Beware the COVID-19 Demons
Our darkest, most twisted, terrified selves are rising out of us now. Pushing their way up through our bodies like a child being born in reverse. Like an alien bursting out of the host’s chest or a serpent shedding its skin. Our traumas are being relived, our regrets revealed, our weaknesses magnified.
We are now living to survive, not to prosper, plan or create, but just to get through each day. Shut up in our pathetic dens, which are no longer charming and cozy, but simply there, we marinate. Our houses have become utilitarian, just a place to exist, eat enough not to feel hungry, wait for evening to come. We venture outside to pretend to be free for half an hour, enjoying the furtive spring sun, but cowering away from each other in the street.
The supermarket is a labyrinth of potential infection. The shopping cart handles are surely contaminated, vegetables already handled, and bulk bins of flour, oatmeal and almonds harbor the possibility of death at home on a sweat-soaked bed gasping for air, shaking with fever.
Our loved ones want to care for us but fear us at the same time. And the worst thing is that the enemy is invisible, unknown, unfathomable. And stealthy. It floats in the droplets, killing those who went to the ski resort bar at the wrong time; those who were sitting on a subway when someone coughed, in the back of the wrong Uber, at the pharmacy picking up their normal meds; the one who turned the doorknob of the last restaurant in the neighborhood still selling take-out.
We are reduced to numbers and body bags — so many that they have to be stored in refrigerated trucks. We see our sleepless and stressed out governors and mayors pleading for supplies, while the federal government, run by a sociopath, pits them against each other, playing favorites, creating division. I wonder which is the greater pathogen, Sickness or Power?
The virus has revealed everything that is wrong with our culture and society. Every crack in our hallowed principles of individual gain, wealth, the right to live in “freedom”, including collecting guns, living without health insurance, despising others for their skin color. We are weak and hateful, full of fear and anger. Ironically, we expire as nature reawakens, trees budding, birds hopping from branch to branch, grass pushing up. Spring is cruel this year. And the planet exacts its revenge against the infected humans who infest its surface. It shakes us off, and we dissipate like bats scattering in the night.
