Here we are.
So, here we are. If there is any one certainty in today's uncertain times, it is that no living human on our little island home, this rock we call Earth, has ever been where we are today. Many have experienced more visceral carnage, the examples are endless.
But, nowhere in time or space of living memory, have we as a civilization, a global population, been cast so decidedly into the void. The before times are gone, probably forever, at least for many years to come and then with foundational changes. The in-between times, where we are now, are where we shall remain for an undefined future. The after times remain a period of myth, of simultaneous universal hope and dread, which no one knows what it will look like.
In the before times, not without their perils, life for the average American was pretty much predictable. Get on a plane, land where you were headed, do your business... Go to work, school, church, the grocery, with little thought of immediate peril. Seeing an old acquaintence, one would spontaneously offer an enthusiastic handshake, or hug, the appropriateness governed by the strength of the relationship.
Even these examples are laden with exceptions. Getting on a plane requires an xray, your laptop to be swabbed for explosive residue. Work, school, church, shopping carried the risk of being gunned down out of the blue. An unsolicited hug could end a political or business career.
Now, all of these activities come with the explicit threat of death - of you, or those you encounter. It is, in the grand scheme of things, a statistically small threat, like being shot in church or blown out of the sky, but one so pervasive no one in their right mind doesn't consider when leaving the house.
History is replete with more graphic perils. One doesn't have to travel back 102 years to the great flu pandemic. Take WWII - 57 straight days of German bombs raining down on London. Thousands died. Fires raged for the entirety. But, there was a very obvious reason for this: someone, some force which could be shot at, war is an ageless plight which always carries the same exit - absolute victory over the foe.
Our current foe, Covid-19, the novel coronavirus, "the rona", is less identifiable. It doesn't wear a baklava and carry a semi-automatic firearm, has never identified with a swastika. Its mark may not even realize he or she or they have been selected as a means of transmission.
In these liquid, constantly morphing and entirely unpredictable times, our leadership is in tatters. This is not a political commentary neccessarily, but an observation: on the one hand, there is a president opting to ingest and promote the use of an untested "cure" which could, by all the accumulated anecdotal evidence, kill him as quickly as keep him safe. On the other side of the coin, one of the most capable private citizens striving to find a cure or at least a salve is branded as the leader of the cabal wanting to chip us in the guise of a solution. The citizenry in-between condemns leaving the house without a mask or charges a state capital maskless but heavily armed to protest the situation.
Political variations on the theme aside, there is one certainty here. We, each and every one of us, regardless of age, location, or social standing, has a fresh, hot 6' layer of shit heaped upon us in order to just get through the day. New decisions, considerations, paranoias, precautions...
Here in the rural south, we haven't been faced with many 5 digit death counts in our states, seen refrigerated tractor trailers filled with bodies outside hospitals while emergency field stations are left unneeded. We haven't been elbow to elbow with humanity who may or may not be the end of us. For many, it's just news from "out there".
I won't try to recount or comment on where things stand in the country, the region or the world. My reality is as a courier for a company in Chattanooga, TN. I spend my days handling paper coming at me from a myriad of sources, delivering said paper to the courthouse, banks, every conceivable destination.
(My company has taken incredibly good care of me and all of our employees, doing everything it can to continue functioning at top capacity.)
Let's just look at interacting with a bank. In the before times, I had my favorite tellers, branch managers, etc who were like coworkers, some form of a social outlet. Now, everything is drive through. Depositing a roll of coins involves minor trauma for the bank employee who must open the actual door, as this roll won't fly magically through a pneumatic tube, and they must breach their cocoon for a moment to interface with an outsider. Many of these interactions are met with great angst.
Then, there is the status of how things work in the world. Many of my office mates awake, get in their car in their garage, park in the garage in our office's basement (not a public garage), and return home to their garage. It could rain 2" an hour until the end of time and these people would never get wet.
(This is by no means a comment on my coworkers, other than they may be more removed from social interaction than I am, as a function of work.)
When told "that's not the way it works right now", there is often pushback. They may be open, but not to the public. Yes, they are doing business, but all hell fire will befall you should you cross their threshold.
