{"id":38506,"date":"2020-03-18T21:04:54","date_gmt":"2020-03-19T01:04:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=38506"},"modified":"2020-04-10T08:29:00","modified_gmt":"2020-04-10T12:29:00","slug":"coping-with-the-shitstorm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2020\/03\/coping-with-the-shitstorm.html","title":{"rendered":"Coping with the Shitstorm #1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A friend writes: \u201cAt the clinic some of the people asked after me, and the doc said, \u2018Well his routine hasn\u2019t altered one minute. Or one millimeter.\u2019 All of them in stitches\u2014and of course it is true. I have been in self-isolation since age 15\u2014 so lots of fun seeing the rest deal with it. I still have a whole load of&nbsp;old&nbsp;Dutch \u2018pravda\u2019 newspapers for wiping my arse. &#8216;Truth wipes best,\u2019 as the saying goes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><strong>Shall we\u00a0<br>be lighthearted<br>to ward off\u00a0<br>our condition?<br>Tra-la-la-la.<br>Or shall the shitstorm<br>fry our brains?\u00a0<br>Tra-la.<br>Packing for<br>the long haul, <br>I won\u2019t forget <br>my back scratcher\u2014<br>with the masks<br>of course.<\/strong> <br><strong><em>\u2014 JH<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube alignright wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"31 seconds of shitstorm relief\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/3HwehxbBZdA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><figcaption><em>31 seconds of shitstorm relief<\/em>. \u2014 <em>JH<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Another friend writes: \u201cThe shitstorm isn&#8217;t frying my brains yet but it&#8217;s starting with my toes and moving up my legs. I let myself give in to anxiety for about 15 minutes in the morning then I remember the example of Winston Churchill and get myself in gear. I&#8217;ve been putting 12-hour days into my job lately just keeping people optimistic and trying to figure out how to navigate through this. I&#8217;m starting to think it&#8217;ll be 18 months of this scheisse. Let&#8217;s keep cranking out the poetry. It lifts the soul without depressing the bank account.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Postscript:<\/strong> March 19\u2014A friend writes from France:  &#8220;The French have decided their options as follows:  Watch loads of porn\u2014buy loads of sex toys\u2014beat up your wife and eat your children (or beat up your neighbor&nbsp;and spend a night in a cell where you can get a free dose of corona virus)\u2014stay in bed and not wake up.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;I am sure there are plenty more options since the irrational has out-flanked the rational. Meanwhile the swans have returned to Venice and so have the fishes. And above China the satellites show no air pollution. That\u2019s more or less it.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>March 21\u2014A friend writes from Scotland : \u201cAs to Zen arse-wipes.&nbsp; While I was up in a Zen temple in the mountains around Takayama, it fell to me to be the one who had to clean the shit off the wooden slipway that carried the fecal prayers of monks into a dark and forbidding hole (not unlike the ones they had been birthed by, I suspect).&nbsp; I was supplied with a bamboo spatula for the purpose, with a prayer brushed on its handle in black ink.&nbsp; I took to the job with enthusiasm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;\u201cAs you might know, the most revered post in a Zen temple is the cook.&nbsp; It seemed fitting to me (and fitted me well) that dealing with the other end of the process was equally honourable.&nbsp; The&nbsp;<em>prima materia<\/em>&nbsp;on its transformative journey, having been exposed to all that chanting and sitting still, had to be possessed of the very highest vibrations; indeed blessed.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIn Tibet, when an attendant monk removed the turds from the quarters of a high lama, they would be placed reverentially on the head.&nbsp;&nbsp;Rabelais, however, would have said, &#8220;Squittard, farttard, shittard.&nbsp; Thy bung hath flung some dung on us!&#8221;&nbsp; If I remember his divine commentary correctly.&nbsp; But then, Rabelais was of an entirely different religion that didn&#8217;t understand or appreciate shit.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIn the Middle Ages, monks used splints of bamboo to wipe their arses.&nbsp; What a material is bamboo: furniture; houses; weapons; vessels for water, victuals, medicines; tobacco; pipes; hats; baskets; pens; brushes; gutters; pots; arse-wipes, and so on, and so on.&nbsp; Finally as philosophical metaphor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_Layard\">John Layard<\/a> always maintained that a baby&#8217;s shit was an expression of love.&nbsp; The only thing it had to offer its mother.&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br>\u201cBy the way,&nbsp;<em>coronach&nbsp;<\/em>is Irish\/Scots for a funeral dirge.&nbsp; Funny that!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br>\u201cWe&#8217;re also in what is now called \u2018self-isolation\u2019.&nbsp; I prefer what we used to call it: reclusion. The former is too clinical, while the latter invokes images of thatched hermitages, lost deep within listening mountains, or hidden in forgotten and trackless forests, in those Chinese and Japanese black ink paintings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n<p><!-- \/wp:post-content --><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A friend writes: \u201cAt the clinic some of the people asked after me, and the doc said, \u2018Well his routine hasn\u2019t altered one minute. Or one millimeter.\u2019 All of them in stitches\u2014and of course it is true. I have been in self-isolation since age 15\u2014 so lots of fun seeing the rest deal with it. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,4,20,17,27],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-38506","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-literature","7":"category-main","8":"category-media","9":"category-political-culture","10":"category-politocal-culture","11":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-a14","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38506"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38917,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38506\/revisions\/38917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}