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Corona Diary!
Mar. 19th, 2020 10:26 amIn the parlance of our time - shit's crazy. Yo.
Sometimes you'll read a book that tells of ages past, enisled by the lapping waves of intemperate time, the distant & ancient. And, if you're of the right disposition you'll feel in some vain way, cheated. As if the never-ending march of time had robbed you of essential experiences & left you only with a little recollection of what has been, a faint echo of some glorious music. That's a feeling. There's another sense you can have, that the future is bright or bleak & hinged upon the efforts of your hands but ultimately unknown - as if the long arc of history is cast from your own gaze & that it will bend, whether toward justice or away - within your power to change but not see.
Which is to say there's always a feeling, like your friends talking about you when you aren't in the room - of what will be & what you've missed. Past or future you won't see these things & are robbed. So there's a morbid narcissistic fantasy I think a lot of people have that the human world itself must perform like pre-linguistic peek-a-boo & that what you cannot see cannot exist & there's no world at all if it's not there for you to experience. So there's a very specific want - to not miss anything important, that's put at ease by the appearance of living through the end.
The crisis of '08-'09 seemed like an end & was in relevant ways but it had that rancorous consequence of empowering all my adversaries & ruining me. This present collapse seems more equitable in its distribution & I flatter myself that I'm more acquainted with meager expectations & narrow wants than those who will lose most.
Which is to say - as I work from my sofa I watch the big numbers go down & grin like an idiot, I listen to the bigshots fumble & flail & laugh like an idiot. At least, I enthuse to myself, I got to see all this myself.
My job has an excess of tough-guy posturing that needs to carry on so they're still open in spite of reason. I say I'm not coming in & working at home instead & they're not quite tough-guy enough to stand up to me or even push back. But that's what it'll be. Foolish people who lack the moral fiber they credit themselves with getting rolled by those who have no such vanity or purer survival instincts.
Agatha & sit in our living room listening to music in the cold & I get her her true birthday present - Animal Crossing & I cherish my true birthday present - the decline & collapse of society.
My brother calls me & is in a bad place - he's out of work & cannot live in the way he wishes. I talk to him & try to get a picture of his day-to-day for msyelf - I'm still mystified by how people live, even my familiar brother- remembering I'm the ape anthropologist, just trying to gather clues. He misses his twice a week hockey games (!! dude is 40 & fit as hell, good for him) daily gym expeditions, his office, the coffe shop, dining out & on & on. His life is out of the hosue - he intuited that I would thrive in these circumstances & is right - so he called me to call my mother to persuade her not to go to columbus by herself to visit in the middle of a crisis. She must have known because she wouldn't take my calls - but there it is. I really hope she's not stranded or out of gas or infected but she doesn't seem to care.
Agatha & I, when it's not too cold in the intemperate old spring, go walking the neighborhood. A few stores are open & what amounts to my social circle of shopkeepers tell their tales, they're all thinking about returning to their old-countries. Meantime every store is closed, all the bars, all the places we'd have dinner, all the places we'd get our new glasses, or where I'd go to get my license renewed or... And so on.
Nothing is happening & I Love It. The nothing happening. But it does put a tinge of fear/horror/sorrow in your step & catching voice as you think on the people who got no place to trade their labor, no place to live their lives, no money to survive till next week.
So Agatha plays new animal crossing & I type on my computer & the Beatles ask if I say I want a revolution. I know I know - I've talked too much about destruction. But I'm not really all that sure it's gonna be all right.
Sometimes you'll read a book that tells of ages past, enisled by the lapping waves of intemperate time, the distant & ancient. And, if you're of the right disposition you'll feel in some vain way, cheated. As if the never-ending march of time had robbed you of essential experiences & left you only with a little recollection of what has been, a faint echo of some glorious music. That's a feeling. There's another sense you can have, that the future is bright or bleak & hinged upon the efforts of your hands but ultimately unknown - as if the long arc of history is cast from your own gaze & that it will bend, whether toward justice or away - within your power to change but not see.
Which is to say there's always a feeling, like your friends talking about you when you aren't in the room - of what will be & what you've missed. Past or future you won't see these things & are robbed. So there's a morbid narcissistic fantasy I think a lot of people have that the human world itself must perform like pre-linguistic peek-a-boo & that what you cannot see cannot exist & there's no world at all if it's not there for you to experience. So there's a very specific want - to not miss anything important, that's put at ease by the appearance of living through the end.
The crisis of '08-'09 seemed like an end & was in relevant ways but it had that rancorous consequence of empowering all my adversaries & ruining me. This present collapse seems more equitable in its distribution & I flatter myself that I'm more acquainted with meager expectations & narrow wants than those who will lose most.
Which is to say - as I work from my sofa I watch the big numbers go down & grin like an idiot, I listen to the bigshots fumble & flail & laugh like an idiot. At least, I enthuse to myself, I got to see all this myself.
My job has an excess of tough-guy posturing that needs to carry on so they're still open in spite of reason. I say I'm not coming in & working at home instead & they're not quite tough-guy enough to stand up to me or even push back. But that's what it'll be. Foolish people who lack the moral fiber they credit themselves with getting rolled by those who have no such vanity or purer survival instincts.
Agatha & sit in our living room listening to music in the cold & I get her her true birthday present - Animal Crossing & I cherish my true birthday present - the decline & collapse of society.
My brother calls me & is in a bad place - he's out of work & cannot live in the way he wishes. I talk to him & try to get a picture of his day-to-day for msyelf - I'm still mystified by how people live, even my familiar brother- remembering I'm the ape anthropologist, just trying to gather clues. He misses his twice a week hockey games (!! dude is 40 & fit as hell, good for him) daily gym expeditions, his office, the coffe shop, dining out & on & on. His life is out of the hosue - he intuited that I would thrive in these circumstances & is right - so he called me to call my mother to persuade her not to go to columbus by herself to visit in the middle of a crisis. She must have known because she wouldn't take my calls - but there it is. I really hope she's not stranded or out of gas or infected but she doesn't seem to care.
Agatha & I, when it's not too cold in the intemperate old spring, go walking the neighborhood. A few stores are open & what amounts to my social circle of shopkeepers tell their tales, they're all thinking about returning to their old-countries. Meantime every store is closed, all the bars, all the places we'd have dinner, all the places we'd get our new glasses, or where I'd go to get my license renewed or... And so on.
Nothing is happening & I Love It. The nothing happening. But it does put a tinge of fear/horror/sorrow in your step & catching voice as you think on the people who got no place to trade their labor, no place to live their lives, no money to survive till next week.
So Agatha plays new animal crossing & I type on my computer & the Beatles ask if I say I want a revolution. I know I know - I've talked too much about destruction. But I'm not really all that sure it's gonna be all right.
