Strange Times

It’s a strange time for being. Nature seems to have an opportunity to breathe and so do we, only, we are not used to this kind of stillness. This stillness feels like immobility at times. My parents have become self-proclaimed experts in politics and pandemics. The moment I wake up I hear the news buzz about increasing death tolls and unfathomable amounts of people choosing to stay home or deciding not to. Nobody seems to worry about the weather forecast anymore. It’s a strange time for being. There is too much of something in the air. These days the hours disappear as if they never meant to exist in the first place. People who rely heavily on clocks must feel disoriented. I feel like the ground no longer exists. Is there a place for me to regain my footing? I somehow have all the space in the world, and the first thing I feel inside it is smaller. Dwelling in all this space is hellish. Will you sit with me? 2 Metres away from me, so we are less hazardous to each other? But I want to be held. It’s an awakening time. How much more do I consider the effect my actions will have on you these days? I hope that my staying-in means you can get your groceries safely, by some rare chance. On some screen, since there are so many about at the moment, I read that someone’s money is being poured into efforts to help others. Lately we notice all that tends to go unnoticed, even the strangers we’d not take interest in otherwise. Perhaps we are searching for a familiar face—for somebody to confirm how real and unreal this all is, this collective unsettling and upsetting of systems. The frailty of us all. We need others to be proof that at we aren’t alone in witnessing it. It’s a lonelier time. I hear my neighbour blast Stormzy when I’m on the balcony. I’ve come to cherish knowing that there are still other people around. Other people besides whomever I live with. We are all enduring the same moment in so many different ways. We are processing and not processing, struggling here and there, driving ourselves over various edges with boredom and panic. We are coming to terms with and not coming to terms with, exhausting our modes of escapism and dreading or hopeful for whatever may come next. Some of us are feeling more helpless, some of us are in pain more often. It’s a strange time for being. I am not writing a ray of hope, not even for myself. Thank God there are others doing so. I’m trying to write my experience into familiarity, but perhaps there is none. Not at this time. Maybe we must find new things to be familiar with, for now at least. Things like the news, the lonely-togetherness, the energy surges and plunges, the extensive consideration for others—the well intended kind as well as the kind that sometimes crosses into paranoia surrounding hygiene. And the sense that whole worlds can be turned over at inconsiderately short notice. That we can do little but be carried elsewhere by the winds of change.