Drove out of the city yesterday to drop off some supplies to friends who are quarantining, and in the suburbs which are systemically alienated from the commerce and social capital of the city centre there was an eerie or ghostly sense of unreality, almost peace. Like maybe the universally-posed threat in the city had tapered off out here. But no, it was obviously a delusional impression and the threat of transmission exists wherever there are other human beings, other flesh-sacks capable of hosting microbial populations both good and bad.
So this is the last day of Level 3 leniency before we commit to a month (more) of confinement in an attempt to halt the annoyingly rapid spread of covid19, an unholy contaminant whose disruptive presence has brought the world to a screeching halt unlike anything I can remember from history books or old-timey movies about the war. Maybe it's because this is a uniquely contemporary situation, not so much the disease but the manner in which we have responded made possible through the hyper-connectivity of the internet. I've said it so manny times in the past week but I'm grateful for our leader who is setting an example for rational, humane government in times of crisis, who had already set a pointed example to the United States about gun-law reform and what they could do about it if they were even remotely competent. But of course they're not and they're choking to death on corporate dick that can't acquiesce from a parasitical push for profit even amidst a global pandemic.
Much like everyone else right now I am contemplating how to a)ensure housing security for myself considering my (everyone's) financial situation has become unprecedentedly precarious, and b)fortify from going completely insane while trapped inside my house with the same people for weeks on end, by which time their quirks will probably feel like personal attacks and I'll have to hide sharp objects from myself so that I come out of this without a manslaughter charge. Just kidding.
I am already sick of television. I fucking hate it.
I keep wondering what 'the stars' are doing and then also keep guiltily realising that reliance (even casual) on daily horoscopes, specifically tabloid ones, is a partial forfeiting of what personal power I have over my own life, and right now that might not actually be much but if there is any at all I'd rather conserve it, nurture it, exert it as frequently as possible over the next few months; if only to have the (potentially illusory) feeling of engagement. But you never know; the opportunity might present itself down the line to really flex, and I'd rather be prepared than limp, flabby, made soft by a few extended weeks spent indoors (how I'm going to keep fortified at this time I have no idea; a strategy is still being formulated). Astrology is a funny one because it's internet popularity bares resemblance with the internet itself, in how it's a vehicle for co-presence, or how just like the internet it allows for the simultaneous mental holding/imaging of two or more separate, parallel realities (my life, and the hidden influence of the constellations as an omnipotent co-present influence). Perhaps co-presence has been something that's existed for as long as any media has (even the media of storytelling itself), but nothing in existence has facilitated the absolute global co-presence of the internet, in which any one individual world (mine, yours, anyone's) will at the same time have the heft and texture of it's foundational one as dictated by an amorphous platform of consensus reality, a never ending script that seems to give populist sensibilities an instant shape and voice.
I am relieved that we will be allowed to go on solitary walks. I don't think I would be able to get through any of this without a daily bit of cardio. It's my number one coping strategy for any and all of life's bitch-slaps. And this is a bitch-slap, or what feels like an unending succession of them, one after the other without a moment's respite between. Ouch.
I do like the vague optimism around what impact locking down for a few months will have on the environment. Apparently there's heavily reduced emissions in China right now, something about clear water in the Venice canals etc. And I guess it does make sense, with no one on the streets and no one in the air, of course the planet will be taking some kind of active pleasure in a virtual pause on industry. I mean don't quote me on this, you'd have to ask Her.
I watched Lord of the Rings; The Fellowship of the Ring last night and tried contextualising our current situation in it's allegorically neat tableaux of good versus evil, and realised I couldn't. I then wondered how many other assumptions about the way the world works, how many other little stories we tell ourselves, will be proven flimsy inaccuracies, ideological niceties with no basis in reality. Is it sacreligious to talk about benefits to this pandemic, to this lockdown? I personally can't handle any more celebrities giving advice on how to 'pull through', and I'm certainly fucking sick of certain celebrities going live on IG, mining the situation for creative branding solutions; are you fucking kidding me?
Also also, thirsty gays promoting sales on their onlyfans accounts via IG is one of the most dystopian things I have ever seen, if only because it feels like this gig economy's grandest punchline.
When I started writing this blog it was as a vent for unassailable anxieties about the world's pending demise, which my imagination had a specific image of, something more akin to the spat of natural disaster movies from the nineties; but things are happening a little differently, feel much different from whatever I'd been expecting. Also the timescale of collapse seems so much slipperier than I imagined it would. I guess that even in light of things like increasingly violent foreign policies by our world powers and global-warming related cataclysms, I had thought we had more time before this way of life was unequivocally disrupted for who knows how long. I hadn't factored in the kinds of changes I would have to make as a person, had only really imagined it as a no-holds-barred Mad Max-esque free for all. But actually, here at the beginning of the end (an end?), I'm not feeling violent but contemplative, quiet, shamed even. My own complicity in the consummate effects of industry, my participation as a passive consumer; these are emotional labours that we are probably all going through right now, and which we will have to efficiently deal with before coming to a place of grace, a place of radical acceptance. Because I guess it's only in the latter that we will be able to find a way through.
But I'm as green in this situation as anyone else, I don't have informed advice to offer. I do think we need to be patient with each other though, especially in our various isolation scenarios.
Ultimately this is a time for grief, a time for processing the specific paths taken which have brought us collectively to this particular point in history, and how we might make different decisions in the future.
God help us.
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