My Virtual Reading Room

I can guess a whole cluster of reasons: the past few years have been la vida loca for just about everyone—and as a nurse, a Jew, and perhaps an immigrant, you’ll have had first dibs on the flak.

I meant “distant and exotic” self-consciously but quite unironically. First, I have no idea where you live (and you are under no obligation to disclose your whereabouts.) Anglo-diasporic culturally-Christian Americans have gotten into a bad habit of regarding ourselves as the default setting of humanity—and I specifically have spent 90+ percent of my life within a twenty-mile radius of my birthplace, and so have to be particularly on guard against an unexamined provincialism. Things like a four-season year, robins on the lawn, huge slabs of meat for meals, and the scarcity of passenger trains may well be exotic out your way.

Second, the above state of affairs has drastically changed. Owing to age, disability, the rapid gentrification of my old neighborhood during quarantine, and above all unrelenting family pressure, the inexorable demographic gravitational suck has dragged me down to Florida.

Edited (hit the Post button prematurely.) 2023-11-05 11:23 pm (UTC)