It is a surreal experience to be voluntarily housebound under the threat of the coronavirus in one of Boston’s most densely populated buroughs. We live on the third floor of a multi unit house, and where I write from, by the bay windows overlooking the street, I have only a peep of the world beyond. Behind me, sleeping with her thumb in her mouth is our infant daughter on whose behalf I’ve grown anxious over the present situation.
From my perch I’m trying to read the outlook of this pandemic; I’m necking over gutters, sizing up what’s happening below: What are my neighbors doing? Who’s out? Who’s in? Are there cars on the road? Did I hear a plane go by? May I crack this window and let in some fresh air? In the past few days something switched— I felt, and I imagine others felt the same unnerving shift from ‘Oh, this will pass’ to ‘Oh, this could be really bad’. There’s a new rash of questions popping up, and a dark wave of unease I can’t see the crest of.
Like many city dwellers who are hunkered but anxious to hear what’s going on, my ears are privy to a polyphony of voices: press conferences, articles, snatches of conversation with my wife, hearsay from colleagues; each voice impassioned with it’s own prediction of how this will all turn out. My unease derives from this ongoing state of mental topsy turvydom; trying to assimilate piecemeal information without letting it devour my attention outright.
The whole thing has made me twitchy. One moment I feel nervous with butterflies, the next I feel a tickle in my throat and wonder what that means. And then, out of nowhere I get a pinch of Springtime lust; this immense craving to be out, to throw away my concerns and watch the Boston marathon and go hear geese honking on the river.
But that will have to wait. From what I’ve garnered in this hotbed of Boston, things remain imminent: the virus is traveling headlong toward the masses, the number of infected will rise, the symptoms, though covert at times, will invariably surface. The list goes on, and for the most part it’s not a pretty tale. However, what’s difficult to reconcile with these bracing updates are the way things look at street level. I glance below and by all appearances the world is humming as if none was the matter; dog walkers are out and couples are strolling. The other day I woke to a beaming sun and warm air and birdsong; then early in the evening I cracked the windows and smelled someone grilling. What is going on here? These are picnic scenes, not quarantine.
Does this lackadaisical optimism extend beyond my neighborhood block? Is it a cultural phenomenon? A brave, swaggering Americanism that believes this pandemic will be conquered, beat, and forgotten in a hurry. I don’t know, but one way or another I’m trying to find my footing between panic, pandemic, puzzlement, peace.
However one makes do in agitating moments like this, there’s no doubt one of the hardest parts is simply sitting with it and sitting with ourselves. Being suspended in an indefinite holding pattern. Waiting. We might say there is something Advent about this lockdown, as we hold out our collective hope for a vaccine, a remedy, a downturn in deaths. But there is certainly something Lenten about it too; a chastening reality; a seriousness and soberness which has descended, exposing our inner life.
Our situation reminds me of a remark C.S. Lewis made about wartime:
“War creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice.”
Under these aggravated circumstances it’s tempting to retreat further from the world and use the precious time to swivel between our universal modes of distraction, to keep up with the news even while keeping away from the precipice that Lewis alludes to. But maybe we must turn toward the edge and not away; to consider what unsettles us and why.
This may mean cultivating what the poet G.M. Hopkins called inscape. Inscape means opening the door of the imagination.Giving the mind space to envision something new outside our usual autopilot.The difference between pure introspection and inscape is that the former is an act of going in to look within, and the latter is an act of going in to look outward; to find that the world is not shrunk to the size of our psyches, but deeper and richer, spreading out before us like a blue sky on which to fly a kite.
I’m wary of calling this outlook a ‘silver lining’, but one way or another, our present plight offers many of us an opportunity to be still again. To be unusually still. To suffer the uncertainty in our lives, and even to do so without being discouraged or isolated by it.
Is this too dreamy? It may not be dreamy enough. As the virus spreads it proves that life is forever dangerous, and that we must face the danger. Perhaps we must fight. Or dream better. Or find a little play within the panic; a vision to fan the imagination alive and remind us that there is something the far side of danger worth living for.
show & tell 