Permitted exercise
Pulling the door behind me and stepping out on to the path, I take a breath of the good clean air. I check to see who's in my path, who's breathing my air as they pass, and who might object to the space I'm intending to claim for a walk. Permitted Exercise.
cocooning
Navigating the brave new world ordained by our (good boy) Government is not for the fainthearted, people. It's a trip down the rabbit hole where the public space is forbidden the Over 70s. Period. Regardless. Well or ill or robust, doesn't matter. Makes no difference. They can stay in their houses can't they? They can be left in there alone, can't they? Just a few months we can steal from what's left of their good living days, can't we? Sure, it won't be the same for them, Limbo. Not as though life moves with any felt tumult through their ageing veins. Not as if the sweet song of sound and vision, birdsong and burgeoning nature sings to them or for them. Nor connection, fined tuned over a lifetime, with God in the ground you walk, the long line of trees on the river road, the first pale pink hint of the apple blossom, needs preserving. Cocooning.
within two kilometres
I am developing an etiquette out there on the open ground. Sometimes its like Easter. Open-ended Easter. The light, the calm quiet spaces you find on that holiday, that gift of days when work stops, schools close, traffic thins, a holiday without Christmas frenzy, summer crowds. It's Easter, there are only chocolate eggs and Christ dying and rising again in the gentle melancholy of Holy week. On those days, my brain says it's Easter! I'll take it!
Sometimes it's End of Days, Mordor. You are a wraith meeting wraiths and Winter is Coming. Grey sky only slightly less ominous than the silent spreading gloom in your house, the stale air in your living room, redolent of sanitiser, bleach. Your hands in your pockets close-fisted, skinned red. Within two Kilometres.
with (un)social distancing
Days where the people cross the road 20 metres back when they see you, when you see them, or else shuffle out to the edge of the pavement as you segue unto the grass margin, to pass. When you catch the eye of the other out of stubbornness, need, exact a wavering smile, a blank nothing, depending.
Days you reach Main Street, hear your shoes slap the pavement as you pass shops shuttered, doors closed, an emptied out world. But wait, just up there on the corner, a gang of men calling loudly, talking loose, claiming space. You will not cross the road, you do not walk around them but though them to throw them off course as you have learned to do. Scattered, they separate, the sense of tension that is not quite menace, easing. For that day, for that time, at least. Social Distancing.
and tell on your neighbours (do)
A speeding jogger, a flying cyclist, two girls softly chatting, a woman pulls out her phone...to report them? Well maybe. I listen to one such on the radio yesterday, enraged by joggers, indicting flying cyclists, pleading for policing, arrests! You are invited, no, encouraged! to unleash your inner paranoiac, your instinct to judge, your will to control. All the glad haters come in from the cold! The Swedes says their people have judgement, discretion, control. Go, Prime Minister Loften! They hold the line, the public space, as the rest of Europe watches and waits for them to fail. Anticipates failure. And tell on your neighbours.
necessary journeys
I remember the scattered men later, alone in my car on my solitary shopping trip for groceries, medicines. Alerted, the hair standing stiff on the back of my neck, as a lorry drives tight to my bumper, trailer rocking perilous behind, never once falling back on a ten km journey. I speed up, he speeds up, he does not pass. I slow below the speed limit, grit my teeth and watch him through my side mirror as he watches me, slowing, revving, slowing, bumper to bumper until I turn off the road for the shop.
A few days later I get out of the path of a carload of howling boys, slipping unto the hard shoulder sharpish from necessity. Necessary Journeys.
so why as I doing this again?
I'm going with this lockdown, this shutting down, for now. This slowing down of a lung eating virus, dispatching those of us already in the departure lounge, threatening those beloved others living by grace of Vaccine, Transplant, Chemotherapy, but tell me this good boy Varadkar, all of you good boys voting in your emergency laws on Friday last, giving way everyway to a virus, (as you gave way to Bankers, a decade ago) to whom do you imagine we're ceding our public space. Who and what will colonise, gain ground, in the spaces we have so obediently vacated. Every idle bad actor, every dispossessed, untethered soul, rocking up from the highways and byways vacated, that's who.
Even as Putin in Russia, Orban in Hungary, gain ground in the world. While we carry on carrying on, turning back a Virus that keeps on coming regardless. About which the science is not clear. You think you can easily turn back this tide boys? can whistle back an abandoned economy, throw in a shifting Sunset Clause to a Charter for a Police State, an Autocracy. And afterwards, Pandora goes obligingly back in her box? Do you know you don't know what you do? And why am I doing this, again.
degrading oppression.
I talked with a man last year, a refugee to whom asylum was granted after long years in Direct Provision, after endless Requests, Appeals, and Court applications. He told me every counted hour of trying, waiting, disappointment, was worth it to be here and not there under the dictatorship he escaped. He told me how the very air in that country was poisoned from top down, how the stealing of personal space, of any say, of human rights, degraded all. All. Those who assumed the power and those who allowed it to be taken from them, whether they could stop it or not. You did what they said until you could not, he told me, and then you ran for your life from your own hopelessness, depression, despair. Degrading Oppression.
... only for a little while...
Back home, my daughter's days are entirely virtual. She sits for her virtual lectures, has virtual chats with her struggling, jittering friends, consigned all to virtual reality. She sings like an angel alone in her room, Billie Eilish today. She uploads on Instagram, for her friends, for her virtual audience, for me. For us, who have failed to hold the space for her and for all the jittering girls and boys. Failed... as the good boys fail us.
"Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me".
