Having a sustaining glass of wine, post shopping for (essential) supplies. Just a quick in and out I figured, just a few necessaries, bread, wine. I stand in a snaking queue for the check out, pushed and rushed and shaken by a panicked crowd, wondering whether, maybe, the universe had sent a plague to test us, shake us, hold a mirror to us, people. I have a notion that the Virus, all the Viruses, have a function, shifting, nudging body rhythms in effect, altering perceptions ( of survivors ). The Virus as an instrument that refines, retunes, reboots, releases, human bodies.
Holding up a mirror, showing us what we are, or have become:
1. Supplies.
We are not short of foodstuffs people. We have more stuff stashed. Foodstuff, medications, sanitisers, tissues, loo roll, paper towels. We have warehouses, supermarkets, trucks a trucking across continents with stuff, more stuff, And yet, and still, and anyway here we are. Pushing, shoving, grabbing, emptying shelves so that we will have it before the next woman takes it. I WILL have my sliced bread and my loo roll in my bunker. I WILL ALWAYS eat (and wipe my bottom) whatever! Whenever! things run out...on you.
2. Loving Care.
Don't touch, don't hold, don't speak too closely, whisper kiss, go skin on skin. Don't accidentally brush, doors handles, people, petrol nozzles. I think of orphanages, in Eastern Europe before Glasnost, all the love lorn places, where infants, tiny humans, were driven mad, irreparably stunted by lack of touch. Forget the loo roll, people, grab a loved one, snatch a partner, take an infant, a random relative, into the lock-down coming down the tracks.
3. Go Virtual (at your peril)
And here we'll be corralled in our houses, busy bees remotely working, living, eating, safe removed from human contact, in the kind of isolated bubble Child Psychologists, Talking Heads, tell us leads to (has led to) to over-weigh, disabled, anxious teens. Teens are us.
4. Avoidance.
Is this lockdown for a week, a month, a year? Are we shadow boxing with a mystery Virus
which may or (may not) have been here for a week, a month, a....since November 2019? Eh?
Who can say? People have been dying, getting better, since November last (or forever). Of... well ...something! Influenza? No one panicked? No one knew back then to blame, to name, Corona.
So now we know. What do we know? We know The Virus will be defeated by the young folk who are not, if they are not, immune compromised. There will be an uneven battle with the old, the sick, and all those people whose immune function has been messed up, broken down, un-underused. All the people insulated by vaccine from the common cold, the influenza, everyday infections, whose immune systems sag flaccid and unused. How many are there of those people? Do we know?
5. Fear:
The hardest thing to hold steady in the mind, for us poor humans, is that fact that we will die. So we do not ( hold it in the mind) We cosset children, prolong adolescence, hobble resilience, suck the marrow from the buzz of living, rather than let life flow to dying when it comes. We vaccine, insure, corral, distance ourselves to the point where children suffer anxious states, self harm to feel, grow into helpless half baked adults, narcisstic, lost, irresolute. We would not let them face the perils of the world and leave them reaching after chemical highs. We will not face the abyss, or accept the defining, life enhancing clarity, that we will die.
6. Denial:
I listen to the pundits, politicians on the radio, on the TV, Social Media, getting off, enlivened, as they talk talk talk. Oh, not about the Virus, no, but about the things we'll do to stop this happening, backs turned oblivious to the Elephant in the Room. We cannot stop this, people? We can delay it, yes, give the always patchy Health Service, our heroic Health Care Staff, a break, but can't, we can't close down normal service indefinitely, or turn the Virus back. And so we lock-down for a month, six months, a year, await a vaccine. And then the next Corona, and the next, and the next one after that. Each one oncoming sooner than the one before. Until we learn. We can only live, eat, mind ourselves cannily, live, until we die.
7. Consolation.
There is a strange strange turnabout just now between the minders and those who must be minded, that is truly rich. How often have I listened lately to the young ones blaming, claiming, wailing how I, and you, have stolen their future, wrecked their planet, used up all the good stuff leaving none for them. How often tried to soothe their youthful terrors, anxieties, about climate change, the carbon footprint, a planet dying while they're on it, quite before their time. Apologies, soothing, good attention, silence offered as they speak, accuse, indict. Rage, against this, that I have not and you have not prevented dying, ending, death. That we will not.
And now it's us, the minders, first, who face this grim and grinning Reaper. And I'm waiting for the Darlings to step up, get the picture, read the writing on the wall. See true and clear, unblinkered, for whom this great bell tolls.
