Here we are 5.05.20
I don't know its precise origin, but once upon a time a cat poster entered our family mythology. We've all seen it by now- a kitten hanging from a branch with the caption "Hang in there" or some such. It's a cute kitten.
This critter became a minor god in our house at some point, worshipped when one of the pack was going through something rough. I think it showed up when my dad had his first bout with lung cancer, in 1984. That was the first of many crisis of health in my family.
I had a pretty serious accident in 1986. Most friends know the details well. I took a pretty substantial fall, breaking a lot of bones, including three vertebrae in my neck. This resulted in a spinal fusion, a month in the hospital, and several months of recuperation.
The cat was there. My hospital room in Nashville, where I would be parked for about three weeks, featured kitty prominently at the foot of my bed. Then, at home, he accompanied me in the living room where my father and I watched endless hours of stupid movies (Morons from Outer Space was cycling on HBO. We watched it, and laughed hysterically, more times than I can recount.)
"Hang in there" went on many roadtrips as well - friends and family recovering from the horrors of life, including another broken neck and fusion of a childhood friend of mine. It still resides somewhere in my mom's house in Kentucky.
On the back of the framed poster is a chronology of its deployments. The subject, the crisis, the date are all documented on the back. The list is long. The suffering documented, the resurrections tallied, it is a unique artifact.
Now, the cat poster needs to be on billboards across the world. Never before have we as a people, an entire civilization, needed this advice, this individual perspective: Hang in there.
So, here we are. Where that is, I don't quite know. I do know the before times are farther behind us, and less retrievable than they were a couple days ago.
I also know the next times are farther away than they were a couple days ago. Right now, we are in a miasma of, for lack of a better term, the fog of war.
The past is irreconcilable, the future is undefined. We are stuck in a grind of God only knows what. Everything, from the fear level of going to the grocery store to the certainty of bills coming down the pike, is cause for confusion and minor panic, or not.
Why panic? What's the use of expending that amount of energy? Why worry? Whatever is going to happen is going to happen. The US has fucked up so royally there will never be another situation like this in my lifetime, I hope. An invisible enemy has firmly planted itself in our midst, and there ain't a whole lot we can do about it except watch, do what the scientists recommend, and not freak out.
I celebrated my first anniversary of working for a great company, Title Guaranty and Trust Company of Chattanooga, on the first day of spring. In that year, we have witnessed a complete breakdown of the city water supply, a Vice President in charge of one branch office get benched for cancer treatment, a pandemic, and a tornado, not to mention a couple lock downs due to troubles at the adjacent county jail. Monday (5.4.20), someone apparently snatched a security person's gun and had to be arrested. Folks are starting to snap.
Folks, I'm tired. Normal went out the window weeks ago and shows no signs of returning. The tornado discombobulation has mostly resolved itself, but it left scars. We are all worn out. The amount of shit one has to dig through to get to the functions of normal life has escalated to a point where things are basically dealing with events as they happen, dealing with, not responding to or having any emotions, just dealing with them.
No longer is there a hope, in my heart, that an end will be declared, the on switch will be flipped, and some sense of normalcy will return. We are beyond a return to normal. Things have changed, and will remain changed, for the foreseeable future. There ain't no going back for quite a while.
The economy is screwed. I thank God that I have a job which isn't going away, as far as I can tell, for a company which is doing its level best to take care of everybody. This reality is at great loggerheads with all the rest of the world which drops people like hot potatoes in these strange times.
Right now, I feel like I'm settling into a new grind, an undefined horizon of the return to normalcy, a horizon which is constantly advancing into the future. As the before times retreat into the past, the new times continue to progress beyond predictability. We just don't know what's coming down the pike.
That is the most frightening message I can derive from the current landscape analysis - we just don't know. Experts tell us this and that, data that compounds on yesterday's data, and tells us it will be weeks before we know where we are.
Folks have to go back to work, that is a given, and overdue, and uncertain. But, with that huge step come more unknowns, risks not yet sussed out, with no way of knowing with any certainty what will result.
Yet, comparisons to past catastrophes are unavoidable. We have racked up more deaths in 10 weeks than we did in the 10+ years of the Vietnam war.
