Gary D. Grossman
Once Upon a Plague – Anxiety, Creativity, Life
Once upon a time, there was a virus called SARs (severe acute respiratory syndrome) which evolved in an unknown vertebrate, mutated, and then was transmitted to humans via civet cats.
Once upon a time, there was a virus called MERs (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome), which evolved in an unknown vertebrate, mutated, and then was transmitted to humans via dromedary camels.
Once upon a time, there was a virus called COVID-19 which evolved in an unknown vertebrate, mutated, then hop-scotched into humanity.
The COVID-19 virus mutated into a sphere with spikes evenly arrayed across its surface, like a golf ball coated with skin tags. These tags resembled a corona or crown — the C in COVID-19. Micrographs of C-19 cells were comical, depicting something more closely resembling an alien from a Star Wars bar scene, than a lethal virus.
~
In the third week of March 2020, I was in the eastern end of the Jezreel Valley in Israel setting up a collaborative citizen science research project with Dr. Motti Charter, an Israeli ecologist. Motti discovered that placing nest boxes for barn owls (Tyto alba) at the edges of agricultural grain fields created homes for these carnivorous birds and significantly reduced the need for poisoning rodent pests. Owlets require daily feeding, and the predation by foraging owl parents significantly reduced rodent abundance while concomitantly increasing grain production. Owls also puke up large pellets containing bones of their prey. As a Citizen Science project, Motti sent kits containing pellets and rodent bone identification keys to local high school teachers, so their students could gain experience in scientific research by identifying the owl's prey. My role was to statistically analyze questionnaire responses of students and teachers to determine learning outcomes. The agricultural and economic implications of this research were epic, because barn owls are one of the most widely distributed birds on Earth, and rodent depredation is a major cause of grain loss worldwide. Hence, this biocontrol technique could potentially decrease the use of agricultural toxins worldwide, with no likely negative impacts.
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Once upon a time, there was a town in the Jezreel Valley named Megiddo — the biblically prophesized location of Armageddon. As we toured project study sites in the Jezreel, the grain basket of Israel, COVID-19 entered from stage left. The country shut down, closing schools, hotels and restaurants, and quarantining visitors. Nonetheless, the compassionate hotel manager of Kibbutz Mizra ignored the order, permitting residence and meals of fresh whole-grain breads, veggies, fruit, and local cheeses.
COVID-19 pared my nerves and temperament down to their raw roots. I was riveted to daily radio broadcasts because changes in pandemic policies could occur every few hours. My research lectures on our lab's recent advances in animal habitat selection studies were swiftly cancelled at both University of Haifa and a national research station. A friend and colleague in the States put me in touch with an Israeli ecologist who offered his home as a refuge in the event I became trapped in Israel. As the government shut down hotels, they made almost no provisions for those already evicted. It seemed nonsensical to prevent visitors from leaving the country, but phones to agencies and airlines yielded no answers — mostly just automated recordings stating the mailbox of the person you are calling is full.
~
Once upon a time, a second century (CE) artist named Brutius spent an unknown amount of time on his hands and knees placing small tiles to create the Mosaic of Megiddo. I was calmed by the thought of Brutius toiling away centuries ago, producing images that yet endure. Besides geometric patterns and a centerpiece of two circling fish, the mosaic depicts the first written mention of Jesus Christ as G-d.
My return flight to the States departed in five days. Nonetheless, given the alarming predictions of the upcoming viral apocalypse, my stress levels powered up like a 747 taxiing for take-off. I began calling Turkish Air hourly. No one answered — not the Jerusalem office, nor the Istanbul office, nor the Atlanta office. My ears received nothing but the mechanically regurgitated we are unable to take your call at this time, all of our representatives are busy or the tolling of infinite rings. After a day and a half, I finally got through to the US Consulate in Jerusalem, and asked if Ben Gurion airport was still open, or if I should try to return via Beiruit or Amman. An embassy employee advised me that leaving Israel would be very unwise: not a realistic option and confirmed that outgoing flights from Ben Gurion were departing. They repeated just go to the airport the day of your flight, but I still had no confirmation that my flight would leave on schedule.
I asked Motti to take me to Ben Gurion Airport and sauntered right past armed guards, although a same day airline ticket always has been required for entrance. Apparently, even military security was befuddled by the rapidly changing government regulations and the spectre of C-19.
