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