The lens through which we look right now is flawed, fuzzy. We have no idea where this is going. Our experts say a second wave is inevitable, and by 1918 graphs, much worse that the first wave, our cavalier attitude will guarantee that.
Then, there are the fractures occurring in society at large. Protests to open up yield more victims. People are popping off everywhere - in my very rural community, there have been 3 officer involved killings in as many months, unheard of. If this goes on as long as it likely will, what then?
As people return with enthusiasm to their previous ways, what will be the outcome? I can't see anything other than skyrocketing numbers of infected. Go to the mall? Hell, no. The grocery store requires all the fortitude I can muster, and then only for a few minutes.
Not helping matters is the general riff growing between those who are hyper concerned, wearing masks at all opportunities, and quick to ridicule those who don't, and those who are more laissez faire about it. Someone is going to get hurt in this dichotomy. One party or the other is eventually going to go off on the other (Postscript - dollar store security guard shot for "disrespecting" the shooter for not wearing a mask, 5.4.20)
We need to CHILL OUT. This situation is undoubtedly going to take a good, long while to run through the system, and we all have to accept that. No longer am I looking for the headline which proclaims a salvation, or heralds a criticism which makes a difference. It is just a matter of putting one foot in front of the other, knowing I have no control other than what I personally do to stem the tide: restrict movement (though I commute 2.5 hrs a day to work as a courier, delivering shit all over town), socially distance, and wear a face covering in questionable situations.
On December 27, 2004, if you lived in Phuket, Thailand, chances are good you were a little wary of getting in the ocean, the day after 240,000 died, in a single swoop throughout the region. That's where we are now. We have to stick our toes in the water, we can't stay where we are, but, what then? What's next?
In this situation, it seems inevitable there will be another, larger wave. When and where are the only variables. As we are setting it up, it will be obvious in a couple weeks.
The cat needs a new date inscribed on the back, some general recognition of what we must all simply endure. Right now, everything is quicksand, any other interpretation is flawed. We, the general populous, and "they", the experts, are still groping for a solid foothold on the situation. This will come, eventually, and will likely extend the forecast of the virus' expansion. Then again, wouldn't it be nice if we overshot on caution?
Hang in there, baby.
This critter became a minor god in our house at some point, worshipped when one of the pack was going through something rough. I think it showed up when my dad had his first bout with lung cancer, in 1984. That was the first of many crisis of health in my family.
I had a pretty serious accident in 1986. Most friends know the details well. I took a pretty substantial fall, breaking a lot of bones, including three vertebrae in my neck. This resulted in a spinal fusion, a month in the hospital, and several months of recuperation.
The cat was there. My hospital room in Nashville, where I would be parked for about three weeks, featured kitty prominently at the foot of my bed. Then, at home, he accompanied me in the living room where my father and I watched endless hours of stupid movies (Morons from Outer Space was cycling on HBO. We watched it, and laughed hysterically, more times than I can recount.)
"Hang in there" went on many roadtrips as well - friends and family recovering from the horrors of life, including another broken neck and fusion of a childhood friend of mine. It still resides somewhere in my mom's house in Kentucky.
On the back of the framed poster is a chronology of its deployments. The subject, the crisis, the date are all documented on the back. The list is long. The suffering documented, the resurrections tallied, it is a unique artifact.
Now, the cat poster needs to be on billboards across the world. Never before have we as a people, an entire civilization, needed this advice, this individual perspective: Hang in there.
So, here we are. Where that is, I don't quite know. I do know the before times are farther behind us, and less retrievable than they were a couple days ago.
I also know the next times are farther away than they were a couple days ago. Right now, we are in a miasma of, for lack of a better term, the fog of war.
The past is irreconcilable, the future is undefined. We are stuck in a grind of God only knows what. Everything, from the fear level of going to the grocery store to the certainty of bills coming down the pike, is cause for confusion and minor panic, or not.
Why panic? What's the use of expending that amount of energy? Why worry? Whatever is going to happen is going to happen. The US has fucked up so royally there will never be another situation like this in my lifetime, I hope. An invisible enemy has firmly planted itself in our midst, and there ain't a whole lot we can do about it except watch, do what the scientists recommend, and not freak out.
