Another week and my mental state is holding somewhere between giving a shit in general and saying fuck it all. I spent a lot of time on zoom this week for various planning and staff meetings, including a committee that I lead and usually greatly enjoy, but I was having a hard time again being human enough to trot us through the agenda. I did a virtual class visit on the history zines, but the students, the few who even had their camera even on, look tired, In fact the room felt tired, and I as I gave my usual spiel and tried to feign enthusiasm for the subject matter and projects, I suspect they all realized that we all are sort of faking it. That we are all faking it while a couple thousand people die each and every day (and in a way that is usually very horrible at that.)
I mentioned earlier in the week to a friend that it's now sort of like 9/11 is happening again. Just every day and everywhere all at once. Also without the illusion that what is happening will pass soon and we can move on after some mourning time. It's too late to make a difference, even if we rally, for what will happen over the next few weeks. What we do now can hopefully get numbers lower in early 2021 and tie us over until the vaccine is widely available, but there are a lot of sad, lonely deaths between then and now that are already in motion.
If this were any normal year, I'd be thinking about perfect gifts for family & friends. I'd be spending a lot of time watching bad holiday romance movies and eating cookie dough before it makes it to the oven, and I am doing these things, but they are less like things I enjoy, but more like shreds of normalcy I am clinging to with every fibre of my brain and it's exhausting. Even on the days I don't have to leave the house it's harder to get out of bed. Early in the pandemic there was an infographic that designated a line between "thriving" and "surviving" and we are all feeling it right now.
So I light my little tree and put a wreath on my door and make chicken soup and try to conduct myself as if the world is not falling apart in every emergency room and hospital and in so many homes. I think of our softness in terms of living through major historical events. During the zine workshop I wanted to tell the students to pay attention and to document everything they can, because unlike most of the time I have been alive as a Gen X-er, "history" was something that happened significantly before I was born. But really maybe it was always happening and there are only certain really bad points where the future textbooks are watching and waiting.
