At what point in the 1918 pandemic or WWII did people say “we won’t be going back to normal”? I’m fascinated by that moment-when the disaster becomes indecipherable from daily life. We are in COVID life now, even more once the schools reopen-then-close. Few surprises left now.
2. All of my grandparents talked about the depression and the war as if it was still a sort of daily reality to the ends of their lives. Of course they did-it was not only the trauma of doing without and constant fear. That time reordered their lives entirely.
3. I grew up in the reality of their disasters. The policies, the values, the memories. The trumpet that hung on my grandfather’s wall that he played in bands during the war. The lives they lived before that time could only ever be seen through the prism of that time of disaster.
4. That’s happening to us now. The pandemic and the racial violence and the economic collapse—the unstitching of a garment we’ve walked around in for a little while now.
5. For myself I can’t think back, even before February, w/out knowing it through COVID. The isolation & fear. The end of progress. The insufferable violence of our institutions. The care & protest. Young people in masks. Whatever we are making now is a new thing. It’s our life.
6. It means that for many of us, if we are lucky enough to live to be old, we will see our lives before this time as leading up to COVID. And we will live after now encompassed by the shared meanings, memorials, & new institutions we make now and in the next couple of years. /end