I celebrated my first anniversary of working for a great company, Title Guaranty and Trust Company of Chattanooga, on the first day of spring. In that year, we have witnessed a complete breakdown of the city water supply, a Vice President in charge of one branch office get benched for cancer treatment, a pandemic, and a tornado, not to mention a couple lock downs due to troubles at the adjacent county jail. Monday (5.4.20), someone apparently snatched a security person's gun and had to be arrested. Folks are starting to snap.
Folks, I'm tired. Normal went out the window weeks ago and shows no signs of returning. The tornado discombobulation has mostly resolved itself, but it left scars. We are all worn out. The amount of shit one has to dig through to get to the functions of normal life has escalated to a point where things are basically dealing with events as they happen, dealing with, not responding to or having any emotions, just dealing with them.
No longer is there a hope, in my heart, that an end will be declared, the on switch will be flipped, and some sense of normalcy will return. We are beyond a return to normal. Things have changed, and will remain changed, for the foreseeable future. There ain't no going back for quite a while.
The economy is screwed. I thank God that I have a job which isn't going away, as far as I can tell, for a company which is doing its level best to take care of everybody. This reality is at great loggerheads with all the rest of the world which drops people like hot potatoes in these strange times.
Right now, I feel like I'm settling into a new grind, an undefined horizon of the return to normalcy, a horizon which is constantly advancing into the future. As the before times retreat into the past, the new times continue to progress beyond predictability. We just don't know what's coming down the pike.
That is the most frightening message I can derive from the current landscape analysis - we just don't know. Experts tell us this and that, data that compounds on yesterday's data, and tells us it will be weeks before we know where we are.
Folks have to go back to work, that is a given, and overdue, and uncertain. But, with that huge step come more unknowns, risks not yet sussed out, with no way of knowing with any certainty what will result.
Yet, comparisons to past catastrophes are unavoidable. We have racked up more deaths in 10 weeks than we did in the 10+ years of the Vietnam war.
The lens through which we look right now is flawed, fuzzy. We have no idea where this is going. Our experts say a second wave is inevitable, and by 1918 graphs, much worse that the first wave, our cavalier attitude will guarantee that.
Then, there are the fractures occurring in society at large. Protests to open up yield more victims. People are popping off everywhere - in my very rural community, there have been 3 officer involved killings in as many months, unheard of. If this goes on as long as it likely will, what then?
As people return with enthusiasm to their previous ways, what will be the outcome? I can't see anything other than skyrocketing numbers of infected. Go to the mall? Hell, no. The grocery store requires all the fortitude I can muster, and then only for a few minutes.
Not helping matters is the general riff growing between those who are hyper concerned, wearing masks at all opportunities, and quick to ridicule those who don't, and those who are more laissez faire about it. Someone is going to get hurt in this dichotomy. One party or the other is eventually going to go off on the other (Postscript - dollar store security guard shot for "disrespecting" the shooter for not wearing a mask, 5.4.20)
We need to CHILL OUT. This situation is undoubtedly going to take a good, long while to run through the system, and we all have to accept that. No longer am I looking for the headline which proclaims a salvation, or heralds a criticism which makes a difference. It is just a matter of putting one foot in front of the other, knowing I have no control other than what I personally do to stem the tide: restrict movement (though I commute 2.5 hrs a day to work as a courier, delivering shit all over town), socially distance, and wear a face covering in questionable situations.
On December 27, 2004, if you lived in Phuket, Thailand, chances are good you were a little wary of getting in the ocean, the day after 240,000 died, in a single swoop throughout the region. That's where we are now. We have to stick our toes in the water, we can't stay where we are, but, what then? What's next?
In this situation, it seems inevitable there will be another, larger wave. When and where are the only variables. As we are setting it up, it will be obvious in a couple weeks.
The cat needs a new date inscribed on the back, some general recognition of what we must all simply endure. Right now, everything is quicksand, any other interpretation is flawed. We, the general populous, and "they", the experts, are still groping for a solid foothold on the situation. This will come, eventually, and will likely extend the forecast of the virus' expansion. Then again, wouldn't it be nice if we overshot on caution?
Hang in there, baby.
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