#plaguetimes

[theworldaccordingtocha]

Turkey day at the plague house. Only we don't eat turkey cause that shit's gross 😂 #noms #plaguetimes #stillgottaeat https://www.instagram.com/p/CWuV39elAvg/?utm_medium=tumblr

[retrofatale]

This is what being extra cautious while still having to work looks like. We take the pandemic very seriously! #quarantinelife #plaguetimes #covid_19 #7sservicesaturday (at 7 Stages) https://www.instagram.com/p/CItUATHpWet/?igshid=44yhxlaoplp7

[fraise-impossible]

We have a pair of interns at work-- both queer women. One is about my age, a little older, and kind, and competent, and a touch world-weary, with big watery blue eyes with lines that make her look older than she is, but those eyes light up in delight when she sees a new plant, a new something of the world to marvel over. the other is younger than us, and also kind, and also competent, and bright as a button, fizzing with wit, referencing ceaselessly the people who make up her community, asking questions like: if you could do anything in the future, no limitations, what would you do? To which my bewildered answer: I don’t allow myself such fantasies! I didn’t say so to her, of course. I said something watered-down that was meant to be kind of ominous (if one could project ominousness into the past tense, as in: the feeling that something(s) important and dreadful have already happened, and in some form continue, and definitely recur). It was a sour, foul feeling. I felt myself shrinking into myself but she had more questions: how do I like the community in Boston...? And I thought: WHAT community?! But surely there is one. And why have I none or why don’t I like it? Because I never sought it out seriously! Because I never believed in it! Because communities aren’t inherently functional entities! Because isolation perpetuates itself! Because communities demand that you function as part of them! And what could I do for anyone that I’m not doing already? What am I supposed to have left over that I could supply to a ravenous collective?  What could I expect to gain from being asked outright to show myself willing to give? I’m exhausted, I’m spent! I can only give myself such as I am, whatever the effect is of my daily slog, the unforeseen consequences of life: dragging myself through space and time in order to keep myself going. Communities want proof, want evidence of loyalty, want effort! I mean, they want you to give, because they won’t give unless they get. That’s the agreement. But there is no community for those who are already tapped out.

A. notes that I’m the more cynical of the two of us now, and it’s true. I’m just a secret nihilst, waiting for the end to confirm itself. How can I possibly allow myself to entertain fantasies of the future? My wishes are simple, domestic. Any promising future can collapse. It doesn’t take much. And in any case, how should we construe current conditions as whatsoever promising? Back to interns: how do I deal with the young hopeful one? I want reflexively to protect her (from what??) and also I don’t want to be a fucking creep. How strange and alienating it feels to be around someone who comes off as so simultaneously relatable and full of excellent politics and... somehow still naïve? Jeez. Is it naïve to ask people around you to engage with notions of the future? Is it praxis of some sort? In this case it very well could be, but she delivers her future-focus with such lack of sanctimony, with such an absence of smugness that I’m just bewildered. She really means it. She’s really just preoccupied by that. She finds it interesting. She wonders what people must think of the future. And here I am, assiduously uninterested in the future for fear of what it contains. I feel old, very very old. The other day one of my coworkers, 65, short and feisty and constantly smoking, pulled over her heinously rusted '03 Camry as she was on the way to the gate and I standing on the side of the path... she scrunched up her mask so she could be heard and said: this is awful. I’m glad I’m old, I don’t have to put up with this for much longer. But you young ones, you’ll have decades of this. And I think she expected some kind of strength in my response, but all I could say was: it’s fine. This is just how it is. Like a tire with a faulty valve, gently deflating. We’ll get used to it. What a lie. I didn’t want to say: I know what a shit time we have coming and I don’t like it. I’m sick with it. I’m pushing it as far away from me as I possibly can so that I can just put one foot in front of another. All these people suddenly acting like they’ve felt it all along! So many people realizing and telling me as though I should exclaim at such news! I did want to say: I look forward to the time that will come after humans. I look forward to my molecules becoming something non-human. I look forward to becoming moss and algae. Dispersed throughout the residents of a vernal pool, scattered around as soil, merging with myself and splitting off again as tadpoles, snakes swallowing frogs and laying clutches of eggs in their secret hibernacula, with the mother liquor of the hatchlings seeping quietly into the soil among the abandoned shells, soon a patch swarming with delighted microbes. What do I think of the future? I look forward to being eaten. 

[citylightsnc]

Pandemic lit for those who want to wallow in it, or to seek better understanding of our current predicament through the thoughtful lens of literature. We’ve got plenty of escapist reading available too. Curbside pickup Tu-Sat, 10-6. Book orders via phone or web ship for 99 cents. Link on bio. . . . #plaguetimes #staffpicks #readmorebooks #readingisselfcare #booksareessential #curbsidepickup #citylightsnc #bookstore #downtownsylva #northcarolina #sylva #spendlocal #indiebookstore #shopwhereyoulive #readmorebooks #wnc #99centshipping (at City Lights Bookstore) https://www.instagram.com/p/B-4V2TRJ2QO/?igshid=k75uvm4u5v2x