What day was it tomorrow? Worn down locked down. We binged on tiger kings and tiger bread so long that I lost time down the back of the sofa along with the TV remote. The sky has been either black or blue. Never grey or white. And now it could be yesterday or it could be Christmas Eve. Will I have lost the ability to communicate face-to-face? Is it possible that I’ll find an unwatched episode of Friends? Maybe this was all a dream. I’ve forgotten why we closed the door. It’s been so long and it’s been too strange.
We zoom through blank soulless streets finding zen in tube trips of streamed yoga bombs. We reconnect lost sparks through worn down locked down boredom. Germinating seeds of hope on our windowsills the whole world over while the hopeless truth is soon these plants will be the only thing in our universe bearing fruit. As our joints rust and our eyes dim to the sight of the sun, another day turns into another month and another week ends where the last one started.
TikTok TikTok as time blends and doors open and close once more. We used to clap, but now we just sigh as we traverse the third peak. Jab me, stab me we cry as we say we want to live but we’re no longer sure why. We invent conspiracies to resuscitate us from the coma. We invent vaccines to innoculate our future. We invent and reinvent because there’s nothing left to do.
Bankers in their spare room sit poised for the furlough bubble to reap its timely revenge and cause the rut in our lives to deepen evermore. A chasm of cashless homes blindly waits to be pushed to the wolves. One tragedy after another. This time we saw it coming a mile away. This time the writing was on the wall.
We eat out and help out and stay home and save lives. We yo-yo and grind down. We make our daily salutation to the sun. Worn down locked down again. The same day again and again.
And as the planet takes another turn we become numb and dumb to the whole scenario. We barely watch the projected spikes or the new sloganeering, as rules change weekly. Nobody’s sure anymore what can be done or where we can go. Shops sell dust by the kilo. Restaurants are a faded and distant memory.
In the sequel to this story, we find our way in a strange new brave new world. Revisiting golden arches now used to house the homeless. Our dreams on pause so long that the tape had stretched. Scratched and warped memories of a future we never had. We had forgotten the lives we were going to live.
But of course the algorithm will reset and the consumer cogs will hoist the pulley that lifts us to resurrection and we’ll go back to nine-to-fives and soulless lives, closer together but ten feet apart.
Image by Saray Villar from Pixabay
Great post, love it and can completely connected with the words. I tried to like the post, but it isn’t letting me it keeps saying “loading…”
This really captures what it feels like. Nicely done. (Ditto on not being able to like the post.)
thank you 🙂 (not sure why it’s not doing this, but makes me wonder how many others it’s not working for!)
Glitches are fun, aren’t they? I hope you can figure it out.
It seems to work if you try and hit like from inside WordPress reader – but not from the site itself. odd. I’ll speak to support!! (aggggaaaaiiiinnnn) hope you’re doing ok in this weird time!!
I just noticed I don’t even have the option to like from the email notification I get when you reply (I always do on other notifications). Good luck with support. Stay safe! (Oh, and I have a story for The Finest Example–should I email you with it or just send it to submissions?)
Excellent! I’ll look forward to seeing it. send it to the submissions! Admitedly Matt seems to pick things up before me on there these days if I’m honest, but we both have access to that account so when I have a spare half an hour I can get the post scheduled 🙂
Excellent–thanks 🙂
Great post! It captures what every might be feeling at this weird time.
“Scratched and warped memories of a future we never had. We had forgotten the lives we were going to live.” Sends shiver down my spine, but it may all turn out to be true. The last sentence is so on point.
I hope you are doing fine in this trying time! Take care.
I’m struggling if I’m honest. It’s knocked my mental health sideways. But I guess it will all pass eventually and life will go on. It’s hard on so many people though. Hope you’re okay! (PS, I’m not ignoring the fact that you emailed me the other day. Just having a snowball of a week!)
I get that, it has affected everyone, some more than others. I am blessed to be living with my family during the lockdown which has kept me from going all haywire. But there are still moments of weakness.
(Don’t worry about the email, I understand.) I hope it gets better for you!
Take care, Pete!
Excellent words. This is how many people feel today.
This is what scares me: “we’ll go back to nine-to-fives and soulless lives, closer together but ten feet apart.” I’m just worried my work is going to come back, same as before, but with a million more cleanings and gloves and no more concern for their workers. I try to keep my hope up, but… At least there’ll still be good poetry!
It could go either way. I feel like we’re too entrenched in consumerism to start caring about people though. It might feel like we’ve had a couple of months of from our cold-cash-grabbing ways, but in the last few weeks the 1% have actually seen their worth shoot up. I saw earlier that Jeff Bezos worth has shot up by something like 50 billion in the last few weeks. We’re being fed the line that we’re all in this together, but just because we’re all staying home, doesn’t mean that the world is any more of a caring place than it was in February… (it’s late at night, tiredness makes me cynical! 😀 Hope you’re keeping safe and well Mint!!)
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Had to travel – it was a bit odd as we drove. Fear of flying and having to wear a mask and maybe not even sit together… anyway the further we got from our own ground zero things lightened up. So much so that we actually had dinner in a restaurant last eve. Odd though – the condiment jars had to be sanitized on their outsides before we could get them. Couldn’t just take them from the nearest table. It will be a slow reopening… and even stranger when we return to our own area – still in a level Red, but possibly moving to yellow soon (too soon) that is debatable I suppose. We all will have to get on with living life at some point. But will it ever be the same before the Pandemic?
Hang in there.
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Descriptive exposition of the madness inherent in quarantine living. Interestingly, the riots seem to have taken the coronavirus off of the news, and a lot of people are awakening from their quarantine like it had been a strange, and sometimes nightmarish, dream that they can shake off by focusing on some other calamity. We humans really have a great capacity for fixating on “something new,” which seems to allow the horrors (or in the case of the quarantine the listlessness) of the recent past to recede fairly quickly.
You’re not wrong about our fixation on novelty. And that’s why history will always repeat itself. We’re just animals attracted by shiny things.
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