Okay, I have been silent for almost a week and my apologies to all of you who have been coming here. But, I have been blindsided by how all the sacrifices we on the East Coast have made over the past FOUR MONTHS have been burned to the ground by the other places in this country. Like, what the f*ck? Did everyone else in the country think that those scenes of corpses in convince store refrigeration trucks, not to mention the mass graves in NYC, a joke?????
But if I take step back, how many thousands of times have I looked at news footage of foreign countries where there has been a massive tragedy and just dusted it aside? Yeah, okay, fine, yes, you have a point that this is a VIRUS and IN THE SAME COUNTRY where I live. But, it seems that unless you are having to deal with it yourself in some real way, you can just float along the Sea of Denial and not care.
People here in New Jersey have decided to drop an anvil on their collective feet and go to bars down the shore without wearing masks and crushed together like sardines on a Tokyo subway at rush hour. I am so weary that I cannot even do a face-palm move. All I know is that it now looks likely that the numbers will increase again and we will be screwed. Mark my word, in two weeks this will all get nasty.
NYC seems to be ready to do the same and I am not amused. Again, everyone wants to get out and be in the presence of another human in the flesh. But this is not under the same burnout that it was like in "The Plague". In the book, people came to a point where they just didn't care and went out for human contact. It was one city and they could feel the rest of the outside world being free. In the end, for the people of Oran, you just rolled the dice because it was unfair how they got screwed and the rest of the world didn't. Despair is rarely a good bedfellow.
But that's not the case here, for the most part. The WORLD got this thing, so the idea of "other" was non-existent. But people's reality tends to go as far as where they drive. So, while we were having WAWA Store refrigeration trucks used for emergency morgues and mass graves in NYC, they thought it would never happen to them. Biology is amoral and just does what it wishes. Now, the rest of the country is having to deal with what we on the East Coast have had to do, and we may wind up in the thick of it again by August.
Fear brings out the worst in people and the fact that wearing a mask has become a political statement is beyond me. Yes, masks suck and I do not like wearing them. But it seems like such a small inconvenience when compared to either death or permanent lung damage after a hellish illness. In the end, it comes down to the people to desire to do all for the common good.
Another odd parallel is that, also in the book, the bureaucratic mechanisms in the book were not enough to truly help out with the crisis. It took volunteers to come forward to help out, with these people knowing that they would most likely die in the process. This was done via the work of the character Tarrou and almost all the main characters step up and do something. Here, there is this disconnect between the federal government and the state government which is causing havoc with everything. To confound things even more, mayors are disagreeing with governors. There is no clear message to the country. It is not that everyone is left guessing, but that everyone seems distrustful of each other as taking precautions has become a political statement. Thankfully, that was not in the book, as no. one would ever have believed it.
Back in very late 1997, a guitarist who changed my life was killed in an automobile accident. The official account was that he skidded off the road during a rainy night while driving treacherous roads in Northern California. They found him days later via a road repair crew that was doing work. His loss was, to many in the Music world, an absolute shock and injustice. Personally, I had just seen him a short time before at what would be his last performance ever. He was 43 years old and about to turn 44. His performance showed that he was doing something no one could have believed: reaching new heights of passion, performance, and invention. It was so inspiring to see him play, especially that time.
To this day, I keep wondering why he was driving those hills at that late hour? If he had just gone slower, maybe this would not have happened? If he had just pulled over and slept in his car or a motel or hotel earlier in the evening or taken a less hazardous path? Sure, that would have delayed him, but it turns out that amount of time was nothing compared to the absolute loss. I am not blaming him for the accident, nor for his death. My wonder is about, what if he had just taken a safer road that took longer? But these are nothing more than the dreams of someone who is alive about someone they knew who died. What if we could just have the chance to not have the one piece the narrative be there and a better one in its place? I miss him as a musical inspiration. I miss many other friends every day who have passed on. I think about the one or two things that I would change to have them still around: go to the doctor a month earlier, quit smoking, get them help sooner, etc. At one point or another, we all want to go back in time and change something in the past so that we would have a better present and future.
I believe that we are in that collective place now and we are wasting it....
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