FEAR || The Creative Pandemic

I had a piece of writing feature in The Creative Pandemic titled FEAR, you can also read an earlier draft of it below. It's not very cheery; about the morose state of mind I found myself in when second lockdown was announced. 

FEAR 

I am afraid that this will last too long. 

Too long to be able to call what we once had normal. 

What if I refuse to adapt and live in denial; go in for hugs and be palmed off on to the pavement; what will they think? 

What on earth do they think? I think sadly to myself at home alone in my kitchen: nobody wants this so – what does that mean?

Eventually, we will become reckless and touch hands to face, to cough and splutter and inadvertently kill off the sick and elderly. How un-caring would that be, and could we live with ourselves after that kind of revolution?

I’m disgusted to even think of it and slam my glass down on the Ikea tabletop. I am not worse off, I’ve not been directly hit by this pandemic, so why am I sitting here being morose when there are people far worse off, dealing with poverty and a lack of space and being displaced. 

It puts me in an angry state, I feel caged in and helpless, I feel stupid and lethargic and incapable of doing anything good in the world. This whole thing makes me lose hope. 

I want to talk about the fear of not knowing. 

Not knowing whether what you are doing is right or wrong, or how you even feel about it in the grand scheme of things. People hope the government is doing the right thing, but of course they can’t be because no one knows what the hell to do, no one understands, there’s too much opposing data, too many questions that bring rise to more questions. 

Unlike a maths problem where there’s a cribsheet and fun to solve, the situation is forty thousand dead in eight months and the numbers are mounting. 

EXT. TREE LINED STREET - DAY

The diagnosis of covid is not black and white.

It’s much more complicated than what the public think.

Why aren’t we listening to the doctors who say that lockdown is going to cause more damage to public health than no lockdown?

Fatigue. That’s the big issue.

You mean post-viral fatigue syndrome?

No, the public’s feeling of fatigue.

 

INT. BASEMENT FLOOR KITCHEN - NIGHT

When was the last time you felt alive?

This very morning when I woke up alive and breathing, awake.

Is that what living is – being stuck in your locale, not communicating with society out of fear of infection? Is that really living?

When you put it like that, then no.

That’s what I’m talking about, man.

 

What if we learn to live small-y. Buy kittens, knead sourdough, prune plants and learn to forage mushrooms.

Get into home-schooling and cycle to work, get to know your neighbours and not rely on quick fixes to solve our mundane problems because we’re too poor to be click-baited all year round, out of season.

But what about the daters? 

I heard us couples became smug in our lockdown bubble o’ bliss. What about those of us who have to find a soul-mate, or someone to cuddle up to when the outside world seeps into your core. 

Penetrated by those desperate quiet stares of strangers sat across from you in train carriages, lips and softness smothered by a stretched piece of cloth. All you can do is swallow and hope that this will soon be over.

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Two Old Men on the Bus

I ran to catch the bus with a suitcase, scraping it on the automatic doors as they swung shut on me. The bus driver looked non-plussed.

An old man is sat by the window in the priority seat, looking out. Heavy-set in a khaki utility jacket, with a fake Royal Air Force patch sewn on to the arm. Headphones in, thick optical glasses, hairy jowls and a drooping face, like a walrus.

The bus pulls in.

A new old man boards the bus. He looks like a thumb, the end of a starfish. Wide smile and making conversation with the driver, unsuccessfully. He sits by the walrus, who takes no notice of him. This new old man’s face is round and soft from all the dopey warmth he emits. He wears a flat-cap, which he doffs and places on his lap.

‘Is warm today.’

‘What?’ The jowly old man pulls out his earphones and glances at his neighbour.

‘It’s warm today.’ Gives him a big grin.

‘It’ll rain later on.’

‘The sun is shining.’

‘No, it’s cloudy.’

‘I can see the sun, shining, will get hot!’

‘No, it’s cold. It’ll rain later on.’

‘I can see the sun – ha ha.’

‘The sun’s over there trying to come out from behind them clouds.’

