Where were you in March 2020? When did you realize that Covid is a thing that can ruin life as you know it? I was hiking in the Joshua Tree and had a great time on the natural beauty of the desert, not sure if I should be back in New York. Every time I refresh the coverage of the era, it seems increasingly obvious that going home means staying indoors for the foreseeable future.
I’m back. A few months later (starting from my living room), I started working in The Times and soon started writing a newsletter called “At Home” where I tried to help people live a fulfilling cultural life from the living room. This is a project designed to help people feel distraction, comfort, meaning, joy, sense, Jehovah and community when they are sometimes unaware of uncertainty. This is something to pay attention to, read, cook, listen, and think about. You can attend this virtual disco, or this virtual poetry reading or someone’s virtual birthday party, where you will squint the people you know and don’t know on the screen, smiling and focusing, close and close distance. Remember the virtual happy time? Remember the zoom shirt? Remember how strange it was to see a colleague’s bedroom decoration during a video call? Who would have thought that Brian in the analysis would choose Those ones desk lamp?
During those days, I spent a lot of time thinking about coping. We all did it. In amidst a lot of chaos and sorrow, there is creativity. Pandemic pods. Sour mania. Alfresco dining is enabled by every possible form of outdoor heating element. A friend of mine started a dance troupe in her town, choreographed on Zoom, and then danced on the neighbor’s lawn. Another built a bed in the back of her SUV and drove across the country and slept in the car. I reconnected with my college friends I had never spoken to in decades. Once we realize how easy FaceTime is, it seems ridiculous that we haven’t done so.
Five years are not enough to get a point of view, not true. It’s a circular number, so it feels meaningful: a good time to review the exhibition, ask what we’ve learned, how to change, how to proceed. Once the world opens up again, we swear to do something different – are we doing it? I vow more social activities, more dinners, more dancing, more travel, more people just because. No longer have face-to-face contact with others! I want to renew these vows, but the world is open and so is the choice. The space for desire to lock in is too large, so much time romantically liberalizes movement and fantasizes about the lives we may live in the future. But unless you have some sort of plan to execute these intentions, it’s easy to go back to the way they used to be: Others are sometimes cute, many times annoying, and need to work hard to plan a dinner party.
