Covid Story: An Artist Sheltered in Place on the 31st Floor

For months now, looking out from the
elevation of my 31st floor balcony,
I eye-gulp the panorama before me,
embracing, with cell phone photos,
its architectural details and vastness,
its sea-sky moving tableau.

Internalizing the eerie emptiness in the streets,
I shift back and forth
from comfort to contagion,
now awed by the magnificence before me,
then in dread, as I think of the brave
Covid caretakers carrying on,
despite fear and adversity.

There is a vessel
navigating north on the Hudson River
with a slowness intimating the pace of progress
toward solving our global dilemma.
I watch it disappear in my viewfinder,
boat yielding to brick,
much as I wish
virus would yield to vaccine.

This architecture, my architecture,
jutting high in the sky,
wrangles with my forlornness,
insisting that I focus, not on the heart-rending,
but on the handsomeness of the
edifices before me,
extraordinary in their extreme
verticality, volume and variety.

It is as if I were tracing and stroking
each building with my fingertips,
now low with flat roof,
now bursting into the sky,
impossibly slender,
impossibly high. 

The red arrow points to where I live,
a small apartment,
albeit with balcony and spectacular view:
lower Manhattan with Wall Street to the south;
Hudson River and New Jersey to the west;
Little Italy, Village, Chinatown and Brooklyn to the east.
An arresting view.
A lifeline for me as I shelter in place.

I used to see the
Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island,
but over the years,
it has been obscured by
towers of glass and steel
rising above those of brick.
Still, I can almost see through these buildings
to feel Liberty’s raised arm,
signaling strength and justice.

And now, with the memory
of running for safety during 9/11,
figures arrive from my previous art,
symbolizing the superhuman,
transformed into monumental edifices
intermixing with buildings around them.

You see, almost two decades after my full day
running from the falling trade towers in 2001,
I still feel viscerally that some scoundrel
can take a gun and shoot down
a skyscraper before me.
And so I engage the figurative symbol
to confront this villain,
erecting this form again and again
so that it becomes part of, and
mirrors, its architectural environment.

My long-nurtured figures -
my cadre of protectors, defenders, sentinels –
brandish the solidity and dominance
of the buildings around them,
or recalibrate themselves into
ghostlike, gusty, translucent shapeshifters.
The misty ones breathe and blow in the wind,
and coexist with those having
more presence and permanence.

Do they take up negative or positive space?
Are they background or foreground?
Are they riveted to a mission, or agency-less?
I like to think that
they are purposely penetrating the
crevices of the structures around them,
searching for clues to immunity and invulnerability,
much as our medical professionals
seek the same in the course
of our cosmic contamination.

Now it is exactly 7pm.
Balconies become platforms for
ebullient cheers, whooped yays, whistled thank-yous.
Honoring the bravest amongst us,
we come together in the evening
with a cacophony of raucous, roaring sounds
that broadcast our gratitude.

The Covid heroes don’t come forward at this time.
They don’t appear on our balconies and rooftops
to acknowledge our applause,
to accept medals and certificates of honor,
to be rewarded with the
monetary grants they deserve.

I ponder their valor and notice that yelling yay
is easier than voicing thank you.
Is it more personal?
Does shouting out my appreciation for these
women and men of mettle and grit
make me feel embarrassed, even bashful?

Is it because my own deeds pale in comparison?
I’m not brave like that.
My giving/helping/donating
cannot hold a candle to their offerings.
They are the protectors
that I am creating in my art,
the defenders I want to be. 

My surreal thoughts of illness
morph into a more sanguine surrealism.
I feel empowered
to make anything happen now
in a landscape of my creation
(so long as my defenders are
here and standing guard).

This new setting is now a stage for performers,
a framework in which to romp and rollick.
It allows for movement with an
expansive outreach in space,
the antithesis of confinement and constraint.

How my spirit leaps as I
create this world of conviviality,
without the virulence of virus
to interfere with my whimsy.
Here, people can angst-lessly
go about their business, as they
saunter, exercise and frolic with free rein.
They know they are being patrolled and protected.

These social scenes contrast starkly
with the tug of Covid’s required social distancing,
its stillness and silence,
broken only by a siren’s blare,
bringing one’s thoughts abruptly back to the
present-day skittishness of
sickness and mortality.

An evening’s radiogram-like regalia
of dots and dashes,
tap out a morse code of stillness,
camouflaging those messages
of desolation and despondency.
Is someone talking, seated, moving
within each white cube that I see?

Will I ring the doorbell (when Covid allows)
and enter into one of the dot-dash cubicles
and say hello?
Will we shake hands?

As this lurching continues,
I seesaw between feeling
circumscribed and confined by Covid,
and then overwhelmed with a desire to
run my fastest, hugging everyone in my path.

If I push myself past being this horizontal yo-yo,
and allow myself to focus on,
and feel privileged by,
the mesmerizing view before me,
my disquietude diminishes.
Ultimately, it is this hypnotic and riveting
vision and version of reality
that feeds me at this time,
a time when solace and safety are
so very precious.