The world continues to shut its doors, its great cities grinding to a halt as a virus barrels its way from country to country in a way no wall or travel ban can stop. This is the globalized world we have stumbled into in 2020, where the same grand power that allows London to New York in five hours paves the way for the exponential spread of a microscopic threat. Uncertainty leads to fear and onward to distrust. If you've read one novel about a pandemic-infused apocalypse, you have read them all. It's the humans you have to worry about when the world falls apart.
Perhaps what I find most peculiar is the reaction of millions now forced to stay inside. These reactions are public now thanks to countless bits and bytes buzzing through the ether and displayed across our phone screens every time we will them on. Deprived of the world's most photogenic sites, its suitors must compromise. Photos of places they once went but now cannot. Photos of expensive meals they once had but now cannot. Photos of fun they once enjoyed but now cannot. Anything possible to ensure their self image, whatever that is, does not grow tarnished in the public's eye by a simple lack of content. "You're not stuck at home, you're safe at home," a new well-meaning thread states, as if being stuck at home is an unconscionable chore requiring a Herculean act of sacrifice. "Bored" and "stir-crazy" are words I'd be happy to never hear again in my life. In the background, thousands battle for their lives in emergency rooms around the world.
The other day I took my bike out and rushed down barren streets at 30mph, past a blooming tidal basin walled off by police and national guard troops. It was a perfect spring day, the new sunshine warming my skin, the gentle breeze rustling past my ears, the ducks swimming away in the Potomac. Awaiting me at home were the ingredients for a new recipe, one where if you put the right things together in a pot and add in a little heat, a miracle manifests, food, the essence of life. Later, I looked to the books on my wall - more than 700 volumes I counted recently - much of it the best stuff there is. Da Vinci, Hemingway, Melville, Dostoevsky, all begging to be opened and read, its ideas pondered over and conversed with until you come out more thoughtful, something better. Never in my life will I understand how people can walk the earth so unable to be with themselves without distraction, unable to be moved by curiosity and the possibility of everyday life. There is just so little time in the big scheme of things to consume it all. By no means did it start here, but a pandemic puts it out in the open, stress testing the extent of our own collective vanity, our discomfort with ourselves in the quiet spaces.
There has never been a pandemic that has not come to an end, and this one too will run its course. I fear our inherent short-term memories will leave us much like we were before. An impossible number of planes will return to the sky turning jet fuel to greenhouse gases. Politicians will return to their relentless election cycles. And the world will step back into its daily commute, having lost a glorious opportunity to breathe, to connect, to catch up with themselves, ask hard questions, and discover the joy that can come when no one is watching, all in spite of, not because of, what's going on outside.
Perhaps what I find most peculiar is the reaction of millions now forced to stay inside. These reactions are public now thanks to countless bits and bytes buzzing through the ether and displayed across our phone screens every time we will them on. Deprived of the world's most photogenic sites, its suitors must compromise. Photos of places they once went but now cannot. Photos of expensive meals they once had but now cannot. Photos of fun they once enjoyed but now cannot. Anything possible to ensure their self image, whatever that is, does not grow tarnished in the public's eye by a simple lack of content. "You're not stuck at home, you're safe at home," a new well-meaning thread states, as if being stuck at home is an unconscionable chore requiring a Herculean act of sacrifice. "Bored" and "stir-crazy" are words I'd be happy to never hear again in my life. In the background, thousands battle for their lives in emergency rooms around the world.
The other day I took my bike out and rushed down barren streets at 30mph, past a blooming tidal basin walled off by police and national guard troops. It was a perfect spring day, the new sunshine warming my skin, the gentle breeze rustling past my ears, the ducks swimming away in the Potomac. Awaiting me at home were the ingredients for a new recipe, one where if you put the right things together in a pot and add in a little heat, a miracle manifests, food, the essence of life. Later, I looked to the books on my wall - more than 700 volumes I counted recently - much of it the best stuff there is. Da Vinci, Hemingway, Melville, Dostoevsky, all begging to be opened and read, its ideas pondered over and conversed with until you come out more thoughtful, something better. Never in my life will I understand how people can walk the earth so unable to be with themselves without distraction, unable to be moved by curiosity and the possibility of everyday life. There is just so little time in the big scheme of things to consume it all. By no means did it start here, but a pandemic puts it out in the open, stress testing the extent of our own collective vanity, our discomfort with ourselves in the quiet spaces.
There has never been a pandemic that has not come to an end, and this one too will run its course. I fear our inherent short-term memories will leave us much like we were before. An impossible number of planes will return to the sky turning jet fuel to greenhouse gases. Politicians will return to their relentless election cycles. And the world will step back into its daily commute, having lost a glorious opportunity to breathe, to connect, to catch up with themselves, ask hard questions, and discover the joy that can come when no one is watching, all in spite of, not because of, what's going on outside.
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