The first few days after the big northeast lockdown were surreal. We were in paradise while our friends and family members were sheltering in place from a virus that was too tiny to see but could make you very sick or kill you.

We watched pandemic T.V. and saw cities where the streets were empty. People lined up outside grocery stores and shelves were bare. Even in Shangri-La we immediately changed our habits. Wash your hands, don’t use your fingers to touch anything, keep a distance, sanitize, sanitize, sanitize.

Mark began to draw imagined images of the threat. Covoid cartoons with the virus as a child standing on top of the world, figures bursting out of the virus, bound by the masks that might save them. Leering, floating death stars, a covoid rock on the edge of a cliff, and everywhere masks and the numerals 19, 19, 19.

With time on our hands and no one to amuse except each other we copied the drawings, trimmed them up and began to send them out. I generally provided narration on the back. Chatty missives about our days on the island. Places we’d gone, walks taken, books read and thinking of you, hope you’ve stayed well, love you a lot. That kind of thing. Death and disease on the one side, life being lived on the other. Ying and yang, the dark and the light.