Fear is part of the human experience. My father would drive drunk and even by age 10 I knew accidents and injuries occurred, by silently releasing the upstairs receiver once the ringing stopped at night when my Mother picked up. That was how I learned my father was killed.
Gone back to bed I finally slept well because he had crashed 7 cars in the 1954-1957 period. I was ready for it to be over. At 6:20 am that morning another call came in from State Police. A man’s voice said his body was missing and presumed to have lived. Had he come home? No. The car was crushed when it ran off of an embankment on Route 9W.
I went to school and later saw him at home with bandages. For me he was dead, although he lived until 1974, I was comfortable for him to stay dead. I didn’t want any more calls.
And since I’ve been circumspect about death and the distinction between “dead to me” and “dead to the world.”
For Coronavirus to me opens that space again between the uncertainty of life and the certainty of death. Life is precious, so valuable and when risk of death is in the hunt it’s now so familiar.
For those who have this illness and the fear of it I know what that fear feels.
Please stay safe. It will pass but its memory will be within your structure of thinking.
Bonhams: Consign With Us Today These are the Times that Try Men's Souls. Paine, Thomas. Sold for US$152,900.
Bonhams: Consign With Us Today The First Printed Work on Political Economy. Sold for US$127,000.
Bonhams: Consign With Us Today Signed Lincoln Photograph with Son Tad. Sold for US$76,700.
Bonhams: Consign With Us Today First Expanded Edition of Common Sense. Paine, Thomas. Sold for US$76,700.
Bonhams: Consign With Us Today Presentation Copy of Hemmingway's First Book. Sold for US$70,350.
Bonhams: Consign With Us Today St. John's Gospel on Vellum, A Fragment in Greek, 5th Century. Sold for US$70,350.
Bonhams: Consign With Us Today Only A Handful of Surviving Copies. Joyce, James. Ulysses. Sold for US$58,880.
Bonhams: Consign With Us Today A Pivotal Step in Einstein's Development of General Relativity. Sold for US$51,200.
Bonhams: Consign With Us Today A Fine Jewelled Binding Signed by Sangorski & Sutcliffe. Sold for US$56,320.
Bonhams: Consign With Us Today Joyce's Annotated Typescript Draft for Finnegan's Wake. Sold for US$48,640.
Bonhams: Consign With Us Today One of 30 Pre-Publication Copies, Inscribed by Hemingway to Spencer Tracy, Who Played "The Old Man". Sold for US$83,050.
Sotheby’s Year in Review
Sotheby’s Year in Review: A Rare Hebrew Bible with Micrographic Masorah. Sold: 1,514,000 USD
Sotheby’s Year in Review: "The Freedman's Primer.” Sold: 241,300 USD
Sotheby’s Year in Review: Smith, William. "The Map that Changed the World." Sold: 139,700 USD
Sotheby’s Year in Review: Psalter, C13th. Illuminated Psalter. Sold: 330,200 GBP
Sotheby’s Year in Review: Lincoln, Abraham. The abolition of slavery. Sold: 13,697,500 USD
Sotheby’s Year in Review: Vergilius. Opera, Venice, Aldo Manuzio, 1501. Sold: 1,041,400 USD
