Today has been two months since the coronavirus panic crashed down around us and first the suggestions then the orders came in, fierce and commanding: stay home.
Bewilderment bled into terror, even for a casual disease-flouting insouciant like me. The sense that this wasn’t really happening followed me everywhere. From Thursday night, sipping gintos with my bestie, laughing because we had managed a stolen evening while her husband was away and our daughters played upstairs and we lingered until well past bedtime, to the next morning when her husband called to say the trade show he was attending had been cancelled and he was coming home, to the news that school would be cancelled for two weeks after spring break, and then, as with the rest of our lives, cancelled again and again. Cancel culture, we thought, was not this. What was happening?
Taekwondo, work, school. Committee meetings, a marketing presentation for small businesses, but then also foreign embassies and borders and flights out of the country.
No one said it but we all felt it: trapped, immobile, alert.
Stress does a thing to your body and spirit. The hunter in the blind remains focused and calm, in control. Meanwhile, the deer, sensing something, a telltale odor on the breeze, freezes, ears perked, ready to bolt, as it tries to assess the threat.
The pickup trucks, cars and milk tankers – and now ATVs, motorcycles and cyclists – haven’t stopped passing the house. Rush hour has mostly disappeared, but there is a surprisingly steady stream of traffic for a village in a province in a country in a world that is supposedly in lockdown. Where are all these people going? I contemplate their grocery store needs but even the most voracious appetite doesn’t explain the F150s gunning it down main street.
Is this lockdown? What does that even mean? Or the other, more palatable term government spokespeople and journalists use to tell us how to behave: social distancing. I narrow my eyes and look askance. What on Earth is that? Socially distant, like when a teenager you know sees you in public and delivers a barely perceptible upward nod of the head by way of greeting and then goes about ignoring your existence? I’m reminded of a line from a Dire Straits song, “Romeo? Yeah, you know, I used to have a scene with him. But Juliette! …” I’m left thinking, and trail off because these are romantic notions.
I’m aware that I’m prone to becoming mired in the thorny details of logic and specifics, and I’m used to checking myself for being too literal, but as a copy editor, I depend on my keen sense of logic, and so it is both an asset and a liability. In my voluntary education, I’ve focused on honing my ability to craft an argument. A degree in English is far from useless; it refines the ability to think. When I’m hired as a copy editor, it is for my ability to structure a document, present logical arguments and help my clients express their ideas clearly. Very often, what this means is helping my clients clarify their thoughts. And so, my instinct is to set about picking apart Covid-19 as I would a sentence, a paragraph, a document. Unfortunately, I have never been busier, and so I poke at it in bursts, haphazardly, when time allows.
These days, people sit or stand in PJs on their front porches clutching coffee cups. At first, there was none of that. The weather was too cold and we were all too afraid, and we were still getting showered and dressed in the morning. Besides, everything would be over in two weeks. We reassured each other on Facebook and in Zoom chats, came up with silly social media pastimes and socially distant ways to celebrate in defiance of the virus’ power over us. What was two weeks of staying home? Sure, we grumbled. The kids grumbled – especially when the parents realized that play dates would be off the menu. We moved on to novel activities like playing board games with our children and growing sourdough starters. The stores ran out of toilet paper and then yeast.
Now? Now we’re all on the front step, clutching onto hope and alcohol, and darting shifty glances at our neighbours. Is Mme X wearing actual clothes or that same tired beige bathrobe? Doesn’t she realize what she looks like? There goes that woman jogging again; why does she insist on dragging her poor kid with her? Oh, her! The shopaholic. God! Is she going to the store again? She’ll get sick and she’ll have no one to blame but herself! Worse, she’ll get all of us infected. Stupid, selfish woman.