‘It is bright – ha ha… I’m joking. Is a joke.’ The walrus grunts and turns away, annoyed. ‘You have to laugh: life.’

Keiko

You would know by her languid airs that she had all the time and money in the world, well. Not so much of either, anymore.

Grown up in Tokyo, daughter to a wealthy merchant father and an heiress mother, Keiko had never know hunger, nor desire, nor anything that moved her to want. Living a perfect sheltered existence through childhood, attending an exclusive playschool at the age of six and graduating from a ladies’ university at nineteen, the world awaited her with cradling arms. Beckoning her so close to their hearts to become human.

Her looks couldn't be bought, only cultivated like a true pearl, through the harsh revolving grit and grind of a careful, possessive shell.

In her formative years she felt no stress, hands flocked around her to take care of that. Keiko knew how to dress with understated glamour, not an eyelash out of place, lips the shade of roses that flowered and whithered with each season.

Men would tap her on the shoulder as she swanked down Ginza Bouleavrd, as she kept friends in lockets who’d grab any hot-blooded male’s attention: Miss Arashi being one, a JAL air stewardess being another. The 1960’s. Her hair, her make-up, her wider than usual almond eyes that sloped off in to a distinguished smile.

‘Are you free to have tea with me?’

‘May I take you for a dance?’

‘Would you and your friend escort us to a private member’s club?’

She never had to cook a meal for herself, never. Always a new man vying for her attentions. Youth, money, beauty, song, gourmet, dance, evokes the memories of an old lady.

Seventy-six is old by any standard, and yet, as if it were yesterday the melody of the American band and the sequined nightgown of the maitre’d float by, leading you coaxingly, deferentially away to a table.

Handsome face, aquiline bridge, light green eyes, a pilot from Egypt with the manners of a prince. ‘I thought, I would never be so happy again.’

Married at twenty-one to a man, a nuclear scientist of all things, who had won her heart with sweet devil talk. Her simple softness seduced by his slick tongue, it was all a complicated dance and she felt lied to. He died at forty-six leaving her a home that only accrued escalating taxes with age.

But by the sea, everything so green and turquoise blue, it never got cold so the fruit always grew so plump. The spiders were hideous and hairy beasts, butterflies with wingspans she’d never believe. Fruit flies the size of horse flies.

The very tanned surfers, with sculpted bodies would ride the waves each morning, forgetting the storms and Keiko liked to imagine mustering that kind of resolve one day. To approach relentless crashing with forethought and courage, mixed with a thrill of the fun.

Those two years of freedom, working as an elevator girl at the Department Store had finished her. She had been too attractive to not be taken off the shelf, wrapped in one of those sharp-cornered bags strangled in frilly ribbon.

She had never bought a cigarette in her life, yet had always been offered foreign silk cuts out of silk pockets, handkerchief, necktie, studs.

Wondering whether the fish danced with the surge of the wave or got swallowed whole in to a vortex –

Keiko alone liked to watch the setting sun, rise, then set again.

It was called the Land of the Rising Sun, perhaps this was the reason why, purely for her to amount to being at this windowsill.

That was her routine, never lonely looking out to shore.

She would never be sure of herself again in her life.

Cool To Be Lonely

There are people marauding everywhere carrying packages of emoticons wrapped up in cells hand-held, both hands, before them. How people ever interacted with people they weren’t already connected to baffles me. What does it look like to be lonely these days? Everyone has a way of covering it up. It used be hats now it’s a device, a more intricate and far less mysterious device. Phones, headsets, gadgets. Only the truly brave wear loneliness with pride, in true fashion.

It falls somewhere between desolation and delirium. For loneliness to work one has to be in it, that is alone, and why else would anyone find themselves there unless on the very edge of something. Loneliness is settling and sometimes a person has to feel it to appreciate the other side, which is company, and good company at that. Say, feeling lonely is natural; not something to be covered up by modern living like some dirty secret; something to be done once in a while to remind humanity of its threadbare way of existence in an albeit cool city. It’s cool to be lonely, sometimes.