On 10:25 a.m. on 20 March 2020, I departed Ben Gurion Airport, on Turkish Airlines flight 785 to Istanbul and continuing to Atlanta on TK31. Only a few travelers wore masks or other protective gear. My wife picked me up that afternoon at Hartsfield airport, and we drove the seventy-eight miles home to Athens, GA.
~
Once upon a time, specifically on 19 March, 2020, the Athens/Clark County Commission passed an Emergency Order governing business operations, closing most non-essential local businesses. The order shuttered restaurants except for off-premise consumption. On 7 July, 2020, the Commission amended the standing Emergency Order to require masking in all public venues, and coverings bloomed on the faces of people in Athens, Georgia, like the paper-white daffodils in my spring backyard.
Through the mysteries of fate, the pandemic pushed me from lapsed poet to active poet, which also piqued my curiosity regarding COVID, creativity, and anxiety.
Moderation
1.
Flew home from Israel,
week two of the Plague,
fourteen day quarantine,
and my Zayde’s haint,
rasps idle hands, the devil’s friend,
so I’m painting our mange-
blotched, 1940s Cape Cod,
our peeling, white, heart-haven.
Kibbutz Mizra, Plague day four,
I flail against the government’s web,
cancelled flights and shuttered stores.
in the Holy Land,
where the air rustles nervously,
despite greening hills, and
there is no moderation.
The new order says
shed all hotel guests,
like winter fur in April,
but kindness prevails,
and I remain, fed even.
Anxiety forecast now
cloudy with occasional sun.
2.
Plague safety and painting
are best in moderation:
six feet apart but talk,
sixteen feet up the ladder,
but please, no farther.
Mental health jogging, but
personal distance from step one.
Rules too harsh, you rush,
overload the brush —
paint drips and spatters
on finished spaces,
and the virus persists.
Painting is meditation.
smooth, silky brushes,
caressing the clapboard.
our house-skin now
sporting layers of ivory.
3.
Life and painting —
ninety percent preparation.
Wash, scrape, prime,
mask, wipe, scrub,
listen, think, act,
Zayde said anything
worth doing, is
worth doing right.
But I’ll always have
spots to touch-up.
Last Stanza Poetry Review, 2021
I remained uninfected by COVID until 26 January 2024, when my asymptomatic daughter returned home with the virus from her University of Georgia neuroscience research lab. Familial interactions are convoluted especially when a member is a vector.
~
Familial trauma furnished the construction materials for my cabin of creative writing — poetry and essays. My mother was hindered by each and every obstacle facing smart, single, working women in the 50s and 60s. Her work challenges, and the stresses associated with being the only parent of an active, strong-willed son, must have played some role in her long-term depression.
At ages eleven, and thirteen, I returned home from school and an overnight, to find Mom overdosed and laying in vomit and diarrhea. These attempts left me with an almost phobic fear of uncertainty — the shoe will always drop, something will always go wrong. To quote Yeats' poem, “The Second Coming,” ...things fall apart, the centre cannot hold... To a young person, a parent's suicide attempt, and onset of serious mental illness strikes one like lightening out of a clear cloudless sky.
~
Once upon a time, well twice actually, the wraith named Dad, appeared during my adolescence. The first visit involved family court and a suit for increased child support, and the second occurred when I was nineteen, a year after Mom died in a car accident. During that winter break of 1973, I drove from Berkeley to Long Island, NY, to find him living in a dust-coated, barely heated garage, rented from a widower friend. A plumber by trade, he urged me to quit my junior year at Berkeley and move to Long Island to plumb houses with him. I stared at him in incredulity and replied get real. That was the last time I saw my father.
Luckily, I had strength enough to power through my anxieties. Here's the TikTok version (please hit like to follow): I earned a PhD and a tenured faculty position at a research university, married, fathered, and helped raise two daughters, published many, many scientific papers, a graphic memoir, three books of poetry, and been told more than once you're exhausting, you just have way too much energy. I hate to be bored and need to create, or maybe I’m running away from myself.
When I entered therapy in my thirties, I addressed the unhealthy mechanisms by which I strove to retain control, which resulted in problems like my difficulty falling asleep. The inability to let go is a not unexpected result of a youth where things did fall apart.
