March 17, 2020
Change It Like A Puzzle
There’s something almost unthinkable about the coronavirus effect on reality right now. As I write, locally, schools and libraries are closed for the next few weeks at the very least, my various employers are all working from home or in the process of setting up plans to — something particularly amusing to me, who’s been doing that all along, I confess — and the grocery store shelves are creepily empty, thanks to panic-buying and people preparing for something akin to an apocalypse.
And maybe they’re not overreacting, as much as my brain like to pretend. The spread of COVID-19 is such that, even when it was, in theory, outside the US — although, let’s be honest, it was certainly here before that was officially the case; I’m genuinely half convinced that’s what my “mystery viruses” from January and February actually were at this point — it still had a scale and a speed that felt fictional in its power. “How can something so big move so fast?” as the cliche dialogue put it.
The first point where I really felt it, the impact it was having, wasn’t when I was sick, oddly enough. At that point, I was just sick and trying to get through it but, generally keeping my spirits high. No, it was just after, when making the decision whether or not to attend Emerald City Comic Con in what would’ve been a couple of weeks. By then, the virus was clearly rampant in Seattle, where the con was to be held, and I kept thinking that, if I went, I would almost certainly get infected, given how weak my immune system was at the time. The forward planning of, if you do this, you will get sick was surreal mental math that brought home just what was going on.
Somehow, still, I didn’t expect the breadth of what’s happened in response. Conferences and conventions cancelled, sure, they’re gatherings of thousands of people. But movies being pulled from release, the widespread shutdown of businesses and workplaces, the slow but steady removal of the everyday that shrinks what we think of as life to just what’s inside our homes…? With each step, it feels more serious and important, and I get that little bit more scared.
I should probably wash my hands more.
March 16, 2020
March 13, 2020
Got A Text!
So, okay, yeah. Love Island. I wish there was something I could say, some argument I could make, to defend my seeming addiction to this UK reality show — streamable through Hulu here in the US — but, truth be told, there really isn’t. It’s almost joyfully irredeemable trash, and I have been wholeheartedly sucked in.
The premise is very simple: across a shockingly high number of episodes per season — around 50! — a group of quasi-attractive men and women are brought into a villa to try to find romance with each other. There are periodic “couplings,” ceremonies where one gender selects a partner, and for those left uncoupled, they’ll either be sent home or have the chance to find love with new people introduced into the villa. On the face of it, it’s nothing special.
In practice, it’s utterly compelling.
The high number of episodes comes from the fact that it’s essentially aired as-it-happens, with each episode edited together from footage shot within a 24 hour period, giving it a weird reportage effect — very little happens, so the minutiae becomes the focus, which makes sense given how dedicated the show needs you to become to each of its stars. Even taking a step back to look at the bigger picture(s) is fascinating, however: When did British men become so emotionally adept in expressing their needs, for one thing?
If it’s a social experiment, though, it needs to be noted that Love Island is a particularly limited one. At one telling moment in an episode of the season I watched, one of the men makes a comment along the lines of saying that the show demands everyone be straight, which answered one of my questions about How Things Work Behind The Scenes.
And then there’s the fact that it’s an experiment where cruelty isn’t a bug, but a feature. It’s a show that specifically plays on its participants’ anxieties and paranoias about trust, in a way that’s genuinely inhuman; midway through the run, the genders are split in different locations and introduced to potential new partners just to see how many leave their partners. It’s a breathtakingly cynical move, and one that the contestants buy into wholeheartedly — the one part of the show that made me queasy while watching, I confess. Why be so cruel?
I did keep watching, though. It won me back after with the small details and the players’ kindness winning out through the architectural cruelty, and because, honestly, I wanted to see how it was going to end. I’m not sure if I have the mental space to try another season — watching the one I did really feel like a commitment — but I’m as glad as I am ashamed that I got as caught up as I did this once, at least.
March 12, 2020
Life During Sicktime
I’m unsure if I ever shared the story about being told that I had cancer here before — I didn’t, it was a pretty severe misdiagnosis — but it’s something I thought about a bunch back when I was sick a couple of weeks ago, which prosays something about where my head was at during that plague week.
It wasn’t just that I was sick, again, after having been similarly sick a month earlier, although that was as exhausting and, honestly, as depressing as it sounds. (There was a feeling of, is that just what this year is going to be, with me in bed for a few days with a spiking fever every month?, I have to admit; can you blame me? And that was before my back went.) It’s that I was struggling against the sickness at the same time that news of the coronavirus was spreading, and my latent hypochondriac tendencies had a thing or two to say.
I didn’t think I had the coronavirus, I should say that right now. The closest I’ve ever come to that was the sickness in January, when news of the virus was first breaking and I asked the doctor what the odds were and she basically made fun of me in response. That reply, it seems, was basically enough to put that idea to bed, even in this more recent go-around as people were being diagnosed with it closeby. It didn’t seem like an option.
Nonetheless, I became very aware of how dangerous viruses were, how inexplicable, and as the sickness steadfastly refused to leave my body, I kept thinking about, imagine just suddenly finding out that this was what it was going to be like from now on. I didn’t think that I was going to die, but I did think, what if I never actually get better and this is it?
I knew that wasn’t really the case, of course; as quickly as I got sick, the recovery came: By day three, every morning I woke up and felt appreciably better. But I couldn’t help myself but think back decades to that bad diagnosis and wonder, what if a doctor just told me, “you’ll live, but you’ll live like this, weak and short of breath and every now and then you’ll have a coughing fit that will end with you on your knees, crying.” What would that be like, knowing that?
