The bad not-so-old days: A meditation

A few weeks ago, I read this question on a blog: “Regardless of your position on how governments handled [Covid-19]*, how has the experience of living through a pandemic altered you?" 

I’ve tackled versions of this question before. My answers have been and will be unfolding for a while. I don’t pretend to fully understand all the strange currents that swept me along, even the ones that I somewhat chose to swim in.

I have also recently been feeling a deep sense of disgust for the entire Covid era and its peculiar anti-culture, and a desire to distance myself from it. This includes many of my own coping mechanisms, behaviours and choices from 2020 to early 2022.

Putting that aside for a moment.

One way I’ve changed is that I’ve become much more focused on how I keep myself entertained and fulfilled instead of expecting people or institutions outside of me to do this. I recognize that I am the most significant agent in my life, and my skills and choices are what most affect how engaged I am with life. This isn’t maybe a radical change but an intensifying of a belief that was always there.

It affects choices I make for myself and my children. For example, I feel much better paying for music lessons rather than paying to take them to concerts. The piano will always be there in our house to play, assuming we don’t knock it to pieces. I can’t on the other hand assume that a band or an orchestra or a ballet company will always be there. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. Institutions that I imagined were stable and based on values that I share proved not to be during the Covid era. 

In hindsight, that destabilization was probably the most unnerving part of 2020-2022. A totalizing structure was imposed from above, and it made all the other structures that constituted reality seem unreal. School, work, family, friendships: suddenly they all had to be arbitrarily restructured. There was some opportunity in this sudden restructuring: a chance to work collaboratively, do things differently, maybe even sometimes better. It was a fleeting moment though, because the proposed “solutions” quickly became more authoritarian and arbitrary (vaccine mandates and passports, laws intruding on private life and relationships.) I was left wondering, what is really real in the society I inhabit? I have had to rebuild my faith in society, from the ground up. And I have not gotten very far yet. 

Crowded places are more likely to give me anxiety and are more likely to be places I avoid. 

This doesn’t have much to do with fear of Covid directly, as I was never very afraid of catching Covid and not much affected by it when I finally did (in June of 2022).

It’s more a distrust for large groups of people that I did not choose and whose purpose I am not entirely sure of. After being deprived of more conventional opportunities for gathering together, it seems to me like something dark came loose in the psyche of a lot of people and coming together for more sinister purposes has become exciting and desirable. A crowd is a bit like a wildfire that might go rogue and consume whatever gets in its way.

I don’t want any of that scene, and I usually avoid any area of the city known for demonstrations or large gatherings. In my city that would be our downtown core and the bigger shopping malls.

I haven’t given up on the public square. But I’m in the process of re-imagining what it means to me and how I engage with it. Large abstract concepts like nation and democracy and social contract shattered around me like brittle, weathered concrete. I don’t know what “Canada” means anymore. Maybe I never did. If I was to vote based on emotion, I would probably vote for a separatist political party right now. (I try not to vote based on emotion.)

None of this is reason for pessimism or despair.

I’ve said this in different ways before, but the local has become much more important to me. The smaller groups I’m embedded in have more to do with my sense of who I am than larger abstract identities. This includes:

-School (mine and my daughters’)

-Dance communities (2)

-Work colleagues

-Friends (neighbourhood friends are closer relationships, but I’m trying to keep the further ones active too)

-Local places and business (small, not malls eek)

-Extended family

The catch word of Covid-19 was “social distancing”. I survived by doing the opposite: pulling people closer to me.

So was the pandemic and all the disturbing deconstruction of reality a time warp or void? Yeah maybe. It feels that way often, and it feels like the best thing to do is shove all those memories in the darkest corner I can find for them. But the better challenge is to shine a light onto that void and dare it to show what it can reveal.

*Of course, I can’t truly separate my experience of governments from my experience of the Covid-19 era. But I also factor in my experiences of individual people, some of which were also pretty disturbing. But, it’s easier to give individual people grace, which is another reason I keep my focus firmly on the local and personal. We’re all just trying to survive in our own ways: sometimes we aim rightly, sometimes not.

Are we all just winging it

Diana shared this quote by Oliver Burkeman , and it got me thinking so I wrote out my thoughts (below).

NOBODY REALLY KNOWS WHAT THEY’RE DOING: “I sometimes think of my journey through adulthood to date as one of incrementally discovering the truth that there is no institution, no walk of life, in which everyone isn’t just winging it, all the time. Growing up, I assumed that the newspaper on the breakfast table must be assembled by people who truly knew what they were doing; then I got a job at a newspaper. Unconsciously, I transferred my assumptions of competence elsewhere, including to people who worked in government.

But then I got to know a few people who did—and who would admit, after a couple of drinks, that their jobs involved staggering from crisis to crisis, inventing plausible-sounding policies in the backs of cars en route to the press conferences at which those policies had to be announced. Even then, I found myself assuming that this might all be explained as a manifestation of the perverse pride that British people sometimes take in being shamblingly mediocre. Then I moved to America—where, it turns out, everyone is winging it, too. Political developments in the years since have only made it clearer that the people ‘in charge’ have no more command over world events than the rest of us do.

