I use lockdown as a chance to brush up on my poetry. The old stuff, the good stuff, the half-remembered references from high school and older, more literate parents.
Sometimes I open the window and feel a thin film of panic and hysteria rise to envelop me, held at bay by the whirring air conditioning and the comforting sounds of the television. It’s only May and the temperature’s rising already, though the silent streets have led to the smog clearing somewhat. Then I turn on my phone and the raw unfiltered anguish and terror of a nation pours out through the glass screen, ten times, a hundred times stronger than if I had stuck my head out of the window. Rumours swirling of doctors silenced, posts exposing corrupt government officials, quack cures selling out in seconds or days. The skyscrapers and statues remain unchanged but the faces have warped and collapsed, my life as I thought it swept away as the great river overflows our fragile dams. On social media the influencers stop going to trendy cafes and start working out in their rooms, and I can see the forced cheer in their eyes fade to black over endless daily videos. I feel like weeping for them, for everyone: How can we, the furnace of the world, inheritors of the great rejuvenating miracle, be brought low by something so tiny?
Out of boredom I begin to sort through my papers, my year visiting at Keio University in Japan cut short by the panic and the chaos. I’d taken out copies of their old periodicals to train my Japanese, and one of the articles catches my eye: “A Statistical View of History”. After all, what is this crisis but the reduction of people into statistics, into empty and hollow casualties? As I read it though, I can’t help but laugh. It tells us that our environment and past events shape the probabilities of actions succeeding, but it is human striving that produces history. Yet who amongst us would have strove for this? No, one heart cannot fight destiny.
Instead, I turn back to my course on networking and telecommunications. This, at least, I can do while trapped indoors. Beats going online, anyhow.
Maybe the food packages will arrive soon.