“Genius is a crisis that joins the buried self, for certain moments, to our daily mind.” — William Butler Yeats.

It’s fitting, I think, that the Chinese use two brush strokes for the word “crisis.” One stroke stands for danger—the other for opportunity. In a crisis, said John Kennedy, be aware of the danger, but recognize the opportunity.

I don’t feel divided from my country today. I think we are one thing right now, the left and the right seem to shrink in the face of reality.

We’re about to get a once in a lifetime opportunity to learn what it is we need, how much we can change, what governments are meant for,  how much empathy do we have for one another?

I have the opportunity to be calm and patient, to take a longer view, to sort through a tsunami of data and hysteria to pick out the kernels of truth and reason, to take some deep breaths and gauge what I am really about.

If you believe what they say about older people, I might get the opportunity to learn a lot more.

So what is the edge, our boundary? Hunter  Thompson wrote that “there is no honest way to explain that because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.”

Sometimes, if you watch too much of the news, it feels like we might be going over the edge. But I don’t think so. I think we are far from the edge. Slaves in America and Jews in Poland were on the edge.

The Chinese brush strokes story has a lot of truth. Lots of danger, but I don’t want to forget to spot the opportunity.

I embrace the opportunity to sort through the hype and hysteria and figure out the truth.

Eckhart Tolle wrote than when faced with a radical crisis, an individual will either perish or become extinct or rise above it’s limitations and take a great leap.

I’m not ready to die; I am always looking for a leap.

I think of our trip to the zoo last Sunday as the borderline day, the last day before the new normal, the day a virus entered all of our lives and changed them, beyond the imagination of any of us just a few days or weeks ago.

It was so innocent a day, really a beautiful Spring day with my wife, daughter, granddaughter, and some penguins and seals and monkeys. It seems like it was a thousand years ago. We sat on benches, listened to the sea lions, laughed and loved one another.

And what a storm was hiding on the other side of Sunday. We had no idea.

We went to the zoo to meet my penguin and Maria’s hissing cockroach. Nobody was wearing a mask, no one had thought of canceling our pre-arranged visit, a Valentine’s Day gift from each of us to the other.

Nobody talked about the virus; nobody mentioned the virus.

Even today, four days later, such a trip seems unimaginable, a visit to another time and place. Baseball was about to begin, so were basketball tournaments, so were a thousand concerts, gatherings, meetings, vacations, and business trips.

Everything in our lives seems to be shutting down, getting suspended or postponed, all out of science, and that eerie hackneyed term we hear so often, “an abundance of caution.”

Presidents get exposed to the virus, candidates get to debate in empty halls, baseball stadiums are empty.

I guess our only choice is to listen to them.

My daughter’s boss in New York told her to stay home for a few weeks. My granddaughter’s school closed down for a month. Broadway shows closed their doors; stand-up comics had no audiences.

We may have waited a bit too long, but we are all on it now, all of us holding our breath, sucking it in, counting on our fingers and in our minds the number of days to normalcy, or perhaps the new normalcy.

We seem a brave people, really, sucking it up and turning to a new and perhaps temporary way of life.

We are used to getting lied to now. Still, suddenly, it seems that the lies don’t work anymore, the truth is gliding relentlessly towards us like a thick and mournful fog, it is surrounding us, enveloping us, we feel it on our skin and in our souls.

That trip to the zoo was then, this is now, a new and different and eerily unnatural world. I confess I was smug about living up here in the country, the virus seemed like an urban catastrophe, we don’t get many travelers from overseas here, why would it come here,  how would it get here?

But it is here. In Saratoga, Bennington, Queensbury. At the Walgreen’s tonight, crowds of people looking for hand sanitizers. There are none.

At first, it felt like just another nightmare on the news, another ugly stream for the cell. Not something for us to worry about.

But it did come here, and it is here. I chose to pay close attention to it, but I don’t choose to worry about it. I just don’t know what good that would do me or anybody else. Maria is worried about me, I’m “at risk,” as they like to say.

I will take good care of myself. I promised.

A pharmacist in a nearby town caught the virus from his wife, who visited Philadelphia; the American Legion Bingo down the road was canceled, a city township meeting was canceled, every school here is figuring out how to handle things if they have to close, or want to close.

All of us are listening for stories like that, gathering them, sharing them. They are our  new and universal reality.

