Notes from the Pandemic: Chapter One: These Days: These Days

Twenty
We Howl at 8 pm, April 8, 2020
The first time I heard it, I thought it was kids driving in the empty streets, blasting music out a car window. It’s been so quiet at night that any loud sound feels like an intrusion. But then I stopped and really listened. And opened the big, sliding glass door to my garden. And I realized what the sound was -- people all around the mountain, woo-ing and beating buckets and howling, their cries bouncing off the mountain ridges and echoing through the canyons.
I raised my hands to my mouth without even thinking and howled back to them, to all the neighbors I’ve never met, the people to whom I’m strangely connected these days. I howl into the night air, thinking of all those sound waves reaching out, wondering how far they will travel, exactly where and when they will fade away, while a traffic light turns green on an empty street somewhere.
In New York City, I know they open their windows at 7 pm and call out in appreciation of the health care workers who navigate what most of us never will. Friends have told me how moving it is.
Here in LA, as far as I know, we just howl. To say we’re alive. To express frustration. To say I hear you. To say I’m here. To say I’ll see you on the other side.
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