Put your tray tables in an upright position, and prepare for departure from 2020. On your right, a once-in-a-millennium scene of cosmic proportions and galactic significance. Though a rather shoddy photo of it (as I took it myself, handheld, shaking in the subzero temps of the Utah high desert). In a spontaneous gambit to witness the Great Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, I rented a magically-available yurt in the dark sky preserve of Dead Horse State Park near Moab, Utah. We could all use a little escape hatch from the universe. A shift into a new alignment. A different perspective entirely. Tho I imagine on the earth-bound Galactic Federation spaceship, the on-flight entertainment is exclusively limited to 1985’s “Cocoon.” Because we all know that when the aliens land—instead of delving into the timeless secrets of the universe—Boomers will just try to mine them for their next-level Botox and anti-aging secrets. Victoria’s Secret blue satin jumpsuit, $15 – Antique World Mall | Smithline Exclusive brown knit coat with fur trim, $55 – Antique World Mall | …

“Perhaps he knew, as I did not, that the Earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road,” – Karen Blixen, Out of Africa Before I left for Kenya, I read Karen Blixen’s (nom de plume: Isak Dinesen) book, Out of Africa. Taking place at about this time 100 years ago, the Baroness owned a coffee plantation just outside of Nairobi. Her book is ripe with the soul of the country and its people, with less of the entitled colonialism than I expected. Karen wanted nothing more than for her bones to lie in rest in Africa. She did not get her wish. Her coffee plantation suffered locusts and other acts of God, and she was forced to leave the land she loved, later dying of malnutrition in her Dutch estate. A minor tragedy of dislocation. On the day I took this picture, I wanted nothing more than to make it out of Africa. I’ll likely process the full scope of traveling during the outbreak of a worldwide pandemic over time—peeling off …

“Banish the ghost of coronaaaaahhh…” Before my trip to Kenya, I went to Passport Health, a traveler’s clinic for immunizations and fear needling. There, I was handed a terrifying brochure filled with the potential dangers of my destination. Typhoid. Hepatitis. Yellow fever. And a long list of other shit-inducing diseases borne of filth and mosquitoes and the social nature of human existence. It totaled $1500 to completely mitigate the fear of the unknown. I paid $500 to slightly assuage it, which my Kenyan friend found baffling and idiotic. I also paid dearly for taking the live Typhoid pills that made me vomit for hours on end over the course a week. I took off into an exponentially panicked world. When I left one week ago, the novel coronavirus drifted in and out of the public consciousness. It still felt like a somewhat foreign concept. Other people’s problems. A few days after I landed, COVID-19 did too. Blessedly not via the conduit of me. Since then, it feels like the entire world has screeched to a …