Hello there, friends. It’s been a long time since I’ve written something here. I deleted the few posts I wrote a few years ago because frankly, I was stupid then. I’m cooler and smarter now.
I have a lot of feelings right now, like a lot of us, and I needed a place to put them. I have time. You have time. Let’s be together, at a safe distance.
I still owe art to some people, and they’re going to see this and be like, “Where the $#%@ is my art, Melissa?” and all I have to tell you is that it’s coming, but I have been a little bit creatively paralyzed the past week. I know you understand.
But my god, look at this place. I cannot believe how quickly the world has been turned upside-down, and it’s only just beginning. After I’d lost some random gigs here and there, on Tuesday, my husband - a faithful member of the service industry here in New Orleans - officially got laid off (temporarily, we hope).
“There are people who have it a lot worse than we do,” I had to tell myself through tears, with snot running into my mouth while I grief ate cookies. Jeff’s idea of comforting me was, “we’ll be fine for a while, and by the time we’re not fine, it’ll be apocalyptic anyway!” What a fun adventure we call life.
I cannot believe a mere week ago I was worried about having to lay low for a couple weeks. I used to be worried about Michael Bloomberg becoming president! Those times seem so innocent.
Now, it’s a medical equipment shortage and an economic collapse. And that doesn’t even factor in the possibility of us and our loved ones and our community getting sick. It feels like we are watching a tsunami approach in slow motion.
This virus adds such insult to injury, that we can’t simply be with each other in this time of worry. When New Orleans goes through a crisis, community healing via food, music, and parties is the norm. I don’t know how to handle a world where the people and places and things I love most are biohazardous to me, or a world where I am poisonous to my loved ones.
Will we call this the Year of Isolation? The Lonely Year? I hope it’s not a year. Some people are saying it might be a year. All because it wasn’t nipped in the bud, because people weren’t aggressively tested. We could suffer for a year and literally millions of people could die.
Look, I might get political. I’ll try not to, but politics and the imbalance of power are causing a lot of chickens to come home to roost right now. I’m having trouble containing my rage at our leadership, just as yesterday, we learned of two Senators (Burr and Loeffler) who lied to the public about the virus in order to give themselves time to sell of stocks. I cannot comprehend the moral rot it takes to do something like that. Meanwhile I text daily with my nurse sister preparing to enter the trenches without equipment (that they could have ordered earlier) to protect her own health and I - what - guess I’ll keep my fingers crossed?
I thought, in this time of rage, grief, and isolation, it would be nice to do a little art and writing to connect with the outside world and express myself. Maybe you will find it helpful in some way. I want to believe I’ll do this on a daily basis but I’m not known for keeping those kinds of promises.
So here’s a little art.
This is Pearl. She never knew a world with pandemic, as she crossed the rainbow bridge too soon. But her mother knows she would have just loved quarantine, like I suspect many little dogs will.
And here’s a littlte fun: