just tweeting through it
A livid sky on London, Crowley thought, And I knew the end was near. Who had written that? Chesterton, wasn't it? The only poet in the twentieth century to even come close to the Truth.
“Oh, so you’re thinking even longer term,” my boss said. We were talking about the possibility that we’d need to shut down the salon I manage for him in the midst of COVID-19, an infection we now believe has been circulating since November or December last year (four or five months ago!) and which has turned up on both of the contiguous United States’ coasts, suggesting that it has left no corner untouched.
He had asked me what I thought was going to happen next, meaning in the next few months. I had told him that depending on whether COVID-19 is a seasonal disease or not — by no means a likelihood — we would likely see the implementation of a quarantine, whether de facto or de jure, perhaps an abatement over the summer, a brief reprieve which our inadequate medical system could use to perform triage on the inevitable damage it would sustain in this first overwhelming flush of new patients, and then a second wave with colder weather. And, I told him, I thought nothing would ever be quite the same again.
These are the last good days, by which I mean the last days when the world will look the way it did at the beginning of this millennium, or this presidential term, or even this week. Whatever happens next, we are at an inflection point, a moment in time where it is possible to feel the paradigm shifting around us. You know it and I know it. Whether you felt it when Broadway closed or when you stopped by the supermarket to pick up just some stuff, nothing too paranoid, but there was a sign on the door rationing hand sanitizer and toilet paper, the way the world will look when the dust has a chance to settle will be different to anything most of us have seen in our lifetimes.
There are moments when we can feel history happening. The last time I experienced one, I was covering the 2016 presidential election live, standing in the New York Hilton Midtown metatarsal-deep in ruddy carpet, expecting to cover a loss and only just beginning to realize, as early returns rolled in, that I was in a different story than I thought. It felt the way I have felt standing shoulder-deep in the ocean when a swell rolls in and lifts your feet off the sand for a moment where you are suspended, neither flying nor falling, but being swept along by a force larger than your comprehension and out of your control.
Ohio is closed. In the next few days, I expect my workplace to close temporarily (at minimum) as clients realize that it is in their best interests to stay at home and care for their communities from a distance. I think this is a moment where the world will become both smaller and larger, the way it always is when travel is more difficult or less desirable. The far-off becomes almost mythological, and the nearby acquires granular detail. I will be staying home and watering my plants and checking in on my friends and family, near and far, and doing my best to keep busy. I will be posting a lot, probably, as well. This is how I process reality: I put it down in writing. There is nothing that isn’t less manageable when you know how to tell it as a story, and what kind of story you’re in. That’s what I’m doing here, and I hope it’s helpful to you, too.
On the one hand, the other day my husband and I watched a man scoop up an entire pallet of Maruchan chicken-flavored ramen in the supermarket, pile as many additional packets on top as he could carry, and then scurry off nervously as if we were about to jump him for sodium. On the other hand, the next day my husband wrote a thread about food safety tips he’s learned while working food service that you should read if you haven’t already, and a lot of people were very, very kind about it, and hopefully learned how to avoid giving themselves food poisoning during a time when our medical system is already stressed far beyond capacity. Some people, on yet the other (third) hand, were real assholes about what internal temperature beef should reach before it’s safe to eat. Nobody is trying to take away your right to poison yourself, I promise! Do what you will! But maybe take a minute to consider how your actions affect others, just in case. You can do that for free.
It’s getting weird out there and it’s only going to get weirder. Stay safe, stay healthy, and if you can, stay indoors. If you know somebody who might be interested in reading this, pass it along, and be as kind as you can, and then some.
—R.