We hear death counts and statistics of cases, climbing and climbing. The endless numbers and graphs are an economy of sorts, a stock market of doom. Our push, as we understand it, is to flatten the curve so the hospitals don’t get overwhelmed in one shot. Horror stories of triage and having to choose who gets the last ventilator, who lives or dies. We’re doing our part so that we won’t have to choose, or worse, so we won’t have to hope someone else chooses us. Quietly, we calculate our odds. Who would they give the last ventilator to? A 45-year-old single mom or a 40-year-old asthmatic? What logic would guide these terrible and inevitable decisions?
Some homes in the area have taken the tone that is so pervasive on social media to the street with billboard-sized makeshift plywood signs proclaiming “GO HOME!” admonishing everyone who drives by. The accusation stings, and I wonder as I pass, conscientiously doing the speed limit, what the person behind the sign thinks they know about me and where I’m going. Are there any valid reasons to leave home? From what authority do they yell commands at me? Each time I pass, Why should I? rises to my thoughts along with Who the hell are you to tell me what to do? These days, WHY? is becoming a persistent, nagging and unanswered question.
The rainbows mock me. Traces of pastel colored chalk on abandoned sidewalks and walkways and oh so many drawings pressed up against windows tell me, colorfully, that “ca va bien aller!” and “we’re all in this together!” Though much smaller, they are far more numerous than the yelling billboards, like a thousand paper cuts to the “GO HOME!” sledgehammer. Markers of a collective delusion, the rainbows have no real effect, like hushing a colicky baby. Perhaps it soothes to know that although we can do nothing to change the situation, we can feel like we have some agency by collectively creating rainbows. How long can bland reassurances last in the face of bold, contradictory evidence? Will “ca va bien aller!” help the families who’ve lost jobs and incomes as they tread ever farther down the path to losing their homes? Perhaps all they need is a positive mindset and a few more rainbows to feel better. And perhaps if they, blithely, go along feeling better, optimistic, and positive, they won’t see what’s hurtling toward them until it hits and they are blissfully knocked unconscious.
The compass points and frameworks of social existence have been removed, and people are looking for meaning and anchor points. This is understandable. Life requires, demands meaning. But rainbows are poor substitutes. I concede that perhaps it is appealing to drift off on ephemeral lullabies. It is worth remembering that the thing about rainbows, their beauty even, is that they are an illusion. What looks like a colorful arch is but sunlight refracting off moisture in the air. Take heed: if you’re intent on the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, you will never reach it. We’re drowning in rainbows, peering out from windows while waiting for someone, preferably someone with M.D. or PhD after their name, to declare the curve flat, swipe the pot of gold from the leprechaun, and distribute the gold.
Pot of another kind, delivers. As logistics companies supporting the supply chain attest, the demand for our state-sanctioned substances is in high demand. While dairy farmers dump milk and restaurant suppliers sell direct to the public to save what they can of their crop, the demand for weed is, understandably, growing. Who can bear to be sober with all this going on? One noticeable difference is that some of the tokers, at least, have taken to sitting in parked cars in front of their homes to smoke – an illegal gathering? Or simply that their kids are home all day now and they are responsible enough to not smoke their afternoon joint in front of them? Your guess is as good as mine. I avert my eyes, pretend I don’t smell anything skunky, and give the cars a wide berth.
We are lucky because here, in the middle of nowhere, we’re all at a good distance by default. It’s not like the city, we tell ourselves. The OPP are on every corner, just the same. A drive to the next town – for an appointment with my lawyer, blessed by the powers that be as essential, surely, but my guilty conscience predates puberty, so who knows – has me passing four police SUVs. Possibly the same vehicle, but not likely. They lie in wait wherever I stop, and I wield my hand sanitizer as proof of moral compliance. See? I’m taking precautions. (As the weeks have slouched by this has become more like See? I’m a moral person.)