....only for a little while?
Pulling the door behind me and stepping out on to the path, I take a breath of the good clean air. I check to see who's in my path, who's breathing my air as they pass, and who might object to the space I'm intending to claim for a walk. Permitted Exercise.
cocooning
Navigating the brave new world ordained by our (good boy) Government is not for the fainthearted, people. It's a trip down the rabbit hole where the public space is forbidden the Over 70s. Period. Regardless. Well or ill or robust, doesn't matter. Makes no difference. They can stay in their houses can't they? They can be left in there alone, can't they? Just a few months we can steal from what's left of their good living days, can't we? Sure, it won't be the same for them, Limbo. Not as though life moves with any felt tumult through their ageing veins. Not as if the sweet song of sound and vision, birdsong and burgeoning nature sings to them or for them. Nor connection, fined tuned over a lifetime, with God in the ground you walk, the long line of trees on the river road, the first pale pink hint of the apple blossom, needs preserving. Cocooning.
within two kilometres
I am developing an etiquette out there on the open ground. Sometimes its like Easter. Open-ended Easter. The light, the calm quiet spaces you find on that holiday, that gift of days when work stops, schools close, traffic thins, a holiday without Christmas frenzy, summer crowds. It's Easter, there are only chocolate eggs and Christ dying and rising again in the gentle melancholy of Holy week. On those days, my brain says it's Easter! I'll take it!
Sometimes it's End of Days, Mordor. You are a wraith meeting wraiths and Winter is Coming. Grey sky only slightly less ominous than the silent spreading gloom in your house, the stale air in your living room, redolent of sanitiser, bleach. Your hands in your pockets close-fisted, skinned red. Within two Kilometres.
with (un)social distancing
Days where the people cross the road 20 metres back when they see you, when you see them, or else shuffle out to the edge of the pavement as you segue unto the grass margin, to pass. When you catch the eye of the other out of stubbornness, need, exact a wavering smile, a blank nothing, depending.
Days you reach Main Street, hear your shoes slap the pavement as you pass shops shuttered, doors closed, an emptied out world. But wait, just up there on the corner, a gang of men calling loudly, talking loose, claiming space. You will not cross the road, you do not walk around them but though them to throw them off course as you have learned to do. Scattered, they separate, the sense of tension that is not quite menace, easing. For that day, for that time, at least. Social Distancing.
and tell on your neighbours (do)
A speeding jogger, a flying cyclist, two girls softly chatting, a woman pulls out her phone...to report them? Well maybe. I listen to one such on the radio yesterday, enraged by joggers, indicting flying cyclists, pleading for policing, arrests! You are invited, no, encouraged! to unleash your inner paranoiac, your instinct to judge, your will to control. All the glad haters come in from the cold! The Swedes says their people have judgement, discretion, control. Go, Prime Minister Loften! They hold the line, the public space, as the rest of Europe watches and waits for them to fail. Anticipates failure. And tell on your neighbours.
necessary journeys
I remember the scattered men later, alone in my car on my solitary shopping trip for groceries, medicines. Alerted, the hair standing stiff on the back of my neck, as a lorry drives tight to my bumper, trailer rocking perilous behind, never once falling back on a ten km journey. I speed up, he speeds up, he does not pass. I slow below the speed limit, grit my teeth and watch him through my side mirror as he watches me, slowing, revving, slowing, bumper to bumper until I turn off the road for the shop.
A few days later I get out of the path of a carload of howling boys, slipping unto the hard shoulder sharpish from necessity. Necessary Journeys.
so why as I doing this again?
I'm going with this lockdown, this shutting down, for now. This slowing down of a lung eating virus, dispatching those of us already in the departure lounge, threatening those beloved others living by grace of Vaccine, Transplant, Chemotherapy, but tell me this good boy Varadkar, all of you good boys voting in your emergency laws on Friday last, giving way everyway to a virus, (as you gave way to Bankers, a decade ago) to whom do you imagine we're ceding our public space. Who and what will colonise, gain ground, in the spaces we have so obediently vacated. Every idle bad actor, every dispossessed, untethered soul, rocking up from the highways and byways vacated, that's who.
Even as Putin in Russia, Orban in Hungary, gain ground in the world. While we carry on carrying on, turning back a Virus that keeps on coming regardless. About which the science is not clear. You think you can easily turn back this tide boys? can whistle back an abandoned economy, throw in a shifting Sunset Clause to a Charter for a Police State, an Autocracy. And afterwards, Pandora goes obligingly back in her box? Do you know you don't know what you do? And why am I doing this, again.
degrading oppression.
I talked with a man last year, a refugee to whom asylum was granted after long years in Direct Provision, after endless Requests, Appeals, and Court applications. He told me every counted hour of trying, waiting, disappointment, was worth it to be here and not there under the dictatorship he escaped. He told me how the very air in that country was poisoned from top down, how the stealing of personal space, of any say, of human rights, degraded all. All. Those who assumed the power and those who allowed it to be taken from them, whether they could stop it or not. You did what they said until you could not, he told me, and then you ran for your life from your own hopelessness, depression, despair. Degrading Oppression.
... only for a little while...
Back home, my daughter's days are entirely virtual. She sits for her virtual lectures, has virtual chats with her struggling, jittering friends, consigned all to virtual reality. She sings like an angel alone in her room, Billie Eilish today. She uploads on Instagram, for her friends, for her virtual audience, for me. For us, who have failed to hold the space for her and for all the jittering girls and boys. Failed... as the good boys fail us.
"Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me".
....only for a little while?
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