There's some really good writing about COVID coursing through the infosphere about now. Among the bounty are the "personal history," "dispatches," and "annals of inquiry" sections of this summer's The New Yorker. They are worth checking out if you're looking for something to read.
It's ironic that as I read these writers' clear descriptions of their lives during this strange time, the details of my own life grow blurry. And I'm grateful for the escape.
How many times have I said, "Everything is weird" since March 12? None of us -- not a single living person -- has ever lived through a global pandemic before. We are an improv troupe the size of humanity, simultaneously Players and Audience/Spectator. Every day, making it up as we go.
I could comment on the effect of the pandemic on food, daily routine, international politics, the local economy...
But my focus in the hour before I sat down to write was Time. More specifically, how it seems to move differently now. Or perhaps it is my perception of it that's changed. Last summer, for example, in memory, exists in another time, a misty past. Long ago. More distant in some ways than memories from 10 years ago.
When I think forward, or try to, there's nothing there. Nothing comes to mind. At times it feels like I'm in the last room of a house I've spent my entire life exploring. It feels like "The End." There is no accompanying sense of impending death. It is not my life that is ending; rather, everything known is ending and only the unknown remains.
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| Olena Shmahalo/Quanta Magazine |
I want to talk about where I live, a place I moved into almost exactly a year ago. Doing Pandemic Time in this particular place is worth describing. Next time.
