"Teatro in times of plague"

134 new cases for a total of 4886; 3 new deaths for a total of 199.

I have four orchids on different trees outside of my room, thanks to my dear friend Blanca Valladares. They have been there about a year, and have been barren. It rained last night. It dawned clean and beautiful and one of the orchids suddenly has a bloom. It’s a sort of pink tone. The other three remain barren (as well as a couple I have in the teatro).

I spent most of the day keeping up with all that is going on in the States. In the afternoon I read a couple of the stories in Baldwin’s Going to Meet the Man. One of them, Previous Condition, is incredibly apt for the current situation. The first-person narrator tells us:

In all this running around I’d learned a few things. Like a prizefighter learns to take a blow or a dancer learns to fall, I’d learned how to get by. I’d learned never to be belligerent with policemen, for instance. No matter who was right, I was certain to be wrong. What might be accepted as just good old American independence in someone else would be insufferable arrogance in me. After the first few times I realized that I had to play smart, to act out the role I was expected to play. I only had one head and it was too easy to get it broken. When I faced a policeman I acted like I didn’t know a thing. I let my jaw drop and I let my eyes get big. I didn’t give him any smart answers, none of the crap about my rights. I figured out what answers he wanted and I gave them to him. I never let him think he wasn’t king. If it was more than routine, if I was picked up on suspicion of robbery or murder in the neighborhood, I looked as humble as I could and kept my mouth shut and prayed. I took a couple of beatings but I stayed out of prison and I stayed off chain gangs.

As far as I can figure, the story Previous Condition is from 1948, published in Commentary. I highly recommend it. In the collection Going to Meet the Man from 1965.

Sunday. May 31, 2020

5094 cases, 201 deaths.

There is a tropical storm (named Amanda) that has formed in the Pacific and made landfall in Guatemala. It has given us a cloudy, rainy day that is very relaxing. Tomorrow, 1 June, is officially the start of hurricane season. This particular storm is supposed to bring us a lot of rain, which we need – but that always carries with it the promise of floods.

Baldwin again:

And again:

…a civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.

And again:

It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate.

(These are from a wide-ranging article published in the New Yorker in November 1962, titled “Letter from a region in my mind”.)

Monday, June 1, 2020

5202 cases, 212 deaths.

It turns out Geovani García has a child in the San José school. It seems his murder the other day was the work of the gangs: that he was executed for not paying the war tax for his gymnasium.

It’s been overcast all day, but not much rain. There are floods and some deaths in other areas of the country. This is the result of the left-overs of Tropical Depression Amanda, which are over the whole area (there has been the most damage in El Salvador).

We are under the same regimen as the last couple of weeks. There are plans to reopen gradually starting next week.

Keep safe and wash your hands.

Jack

 

 

 

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