My daughter, my cell mate in isolation, drops a Newspaper article from 2017 in my lap concerning long dormant Viruses awakening.... from frozen places melting, from buried places unearthed, from forests burned for profit, headless hardcore fracking. Elephants in the Room.
Holding up a mirror, showing us what we are, or have become:
1. Supplies.
We are not short of foodstuffs people. We have more stuff stashed. Foodstuff, medications, sanitisers, tissues, loo roll, paper towels. We have warehouses, supermarkets, trucks a trucking across continents with stuff, more stuff, And yet, and still, and anyway here we are. Pushing, shoving, grabbing, emptying shelves so that we will have it before the next woman takes it. I WILL have my sliced bread and my loo roll in my bunker. I WILL ALWAYS eat (and wipe my bottom) whatever! Whenever! things run out...on you.
2. Loving Care.
Don't touch, don't hold, don't speak too closely, whisper kiss, go skin on skin. Don't accidentally brush, doors handles, people, petrol nozzles. I think of orphanages, in Eastern Europe before Glasnost, all the love lorn places, where infants, tiny humans, were driven mad, irreparably stunted by lack of touch. Forget the loo roll, people, grab a loved one, snatch a partner, take an infant, a random relative, into the lock-down coming down the tracks.
3. Go Virtual (at your peril)
And here we'll be corralled in our houses, busy bees remotely working, living, eating, safe removed from human contact, in the kind of isolated bubble Child Psychologists, Talking Heads, tell us leads to (has led to) to over-weigh, disabled, anxious teens. Teens are us.
4. Avoidance.
Is this lockdown for a week, a month, a year? Are we shadow boxing with a mystery Virus
which may or (may not) have been here for a week, a month, a....since November 2019? Eh?
Who can say? People have been dying, getting better, since November last (or forever). Of... well ...something! Influenza? No one panicked? No one knew back then to blame, to name, Corona.
So now we know. What do we know? We know The Virus will be defeated by the young folk who are not, if they are not, immune compromised. There will be an uneven battle with the old, the sick, and all those people whose immune function has been messed up, broken down, un-underused. All the people insulated by vaccine from the common cold, the influenza, everyday infections, whose immune systems sag flaccid and unused. How many are there of those people? Do we know?
5. Fear:
The hardest thing to hold steady in the mind, for us poor humans, is that fact that we will die. So we do not ( hold it in the mind) We cosset children, prolong adolescence, hobble resilience, suck the marrow from the buzz of living, rather than let life flow to dying when it comes. We vaccine, insure, corral, distance ourselves to the point where children suffer anxious states, self harm to feel, grow into helpless half baked adults, narcisstic, lost, irresolute. We would not let them face the perils of the world and leave them reaching after chemical highs. We will not face the abyss, or accept the defining, life enhancing clarity, that we will die.
6. Denial:
I listen to the pundits, politicians on the radio, on the TV, Social Media, getting off, enlivened, as they talk talk talk. Oh, not about the Virus, no, but about the things we'll do to stop this happening, backs turned oblivious to the Elephant in the Room. We cannot stop this, people? We can delay it, yes, give the always patchy Health Service, our heroic Health Care Staff, a break, but can't, we can't close down normal service indefinitely, or turn the Virus back. And so we lock-down for a month, six months, a year, await a vaccine. And then the next Corona, and the next, and the next one after that. Each one oncoming sooner than the one before. Until we learn. We can only live, eat, mind ourselves cannily, live, until we die.
7. Consolation.
There is a strange strange turnabout just now between the minders and those who must be minded, that is truly rich. How often have I listened lately to the young ones blaming, claiming, wailing how I, and you, have stolen their future, wrecked their planet, used up all the good stuff leaving none for them. How often tried to soothe their youthful terrors, anxieties, about climate change, the carbon footprint, a planet dying while they're on it, quite before their time. Apologies, soothing, good attention, silence offered as they speak, accuse, indict. Rage, against this, that I have not and you have not prevented dying, ending, death. That we will not.
And now it's us, the minders, first, who face this grim and grinning Reaper. And I'm waiting for the Darlings to step up, get the picture, read the writing on the wall. See true and clear, unblinkered, for whom this great bell tolls.
My daughter, my cell mate in isolation, drops a Newspaper article from 2017 in my lap concerning long dormant Viruses awakening.... from frozen places melting, from buried places unearthed, from forests burned for profit, headless hardcore fracking. Elephants in the Room.
