The Rapid Normalization of the Absurd
Dispatches about personal "resilience"
Someone has spray-painted a COVID HOAX 2020 stencil onto the pavement a few blocks from my apartment. I see it on the ground every time I head west, and its edges are still as crisp and clean as the first time I saw it weeks ago.
Almost every BLACK LIVES MATTER stencil on that same block, and for blocks around it, has been washed out or covered with black spray paint.
My acceptance to a writers' retreat last winter was a shiny accomplishment after unexpectedly losing my job in the fall. It was the signpost of a new possibility, but as the days to the March retreat counted down and the COVID cases counted up, the organizers postponed it to October. It was, at the time, devastating. When the subsequent move to an online-only retreat came a few weeks ago, I took the money I had earmarked for fees and the vacation days I'd already taken off of work and booked an Airbnb rental, in the lovely redwoods of the Santa Cruz mountains. A solo getaway was no equivalent to the original plan, but at least it would be a getaway. I'd take it.
Of course, those plans were shuttered as well.
I've picked up a new quarantine activity: testing mouse traps with the rigor of a Consumer Reports editor. I am hundreds of dollars into this hobby (which is frankly on par with previous fly-by-night obsessions like knitting and beading), and after weeks of setting, checking, verifying, I am extremely unpleased to announce the results are not conclusive. Further testing is required, and I have expanded my coverage to include inhumane but purportedly effective glue traps.
But Robin, what if the mouse has left already?
Of course, I’ve considered this. While the mouse seems to be completely uninterested in the delicious, deadly peanut butter and jelly traps I've set out, it did (for a while) consistently leave tracks across bits of flour I laid out to detect areas of the kitchen it was frequenting. It stopped about two weeks ago, leaving me to seriously consider your question, reader. The building I live in is old, it creaks, and I'm sure there are plenty of small holes for a mouse to exit. And perhaps it did for a while.
I cannot describe the wave of helplessness I felt yesterday morning when I saw that the flour had been disturbed yet again, after I'd begun to feel confident that it'd left. I purchased the glue traps that afternoon.
Editor's note: we are no longer taking well-intentioned suggestions for how to deal with this ongoing problem at this time.
The filter in my air purifier has this little red light indicator that has been signaling that it needs to be changed. I originally purchased it to handle allergens -- is that why my throat has been scratchy these last few days? Or did I spend too much time outside this past weekend in moderate-to-unhealthy levels of wildfire smoke? Or is it low-grade COVID-19? The best-case scenario is that these are "just" the symptoms of the heightened and sustained amount of stress and anxiety of *gestures to everything happening* manifesting itself in my physical health.
I can't focus enough to read very much (I’ll entertain an alternate explanation here, which is that I was no match for a vampire-witch love story that also featured demon yoga, yes you read that correctly demon yoga) but I am playing copious amounts of Good Sudoku well into the early hours of the morning, many mornings. I've also made phenomenal progress on a variety of things like watching Better Call Saul, rewatching Watchmen, watching The Last Dance, watching I May Destroy You, watching I'll Be Gone In The Dark, rewatching What We Do In The Shadows. A Goofy Movie is better than we even remembered it to be apparently, so that's next on the list.
Owing to my inability to set foot in the kitchen at this time without shoes, disposable gloves and a can of Lysol at the ready (see previous section on new hobbies, we are at red alert germ eradication, and we do not have time for organic, eco-friendly plant-based cleaners), I have inadvertently begun a local restaurant support fund to the tune of $40 Each Day for food, service and delivery tips. I am being well-fed, thankfully, and my meal selection has now expanded beyond merely what I am able/willing to cook (in fact, it now excludes things that only I am able/willing to cook). There are koshari bowls, noodle bowls, burritos, seven-ingredient salads, curries, pierogis, burgers, and more with an ever-changing daily selection.
Before I was functionally exiled from my kitchen, I rotated a dozen recipes across a few evenings of cooking each week, diligently storing, freezing, reheating leftovers. Each week would feature one new dish, stretched across 3-5 consecutive days until I grew tired of even my own favorites. We have moved from one extreme to the other.
The handful of friends I am able to see safely from a distance here in the Bay Area keep me grateful that I am here and they are around. Local news breathlessly reports on drops in average rental prices but they remain ludicrous. None of this is sustainable. None of this is sustainable.
I used to be excited by the concept of resilience, which speaks volumes of the privilege I had and still very much have. Resilient enough to break into the game industry. Resilient enough to survive my first firing. To be laid off. To withstand burnout. To survive a second firing. To be laid off again. To be gaslit and ignored. To smile through injustices, to pretend things are fine. To be fucked over. To have overdue, unpaid invoices ignored. To have my foundation of self shaken.
But I have reached a personal breaking point on this issue. I don't want to be resilient anymore. I want to rest. I want comfort. I want someone else to do it all. I want to release my shoulders and my jaw. I want things to be less hard, for me here, for you and everyone else where you are. It's not that I deserve to rest any more than anyone else, but it’s hard to see past the things I can't control, all the things that I used to feel some semblance of agency over. I want to take a deep breath in, and when I exhale I want to just exhale, not to feel like I'm releasing the heaviness of a thousand worries only to absorb it back in with the next inhalation.
Have you tried yoga and meditation, Robin?
I have, I have, I have.
But I haven't lately, so maybe I will again, because what else is there but to keep trying.
With gratitude,
Robin
PS - how are you in the midst of all this ?