2020 and The Twilight Zone

Unreality is definitely on the table. Science has become an existential option. Relativity rears its ugly head. Pandemia is all the rage. I am wearing a mask with wiener-dogs on it. People think it's cute.

It took me a while but I have come to realize that Gini and I are living in the Twilight Zone. Monday thru Friday we ritually watch Wheel of Fortune/Jeopardy and then we stream episodes of somebody getting murdered and we are the detective voyeurs. In our Zone all these people deserved it and it only adds to our peace of mind when they are found out, caught and disappeared.

Now for us this banality is our pleasure dome. Should Olivia Newton-John appear we would have to formalize the Xanadu-ness of our joie. Maximizing this irony would be Twilight Zone or Outer Limits or Night Gallery juxtaposing us with someone whose idea of hellish torture is the previously described euphoric cocktail.

I am not sure when we lost touch with the mortal coil. Our flight out of south Florida was filled with trepidation, full occupancy and people without masks. We left behind hurricane season and quested to be with our son for a couple of months. When we arrived in Portland, our son Chip recognised us. Others in our adopted neighborhood treated us as visible and knowable entities. Who knew? Two months of seemingly normal existence. Golf, music, family and great wining and dining at home.

Some COVID-19 trepidation was experienced with our plane flights but a plastic face shield, cloth mask, latex gloves and enveloping clothing attenuated the anxiety. Upon arrival in New Hampshire, a former residence we enjoy revisiting, our DIY quarantine perhaps took the rhythm out of our former grasp of reality. But fortunately we did have cable/internet contact. Some “plugging in” was involved for sure. Though we could not TiVo or DVR the episodes, without an agenda it was very easy to reserve an hour in the evening for our manna. It was more comfortable with Alex, Vanna and Pat. They ate very little and our dinner was usually delicious.

It would be at this point that Rod Serling, or whoever was hosting, would introduce the victim whose Purgatory/Limbo/QuasiHell was our living room. Anguish and vertigo at the brink of horror awaited them.

The vic-, excuse me, visitor would then subtly and eventually notice at some point that the TV was no longer on but that their sense of time did not really feel stable. “What year was it when...” echoed like a small avalanche among the multitudinous photos that seemingly coated the living room. Gini had immersed herself in a career of scrapbooking for the benefit of our son. Pictures that had Chip as a theme but our lives as a thesis ebbed, flowed and oozed even beyond the living room. Tribbles...easily confused with Tribbles...Our nirvana was perhaps anathema to our Zone intruder.

Vicariously one could project the visitor's queries: Who are these people? Who's in charge here? Am I expected to do something?

Time is fleeting. So are our wits.

I love Vanna. Alex can be a bit nerdy but he's our nerd. Pat, Pat, Pat!

I'll always love Gini and Chip. The pics remind me of things that I really forget. I get the time instability but maybe there's a grandfather's clock that we can put three dimes in and then cue the organist to maintain an existential tether. We can go waa-a-ay back. WABAC. Sherman and Peabody must have something for us. The organist can play something hopeful.

The view of the lake is spectacular, a holo-deck delight. But go out there? For real? What, are you nuts?