Waking at my usual time, I confess being disoriented.  I admit that my blood sugar was very low.  On that account alone it is not surprising that my body, felt like it was Sunday.  The calendar reads Tuesday.  Well informed individuals know that the mind’s function depends upon the brain.  The brain is an an energy hungry processor.  If due to circumstances the fuel runs low, the engine sputters.

I received a phone call from my local banker, who was kind enough to call me directly with the answer to a question which I left by the bank yesterday.  I mentioned to him that he was working on a Sunday.  He laughed, commenting that with house-quarantine, and social distancing every day seems like a Sunday.

I am relieved that he misunderstood my comment as a joke.

Vertigo is a reeling sensation of confusion, a loss of orientation.  Another factor fed into my disorientation earlier today.  I do not remember which of the news feeds conveyed to me the destruction of markets.  That was not meant as a metaphor.  The report defined a marketplace as a meeting of buyers and sellers.  That does not currently exist, especially with the price of a barrel of crude dipping below 0, into negative territory.  No one need explain that this comes as a “heart attack” to countries dependent upon energy exports, to fund critical needs.  I do not own a oil stock.  However large segments of value belonging to institutions and individuals are counted in the worth of shares in energy companies.

As everything is connected to everything else in this world, how important it becomes is when social distancing to slow down a deadly virus means that markets of all kinds begin to die.  The Fed is spending trillions to resuscitate a flat-lined market.

We operated in a state of vertigo, a disorienting illusion, thinking that the economy is summed up by cost benefit calculations, by winners with their faces turned from those who lose.  Those of us, the fortunate, some who live in North America, furthermore congratulated ourselves on our moral merit.

These principles, that markets are mechanisms, machine-like, with no moral dimension, that you ought not to consider the other side of the transaction — caveat emptor.  After all is said and done, how big was your win?  Our customary way of thinking, and conducting ourselves now appears  to be the anti-reason, the ultimately dangerous modus operandi that it always has been.

I paged through the New York Times Style Magazine this morning.  The advertising photos and articles are artifacts of the old world, the BC world 〈before covid-19〉 of endless growth, of excess.  I liked this photo of Keira Knightly.  She is by any taste, an attractive woman,  She is a fine actress as well.

In the world being born, I think that few will care whether Ms Knightly wears Coco Crush Rings.

Yesterday, invited to take a walk with friends in the Blue Heron Forest Preserve, our special treat was to make the acquaintance of Hugo, their new family member, a rescue-pup.  Hugo knows nothing about markets, about making money in a bear market, etc.  Hugo just knows, and thoroughly enjoys the relationship conveyed to his body, by his sense of smell, keen eyesight, and his love of running.

I’d like to learn to live more like Hugo.