~
COVID-19 resurrected my dormant anxiety. There were few certainties regarding how to remain uninfected: masking, disinfectants, total isolation? The skin on my hands began to resemble pink crepe paper from hot water and soap washes, chased with alcohol-based sanitizers. My other shoe began running a marathon, given I was in the high mortality age group (65+). It appeared many college-aged kids, including the ones I regularly taught, were asymptomatic yet contagious (like my daughter, who brought the virus home in 2024). Large gatherings such as choir performances turned into super-spreader events, and one could only imagine indoor atmospheres filled with floating spiky globes of C-19, as the choir belted out “Amazing Grace.”
By 2021 most everyone had become experts at using remote video communication platforms like Zoom.
The Losses of COVID-19
What do I miss most,
they ask? A tight hug,
I say, more than 15 seconds.
The warmth of bodies, known
and new. The softness of blouses
and even the crushed goose down
of insulated coats. Memories
freed by someone’s scent. Hugs,
coming and going, greeting and
parting, new or familiar,
hands lightly stroking my back,
granting a good squeeze.
Verse-Virtual, 2021
~
Once upon a time, back in the last century, the creative writing life was called the "sassy" era; that is, the epoch of the Self Addressed Stamped Envelopes (SASE). The US Postal Service was the means of communication via which acceptances and rejections were transmitted. Electronic submissions and the World Wide Web were mere glimmers in the eye of Tim Berners-Lee, although he likely wasn't fantasizing about poetry and creative nonfiction. If there is one development that has influenced creative writing more than any other, it is the internet.
Taking care of my first child led me to tug on the thread of creative writing that extended from my teen years to adulthood and finally, parenthood. Somehow the continuity of generations, diaper changes, endless walking and burping, and macerating frozen peas or carrots, resuscitated my poetry gene. I wrote while Robyn napped, I wrote while Robyn watched Barney, I wrote while Robyn jumped endlessly in her Johnny Jumper. Fatherhood provided material for volumes of poetry and essays, especially given my own traumatic childhood. I wrote about my new life as a dad, every time a spare moment presented itself. But with the birth of my second daughter, creative writing took a back seat to changing dirty diapers and liquefying veggies.
~
During the height of the pandemic, I received an email request for a poetry submission from a literary journal. The majority of my recent writing energy and effort had been devoted to the research papers and grant proposals essential to my job as a professor of animal population ecology at University of Georgia. Even today, I wonder how that poetry editor found my name. I had been on Facebook for about 15 years but had no idea of how deeply entwined the literary community and internet had become, and how easy it was to reintegrate via web-based platforms and social media. The solicitation felt like a gift and was the motivation to begin a successful submissions practice once again.
Once upon a time, poetry and science were brother and sister that informed each other. It was most enjoyable to discover writing poetry improved my scientific papers and vice versa. Both strive to explore the essence of existence, animate and inanimate. Both strive to be terse while conveying relevant information. Both strive to describe life and objects in new and deep ways.
~
Once upon a time, pandemic containment measures such as quarantines, remote work, and limited business interactions contributed to the isolation fueling both internet usage and creative writing. The pandemic, or its countermeasures, initially had a positive effect on creativity and productivity (as reported by Yvonne Gorlich reported in Nature, 2023). However, by the end of 2021, both self-reported creativity and productivity declined due to fatigue, remote work and quarantines.
One of the ways we counteracted the resulting anxiety was through community building, communal spirit being one of the few pleasant aspects of the pandemic. As a daily jogger I saw many neighbors out walking for the first time: whole families even. On Facebook, a local resident formed a group called Athens Quarantine Canteen where neighbors exchanged recipes, food sources, and shared spices. As of April 2026, the group contains 1800 members and the good karma and new recipes continue still.
Mothers and Daughters Walking
It is June 2020, and my wife
is talking me down, yet again
from the paranoid heights of
imaginary COVID, health
professional that she is. We
quarantine in place, the days
mostly crushed like the
cans in our recycling
bin.
I slide off my harness of fear
by jogging, though my left knee
protests like an unoiled screen
door. So my gait is odd, a mildly
hamstrung horse, for five miles of
therapy.
