The post-coffee morning trip up the road with the pup to find some rays of sun, tsk-tsk at the small industrial pig farm, and confirm the town still exists after weird quarantine dreams.
Journal
Day 14: the Shape of Things To Come
Can I scream?
We lack the motion to move to a new beat!
How can we expect anyone to listen if we are using the same old voice?
We dance to all the wrong songs
We enjoy all the wrong moves
— Refused: New Noise
As the dead pile up and the living struggle to meet ends meet around the world, I resign myself to this reality and try to focus on the here and now in our small, safe-for-now village. But my head spins as we are thrown into the peak of the coronavirus crisis while the dual shadows of a decaying and depraved globalized economy and climate breakdown lurk beyond.
I try to stay calm and present with the myriad micro-joys: the kitchen table where I (gratefully) work and write; the small patch of grass where Alqo sunbathes in the early spring mornings; the short walk up the carretera secundaria that exposes a footpath to wander the monte without being noticed by passing guardia civil patrols; a reluctant Amazon order of eight books of fiction and theory to allow myself a break from screens and the news cycle; a beautiful and simple daily routine of meditation, fitness, work, creativity, and delirious vegetarian gastronomy; the mobile panadería that feels even more essential and convenient to avoid the town.
The macro-agonies that I cannot outrun: immediate family members in a densely populated state that must continue to work; the ineptitude of the ruling class to help working people; an American stimulus that will barely cover a month’s rent and nothing else while leaving the many with either nothing at all or delayed disbursement; the prioritization and love of money that will prioritize illogical, fossil-fuel guzzling industries; the awareness that this is an overture and we will surely have another crisis within the next decade.
I’m not living up to the aspiration of stumbling toward hope. I can’t even stumble. It’s of my own doing. Talking to a few friends who are less tuned-in, maybe I could avoid things better, log off, dive into working on writing those novellas more, care less. Human brains aren’t equipped to soak up so much negativity with so little power to change or dismantle those culpable.
En fin. Unfortunately for me and possibly many others, the macro is consuming the micro. And this is just the beginning
Staying Inside: Solidarity from Solitude
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone“ — Blaise Pascal
Day X of lockdown, quarantine, self-isolation, etc. Any word I use is lacking. The Spanish government has extended the confinement period until 12 April, past Semana Santa. I knew this was coming. Frankly, I think it’ll extend past this. The epicenters of the coronavirus crisis in Spain are brutal and the numbers of positive cases (to say nothing of unconfirmed cases or people thinking they have symptoms but cannot receive a test) are rising. Doctors are in tears on social networks lamenting the difficult decisions to pull elderly patients off respirators to give them to younger patients and begging us to stay inside to flatten the curve and stop the spread.
Outside of the Spain and other affected countries like Italy, I see the rumblings of the governments of the United Kingdom and the Unitedl States; simultaneously lying to the population about its preparedness, how deadly this can be, and prioritizing their economies over human lives. It breaks me a little bit. It breaks me, someone far away and relatively safe, because people look for leadership in times of crises. And those leaders are already diluting their advice to stay inside by suggesting we might need to stop that for the sake of the economy. I’ll say it a thousand times more and I’ll say it everyday. The capitalist class does not give a fuck about you.
People of the Occident have become so alienated and atomized from their fellows that to ask us to stay inside, to practice social distancing, to think of the more vulnerable in our society is beyond many.
Twitter isn’t a good measuring stick, but I see people being reckless about our current situation. They say we’re hyperventilating, they try to compare numbers of other illnesses and their mortality rates to for some good ol’ whataboutism, etc. How about we listen to doctors and nurses instead of people who received an email from their cousin who lives in his parents’ basement and crunched some numbers one night?
Look, there are many people who cannot stay inside; the unhoused, service sector workers, medical staff. I get that. But for the rest. The ones who can work from home, self-isolate. By all means, go for a walk alone, but don’t half-ass this. You could be responsible for saving lives just by being at home.
Have some solidarity. If we do this right, we could avoid much harm. Then we can start reorganizing this society to be more coherent and human-centered.
Now, Because What Is Later Anymore?
I updated my /now page today. Seemed like an appropriate thing given that now is so different than before, for all of us.
Lockdown: Day VI Reading List
The three intertwined and colliding global crises of COVID-19, climate change, and capitalism overwhelm us with so many challenges it’s almost impossible to think straight. But soon, for those not in precarity, not on the frontlines of a war against an invisible enemy everywhere in the public sphere, we must shine a light on this chaos, and ourselves at home, to see that the moment presents us with sink-or-swim opportunities for all of us. To hold this tension within ourselves will be very difficult, but it’s our only way. A better world and system is possible. Here are some of the things I’ve been reading and listening to.
- We’re Not Going Back to Normal: “We all want things to go back to normal quickly. But what most of us have probably not yet realized—yet will soon—is that things won’t go back to normal after a few weeks, or even a few months. Some things never will.”
- The Only Treatment for Coronavirus Is Solidarity: “The new coronavirus makes vivid the logic of a world that combines a material reality of intense interdependence with moral and political systems that leave people to look out for themselves. Because we are linked — at work, on the bus and subway, at school, at the grocery store, with the Fresh Direct delivery system — we are contagious, and vulnerable. Because we are morally isolated, told to look out for ourselves and our own, we are becoming survivalists house by house, apartment by apartment, stocking enough that’s canned and frozen, grabbing enough cold meds and disinfectant, to cut ties and go out on our own.”
- After the Quarantine, the Flood: “In what ways are we numerous, enumerated, counted, uncounted, dividuated, enmassed, and divided? In what ways have we chosen to live this way, and in what ways is it chosen for us In whose interests are lives thus organized; which powers does this serve? And what, indeed, is the meaning of our modes of numerosity? I apply these questions again now, from a warm apartment, with ample food and the ability to support myself materially as I type. In this moment, we have been asked to mitigate being numerous together. Solidarity in the pandemic, for those in my position, is situated in not making things worse; this we can choose.”
- Come On, You Live in a Society: “American politicians long ago shifted the burden of safeguarding the public from the government to individuals. Call it personal responsibility, call it deficit reduction, call it whatever you want; the consequences are the same no matter which label we use. The absence of any seriously developed health-care infrastructure abandons people to muddle through on their own. The absence of major labor protections forces people to work sick and will financially ruin anyone whose employers don’t offer paid leave. The preeminent message coming out of D.C. — and this is not a new trend; it is far older than the Trump presidency — tells people that they’re ultimately responsible for themselves. We are conditioned to think of ourselves as individual consumers first and as interconnected members of society second. Movements that hold the opposite view tend to be ruthlessly broken down and suppressed at worst, or at best, dismissed as the fantastical longings of childish adults.
Podcasts
- TrueAnon’s Love in the Time of Corona, Part I and Part II
- Belabored’s Work in the Time of Coronavirus
- Intercepted‘s Coronavirus, the Election, and Solidarity in the Midst of a Pandemic
Time to educate ourselves, create meaningful or whimsical things, to share, to hurt, and to find each other. An injury to one is an injury to all.