Getting the plates renewed for the company car - "Did you get the car smogged?" meaning emissions tested, a requirement for renewal in the before time. "No, that's been suspended." By the way, the renewal office, that is literally across the street from our office, has been closed for 6 weeks, with no reopening date, and plate renewal isn't going to be monitored until at least the middle of June.
Nobody likes living in the void, dealing with the unknown at every turn. Problems were compounded in Chattanooga after a tornado swept through a major commercial artery. Got power? Phone? Internet? Roof? Getting business done, living life, required wading through an additional 6' of merde. Tempers frayed, patience evaporated.
As to the after times, so many of us see either a dystopian corporate run police state or some utopian resurrection. Bill Gates chipping us or dancing in the streets, the sudden all clear having been given. This isn't going to work like that, in either direction.
I ponder, what does heaven look like? The Talking Heads offer the most compelling answer - Heaven is a place, where nothing ever happens. Planes don't fly into towers, swaths of Africa don't bleed to death from their orifices or gynocidal militias, corporate overlords don't materialize and force the rest of us further into serfdom.
The one combination that will get us there quicker than anything else, is compassion and reason. Compassion in totally throwing out the idea of "the other" - the infected, the overlord, the individual fighting against some perceived tyranny. Reason in actually listening to science, forget the Machiavellian rest of it - Shaming someone for not wearing a mask, hanging the governor in effigy outside his home are not ways to make progress.
If anything good can come of this mess, it is some progress of empathy and cooperation to get to the after times. Right now, every one has concerns, be it their immediate safety or the coming of tyranny. Some of these concerns are less founded than others, and I don't want to question any of them, any are possible, one person may know something concrete which I don't. One thing is for certain. If we don't put personal agendas aside, work together and go with the best science, we are screwed and the in between times will drag out far longer than we want them to or is rational.
Once upon a time, our best scribes predicted the return of the Christ, an apocalypse, a resurrection, a rapture, right around the corner. now the return of the before times, or at least the arrival of the after times, is predicted for next week. We must look at 2000 years of prophesy and our current forecast, both of witch look as likely.
At no other time in our history has cutting each other some slack, taking care of the "least of these" been more important for our communal well being. Be nice.
But, nowhere in time or space of living memory, have we as a civilization, a global population, been cast so decidedly into the void. The before times are gone, probably forever, at least for many years to come and then with foundational changes. The in-between times, where we are now, are where we shall remain for an undefined future. The after times remain a period of myth, of simultaneous universal hope and dread, which no one knows what it will look like.
In the before times, not without their perils, life for the average American was pretty much predictable. Get on a plane, land where you were headed, do your business... Go to work, school, church, the grocery, with little thought of immediate peril. Seeing an old acquaintence, one would spontaneously offer an enthusiastic handshake, or hug, the appropriateness governed by the strength of the relationship.
Even these examples are laden with exceptions. Getting on a plane requires an xray, your laptop to be swabbed for explosive residue. Work, school, church, shopping carried the risk of being gunned down out of the blue. An unsolicited hug could end a political or business career.
Now, all of these activities come with the explicit threat of death - of you, or those you encounter. It is, in the grand scheme of things, a statistically small threat, like being shot in church or blown out of the sky, but one so pervasive no one in their right mind doesn't consider when leaving the house.
History is replete with more graphic perils. One doesn't have to travel back 102 years to the great flu pandemic. Take WWII - 57 straight days of German bombs raining down on London. Thousands died. Fires raged for the entirety. But, there was a very obvious reason for this: someone, some force which could be shot at, war is an ageless plight which always carries the same exit - absolute victory over the foe.
Our current foe, Covid-19, the novel coronavirus, "the rona", is less identifiable. It doesn't wear a baklava and carry a semi-automatic firearm, has never identified with a swastika. Its mark may not even realize he or she or they have been selected as a means of transmission.
In these liquid, constantly morphing and entirely unpredictable times, our leadership is in tatters. This is not a political commentary neccessarily, but an observation: on the one hand, there is a president opting to ingest and promote the use of an untested "cure" which could, by all the accumulated anecdotal evidence, kill him as quickly as keep him safe. On the other side of the coin, one of the most capable private citizens striving to find a cure or at least a salve is branded as the leader of the cabal wanting to chip us in the guise of a solution. The citizenry in-between condemns leaving the house without a mask or charges a state capital maskless but heavily armed to protest the situation.
