My Jandek Plague Journal: 5/5/20 "The Picture"

"And here I am/How did I get here/How did I make this world/I thought it out and made a plan/And the elements combined/Presto — here’s reality." I live and work in South Korea. How did that happen? I know the steps I took, the choices I made, but it still seems amazing to me that it's my reality, that it's something I could imagine as an option. Meanwhile in the US, the country I left, the place I couldn't imagine a world outside of, a document written for the administration leaked saying that if they "reopen" the economy the pandemic will persist with the daily death rate reaching 3,000 people by June. And this is accepted because nothing else can be imagined. That makes sense though. During the Cold War the only vision offered was Soviet desperation, not some competing utopianism. With the fall of the USSR, we haven't constructed a new imaginary so the world the US is building looks increasingly Soviet. -5/5/20. "The Picture" from The Place (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)