Disclaimer: no matter what social class you are, if you can take a shower while not in the very act fearing for someone else’s life then you are part of the new privilege. And as partly a way to atone for whenever I do sound like a privileged baby ironically in the ghetto, I type to share cause I get to do that too. My own private front line is behind a mid-2012 unibody macbook the last release before apple began losing all integrity. And I gotta be ok of that. It is that or I break into a long term care home bellowing “what can I do” and be greeted by varying “get the photon fuck out of here”s then go home to resultingly be greeted similarly by my household. So take this all as metaphorical or existentially applicable to whatever you may be going through. I hope this helps. More important as always, I hope you’re ok.
Hearing the news say that on june 22 people in montreal can already take it to the next level and gather indoors, I had a mellow inner downer attack. One of the time bombs symbiotically latched onto my person now had a timer. June 22 just became another legally deciding checkpoint as to where your values stand, how you aim to navigate them, and the actions that’ll show for it. And B and I mutually tried breaking this down. Things aren’t less dangerous, rather the government just wants to get things back to as normal as possible without technically green lighting a civilian death sentence.
Wait I gotta stress that this is going somewhere that can apply to a non-pandemic situation. There’s enough sound and intellectually-constructed writings on corona, so I’d be plagiarizing if I tried to actually sound smart. Again I write to not implode. So the way I see it, nothing’s changed. Just the way the top guys say we get to go about it. And this is where people getting to exercise free will blows so hard.
Every week I video-see B and his family. His daughter’s noticeably growing and evolving from one call to the next. I notice partly cause even my semi-perma-shroomed mind doesn’t deter my affection; partly cause science is panic; and mostly cause her parents feed her an unclassified caliber of nurture. The last time I was actually with them in February? She was getting used to walking. Yesterday I saw her run so fast down the hall that… she just ran so fast. She just ran really fast.
And at this point when I do see her again she’s gonna greet me with a backflip and a kick to the face. I will crash to the ground like a jenga tower I slap down before a match starts cause we all know how it ends. And when I crash I will melt into tears not cause the kick packed a punch, but cause I’ll be in emo pain. Not the same emo pain that has the jenga guy crying cause he took so much time to set up the tower. Emo pain that I wasn’t around in that lost time to personally help train her to backflip and kick me in the face.
She may even decide hugs other than with family are overrated. And this is the thing—in that scenario she’s grown to a point that she can consciously decide that. Right now that may be harder. So even if her parents allowed which they obviously shouldn’t / wouldn’t, if I hugged the kid before public safety guy thinks it’s ok, would I actually be able to live with myself? Wow even just writing that the answer became a clear no. Writing can be therapeutic. The Hell would I say to her when she’s an impressionable child—“I love you so much that I endangered your well-being just to show you”. Then I might as well go drink CLR for masquerading self-interested-affection as affection-to-others.
Look this is nothing. If my role is to see no one, then the only thing I need is for that to be a paid job and I’ve already been mostly doing it since last September. All I gotta do is continue living a heightened actual-life-and-death version of what was always my life, and not set off the strapped time bomb with the corona sticky note. The catch—I would be so relatively ok if we were all told to quarantine until it’s pretty much all good e.g. vaccine, corona going I’m bored bye. The existential reality is june 22 is a faint green light for people to optionally move on at their own varied degrees. So random scenario—everyone’s legally locked in, and of course the person you think would’ve been the one suddenly realizes in their quarantine self-reflection that they’ve always wanted you, and of course this would happen when you are now legally forbidden to be with them. June 22, people can gather, first guy she invites over breaks the 2-meter rule and tickles her, she goes “what’s this emotion I feel”, and yeah CLR.
These sentient beings called humans of which I’m so not a cog amongst no no are reactionary. And I guess I’m gonna find out sooner or later how people will have handled the options that are extended to them. If within these next weeks the numbers blast up and create a comic book movie beam in the sky, then the only solace out of that is everyone still alive goes into lockdown again. Or it’s relatively fine regardless of the underground gangster poker shootouts and o noir-style orgy phenomenons that have ushered the new underbelly of the next earth. Either way I know for a metaphysical fact that people are gonna start doing their thing again.
And I’ll still be here. Where I was adept-level before corona, where I was boss-level during corona, and where I am wearying-pro-level now at still-corona-but-you-can-meet-people-just-don’t-hug-or-get-it-on. And people will hug or/and-then get it on.
In my case though, I can’t break cause of an arbitrary date and others’ reactions to it. B’s daughter won’t lose anything if I miss out on only the most formative years of her life. People don’t lose anything by my not yet logging onto the Outside World Game, though they sure as Hell won’t see what’s coming. Whoever blacked out during lockdown and cabin fever-thought “omg terry so smooth-skinned sexy” won’t lose anything by waking up. If I’m so convinced that my if-nothing-else fate is that of an artistically altruistic martyr of aloneness, then for me nothing has to change on june 22. And if I betray my own given purpose then I might as well cook and eat my own shoe, and unlike Herzog I won’t film myself doing it to expand my cult.
Our talk really did help B. Thanks. This one wasn’t pure pain to write. And to that, Dan “Science Beat” is such a swell track to wrap on especially at 5 a.m.
OPEN DOOM CRESCENDO 