Our Moods in Front of Us
Eileen Manion
“Something has happened to us.
We shall never be at peace.”
Natalia Ginzburg, Little Virtues
As I walk the streets of Montreal, I see many changes. Despite the new rules allowing restaurants and stores to reopen, many remain shuttered, and I often read of another small business that has gone bankrupt because it could not survive the disruption.
Every day we read about how many new Covid-19 cases there are, how many people have died, and wonder: when can we wake up from this nightmare?
At first it seemed like only sick old people were dying; but then we found out young healthy people don’t necessarily survive.
In addition, we hear about young adults who recovered, but report symptoms that last for longer than they should.
And the damage to the body can be shifty; at first it was classified as a respiratory disease, but then we were told that it can affect not just lungs, but also kidneys and the heart.
Information is as unstable as the virus itself; children are not likely to get it we’re told one day and the next we hear of children in Trois Rivieres who returned to school and immediately succumbed.
But children have only mild cases. we are told.
Not always: some develop life threatening conditions. The very randomness of who gets sick, who dies results in a kind of terror, learned helplessness, and depression.
Who and what are safe? One day we hear that we should disinfect our doorknobs, then we’re told — no — we catch it from the air we breathe — most likely indoors.
How many times have I walked past La Malheureuse Magnifique, located on the busy corner of Sherbrooke and St. Denis Streets, without looking carefully at it? On the way to the optician, the bakery, Lafontaine Park. For my tourist at home project, I decided to give it more thought.
Although created in 1972 by Pierre Yves Anger, the crouching white figure, devoid of gender, with arms embracing the head as if the person wants to shut out a world that is just too painful and scary seems to express perfectly what we feel now, after contending more than four months with fallout from the coronavirus.
But can the sculpture represent anything else?
The inscription suggests another possibility:
“A ceux qui regardent a l’interieur d’eux-memes et franchissent ainsi les frontiers du visible.” To those who look within themselves and thus break through the borders of the visible.
What do we see when we look within ourselves?
Fear? Will I, my partner, my mother, my child, my friend catch this disease and die?
Impatience? Why can’t I sit in my favorite café this afternoon?
Anger? Why has this pandemic been so badly mismanaged? What is the government doing with my tax money?
Or can we locate some resilience?
Natalia Ginzburg was describing the collective trauma of a generation that reached adulthood when Mussolini controlled Italy, and then lived through the horrors of World War II and its aftermath.
The Covid-19 pandemic has created a very different kind of collective trauma for us. Although our houses may remain intact, our lives have changed dramatically and we have no idea how long these changes and this uncertainty will last.
The changes mandated because of the pandemic should be preparing us for more serious disruptions. Global warming has already affected other parts of the world, especially Africa, the Middle East, the Arctic, and Central America, contributing to civil wars and migrations.
Some of the effects have already been seen in North America: out of control fires, droughts, increased hurricanes and tornadoes.
Just as our behavior is causing climate change, so too has it influenced the creation and spread of new diseases, as humans encroach on wilderness areas, increase meat production, travel.
Many, led by Donald Trump, deny the need for change and insist the virus will go away if we just don’t think or talk too much about it.
Such denial is a coping mechanism. But a very bad one. Denying a problem will not make it disappear, only prevent us from solving it.
And denial of the seriousness of Covid-19 and of our human contributions to climate change do even more damage.
They inhibit the social will necessary to deal with both.