Political variations on the theme aside, there is one certainty here. We, each and every one of us, regardless of age, location, or social standing, has a fresh, hot 6' layer of shit heaped upon us in order to just get through the day. New decisions, considerations, paranoias, precautions...
Here in the rural south, we haven't been faced with many 5 digit death counts in our states, seen refrigerated tractor trailers filled with bodies outside hospitals while emergency field stations are left unneeded. We haven't been elbow to elbow with humanity who may or may not be the end of us. For many, it's just news from "out there".
I won't try to recount or comment on where things stand in the country, the region or the world. My reality is as a courier for a company in Chattanooga, TN. I spend my days handling paper coming at me from a myriad of sources, delivering said paper to the courthouse, banks, every conceivable destination.
(My company has taken incredibly good care of me and all of our employees, doing everything it can to continue functioning at top capacity.)
Let's just look at interacting with a bank. In the before times, I had my favorite tellers, branch managers, etc who were like coworkers, some form of a social outlet. Now, everything is drive through. Depositing a roll of coins involves minor trauma for the bank employee who must open the actual door, as this roll won't fly magically through a pneumatic tube, and they must breach their cocoon for a moment to interface with an outsider. Many of these interactions are met with great angst.
Then, there is the status of how things work in the world. Many of my office mates awake, get in their car in their garage, park in the garage in our office's basement (not a public garage), and return home to their garage. It could rain 2" an hour until the end of time and these people would never get wet.
(This is by no means a comment on my coworkers, other than they may be more removed from social interaction than I am, as a function of work.)
When told "that's not the way it works right now", there is often pushback. They may be open, but not to the public. Yes, they are doing business, but all hell fire will befall you should you cross their threshold.
Getting the plates renewed for the company car - "Did you get the car smogged?" meaning emissions tested, a requirement for renewal in the before time. "No, that's been suspended." By the way, the renewal office, that is literally across the street from our office, has been closed for 6 weeks, with no reopening date, and plate renewal isn't going to be monitored until at least the middle of June.
Nobody likes living in the void, dealing with the unknown at every turn. Problems were compounded in Chattanooga after a tornado swept through a major commercial artery. Got power? Phone? Internet? Roof? Getting business done, living life, required wading through an additional 6' of merde. Tempers frayed, patience evaporated.
As to the after times, so many of us see either a dystopian corporate run police state or some utopian resurrection. Bill Gates chipping us or dancing in the streets, the sudden all clear having been given. This isn't going to work like that, in either direction.
I ponder, what does heaven look like? The Talking Heads offer the most compelling answer - Heaven is a place, where nothing ever happens. Planes don't fly into towers, swaths of Africa don't bleed to death from their orifices or gynocidal militias, corporate overlords don't materialize and force the rest of us further into serfdom.
The one combination that will get us there quicker than anything else, is compassion and reason. Compassion in totally throwing out the idea of "the other" - the infected, the overlord, the individual fighting against some perceived tyranny. Reason in actually listening to science, forget the Machiavellian rest of it - Shaming someone for not wearing a mask, hanging the governor in effigy outside his home are not ways to make progress.
If anything good can come of this mess, it is some progress of empathy and cooperation to get to the after times. Right now, every one has concerns, be it their immediate safety or the coming of tyranny. Some of these concerns are less founded than others, and I don't want to question any of them, any are possible, one person may know something concrete which I don't. One thing is for certain. If we don't put personal agendas aside, work together and go with the best science, we are screwed and the in between times will drag out far longer than we want them to or is rational.
Once upon a time, our best scribes predicted the return of the Christ, an apocalypse, a resurrection, a rapture, right around the corner. now the return of the before times, or at least the arrival of the after times, is predicted for next week. We must look at 2000 years of prophesy and our current forecast, both of witch look as likely.
At no other time in our history has cutting each other some slack, taking care of the "least of these" been more important for our communal well being. Be nice.
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