Who said every cloud has a
silver lining? Surely some are
copper, tin, or even lead? Does
Odin hurl COVID-bolts to keep us
on our toes or do plagues come
from Asgard’s random number
generator?
On my jogs during quarantine
I see mothers and daughters
walking. Peas from the same pod.
High school, middle school, even
fourth graders, home for Zoom
instruction, with Mom and
Dad.
Everyone is tired of our ruffled
feathers from months in the human
chicken coop, and we all ache
for the smell of sunlight and
the taste of a fresh breeze. COVID
sent us outside, stretched our legs
at midday, let us relearn how
to listen, even released kindness.
Perhaps there is a silver lining.
Lyrical Years, Kelsay Press 2023
~
Once upon a time – 1:59PM on 5 October, 2022, to be precise – the Athens/Clark County GA Commission allowed the State of Emergency Order for C-19 to expire.
Once upon a time, the deaths of approximately 1.2 million people in the United State were linked to C-19 infections.
Six years after the discovery of C-19, it remains difficult to assess the relationship between pandemic-generated anxiety on creative writing and productivity. Nonetheless, the literary publishing community has grown exponentially over the last fifteen years. (According to Benjamin Davis, a founder of the creative writing platform Chill Subs, 750 reviews existed in 2010, when he began mapping the data.. The number of markets grew from1500 in 2020 to over 4000 today.)
My own C-19-anxiety, which had morphed into mild agoraphobia, began to dissipate in mid-2024, when a trip to the supermarket or popular restaurant no longer brought on jitters. Even with a vaccination and booster shots I did catch C-19 again in January 2025, though a dose of Paxlovid relieved all symptoms other than lethargy and a runny nose. Horrible fantasies of respirators and hospital wards were finally gone.
I continue to find joy in writing, and I don't anticipate my creative writing gene will switch off any time soon, health willing. I have joined two online poetry groups, the first a generative group and the second a critique group, both of which have increased my sense of community and skills as a writer. The internet, with all its warts and lesions, still is a wonderful tool for connecting and learning.
Paying Attention on the Baldwin Grade
Passing the big Ingles market I speed through the last intersection in Baldwin Georgia, and crest the ridge holding up the South end of town, only to find the undulating Piedmont hills laid out before me—visibility at least twenty-seven miles—odd for July, with its shower-curtain humidity, even though white and red oaks do their best sets of push-ups provisioning oxygen, while loblolly and shortleaf pines comp us with chasers of pinene, the real deal, not that fake Christmas tree hanging from your rear-view mirror, and I am gob smacked by the immensity and continuity of this robust green landscape, distant from the ocean, yet looking like nothing so much as a horizon-long set of large rollers from a mid-Atlantic storm, so many waves of yellow-green, green-green and blue-green, colors ebbing and flooding with the breeze, like some window shade that you pull down but keeps rolling itself up, and I should really pull over and suck it all in like a long toke on a joint—let this immensity fill my lungs and seep into iron-red arterial blood for a lap or two around my body, but this is where the eight mile stretch of forty-five ends and we’re back up to sixty-five within two-thirds the length of the local high school football field—my wife and daughters are accustomed to my speeding, not too fast mind you, just the six or seven mph of lagniappe the troopers give you, and Georgia 441 takes speed so well, as long as you slow up on the unbanked esses just north of Homer where you have to drop to sixty if there’s traffic, but when no one’s on your right, you can slalom across the lanes, drifting like Mario Andretti at the Grand Prix of Monaco—windows down and chestnut hair flapping—and that dendroid diorama of big mid-oceanic waves stays with me, all the way to Athens as I inhale the citrus flavor of new sourwood flowers, and drop down to sixty-two at the Clarke County speed limit sign—while my neurons write this second, this minute, this hour, in my every grinning cell.
Salvation South, March 2023
Gary D. Grossman enjoys sharing his poems and essays, published in 80+ literary reviews. He doesn't enter contests but his work has been nominated for the usual awards, i.e., Pushcart, Best of Net, etc.- no wins yet, so meh, right? His graphic memoir, three books of poetry and gourmet venison cookbook all may be purchased via his website or Amazon. Gary enjoys running, fishing, gardening and playing ukulele. Website: https://www.garygrossman.net/
