugged her goodbye before her trip. I wish I could’ve gone with her. Since 2020, I have ached to return to my ancestral homeland. I want to see my extended family before it might be too late.

Through social media and personal anecdotes, I can see that most of my family—my immediate family and the vast one in Perú—are exercising less precaution now from getting infected with this virus. I imagine many of them think I am excessive with my preventative behavior—if they knew about it. (i.e., not dining indoors; not hitting up the bars; avoiding air travel; avoiding elevators when possible; wearing high-quality respirator masks in any public indoor space; pissing outdoors to avoid public restrooms; utilizing a carbon dioxide monitor to assess indoor air quality.) I know my own mother thinks I am too extreme with my precaution—that I’m reading too much about SARS-CoV-2 and the multitude of effects it has caused in our societies.

Today's Distressful Thought - November 20, 2022

My wife and I bought a new microwave today. Previous one lasted us ten years. Not sure which one's gonna last longer: us, or the microwave.

That's where I'm at as this year comes to a close and our American society, by and large, has decided we liked the way of life we lived in 2019 so much that we are unwilling to adapt to this virus and we will accept all the consequences which we don't want to hear about because we want to pretend this pandemic is over.