The Crow

I was walking on this gloomy morning alone after Sam had been particularly atrocious on an attempt to walk him. He has always barked at other dogs with an assassin’s vigor; whether Dachshund or Doberman, Bichon Frise or Boxer, Sam transforms into 35 pounds of pure Beagle hatred upon sight of another dog. He strains at the leash, snarling, gnashing teeth and salivating wildly, barely able to get in a breath between the bays, barks and other ballyhoo. 

I’m used to this. At 15, which if Lorne Greene is to be believed renders him a 105-year old human equivalency, Sam persists with these capricious expressions of violent desire. Fine. Now though, his failing eyesight is such that he mistakes toddlers for other dogs and offers them the same kindnesses he would a fellow canine. After two instances of Sam making plain his wish for some dog-on-baby ultra-violence, I brought him home and finished my walk alone.

It has been raining for the past several days in Southern California and not only that, a somberness has descended across the world and across the United States. I am away from my native family and I ache for that connection in this muddle. I am married to a person who is perfect for me, and I am happy. I am artistically satisfied for the most part (whether or not my audience is), and in the largest sense of it, my life is going well. Happy but sad, the simplest iteration of the human condition. I am sad for my separation from those who have known me forever, and sad for my country and for my world. We fight an enemy we cannot see, and the only weapon against it is doing nothing. And that is not our nature. Not our nature at all. It is in this frame of mind, under a low-hanging slate sky and into the needling mist of a middle-of-March low pressure system that I walked in a forward tilt, keeping stiff pace for no reason.

The sometimes torrential and sometimes misting rains of the past few days have rendered the earth soft on my walk across a dramatic mound that offers a 360-degree panoramic view of the San Fernando Valley. Before rising to the mound, I hop across a small creek, which because of the rains had swelled beyond its usual trickle. As I selected a stone for crossing it, I spotted a crow standing on a rock in the river.

“Well, hello, little man. How are you today?” I said softly, hoping not to startle him.

“Okay, I guess,” he said.

I don’t know if I took another step, but if I did, that was it. I definitely didn’t take two. I looked at the crow and he looked at me. “I could have sworn I just heard you talk,” I said to the crow. He continued to stare back at me. 

In writing that last sentence, I felt compelled to write the word “blankly” at the end. Because in describing a crow staring at something, how could you not say the stare was blank? But it wasn’t. It was the opposite of blank. It was…thoughtful. “Did you just talk to me?” I asked.

“It would have been rude not to, don’t you think? Oh, and speaking of rude, please pardon me. I didn’t inquire as to how you were doing today. I hope you’re well.”

I was shocked. I guess it showed.

“Well?” he said.

“I’m doing great!” I said.

“Are you sure? I saw you walking up this way and you seemed a little down,” he said. “I’m Matt.”

“Hi Matt. My name’s Chris. Chris Elliott. Like the comedy writer. I write comedy too. He screws up my brand like you wouldn’t believe.”

“He is funny though.”

“I know, he’s really good. That’s part of the problem. I publish under Christopher sometimes, sometimes under Christopher Dean, which is my full name—"

“I know. I have your ‘Pottymouth’ album.” He was smiling. Can crows smile? “That’s some funny stuff, man. I also love the ‘Dismayed Gourmet’ essays.”

“So you know me? You know who I am?” I was beginning to get nervous.

“You think this talking crow stuff happens randomly? I was sent here to help you feel better. I was sent here to grant you a wish.”

“A wish? Anything?”

“Of course not. None of this, ‘Okay, cure the coronavirus’ pie-in-the-sky. It has to be for you. For you alone. My managers say you apologize way too much and that it hamstrings you from being of greater value to the world. They say you should just lighten up, give yourself a damn break, and let your spirit truly roam. The world derives nothing from you unless you are at peace and comfort to offer the full measure of your unique expression. They’re thinking maybe if you get a nice piccolo trumpet or something, it might help free some of your bottled energy.”

“Wow. Who’s your manager?” I asked Matt.

“Classified. Now, your wish?”

“Not sure. Can I finish my walk first?”

“Of course!”

“Care to come along?” He flew up from the rock and turned a circle over my head. "Caw! Caw! Let's go!"

I started up the mound and he circled me as I walked up the grassy hill to the spectacular view that was always the centerpiece of my walks with Sam, except of course when he wants to maim the new progeny of Woodland Hills. 

"Reminds me of a joke," Matt said. "Even though we eat carcasses on the roadway, we never get hit ourselves. Do you know why?"

