Everything is dialectics.
And dialectics are confusing.
I am sitting in San Marcos, Texas.
Listening to a friend’s song.
A stripped-down version of an old song.
I say he should put it on his album.
People enjoy alternate versions of songs.
Last night, California imposed a state-wide lock down.
The land from which our notion of lifestyles arose, closed.
Today, New York ordered all “non-essential” businesses to close.
Your only excuse to be outside is “solitary exercise.”
The land from which our notion of modernity arose, closed.
Governors are asking for the military to be deployed.
To facilitate an already failed process of mitigation.
I said that, not the governors.
My friend wrote a haunting song.
A metronome undergirds the sound of decay.
He said it was a mistake, the metronome.
I love this mistake.
This is my final testament from the age of 27.
Tell me, do I return to New York?
So I can say in whatever formulation of the future we receive, that I drove across the country twice in a week because I am a combination of impulse and indecision.
Or, does one watch the slow-grinding end to what I knew society to be from the country?
Sometimes even places like Oklahoma can prove pivotal.
I’ll get killed in New York.
But, when my story gets told, being born in Miami and dying in New York has a ring to it.
Being born in Miami and waiting out a crisis in a town a half-hour outside of Austin has a ring to it.
Rings of differing size.
The latter is a plot in need of workshopping.
The kind of workshopping where you’re surrounded by writers more talented than you are, carrying a level of honesty you aren’t used to.
The bastards, they’ll hurt your feelings.
Don DeLillo will be brought up, “all [good] plots point toward death.”
You’ll be too shy to say that you knew the line was from White Noise—
That you’ve read it two-and-a-half times.
That a pretty girl once sat next to you on the 7 train and asked what you were reading.
That you fumbled over your words while explaining the plot, the Airborne Toxic Event, the precocious children, Hitler.
That the girl smiled, wondering what you were talking about, but wrote down her number on the back of the book anyways.
That when you took her out the next night, she didn’t inquire about my literary progress.
That you never saw her again after kissing at Union Square.
That our first kiss occurred after I had made a drunken call for revolution.
That before she leaned in, her eyes photographed me.
That last week, while sitting at a bar on the Lower East Side, the gentleman next to you asked why you were annotating the book.
That you said you found it prescient and hilarious.
That you enjoy rereading books when you don’t know what to consume next.
That your annotations this time around were in black pen, as opposed to blue, and your highlighter of a better quality.
That you wanted to compare annotations, see how far your critical thinking had come.
That you smiled when the gentleman said he didn’t know who Don DeLillo was, because you presume New Yorkers know everything.
“Well, I’m from New York.”
That you were apprehensive when the gentleman asked for a second cigarette, because he didn’t press you on White Noise’s prescience, didn’t ask if DeLillo had written other books of note.
That you would’ve said Libra was important, because it’s about a young man who was granted the opportunity to become a historical agent.
That you were jealous of historical agents.
That you thought he looked like someone, someone of note, but of a minor note because you didn’t know who the someone was.
That your latest read was lacking the rapidity you impress yourself with sometimes.
That you think this is symbolic of a mental decline.
That you retort said symbolism with your knack for staying up to date on the news.
That you can quote the latest (official, via Johns Hopkins University) death toll from Italy.
That you can read facts from outside of your academic focus and regurgitate them in a fashion strangers find convincing.
That you believe this is important, because people have an aversion to listen to experts.
That you don’t think it’s in bad taste to write selfishly about a crisis while the crisis is occurring.
That you believe you’d be living in bad faith if you didn’t write selfishly about a crisis while the crisis was occurring.
That you’re an adherent of posterity.
That, a week from then, you’ll be debating as to what your next step will be.
Because, like the workshoppers claim, “all [good] plots point toward death.”
Everything is dialectics.
And dialectics are confusing.

Rudy Ralph Martinez is a resident of New York City, the epicenter of the Coronavirus pandemic in the United States. Before the Pause, he was a graduate student at the City University of New York and a contributor for PopMatters. He hopes to one day doze off on the train again.