This past Monday, I thought it was Friday - a sign of life in quarantine. I am fortunate. I have clean water and the luxury of being able to distance myself from others, and have a nice view of the Maple and the Sumac in my backyard and don't worry too much about anything other than living with my terrible disease (which is actually a lot to worry about).
There was a time when I was more or less just existing. When there was nothing for me to do but watch television and escape into that false world there because my world was too much to bear. Luckily, I got out of that mindset, because worry is, after all, a waste of time, and began to write. A lot. I wrote two novels and then started the third before my writing flow ebbed again and it became more difficult for me to come up with the words. And this is where I am now, counting the days until my next writing group, thinking Monday is Friday, and being generally confused and bewildered in this age of Covid and in the midst of a corrupt administration.
“Time can be such a sadist,” says one of my characters, and she’s right. Time is a sadist. But I submit something further- time can also be an ocean, a penny, a blessing, a savior, a blowhard, a nitpicker, an irritant, and something else that I haven’t mentioned. It can also be revealing.
Time, for me, has revealed How I’ve Come To Be Here – in this place of uncertainty and almost-despair at the fact that I have, essentially, stopped. Stopped writing. Stopped singing. Stopped walking. Have, instead, lain on the bed staring at the vapid TV, my mind a complete blank, trying to come up with a reason to go sit at the computer and do something other than to go on Facebook. Oh, and a recent obsession with YouTube, watching the monologues of, and giggling at, all the late-night comedians. As if I don't find enough in life to giggle at. I am an expert giggler. Ask anyone.
It will come as little surprise, then, that time has become irrelevant. In a sense, this is strangely comforting, as life takes on a larger meaning and becomes profound in its anarchy. The irrelevance of time also brings a certain amount of anxiety, for if time doesn't matter anymore than what does? It's similar to the idea of letting go - of just paying attention to the now, that old Buddhist lesson. It's all I can do, anyway. Whether it's Monday or Friday, I guess is not really the point. I am here today, whatever day it may be.