SCENES FROM A BANDIDOID QUARANTINE

I've been mostly at home during the quarantine. Oh yeah, Emily and I have been doing bandidoid grocery and takeout runs (we want our favorite food joints to survive), and taking her 98 year-old mother to the doctor. But we've been homebodies for the most part.

Seems if we don't have jobs to go to we have no trouble finding stuff to do. Ideas have been stacking up for years, and we have a house that needs taking care of . . . then there's the garden!

Hacienda Hogan is a great place to live. It has to be. We made it that way.

And it's springtime. A weird Spring. Like the end of Un Chien Andalou, with the couple buried in their waists in the sand while they're being eaten by insects.

We have insects, and flowers, and there was a fantastic overgrowth from the changing climate's overabundance of rain that buried both yards in Max Ernst-style jungle. And me being me, hacking through while listening to TejanosBest.com brings on Edgar Rice/William S. Burroughsian imagery. Praise Xochiquetzal!

Now and then I uncover artifacts of some lost civilization. A lot has been getting lost in the chaos. Memories of past apocalypses to help get through the current one.

With the world on pause, and all of us stuck at home, we need to think about what to do when the crisis ends. What will we do when we go back to work? Will work still be there? What kind of life, and world, do we want after all?

Emily and I are thinking about retirement. It looks better every day. She's learning how to play the piano and read music. I'm working on a long-neglected comic strip (and drawing in general), and working on Zyx; Or, Bring Me the Brain of Victor Theremin. And I take the occasional picture.

And I have other projects. There's a lot of things I want to do. To hell with what the experts say will sell. Their culture and economy is in the process of transmogrifying beyond all recognition.

Will these so-called experts still be in business when the virus finally burns out? How much of that world will be left? If any.

If you want the world to be more like what you want rather than a nightmare, you have to work at it. Utopias are do-it-yourself, dystopias are corporate products that you can order online and are delivered to your front door.

I know that what is utopia for some is dystopia for others, but then the fighting and fucking of civilizations is what makes life interesting, and brings forth new worlds.

The more, the merrier, I say.

As Voltaire said, “We must cultivate our own garden.”