Sparkling Isolation – Day 35

Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate.

I wonder if I can paint that over the doorway to my apartment? Right now, you don’t want to be around me. Take my word for it.

I’ll leave it to those who are not of a literary turn of mind to look that quote up on their own. What I will say, is that Dante would have had a field day writing about the world of today.

For me, this has always been a perfect quote to describe those moments when I feel both hopeless and powerless, yet compelled to keep on moving forward. That’s precisely how I feel today. I have been getting strong signals – magnified by a strong intuition – that I may soon add the words “furlough” and “unemployment” to my regular vocabulary. Nothing specific, just the result of aggregating the conversations I have had in the past few days.

WARNING – I am going to use curse words (tastefully edited) from this point on, so if you are not a fan of profanity or if there are younger eyes/ears following along, you might want to stop now. And for the record, it is rare for me to publicly curse like this but these are strange times.

Despite my feelings of impending doom and a strong dose if “I don’t give a flying f**k,” I still have a job to do and I’m getting paid for it, so I keep soldiering on and biting my tongue.

As I think about it, cursing has become frequent in my conversations today which may offend some people. Of course, if you are offended by cursing then it’s a good bet you won’t last more than ten minutes as my friend, because I could win an award for “creative cursing” in multiple languages. Spanish is nice for cursing, but English is easier for me, although German is my favorite because it sounds like cursing anyway most of the time. When I am particularly frustrated, I might lapse into French and Italian for a few key curse words – but sometimes, the only word that suffices to express how I feel is my favorite guttural Anglo-Saxon “F-word.”

F**k, f**k, f**k, f**k, f**k!!!!!

I feel better now.

Clearly, this had not been one of my better days and I am not doing well at this moment. In fact, I am in a sucktastickly crappy mood. I think I may have just made up a new word. That at least made me smile momentarily.

The combination of feeling helpless, hopeless, and powerless at the same time is a nasty recipe for a poisonous cocktail. Instead, I think I am going to go find the ingredients for something more pleasant – maybe my favorite boozy cocktail, the Vesper. Unlike 007, however, I believe it’s better to stir – not shake.

For the moment, my apartment is still a place of doom and gloom – so take warning from the quote I put at the top of this post. Maybe tomorrow will be a better day.

To quote an Italian proverb, “Finché c’è vita c’è speranza.”

Time for a cocktail – or three.

It’s only Quarantine if it comes from the Quarante province of France. Otherwise, it’s just Sparkling Isolation.