Though until now I have refused to use “disinfectant” anything because of the chemicals they contain, I panicked and on impulse and in fear of shortages, purchased two containers of disinfectant wipes (one to keep in the car, wipe down packages, the steering wheel, my keys, doorknobs) and two tiny spray bottles of locally made hand sanitizer. Rosemary and lavender. I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel safer for it. They do smell lovely and I have the satisfaction of knowing I supported a small business. I keep one in my car next to the gear shift; the other I hold in my pocket like a cannister of pepper spray, thumb at the ready. I am ready. I am holding a talisman that will somehow magically impart protection – not just on my body (handwashing being next to godliness), but on my soul.
My husband tells me he saw our neighbour, an upstanding member of the community and parish who is a few years older than us, heading out for a walk in the back cornfield wearing a face mask. We are confused. We are awed. This becomes her daily routine, though for the several years we have lived here, I can’t recall ever seeing her walking into the cornfield. The world has gone mad. But then we are told that perhaps this virus is airborne. Perhaps even the cornfields aren’t safe?
I don’t leave the house. From my perch next to the window of my second-floor craft-room-come-office, I sit with my laptop, watching the snow melt, the incremental changes outside. I try to log in to Zoom meetings and Skype and GoToMeeting but our internet is woefully inadequate. The field becomes marshy. The squirrel highway is in high-gear. Slowly buds appear, and miraculously, burgeon. Slowly the snow and water dry up and the green begins to take hold. The birdsong flourishes.
For a while, I took one picture each day from that window, hoping that with a time lapse some change would be visible. I gave up, possibly too soon.
A friend, an artist, takes walks and creates wonderful artwork of the barren vistas – the long straight road, telephone poles and electric wires, the razed blank fields. I wonder at her discipline. And also a part of me thinks that just like my days on my red chaise longue (how decadent!) beside the window, the scenery she depicts is nothing different from the usual. It always looked like that. Are we simply paying more attention?
And so, through the window, I see my mask-clad neighbour weeding her garden, alone. The pickup trucks speed through town and the police don’t stop them. I stand shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers in the chocolate aisle of the pharmacy before Easter, selecting the right chocolate eggs and basket fillers, but trying in vain to somehow not touch what I don’t plan to buy and politely maintain the mandated 6 ft distance between myself and other shoppers – in an aisle that is not more than 4 ft wide. We avert our eyes as if not seeing each other somehow creates more distance. Or at least makes it less painful.
The world walks around heads hung low avoiding eye contact, not smiling. There is a grim doggedness in the air that blends guilt and indignation. We eye everyone with suspicion. The police truly are everywhere now. And we hear stories, rumors, legends. The border with Quebec is closed. The fines are huge. They aren’t giving warnings. Is it safe to go to Costco? Surely they haven’t set up roadblocks on all the roads? There’s not the manpower to do that. But what if? We don’t know, we don’t know. We hang our heads low.
In the aisles the clients come and go. And are told to follow the one-way arrows. There’s no returning to the produce section. Not even for an onion for your stone soup.
Letters to the editor opine that access to non-essential products should be limited, as if prohibiting access to non-essential stores is not enough. They also want to take away our steak and other small gluttonous pleasures. I buy 3, depleting the store of rib eye. I linger in the craft beers until I feel the eyes of the gaunt and awkward teenager on me. I scoot along the direction of the arrows before he can tell me that now is not the time to browse. He is putting his life at risk for minimum wage so I can buy my craft beer, and this is … preposterous. As is the rigmarole at the cash. If someone thought to invest in sanitizer products, surely they are now rich. My right arm aches just watching the young cashier spray and vigorously wipe down every surface within her 6 ft bubble after each client. We are all infected and infectious. We are, as the news and social media tells us, the vector. Stay home. If you must go out, best not to enjoy it, best to wear a mask of penance, of subdued guilt and condemnation. We master arranging our faces to demonstrate we are scornful victims, we are justified, we see you for the disease-ridden unholy creatures you are. You will not kill me with a smile in the bread aisle. Not today.
