Pandemic Summer ’20

17 March 2020, the coronavirus closed the Abbey Guesthouse, and I was out of a job.

At the end of May, St. Cloud Hospital provided intubation and ventilation for me from Sunday night until Tuesday. I had bilateral pneumonia with sepsis and A and V-Fib, unrelated to the coronavirus pandemic.

Early June, I survived a week in the hospital for recovery and two weeks rehab in Sartell, MN. Two weeks of restful quarantine followed in the same Abbey Guesthouse that had “laid me off” three months previously.

When I first felt ill Sunday evening, I remember, before losing conscious memory, seeing before me an image of two black squares on a white field. I wondered how such sharp edges of the squares were possible. I looked closer to see if the black ink bled into the paper. Maybe the medium was enamel? ceramic?

Then I realized that this was no material image. I, myself, was creating this temporary image for me before I lost consciousness.

Several days later, during recovery, I asked my main nurse how I could explain my condition, what would be the diagnosis? She replied, “Bilateral pneumonia.” This, I realized, was what I had been trying to tell myself, albeit in a highly abstract image.

When I next had use of a digital graphics program, I produced the following image with Fireworks.

Later, Bro. Alan, an artist/confrere, suggested I had been channeling Kazimir Malevich, a Russian Suprematist. Below is his oil painting, “Black Square,” 1915, 79.5 x 79.5 cm, State Tretrakov Gallery, Moscow.

“His Black Square (1915), a black square on white, represented the most radically abstract painting known to have been created so far and drew ‘an uncrossable line (…) between old art and new art'” (Wikipedia).