I drove through a deserted New Orleans this past weekend. It’s hard to see your home in a coma.
People who have survived the coronavirus have been describing a sensation, after days of fever and coughing, where they feel a weight on their chest and struggle to breathe. The weight I think we are all feeling is almost physical; I, too, feel a tightness in my chest. It’s that familiar tightness from every month that I’ve been worried about money, or a loved one, or my health, or a hurricane, or anything else - it’s all those stresses in one.
Normally, stresses ebb and flow; when it rains it pours but it doesn’t usually flood. Right now, it’s flooding. And typically these stresses come, and we can retreat to our support systems - our families and our friends and our communities. We can’t right now. Often we can bury ourselves in work or hobbies; but for most of us, those are limited or modified in some way. I’m lucky in that I still have my work and hobbies; but my creative energy has been depleted.
Funny enough, I did this little doodle to try to represent that feeling of the air being heavy, but you could also interpret it that the figure is the one sprewing poison, or that (because it’s gold), the air in the lungs is more valuable than we ever imagined.
I can’t sit here idly under this weight. There are people in my city (and elsewhere) mass producing masks, and being hired by hospitals to produce equipment. It’s surreal; the federal government should have done it, yet our communities is having to pull together and make ramshackle equipment to the best of their abilities, just in hopes to keep our death toll lower. Restaurants with little money coming in are feeding the needy (here’s one that’s special to me, if you’d like to chip in a dollar or two).
You could call it heartwarming if people weren’t going to die because of this structural failure.
I mean, I get it; it is heartwarming to see your neighbors come together to take care of each other. But too many facets of the crisis are man-made, by people we elected into office and pay to take care of us. What is the point of living in a society if our leaders have no interest or incentive to keep its own people alive?
But I’m a creator; in the face of dysfunction and desperation I am antsy to do something. My typical avenues aren’t speaking to me (hence the writing). I think my role in this saga will reveal itself soon.
If you are antsy like me but don’t have money to spare right now, some things you can do in the short term, if you are healthy, practice social distancing, and feel comfortable:
Donate blood - they really, really, really need it.
Foster a dog or cat (shelters often cover expenses)
In an effort to take this day by day, I’m going to send gratitude to the universe that on this day, my household still has:
Our health
Our home
Full stomachs
Each other
The internet
And now, take a two minute break and breathe deeply while you watch Ms. Dancer here come to life.