"No, Matt. Why?"

"Because one of our buddies sees the automobiles coming and yells 'Caw! Caw!"

We continued our walk across the mound and then down the other side, and Matt lighted upon my shoulder. “Chris, I know you’re sad. I know you’re in between on a couple of things. Your work life is in between, your music life is in between and your writing is between. You‘re looking for your next big idea to work on, but hey, you’ve had a great couple of years, haven’t you? You wrote a novel and a musical in the last two years, Dude, that’s awesome. Seriously, respect. High-level avian respect. So you haven’t sold them. So what? Some people whose opinions you respect have assured you that they are both good quality works, and that they are both in a professionally presentable condition. There is a lot you can do to share your work more widely.”

“Matt, how do you know all this stuff about me?”

“Again, classified. Now, this wife of yours. She seems pretty cool. Tell me about her.”

And so we walked the full three miles that Sam and I usually walk, chatting about love, music, poetry and the flavor of fresh roadkill. I walked an extra bit of the loop to get him back to where I found him.

“Chris,” he said. “You never asked for that wish. You know I could probably get that novel onto a decision-maker’s desk for you.”

“Matt. Crows are smart.” I said, a broad smile crossing a face that really needed one. “You must know by now; my wish has come true. I have wished only for a friend.”

Doing nothing is the only weapon we have against the coronavirus

The Patrick Henry avatar remains a prominent American ideal—the mystique of the rugged individual—indefatigable, unflappable and unchangeable; give me liberty or give me death. Well, that is indeed what the choice has boiled down to. For the time being, I am advocating against liberty and against death. 

The liberty we sacrifice in this case amounts to passive resistance as a means of winning a war, social distancing being the primary strategy that will defeat the coronavirus. We win by retreating into our imaginations, by getting to know our families better, by reading, making an improvement on a musical instrument, painting, learning a complex software suite, taking a crack at actively navigating a wild bear market or whatever it is that sustained periods of time apart from society may inspire. We are such a handshakin’, high-fivin’, fist-bumpin’, bro-huggin’, joint-passin’, buffet-eatin’, chip-dippin’, ride-sharin’, subway-takin’, airline-flyin’, concert-goin’, casual sex-havin’ society, how are we ever going to adjust?

We will need everyone’s voluntary cooperation. We will need government to help workers and small businesses suddenly upended by this. We will need large corporations to provide work-at-home solutions for employees. We will need community in the large and small sense of the word. We will need to embrace a sense of shared destiny. We will need people to cease socialization for a few months. We can mitigate this to a large degree, but in order to do so, we will need all of this.

The United States is on the upswell of a wave that has not yet crested. Think of it as a climate crisis in miniature. We are failing at climate crisis response, largely because it is an enemy we cannot see and whose crisis point is decades out—a profile tailor-made for human ignoring. The coronavirus has closer to a one-month envelope before its potential crisis point, and that seems indeed to be within the scope of human strategizing. 

We are at the front end of what appears to be a solid understanding of the danger, albeit six weeks too late, and albeit without much coherent messaging from the Trump administration. Communities and corporations have taken this over, rendering the federal government a dead and bloated thing, a dull-eyed impediment, a nuisance if not for its checkbook, irrelevant to strategy or communications. The Trump administration has shrunk into miniature or has been distended to vile and bizarre grotesqueries over this, its image a comic reflection in a funhouse mirror, engorged in one place and elongated in another, all where it shouldn’t be, all in distorted disproportion. Everyone but the truest devotees to the realm understand that Trump’s cabal of amateurs, sycophants and witnesses are hopelessly out of their depth when it comes to actually managing a crisis. Fortunately, communities and businesses are largely ignoring the lies and bogus recommendations coming out of the White House. 

This thing is a beast, and it is going to tear into this country all through spring and summer unless we get and stay serious about social distancing. Our trajectory is on a par with Italy and Iraq, not with South Korea or Germany, both of which have flattened their curves. I read a Johns Hopkins analyst this morning who approximates 50,000 undiagnosed cases in the US right now at a minimum. With statistics indicating a three to six-day doubling, that puts us into millions of cases by summer absent vigilance about social distancing, which in turn translates to overwhelmed ICU capacity. Some promising reports came through today, but we have to keep our foot on the gas. We are just beginning to respond appropriately to this as a nation, and we cannot blow it now. Write or call, but don't come by. It's the thought that counts, and you must know I love you.