It’s alarming to face the prospect that you might never truly feel as though you know what you’re doing, in work, marriage, parenting, or anything else. But it’s liberating, too, because it removes a central reason for feeling self-conscious or inhibited about your performance in those domains in the present moment: if the feeling of total authority is never going to arrive, you might as well not wait any longer to give such activities your all—to put bold plans into practice, to stop erring on the side of caution. It is even more liberating to reflect that everyone else is in the same boat, whether they’re aware of it or not.”—Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals (2021)

My thoughts:

What, it’s not just me always winging it? 😆 that’s a relief…..sort of….lol.

I think based on my experience I agree though. Any experience I’ve had with any organization, over time has shown me how difficult it is to keep those organizations going. Any sort of consistency, authority, accountability is built gradually over time, and is mostly a matter of convention and tradition: “We will hold you to this standard because we have been holding people to this standard for a long time.”

Covid-19 of course disrupted typical ways of doing things. This was in one sense a good thing because it made space for finding new ways to do things. As a teacher the early days of lockdown were amazing for my professional development. I learned and innovated more in 4 months than I had in 5 years at least. Teachers were working together more closely because we were all equally discombobulated. Many students struggled with the new ways of doing things, but not just a few thrived as well. It was exhausting, liberating, stimulating, and even fun.

But…as the disruptions continued, and inequities emerged, it became apparent how difficult it is to maintain consistency, authority and confidence in the system. I have mostly good relationships with my students, so our immediate environment is pretty good, but how do I speak with authority when someone above me can (often seemingly arbitrarily) completely up end our reality? You must come to school….no you shouldn’t….exams are on….no they aren’t! (At least that one doesn’t affect special Ed)….This assignment is super important and you should make your best effort….or not because you have to learn from home and it can’t be properly completed there…Here is this great instant messaging app that we can use to communicate efficiently.....but now people are abusing it, sending inappropriate rants, demanding we stop everything during the school day to respond to them RIGHT NOW.....well you get the idea. Without consistency and tradition, our institutions are exposed as collections of persons just winging it.  And it becomes difficult to give them the benefit of the doubt, to believe in their coherence. This is true even if in the moment, the people inside those institutions are genuinely doing their best and trying to do things better than they've always been done before. And often succeeding!

It’s a crazy ride alright. 

There is no more normal

The COVID-19 news is sounding a bit more positive lately, at least in my area. And so there is a lot of conversation about going back to normal, going back to business as usual. I do try to act normal in my daily life, as much as I can. Being normal has always been a “fake it till you make it” effort for me, anyway. I can present an persona that functions as people expect. I can sympathize with the desire for a calm, predictable, dependable world, and even share it.

However I don’t feel anything like normal, if “normal” presumes a certain level of trust in the social structure and authorities around me. There is less I feel I can take for granted every day. I wake up and go to sleep with an inner and outer watchfulness. I watch others. I watch myself, listening to my own words and actions and wondering, How truthful are you?  Other than the general aim for truthfulness, I don’t always know exactly what I am watching for. Patterns in the underbrush I suppose, movement in the shadows. I go to bed exhausted most nights.

This article by Matt Taibbi does a good job of pulling together many of the stories I have been following the past few months with an increasing sense of uneasiness. It’s been 6 months since my break from Face.book and I’m not at all sorry. There are a few groups and people I miss, because they manage to be positive social ecosystems within the larger negative complex. But investing time in local, personal relationships has had far better results for the time and effort put in. When I want to step outside my parochial worldview, carefully choosing where on the internet I put my attention is far better educationally. I have read more books this year than in any of the previous 5 (and quite possibly cumulatively).  I do a pretty good job of keeping up with podcasts too (though there is always more than I have time for). There is of course the risk of getting into an echo chamber, but all the people I listen to are curious and/or educated people and there is my own extremely high openness to experience, which acts as a counterbalance I think.

I am open, but I also like to know where the boundaries are. There is a line in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series that I really like. She is talking about being a leader, or maybe about being a man, I forget which. (Doesn’t matter anyway; I have a well integrated masculine side.) It goes something like: “What it really means to be a leader is to draw a line in the sand, and to fight anyone that steps over it.”

2021 is about drawing my lines in the sand. I may put them in the wrong place sometimes; I may be ignorant of many things and make mistakes. I am not interested in convincing anyone of how right I am because I am rarely convinced of that myself. But the lines need to be drawn so I have some way of understanding what is going on when information and/or its suppression is used like a weapon. I have to understand clearly what is real and important to me when propaganda and gaslighting is the order of the day. I have to know who I stand with and what I will and won’t tolerate being done to them. 

