It feels like I'm in a Terrence Malick film. Don't get me wrong, I really like Terrence Malick's films, but it's been running for over 3000 hours now and it's getting a bit tiring.
Another day, these four walls. Home as work, work as home. No avoidance. The same routine, the days melting and fusing into one. Sleep. Sleep with these disquieting dreams. Exhaustion. Debilitated by myself and this inability to break away from an endless inner dialogue. Gratitude and guilt. So many now without a form of sustenance. Still have today, but... A fragile state. Falling and tossed. The present now, in this space, but the future...
I went out to get some groceries yesterday. The first lockdown hardly anyone was outside. The streets were hauntingly empty, but there was hope. The borders were closed, and the numbers were low and seemed to be suspended and under some kind of control. The government seemed to be taking it seriously and responded to close things down before it got out of hand.
These days it's a different world. Shut down for the second time and the numbers on the rise. There's an amplified anxiety in it all, and yet yesterday when getting the groceries, there were thousands of cars and people around. It felt as though things were going on despite everything. The economy is crashing and burning, but people are out and about anyway. The same things, the things that have always left me unsettled. The aggression and impatience on the roads. People speeding and pushing, not respecting personal space. We've got a real reason to be anxious now, but what was this reason before? Last time, there were signs of a reconnection with what is really important. Nature emerged and pushed its way back. The air cleared. The planet sighed in relief. We spoke about the need for a change and now this was a chance for that – yet all everybody seemed to want to do was 'get back to normal'. We somehow knew that normal is sending us and our children into a cul-de-sac, but there is the coexistence of an acquiescence – as if there are no alternatives.
Where is this all going? Where can we find hope and a path to better days? Yet a friend said they are picking people up off the street now where he is. Seattle. Not police, not even military – some kind of mercenaries. Bashing even peaceful protestors. Spraying them in the face with tear gas. Bundling them into unmarked cars.
My other friend says, 'nature doesn't care, it hasn't changed, it's still there in its searing beauty'. And it doesn't.
Now at this point, I'm holding out for hope, for something to cling to. Can we reach some stability for the sake of our children? Can some sense come out of this, or are we being ushered into an outcome that has been pre-destined by history?