I think it helps to be older because I’ve seen a lot of crises, a lot of panics, a lot of bungled government missteps, a lot of feckless politicians hiding the truth, a lot of mediasteria.

I know it my bones that this will pass, and sooner rather than later. And we can all talk about where we were when it happened, just like people did about John Kennedy’s assassination or 911.

They might have been slow to act this time, as governments often are, but they are on it, they are figuring it out.

For me, this is a drama like no other; I just can’t remember a time or place where everybody needed to stay away from everybody for a while. The political geeks and hangers-on call it social isolation.

It goes against history, habit, and our social nature. We Americans go places – to beaches, parks, concerts, vacations,  supermarkets, foreign countries,  games, plays.

So here it is, it is upon us,  either to be accepted or denied, like a ghost ship heading for the rocks. I go with acceptance.

Maria’s Belly Dancing Class was canceled, and who would have thought a virus that began in China could have done that? So was Disney Land, and Madison Square Garden,

Baseball Opening day the thing they call “March Madness,” and just about every convention or political rally in the country.

I think Amazon will be happy this month; people can buy whatever they want (except for Murel Anti-Sanitizer, which costs $94 a bottle on Amazon and is unavailable at any price) and shop from home.

Good news for some. Social isolation is already here.

When I went to the doctor’s this morning, everyone was wearing masks, and there were signs everywhere urging me to turn around and go home if I even had a mild cough or felt sick.

And this was the doctor’s office.

It hit me yesterday at the Mansion when I realized visitors would soon have to be barred, and at Bishop Maginn High  School when it became apparent to me that the high school might very well have to close.

How, I wonder, can I help? What will I do?

I can feel the moment coming when I am asked to stay or told to stay away or must stay away.

I feel a bit fragile about being older, so many people are urging me to stay home.

But there is another opportunity.

To study and consider what it means to be part of a community, to listen to one another, to help one another to think of one another.

Already,  some people are asking other people what they need, how they can help. We might have to go inside, but we can still step out of ourselves and our conventional wisdoms.

Neighbors are looking in the older adults who can’t get to the store.

For one of the rare times in my life – 911 was another – I feel fused into the broader community of human beings. Today, we are all taking the same thing and thinking the same thing.

We are all of a mind, wondering, shaking our heads, trading stories,  telling ourselves what we want and need to hear.

The walls of the left and the right crumble a bit each day, as people have no choice but to talk to one another and do something together. And to come to see the same thing. What are we about?

What’s behind the curtain?

I always remember to look down the road to the other side of this trauma – to where the light is.

To see that we are all human, we indeed are in all of this together. I stopped to ask a farmer how he was and if he was afraid and he shrugged, “oh, hell, he said, I’ve got to die of something.” and that was all he said about it.

Then he turned and added, “you know, I’m 82. Old people die, that’s the way it is…”

I am weary of our endless political carping, yet I also see and feel what it means to have a leader, to have a guide. I remember it from 911; it made all the difference. Heroes emerge and rise when they are needed.

I vote right now for Dr/ Anthony Fauci , one of the lead immunologists of the Centers For Disease Control, he tells the truth every day and has told the truth from the beginning.

He will surely be fired when the dust clears.

If you listen to him, you will understand the truth of what is happening.

He was a hero during the AIDS  epidemic as well. We will all be fine, most of us, he says, it will just take a while and ask of us that we live very differently for some time.

And perhaps another opportunity: people see that science is real, and science is essential, and so is government and so are leaders. They matter.

People might see that being alone is sacred, a sacrament, a chance to think and awaken and face the truth about ourselves—a vacation from angst and anger.

I want to say that for the first time in days, I believe our governments and leaders are moving to deal with things, it will take weeks and months- even longer –  for it all to settle.

But it will return to normal.

We are a free people, used to going where we want to do when we want to do it.

We are not free people right now, and not for a while. That is a significant change.

Perhaps one needs to be quarantined to grasp that. Every test that is met is rewarded by some growth in knowledge, the strengthening of character, or awakening into higher consciousness.

We are asked to do something most of us have never been asked to do or told to do: nothing.

In China, everybody did as they were told. And that works for some.

That has long been their story. But we are not China.

It’s a different story here. We will do what we are told because we want to, and we need to. And that is no small thing for a schizophrenic country.

There is no left or right to hide behind; the coronavirus is a fierce lover of democracy; it knows no label or ideology and just might remind us what it means to be free.