Wallet, keys, phone. Shopping cart. Turning around at the first corner and going back, because I can't enter the store without the item I've forgotten. The one I've not yet trained myself to checking for when leaving the house, because I no longer go out every day.
This is the new normal. Running errands on rainy days on the chance the lines outside the shops will be shorter. Glasses fogging up because of the mask and the weather. Doing a victory dance when the Costco run coincides with a toilet paper shipment. Sitting outside in the sun on days when it's finally warm enough. Giving myself permission to do nothing but savor the fine day, and not consider it squandered, because nothing can be taken for granted anymore.
Nature's seasons have not been canceled. The seasons we used to let slip through our fingers now invite us to participate in them, if we can remember how. Go back to a normal that was sitting out on the stoops, talking with neighbors, with people passing, pausing on the sidewalks. This was the normal of an age before the internet, when the social network was the people you connected with face to face, who linked you to the rest of the world through six degrees of separation. A ray of hope in an uncertain time, that being out on the stoop, out on the sidewalk, out on the balcony, fire escape, roof, can reconnect us through the six feet of social distancing.
What has been canceled are the seasons of art, of beauty, of that which we sought in order to feed souls weary and fouled by mere commerce. To survive the pandemic only to live in a world from which the arts have been purged would be not to live at all. Then our apocalyptic visions of zombies taking over the planet will have come true. If we are to march, soulless, hopeless, into the greedy maw of essential commerce, for the benefit of corporations whose survival has been given precedence over the survival of the citizens, then it will be time to take off the mask and welcome death.
That will not be my new normal. If you wish to make me non-essential, then you will have to pay me to not take a job, the way I used to be paid, as an owner of farmland, to not grow corn, because there was already too much. If you wish me to take on an essential job, again, you're going to have to sacrifice your precious profit margin. You're going to have to add that extra shift of specially trained cleaners to come in and disinfect the work space every night. You're going to have to pay for your unoccupied office buildings to be transformed into affordable housing. Into food banks and community kitchens, care facilities for seniors and children. Because in my new normal, no one has to go around the corner to the "poor door." There is neither too much nor too little, but enough. There would not be "what can you do for me?" Rather, "what can I do for you?"
Oh. Wait. They murdered that guy. And made us drink the Cold War Kool-Aid. Take everything you can, before someone else comes along to take it away. Because everyone wants what we have.
Except they don't. I don't even want whatever this ephemeral something is that is supposed to be so great. I learned long ago that the dream beamed into every home with a television winked out of existence once that box was turned off. The great consumer comfort we were supposed to believe was our birthright did not, in reality, exist.
Now we're stuck with the guy whose whole world is television. Who must have his daily fifteen minutes as proof of life.
I no longer own a television. I no longer let the (m)ad men dictate my desires.
My new normal is trying to remember art and beauty by streaming reruns of past performances. Reminding my soul that there is more to existence than the mundane work currently deemed non-essential. But the ambiance, the heartbeat of live theater, is missing. As a writer I have always worked from home, but this shutdown cuts me off from my muses. Like the victims of the pandemic, we are on life support, wondering when - or if - the spark of creation will be permitted to catch fire again. When - or if - that which has always made life worth living will once more be considered essential.
For now, pull the barre across the bedroom door, position the monitor to be seen from across the room, squint and follow the ballet master du jour. Take your pick. We are all fluttering in our cages, the wings of our inner Firebirds and Bluebirds clipped.
And still we dance, even if only in vague memory of past triumphs, movement muted by constraints of space or physical limits.
The new normal is that this disease, unease, lack of ease, is here to stay. It was not the first, and will not be the last. We will adapt, or die. There will be fewer of us when we come out on the other side of this.
We've learned to dance alone. We'll learn to sing through the mask. Create new dream visions from the nightmares of doubt.
There will be fewer of us, but we will be the strong ones. We will shine all the brighter for having come through this darkness.
This is the new normal. Running errands on rainy days on the chance the lines outside the shops will be shorter. Glasses fogging up because of the mask and the weather. Doing a victory dance when the Costco run coincides with a toilet paper shipment. Sitting outside in the sun on days when it's finally warm enough. Giving myself permission to do nothing but savor the fine day, and not consider it squandered, because nothing can be taken for granted anymore.
Nature's seasons have not been canceled. The seasons we used to let slip through our fingers now invite us to participate in them, if we can remember how. Go back to a normal that was sitting out on the stoops, talking with neighbors, with people passing, pausing on the sidewalks. This was the normal of an age before the internet, when the social network was the people you connected with face to face, who linked you to the rest of the world through six degrees of separation. A ray of hope in an uncertain time, that being out on the stoop, out on the sidewalk, out on the balcony, fire escape, roof, can reconnect us through the six feet of social distancing.
What has been canceled are the seasons of art, of beauty, of that which we sought in order to feed souls weary and fouled by mere commerce. To survive the pandemic only to live in a world from which the arts have been purged would be not to live at all. Then our apocalyptic visions of zombies taking over the planet will have come true. If we are to march, soulless, hopeless, into the greedy maw of essential commerce, for the benefit of corporations whose survival has been given precedence over the survival of the citizens, then it will be time to take off the mask and welcome death.
That will not be my new normal. If you wish to make me non-essential, then you will have to pay me to not take a job, the way I used to be paid, as an owner of farmland, to not grow corn, because there was already too much. If you wish me to take on an essential job, again, you're going to have to sacrifice your precious profit margin. You're going to have to add that extra shift of specially trained cleaners to come in and disinfect the work space every night. You're going to have to pay for your unoccupied office buildings to be transformed into affordable housing. Into food banks and community kitchens, care facilities for seniors and children. Because in my new normal, no one has to go around the corner to the "poor door." There is neither too much nor too little, but enough. There would not be "what can you do for me?" Rather, "what can I do for you?"
Oh. Wait. They murdered that guy. And made us drink the Cold War Kool-Aid. Take everything you can, before someone else comes along to take it away. Because everyone wants what we have.
Except they don't. I don't even want whatever this ephemeral something is that is supposed to be so great. I learned long ago that the dream beamed into every home with a television winked out of existence once that box was turned off. The great consumer comfort we were supposed to believe was our birthright did not, in reality, exist.
Now we're stuck with the guy whose whole world is television. Who must have his daily fifteen minutes as proof of life.
I no longer own a television. I no longer let the (m)ad men dictate my desires.
My new normal is trying to remember art and beauty by streaming reruns of past performances. Reminding my soul that there is more to existence than the mundane work currently deemed non-essential. But the ambiance, the heartbeat of live theater, is missing. As a writer I have always worked from home, but this shutdown cuts me off from my muses. Like the victims of the pandemic, we are on life support, wondering when - or if - the spark of creation will be permitted to catch fire again. When - or if - that which has always made life worth living will once more be considered essential.
For now, pull the barre across the bedroom door, position the monitor to be seen from across the room, squint and follow the ballet master du jour. Take your pick. We are all fluttering in our cages, the wings of our inner Firebirds and Bluebirds clipped.
And still we dance, even if only in vague memory of past triumphs, movement muted by constraints of space or physical limits.
The new normal is that this disease, unease, lack of ease, is here to stay. It was not the first, and will not be the last. We will adapt, or die. There will be fewer of us when we come out on the other side of this.
We've learned to dance alone. We'll learn to sing through the mask. Create new dream visions from the nightmares of doubt.
There will be fewer of us, but we will be the strong ones. We will shine all the brighter for having come through this darkness.