I had been off Facebook for almost a year for personal reasons, deleted the app from my phone though not my account. It was a cop-out with a sprinkling of self-challenge. Could I do it? For easily the first two months I reached for my phone, sought out the FB icon with my thumb and, remembering I’d removed the app, put down my phone. It was a reflexive habit I was unlearning. I went back for practical reasons and opportunity. Just before this corona crap hit the fan, I joined the local business and merchants association, and was told I would need to join its Facebook group. A moral dilemma! But I wanted the community, the connections and the position, so I reinstalled the app and logged in. Disorienting doesn’t begin to describe the feeling. Like stepping into a time capsule, perhaps, crossing a threshold. Everything had changed but nothing had changed. The UI looked to my LinkedIn-accustomed eyes like the equivalent of picture book typography. It was the comic sans of apps. Everyone I had walked out on was still there, though. Virtual life had progressed just fine without me, without creating any significant difference that I could see.
I’ve been back on the platform for a mere few months, and I’m already thinking about how to get off the merry-go-round. It’s a business tool, clearly, and I don’t have much choice but to use it. But the covid-19 soap opera is more than I can bear. More on that later.
Here is what I posted today: two photos of my husband holding up the turkey he just shot. He went hunting for the first time this morning, and he brought home a turkey. He and the guy he went with cleaned the bird in the backyard. Bags of meat are now nestled in our freezer while the carcass simmers on the stove. If you were paying attention, you’ll have noted: he went hunting with someone, and that someone was not me. That someone was from outside this household.
What I’m working towards is a discussion of what I think is one of the most radical acts of our times.
The most radical acts today are not those we think of as characteristic of rebellion and resistance. They do not require us to protest loudly in the street, disrupt the social order, live on the fringes of society or follow extreme asceticism. No, they are so mundane and traditional, so insignificant that many people are willing, even in a great hurry, to do away with them. It is an upending.
Prioritizing others over ourselves is the politically correct thing to do, from using preferred pronouns to wearing masks, even if you’re not sick, just in case. You wouldn’t want to pass on this illness to someone who passes it on to someone who then dies. Mightn’t that be murder?
The people who populate my virtual social life would not, I don’t think, consider themselves conservative or cautious. These are Liberals or Greens or NDP supporters. They are socially conscious. Some of them edge toward the social justice warrior end of the spectrum, others simply hang out in a “live and let live” bubble. Certainly, most would disagree with being labeled sheeple, that condescending term. These are friends, people I value and respect, people I look forward to sharing a beer and a meal with, many who I think are smarter and more accomplished than I am. They’re good people, people I would welcome at my house at the drop of a hat, at almost any time of day. Show up and I’ll open the door, welcome you in, feed you and give you a glass of whatever poison you desire.
Yet somehow, this offer, made today, would itself be seen as poisonous – a temptation or a threat. Don’t I realize I’m putting lives in danger? Geez, if beers with a handful of close friends is putting lives in danger, why do we let teenagers drive? Or anyone, for that matter. Has the social creed become “Don’t breathe; it endangers lives”?
Strong, smart, relatively young people are eagerly ditching their agency, self-reliance and ownership of their fates in favor of a hyped-up responsibility for others’ lives and a petulant demand that other people take responsibility for theirs. Finger pointing, allegations and insults – even the rallying cry that those who don’t conform ought to suffer the consequences of terrible illness and be deprived of health care.
I return to all the tired maxims and proverbs. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. And on social media, everything is a glass house. The histories accumulate and tell a tale, long after you’ve forgotten what you posted to your feed. Social media doesn’t forget, and its walls are terribly transparent; all the contradictions and slip-ups are on display for those who look.
Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone. The sticks we use to measure others and the stones we lob at them in the village square are not the ones we use for ourselves. A heavy drinker wants “covid-19 deniers” to be denied health care if they get sick; a lead-footed speed-demon demands others wear masks for his protection – it’s not difficult to be sanctimonious and critical of others when you believe you have the moral high ground. Far more difficult to examine ourselves in the same harsh light. There’s a barbarism to the social mobs, a frenzy of conforming and self-policing, of exhortations starting with “can we all just agree…” and false comparisons, strawman arguments, skewed statistics, and a paranoid demand for protection that stems from an utter lack of self-responsibility.
The memes are abundant and condescending and so very patronizingly simplistic. They are smears and slogans meant to garner a chuckle, a like, and a share. Scrolling my news feed feels like being stoned in the village square. No one sees a problem with the situation – by which I don’t mean the virus. They all see a problem with the virus. On Facebook, proclamations of agreement advocating compliance with government measures are abundant. Each post and comment trying to outdo the others in indignant moral signalling. It isn’t possible to question or disagree with any of it and still be a good person. I hang my head low in resignation. I disagree. I am quiet. I am quietly a bad person.
I most recently stumbled across the egregiously snotty term “cognitive sophistication.” It was used by an acquaintance who also bandied about “fucktards” and “covidiots” to describe people who, like me, disagree with the masks and mandates. Others have publicly, in writing, wished that “covid deniers” would get sick — perhaps not sick enough to die, but seriously enough to suffer — so that they would then understand the gravity of the situation and repent for their sins. I have trouble putting my thoughts about this snark into a coherent form. I’m reduced to eye-rolls and guttural sounds of frustration. It’s all getting stuck in my craw. I’ve come to learn that several of the people I consider friends think me an idiot. How do we move forward from there?
Many of the people I know seem to be leaping to discard the little remaining agency they have. Aren’t I afraid? How dare I be so inconsiderate of the lives of others. Am I so selfish as to consider socializing in person, in close physical proximity, with people I am not married to or haven’t given birth to?
Quite frankly, yes. And I don’t see it as selfish. Do as you will, I am not imposing or demanding anything of anyone. Opening my door is a radical act of reclaiming the only things I have a degree of control over: my body and my mind. I do not and would not impose anything on others. By all means, keep your distance, stand back, self-isolate. Take all the safety measures you feel are appropriate to safeguard your health and to not transmit your “original sin” of contagion to those around you. Do not fall into the pit of thinking it is the duty of others to protect you, your loved ones, and the world against a theoretical, miniscule threat, to their own detriment. My uncloistered existence, I am told, is an existential threat to the entire community and beyond. I could kill someone by stepping outside my home, by getting too close, by not wearing a mask, not washing my hands and my soul and my mind of dangerous viral thoughts.
Life is a crapshoot. It is risk, challenge, and struggle, as well as chance, from the moment the first cells divide. In the face of these, character develops, as does strength and immunity, both physical and mental. There is nothing at all to be gained from being coddled and padded, isolated and distanced. We are social creatures. Our social interactions are one of the ways we build family, community, and strength. Not just because there is strength in numbers, though this is not an insignificant consideration, but because we bounce off each other, share each other’s energy, experience, and lives. There is a symbiosis that occurs in tight communities, that helps them thrive and protects the individuals against catastrophic disaster. This is not to say illness and danger don’t occur, but rather that the negative effects, when people can lean on each other and learn from each other’s hardships, when the burden is shared, is much reduced. We are like trees in a forest – independent organisms, surely, though some mushroom mycelium theories suggest otherwise, but a part of a larger living ecosystem. We do ourselves a great disservice to think in single, zero-sum terms.
How, possibly, can people date and hook up, get married and procreate under this distancing regime? It severs the head of society – those of us in unions and families, are free to be close. Forced, in some cases. What about the singles? Another friend posted ironically on Facebook that she was concerned about what would happen when lockdown is lifted, as she has 83 dates lined up. Dating in the time of online socializing and prohibited proximity is absurd.
