All tagged covid-19
It’s been 9 days since the world went insane. I don’t even remember what I was thinking about before. I know I was aware of coronavirus, and was tracking it’s spread in China, but it hadn’t yet stopped life everywhere else. So it seemed like a distant non-possibility. it feels weird. like it was normal normal normal and then bam. everything changed. overnight.
These are strange, strange times. I feel the urge, more than ever, to document and write what I’m seeing and what I’m feeling and, more simply, what is happening for the sake of posterity. And yet, I’m not. Not nearly as much as I want to, or should be. Part of that is old fashioned self sabotage—it seems that even a global pandemic can’t shake one’s ability to self loathe—and part of that is practical.
On Saturday, the Daily (a New York Times podcast that I love) played a special episode titled: A Bit of Relief. It was needed after the week that had just concluded. It included a reading from “Love in the Time of Cholera” by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (also love her and her writing), another reading by Wesley Morris from a cookbook about how to stock your fridge (funny and light and his voice is nice and reassuring to listen to), and then this reading from C.S. Lewis’ “On Living in an Atomic Age.”
it’s hard to know where to start. As of right now, the world has essentially stopped due to the outbreak of the coronavirus. The World Health Organization, as of March 11, has declared it worldwide pandemic. China, Italy, Spain, Japan and even parts of the US are now on lockdown. Businesses are closing. Schools will likely be out of session until the 2020-21 school year begins. Daily, hourly even, we are hearing new reports on rising cases and restrictions. It’s a lot to take in and process. It feels like we should be watching this in a movie, or reading about this happening in another place, in another time.