I wasn’t sure what to call this post. “There is no more normal” is maybe a bit of an extreme statement. I have calm happy days. I continue (I hope and believe) to be a positive influence. I think what I really mean is: “There is no more normal I take for granted.” In so far as normal exists for me now, it is created through my daily actions, reactions, and sense making. So I do hope I have the strength and the skill to continue to make that happen.

My City of Lights has gone dark

I listen to the Scottish band Runrig a lot lately. Their high energy music (I tend to skip the ballads) is good for morale or redirecting negative energy.  But sometimes their happiest music is also a touch depressing, especially the songs recorded live. They remind me of the concerts and other live events that have been cancelled in the name of slowing the spread of Covid-19.

Regardless, I have some favourite songs that I listen to regularly. One of these is “City of Lights.” 

City of Lights Live

“City of Lights” (to my ear anyway) is a celebration of the connection and creativity of life in a city.  Although I’ve visited rural areas, and wilderness and nature are important to me, I’ve never lived any length of time outside a city nor have I ever considered doing so. 

I arrived in the city of lights
Enchanted ballrooms where I lost my life
I've closed my eyes
On your fairground smile

From the time I was four years old,  I’ve gone to concerts and live events, and taken lessons in anything that struck my fancy. I feel as at home in our major concert venues as I do in my living room: as soon as I walk through the door and hear the buzz of conversation, I have a powerful feeling of peace, anticipation and belonging.  It’s always been part of my expectation of anywhere I live that I can have such experiences. It is especially meaningful to live in the city of my birth where theatres and concert venues are graced with memories of my childhood, youth and early adulthood. Family outings grew into outings with university friends and dates. Later I would give my parents symphony tickets for Christmas and birthdays. My husband and I also usually gave each other concert, theatre and comedy tickets as presents.

Many of my memories are associated with our downtown, which has a hub of theatres and a big concert hall, surrounded by a cluster of pubs and restaurants of course. I have never actually had a job in the downtown, so I almost completely associate it with dressing up and going out.

Old emotions still burn inside
On solid ground, round the mother tongue
A tower of hope, a joyful sound
You take your time
A hand of aces in a pack of lies
I found my song and I started to sing
Took me away on an olden wing
So far from home

So lonely but not alone

The last time we were supposed to go to a concert was March 14 2020: a band from Ireland. The tickets were my 40th birthday present.  It was cancelled the day before as that was the first weekend the city closed down. Those tickets were refunded though I’m still hanging on to a couple of other sets for events that keep getting rescheduled into the future. If we are lucky, the future really does arrive one day. But maybe not quite the one we imagined.

Last week I went downtown to get my Covid-19 vaccination, an experience I was neutral to negative on, but decided to go through with anyway. As the train pulled into the station, I realized I cannot actually remember the last time I was downtown. It might have been fall of 2019. Without any theatre or music to go to, there was simply no reason to go. If downtown showed up in the news, it was because of some demonstration or other (it’s also where City Hall is located.) That made me even less likely to want to go there, but I wouldn’t have in any case.

I got off the train and started walking toward the convention centre, where I have attended teachers’ conventions for years, but not the past two. It has been repurposed as a mass vaccination clinic. Now, while I wear a face mask indoors, I do not wear one outside. Usually the minute I’m out the door it’s off my face into my pocket. For the first time though, I had an urge to keep my mask on as I was walking outside. It wasn’t fear of Covid per se; there were no dense crowds. Rather I had the feeling that I was walking in a foreign territory, and I wanted to hide or protect myself.  If a suit of armour and a sword had been offered, I would have happily accepted those too.

I actually forced myself to take the mask off because I found these feelings inexplicable and disturbing, and I refused to let myself act on them. Nothing about the downtown area looked noticeably different than I remembered. I was not in a foreign or dangerous country. My behaviour should not change! But the mask went on again the minute I was in sight of my destination, and I felt a distinct relief at being concealed and armoured against the unfamiliar and for some reason, vaguely threatening environment of the city I’ve lived in all my life.

All things considered, I’ve had a happy and stable life the past year and a half. I love my neighbourhood; I love the parks and nature areas we can drive to; I have no quarrel with any person I know, though I see friends much less often. Work has taken the place of most of my social life, and luckily I like my work. But the strange feelings I experienced downtown do remind me of a loss. The loss is the communion with other people around an experience of mutual interest and transformation. They might be friends or family; they might be strangers with whom I only share the experience of being an audience. But it is a loss of connection, and it makes me much more likely to see strangers and even once familiar places in a defensive or hostile light.

In this empire of ache and rhyme

Lovers and best friends are running blind

I don’t run blind now, at least not outside my neighbourhood. I’m wary and I want to be gone, as quick as I can.  There is no city of lights for me in our downtown anymore.

But for all that, I am not going to stop listening to “City Of Lights” or other songs that remind me of happier times. When the real thing is not happening, the memory of it is even more important so that we don’t forget such realities are still possible.

I grasp your hand
Is this the only world I understand
There's a sadness
There's a joy
There's a place
There's a song that will never die
Forever