As we move now, into month three of this disaster, the immediate urgency has ebbed. The rainbows have faded and been worn and tattered by the wind. People have taken sides and social groups fractured into factions according to their belief or not in the presence or seriousness or origins of the coronavirus. Pundits on all sides keep trying to find a new angle to approach the topic, the need for novel content growing exponentially greater day by day as veins are tapped and mined to exhaustion. From the possibility that pets can get or transmit the virus, to new mutations and new terrifying manifestations of illness, to proper grocery etiquette and mask making, mask wearing, and even hook-up culture in the time of covid. If there’s covid attached, the appetite is insatiable and the producers can’t keep up. They’re grasping at ever more remote and obscure worries, and quite frankly, it seems the public is mostly tired of hearing about it. But no less scared. Resigned, it seems, to fear being a daily thing. The new normal, as it is so often touted, meaning a state of low-level panic and stress is becoming habitual and there is no letting one’s guard down.
I forget as I’m walking through the store that I’m supposed to fear the people around me, and treat them as if they had 6 ft razor blades sticking out of them, to give a wide berth, apologize for my existence. I have gotten adept at backing my way into the aisle with the arrows on the floor directing me to go the other way.
Like-minded patrons easily suss each other out. It’s not difficult to tell which camp a fellow shopper is in and I search now for eye contact, a smile, a gleeful disregard of arrows, a shrug. The non-shrinking will save us, and I hold my head high refusing to be cowed amidst the yogourt, though I hang back when the older woman in mask and gloves makes her way to the ground beef because it’s the polite thing to do.
We are rearranging ourselves in these unfamiliar and awkward formations, and it seems most of us don’t really know why. It certainly isn’t second nature – it’s like trying to get toddlers to form a straight line or to sit still and look straight ahead for 5 minutes. Forced, difficult, we all break free, whether by mistake or on purpose, our nature overcoming us, the way after work I would shed my shoes and socks, bras and jeans to pull on something more comfortable. Even the most scared among us can’t be on guard all the time. We are swimming against our nature, and it is wearing us down, no matter what we believe.
The thunderstorms are on their way, but they are still off in the distance. The color of the light changes, there’s an eerie calm and the birdsong seems so much louder. No leaves rustling, no wind. The angle of light that we know instinctively does not bode well.
I sit with the window open, the crickets, tree frogs, birds, the occasional revving of an engine, and wonder when the rain will start, when will it be time to take cover, close the windows, marvel at the terrible force in awe and terror and appreciation.
And here, the thunder starts, rumbling in the distance. A car alarm goes off, fighting for position and the black squirrels and chipmunks conduct last minute high-speed errands along the wood fence. What will the next hour bring? Tomorrow? Next month, next year?
Do we stand, facing the future with a mask of terror and a scream upon our lips? Do we cower under masks and plexiglass, holding our science up as the shield that will defend us, or do we bare our bodies to the onslaught and walk fearlessly into the storm knowing we will be soaked and battered by hail, but that it will pass and we will emerge wet, bedraggled, and stronger for having felt the power and electricity course through our bodies, for having been actively a part of it, an agent of it, even.
For it is impossible to escape the reality of our nature, of our own animal presence and complicity in this biosphere, this ecology and environment. We do not live in it. We are it. Without it, we are nothing. The rumble comes closer, the stillness more deep. The listening becomes acute, tuned to the raindrops on leaves, the first quiet pattering.
The light show begins as the thunder intensifies. We are alert, electric, suspended in the moment of expectation, suspense. What will become of us? How are we to survive? What will the landscape be, when the swathes of rain and electricity have passed, leaving our senses raw and rejuvenated?
We need connection to the point of becoming, to the extreme. Immersion, which differs from absorption or assimilation. We become suspended in the moment, the thing, as a way of becoming part of it, and perhaps of participating in reconstituting something new, a new alchemy, a new mode of existence, if only temporarily.
We are fleeting. We are ever changing. We are each other.
I am you and you are me. There is nothing that doesn’t belong, nothing that is not of us.